The Rebels of Ireland (129 page)

“If ever the time should come when there is actually a rising,” she said, “our Irish Volunteers are going to need a lot more arms than they've got now. How will they be supplied? I shouldn't think another run like the
Asgard
would do it.”

Back in 1914, when in answer to the Ulster arms shipments, the Volunteers had needed their own arms, the rich author Erskine Childers had let his sailing ketch, the
Asgard,
be used to run arms in by the Ben of Howth. The incident had been famous; but for a proper rising, something on a far larger scale would be needed. She thought of what old Maureen had told her about the Maddens in America. “Would the Americans finance such a thing?” she asked.

“Perhaps. Or even the Germans, I suppose,” he said with a shrug. She glanced at him, but did not ask further. She had the distinct impression, however, that he knew more than he'd said.

In April she noticed a change in him. She met him and Rita one evening, and though he talked as usual, he seemed abstracted. Easter week approached. On Palm Sunday, she saw Rita, and again on Wednesday. On the second occasion, Rita confided in her, “Something's coming up. I don't know what, but in the ICA, we've been told there will be manoeuvres on Easter weekend. She gave Caitlin a meaningful look. Important manoeuvres.” On Thursday morning, Caitlin chanced to see Willy in the street. They only exchanged
a few words, but she thought there was an air of suppressed excitement about him.

She was surprised to see him coming from the quays across College Green that evening. He was walking slowly, his head bowed, and he appeared to be muttering to himself. She had actually been attending an art class, and as he started to walk eastwards along the wall of Trinity, she rode her bicycle by him. He was not aware of her, and glancing back, she hesitated to interrupt him. Yet he looked so troubled that, fifty yards farther on, she put on her brakes and, resting her foot on the side of the road, waited for him to draw up.

“Are you all right?”

He glanced at her, still frowning. She was afraid that she had trespassed upon his private thoughts.

“No.” He gave her a nod that indicated she should remain in his company. He wasn't wearing her scarf today, she noticed. She dismounted completely and began to walk beside him. The street was almost empty. They went in silence for a hundred yards. “I know you don't talk,” he said finally.

“I should know that.”

“It'll be out anyway, soon enough now.” He shook his head. “You remember you asked about arms?”

“Yes.”

“They came today. Actually, this man Sir Roger Casement has been negotiating for us in Germany for more than a year. Strange isn't it, an English public servant, knighted, yet sympathetic to Ireland as well? We asked for troops. They wouldn't give them. But twenty thousand rifles and a million rounds of ammunition were to be landed with Casement in Kerry today. They came, too. But something went wrong. The ship was intercepted. Casement's arrested.”

“I heard something might happen this weekend.”

“Perhaps it will. Say nothing of what I've told you. But keep going down to Liberty Hall. If there's more to hear, you'll hear it there. Don't be seen with me now. Good night.”

The next three days had been strange indeed. Half the time, nobody seemed to know what was going on. But gradually she began to understand. The rising had been planned. The IRB was behind it. They'd even sent out orders to the Irish Volunteers, all over the country, to rise on Easter Sunday. They hadn't even told Mac Neill, who was supposed to be in charge. With the arms from Casement lost, Mac Neill countermanded the order. But Tom Clarke, the deadly tobacconist, and Pearse and the other IRB men wanted to go ahead anyway. They started sending Cumann na mBan girls off with new orders for a rising on Monday instead. Each time Caitlin arrived at Liberty Hall, she found more confusion than she had before. But on Sunday, Willy was there.

“Be here tomorrow morning,” he told her firmly. “There'll be plenty for you to do.”

That proved to be an understatement. The Easter Rising was a strange business, but it was certainly a week to be remembered. For a start, there was the question of numbers.

It was clear to her from the moment she arrived at Liberty Hall that the order and counter-order of the weekend had taken a heavy toll. Most of the Volunteers, especially outside Dublin, had believed that the rising was cancelled. Only about fourteen hundred of the Irish Volunteers were at the quay, together with about another two hundred of the trade union ICA. She saw Rita among them. It seemed that the leaders had a plan, though. It was interesting to see how several of the men directing affairs now were obviously members of the secretive IRB. The poetic Pearse and the gaunt tobacconist Tom Clarke were among them. James Connolly of the union was taking a leading role, also. Though not one of the leaders, she could see from the way that he bustled about that Willy O'Byrne had their confidence.

Despite their modest numbers, the plan was to take control of a number of strategic points in the city. The General Post Office on Sackville Street, opposite Nelson's pillar, would be the headquarters. Then there would be garrisons in the Four Courts a short way upstream, the Castle and City Hall, Jacobs Biscuit Factory to the south; another industrial building, Boland's Mills, in the southeast, by the Grand Canal docks; and several other places. People were being chosen for each location.

Just for a moment, she asked herself what she was doing there. The enterprise seemed hasty and almost sure to fail. Even now, she guessed that the British forces in Dublin probably outnumbered theirs by three to one. But as she caught sight of Rita's excited face, and the faces of other young women she knew, she chided herself. If they are ready to fight for Ireland, then so should I be, she thought. She wondered where she should be posted. Somebody pointed to her and said that as she was such a good marksman, she ought to be a sniper. There was some hesitation. Then Willy appeared. She saw him converse briefly with some of the leading men, pointing to her. Then he came over.

“Did you come here on your bicycle?'

“I did. Why?”

“Go home quickly.” Her face must have registered dismay, because he laughed. “Don't worry, I'll give you every chance to get killed. But I want you to come back here dressed as if you were going to an art lecture, or to the Abbey. You may be more use like that. I need you to look like,” he grinned, “a young countess.”

“I'm not giving up my Webley.”

“Hide it somewhere, that's all.”

She was back in half an hour. When he saw her, Willy nodded approval. When she asked him what he wanted her to do, he just said: “You'll see.”

The detachments started marching out at eleven o'clock. She watched them go down the street. As it was the Easter holiday, there were quite a few people strolling about. They'd seen the Volunteers
march about before, so they evidently supposed this was some sort of Easter parade. Nobody took more than the most cursory notice.

An hour later, to the public's great astonishment, Pearse the orator came out in front of the General Post Office and proclaimed an Irish Republic.

A week to be remembered. It was not long before she understood the reason why Willy had asked her to change her clothes. Within a day, there were cordons and barricades all over the centre of the city. The GPO and the Four Courts particularly were under heavy fire. There were snipers on the rooftops. More and more British troops were coming into the city to cordon off the whole centre. Later in the week, a gunboat came up the Liffey and started pounding the rebel positions. And the most useful task she could perform was to carry messages, without incurring suspicion.

If she had any talent for acting, she realised, now was the time to use it. She did rather well. To her surprise, she found that she could get in and out of the GPO. The women were running both a kitchen and a field hospital there. By taking a careful route, she could get to the Four Courts. Though it got harder as the days went by, she was able to cross the Liffey and get to St. Stephen's Green, where the women had another field hospital set up, to City Hall and points beyond. She was proud to find that in most of the garrisons, the women were soon relieving the men as snipers. When she was sent down to the Jacobs factory, she found Rita in high good humour. “They threw me out, so I've occupied them,” she announced. “And before we leave, we'll eat all their biscuits!” Only at Boland's Mills did she find that there were no women. The commander there was a tall, bony-faced Irish American in his early thirties with a strange Spanish name: de Valera. He told her frankly, “I won't have women under my command.”

“You think we'll run away?” Caitlin demanded.

“Not at all.” He laughed. “The women are too brave. They take
so many risks I can't control them.” He wrote a message on a scrap of paper and asked her to take it to the GPO. “What will you do with the message if the soldiers take you?” he asked.

“Eat it,” she answered simply.

But the soldiers never did take her. The snipers nearly shot her a score of times. Indeed, since the Dubliners could never resist the urge to have a peek to see what was going on, she saw many of them hit by snipers or stray bullets. But she became adept at knowing where the dangerous corners and crossings were. Her genius lay in her ability to bicycle up to a group of English soldiers and ask for their help in getting through. She always had an excuse. She had to see her art professor, go to the theatre to collect a play script, visit her great aunt. Once she carefully loosened her bicycle chain and begged the soldiers to help her get it back on. Sometimes, of course, they refused to let her through, and she had to find a detour to come at her objective some other way. But often as not, they took the pretty, well-spoken girl with the expensive clothes and the flashing green eyes for a harmless young aristocrat, and let her pass with a warning that she'd better take care.

Nor were the soldiers so foolish to do so. After all, the Volunteers were barricaded in their occupied buildings. Some of their women were insisting they were nurses, when they weren't sniping from the windows; but they were nearly all in uniform of one sort or another. And above all, most of the people of Dublin had not only been taken by surprise by the rising, they wanted nothing to do with it.

Caitlin heard their comments frequently. What was the point of all this fuss, it was asked, when independence had already been promised? Shopkeepers and businessmen were not pleased at the damage done to the city, especially after the gunboat started pounding the rebel positions. “Sackville Street,” a grocer complained to her, “is being turned into a ruin. And who will pay for all this? We shall. You can be sure of it.” More than once, going through the Liberties in the latter part of the week, she heard furious complaints
from Catholic mothers, because the disruption had delayed the pay packets they got from their sons in the British army.