“People like you give eternal damnation a bad name.” Hickey laughed. “I’ll wager you carry some of that holy oil with you all the time. Never know when a good Catholic might drop dead at your feet.”
“I carry holy oil, yes.”
Hickey sneered. “Good. Later we’ll fry an egg with it.”
Father Murphy turned away. Megan walked toward Maureen and Baxter. Maureen watched her approach, keeping her eyes fixed steadily on Megan’s.
Megan stood over the two cuffed people, then knelt beside Baxter’s sprawled body and ripped the belt from his pants. She stood with her feet spread and brought the belt down with a whistling sound across Baxter’s face.
Father Murphy and the Cardinal shouted at her.
Megan raised the belt again and brought it down on Maureen’s upraised arms. She aimed the next blow at Baxter, but Maureen threw herself over his defenseless body and the belt lashed her across the neck.
Megan struck at Maureen’s back, then struck again at her legs, then her buttocks.
The Cardinal looked away. Murphy was shouting at the top of his lungs.
Hickey began playing the chancel organ, joining with the bells. Frank Gallagher sat on the blood-smeared landing where Fitzgerald had lain and listened to the sounds of blows falling; then the sharp sounds were lost as the organ played “The Dying Rebel.”
George Sullivan looked away from the sanctuary and played his bagpipe. Abby Boland and Eamon Farrell had stopped singing, but Flynn’s voice called to them over the microphone, and they sang. Hickey sang, too, into the organ microphone. “The first I saw was a dying rebel.Kneeling low I heard him cry,God bless my home in Tipperary,God bless the cause for which I die.”
In the attic Jean Kearney and Arthur Nulty lay on their sides, huddled together on the vibrating floor boards. They kissed, then moved closer. Jean Kearney rolled on her back, and Nulty covered her body with his.
Rory Devane stared out of the north tower, then fired the last flare. The crowds below were still singing, and he sang, too, because it made him feel less alone.
Donald Mullins stood in the tower below the first bell room, oblivious to everything but the pounding in his head and the cold wind passing through the smashed windows. From his pocket he took a notebook filled with scrawled poems and stared at it. He remembered what Padraic Pearse had said, referring to himself, Joseph Plunkett, and Thomas MacDonagh at the beginning of the 1916 uprising: “If we do nothing else, we shall rid Ireland of three bad poets.” Mullins laughed, then wiped his eyes. He threw the notebook over his shoulder, and it sailed out into the night.
In the choir loft Leary watched Megan through his sniper scope. It came to him in a startling way that he had never once, even as a child, struck anyone. He watched Megan’s face, watched her body move, and he suddenly wanted her.
Brian Flynn stared into the organ’s large concave mirror, watching the scene on the altar sanctuary. He listened for the sound of Maureen’s cries and the sound of the steady slap of the belt against her body, but heard only the vibrant tones of the chimes, the high, reedy wail of the bagpipes, the singing, and the full, rich organ below. “The next I saw was a gray-haired father,Searching for his only son.I said Old Man there’s no use in searchingYour only son to Heaven has gone.”
He lowered his eyes from the mirror and shut them, listening only to the faraway chimes. He remembered that sacrifices took place on altars, and the allusion was not lost on him, and possibly some of the others understood as well. Maureen understood. He remembered the double meaning of sacrifice: an implied sanctification, an offering to the Deity, thanksgiving, purification…. But the other meaning was darker, more terrible—pain, loss, death. But in either case the understanding was that sacrifice was rewarded. The time, place, and nature of the reward was never clear, however. “Your only son was shot in DublinFighting for his Country bold.He died for Ireland and Ireland onlyThe Irish flag green, white and gold.”
A sense of overpowering melancholy filled him—visions of Ireland, Maureen, Whitehorn Abbey, his childhood, flashed through his mind. He suddenly felt his own mortality, felt it as a palpable thing, a wrenching in his stomach, a constriction in his throat, a numbness that spread across his chest and arms.
A confused vision of death filled the blackness behind his eyelids, and he saw himself lying naked, white as the cathedral marble, in the arms of a woman with long honey-colored hair shrouding her face; and blood streamed from his mouth, over his cold dead whiteness—blood so red and so plentiful that the people who had gathered around remarked on it curiously. A young man took his hand and knelt to kiss his ring; but the ring was gone, and the man rose and walked away in disgust. And the woman who held him said,
CHAPTER 47
Brian Flynn looked at the clock in the rear of the choir loft. He let the last notes of “An Irish Lullaby” die away, then pressed the key for the bell named Patrick. The single bell tolled, a deep low tone, then tolled again and again, twelve times, marking the midnight hour. St. Patrick’s Day was over.
The shortest day of the year, he reflected, was not the winter solstice but the day you died, and March 18 would be only six hours and three minutes long, if that.
A deep silence lay over the acre of stone, and the outside cold seeped into the church, slowly numbing the people inside. The four hostages slept fitfully on the cool marble of the altar sanctuary, cuffed together in pairs.
John Hickey rubbed his eyes, yawned, and looked at the television he had moved to the organ console. The volume was turned down, and a barely audible voice was remarking on the new day and speculating on what the sunrise would bring. Hickey wondered how many people were still watching. He pictured all-night vigils around television sets. Whatever happened would happen live, in color, and few would be willing to go to sleep and see it on the replays. Hickey looked down at Pedar Fitzgerald. There were ice packs around his throat and a tube coming from his mouth that emitted a hissing sound. Slightly annoying, Hickey thought.
Flynn began playing the bells again, an Irish-American song this time, “How Are Things in Glocca Morra?”
Hickey watched the television. The street crowds approved of the selection. People were swaying arm in arm, beery tears rolling down red faces. But eventually, he knew, the magic would pass, the concern over the hostages and the Cathedral would become the key news story again. A lot of emotional strings were being pulled this night, and he was fascinated by the game of manipulation. Hickey glanced up at the empty triforium where Gallagher had stood, then turned and called back toward the sacristy stairs, “Frank?”
Gallagher called from the stairwell, “All quiet!”
Hickey looked up at Sullivan and Abby Boland, and they signaled in return. Eamon Farrell called down from the triforium overhead. “All quiet.” Hickey cranked the field phone.
Arthur Nulty rolled over and reached out for the receiver. “Roger.”
“Status.”
Nulty cleared his throat. “Haven’t we had enough bells, for God’s sake? I can’t hear so well with that clanging in my ears.”
“Do the best you can.” He cranked the phone again. “Bell tower?”
Mullins was staring through a shattered window, and the phone rang several times before he was aware of it. He grabbed it quickly. “Bell tower.”
Hickey said, “Sleeping?”
Mullins moved one earpiece of the shooters’ baffles and said irritably, “Sleeping? How the hell could anyone sleep with
Hickey said, “How are they behaving outside?”
Mullins trailed the phone wire and walked around the tower. “They keep coming and going. Mostly coming. Soldiers bivouacked in the Channel Gardens. Damned reporters on the roofs have been drinking all night. Could use a rip myself.”
“Aye, time enough for that. At this hour tomorrow you’ll be—where?”
