Redemption - Leon Uris [129]
I took it to Long Dan Sweeney and Atty. They were convinced of Dalton’s desire for redemption.
Next, I went to Conor’s dear brother, Father Dary Larkin. Dary was a Bogside priest and close confidant of the enlightened Bishop Mooney.
Dary did not hesitate a ha’penny’s worth and threw his lot in with us. Did he have Mooney’s blessing? Not to ask.
Hugh Dalton was up for retirement as we set up the plan. Conor was instructed to start serving the Mass so that it would appear natural after a time. This gave Dalton the needed time to get his pension and leave for civilian life where he would be above suspicion.
On certain Sundays the prison was made a sort of open house for visiting relatives. Usually two or three dozen priests came from around the country as well.
Father Dary entered Portlaoise under an assumed name among twenty other priests. Father Kyle, a willing victim, was “attacked” in the sacristy by Conor, who pretended to be robbing him. The “victim” was bound, gagged, and locked in a closet where he would later be discovered.
After the noon Mass, all the priests assembled near the chapel and, as a group, passed through the main gate. Conor Larkin in the disguise of a priest in Father Kyle’s clothing…and I’m certain the Lord will understand…walked out to freedom.
II
Dunleer, the landed estate of the Baron Louis de Lacy, lay hauntingly in the lunarscape of Connemara in County Galway. His land stretched over thousands of acres, encompassing dozens of the hundreds of lakes that pocked the area. The barony drifted up to the Twelve Bens, small but respectable mountains of jagged naked stone hovering over a moorlike bog, and a fairy coast of hidden coves and strands and plunging fjords. Most of the mystic de Lacy domain was all but hidden to the eye. Once out of the foothills, a prolific archipelago peppered a water world from the bay out to the open sea.
The de Lacys were old Norman Catholic aristocracy of the legendary “Tribes of Galway” eccentricized by generations of Connemara wilderness. Dunleer demesne was part of the tragic heritage, the land to which Oliver Cromwell had condemned the Irish into exile and mass death.
The present Baron, affectionately called “Lord Louie,” had recently closed out a distinguished career in the British Navy and consular service and had retreated to Dunleer to breed Connemara ponies and continue his mania as a Gaelic scholar.
Lord Louis was also an ardent republican and secretly a member of the Irish Republican Brotherhood, a close confidant of Long Dan Sweeney and Atty Fitzpatrick. Dunleer figured in Brotherhood plans early on, a safe place for men in hiding and a place to store arms.
From the day Conor Larkin made his escape, he was spirited into Dunleer and hidden so deeply, so far back in a lakeside cottage, it would be impossible to find him.
Well now, we had the most hunted head with the greatest bounty on it in our keep. Dan wanted to get Conor out of the country and let a few years pass. Even I could see the rationale of having him leave Ireland, but I feared it, greatly. The man was in no state to take care of himself.
In prison he lived in a survival mode. In Dunleer Conor now had open spaces and time to think. The wound of Shelley’s death would never fully heal, we all knew that. As the weeks passed he still was not able to function normally. He would show the four of us periods of clarity, but the longer he remained clear, the more her murder and his guilt were laid bare.
After a time he’d flare and plunge into a nether world. Conor had locked himself with higher walls than Portlaoise. He was a prisoner of himself. His escapes now were his distorted journeys into madness. He could only face his torment head-on for so long, then fall.
Dan’s frustration had to be tempered by reality. Conor had to be taken out of the country. Only Atty held out now.
“We’ve got to lay it on the table, Atty,” Dan argued to her. “Conor is