We transferred to the Westland Row Station for the short ride to Maynooth in County Kildare where St. Patrick's College stood in a setting of magnificent serenity on the site of an ancient Fitzgerald castle.
By noon the gathering of families from all over the country milled about on the green before the Chapel. Half of them seemed equally out of place as Brigid. The Chapel left nothing undone as a showpiece, a Gothic wonderment thirty years in the building and crafted literally by hand in marble, wood and mosaic. Why, the choir stalls alone held half a thousand men. The sense of tension and exhilaration built as we entered that awesomely high-ceilinged domain.
Concelebration commenced with the lavabo, a ritual of cleansing of hands and feet by the candidates, who then entered the nave fanfared by a thundering of the mighty Stahluhut organ. They moved majestically down the aisle all white allow in their albs, amices, chasubles, gemials, cinctures and stoles.
And there was wee Dary still the smallest of the lot and half again as smart. We all exchanged smiles as he spotted us and Brigid joined the brigade, of sniffling women.
The Bishop arrived between a pair of priests and enthroned himself.
"Let those who are to be ordained priests come forward," the deacon summoned. "Martin MacRannall."
"I am ready and willing."
"Edwin O'Meagher."
"I am ready and willing."
"Dary Larkin."
"I am ready and willing."
"Pearse MacSheehy . . ." until all twenty candidates had been tolled.
"Do you know if they are worthy?" the Bishop inquired when they had all arrayed themselves before his seat, looking like a pile of white sheep shearings.
"I testify that upon inquiry among the people of God, and upon recommendation of those concerned with their training, they have been found worthy."
The Bishop droned from memory as to their coming life and duties and questioned them on their worthiness and rendered an oath of obedience and then they prostrated themselves before him on the marble floor, becoming a candent cloud.
Having been presented, ejected, instructed, examined, vowed and invited to prayer, the concelebration reached the Litany of the Saints.
Lord have mercy - Lord have mercy
Christ have mercy - Christ have mercy
Lord have mercy - Pray for us
Holy Mary, Mother of God - Pray for us
Saint Michael - Pray for us
All you holy angels - Pray for us
Saint Joseph - Pray for us
Saint John the Baptist - Pray for us
Saints Peter and Paul - Pray for us
Saint Andrew - Pray for us
Saint John - Pray for us
Saint Mary Magdalen - Pray for us
Saint Stephen - Pray for us
Saint Laurence - Pray for us
Saint Ignatius of Antioch - Pray for us
Saint Agnes - Pray for us
Saints Perpetua and Felicity - Pray for us
Saint Gregory - Pray for us
Saint Augustine - Pray for us
Saint Athanasius - Pray for us
Saint Basil - Pray for us
Saint Martin - Pray for us
Saint Benedict - Pray for us
Saints Francis and Dominic - Pray for us
Saint Francis Xavier - Pray for us
Saint John Vianney - Pray for us
Saint Theresa - Pray for us
Saint Catherine - Pray for us
It was a staggering ritual and Conor and I loved Dary enough to set aside our own bitterness toward the religion and share his glory.
Yet, as they droned into the Irish saints, all two hundred and seventeen of them from Abben to Our Lady of Youghal, that old queasy feeling crawled into my stomach. I had not said the rosary since I'd left Ballyutogue.
Halfway through all the Irish saints, all the Irish saints in Scotland, all the Irish saints in England and all the Irish saints in Europe I was having a job keeping my peace.
Only a few weeks earlier I had written an essay on the premise that if two hundred and seventeen saints acting as demigods wasn't paganism, what was? Our people fall on their knees to dull-eyed idols in a saint worship we would condemn as paganism by a black man in an African tribe.
Was it not paganism to ask a statue for fertility of field and fertility of womb, for rain when it's dry and sun when it's mildew? To throw away crutches at shrines filled with saints, to ask a saint to win at sports, smite the enemy, cause warts to disappear, find gold, keep the butter from spoiling?
How much light, how much truth, have we shut out by blind obedience? Or could we have borne the truth of our poverty and servitude? Did we require the false hopes to ease the pain of living?
In all this awesome splendor I wondered about this hold . . . this terrible mysterious hold on an otherwise enlightened people. Is there an inherent weakness in most people that requires a mystery to keep them going?
Saint Turninus - Pray for us
Saint Tutilo - Pray for us
Saint Craik Ultan - Pray for us
Saint Fosses Ultan - Pray for us
Saint Ursinus - Pray for us
Saint Aosta Ursus - Pray for us
Saints Wiro and Plechelm -Pray for us
OUR LADY OF YOUGHAL! - I made it!
All men and women, saints of God - Pray for us
Lord, spare us - Lord, deliver us
From all evil - Lord, deliver us
From all sin - Lord, deliver us
From everlasting death - Lord, deliver us
From the mystery of your incarnation - Lord, deliver us
By your death and resurrection - Lord, deliver us
By the sending of the Holy Spirit - Lord, deliver us
Be merciful to us sinners - We ask you, hear our prayer
Guide and protect your holy church - We ask you, hear our prayer
Keep our Pope and all the clergy faithful in religion - We ask you, hear our prayer
Grant peace and unity to all nations - We ask you, hear our prayer
Strengthen and keep us in your service - We ask you, hear our prayer
Bless these chosen ones - We ask you, hear our prayer
Bless these chosen ones and make them holy - We ask you, hear our prayer
Bless these chosen ones, make them holy and set them apart for sacred duties
We ask you, hear our prayer
Jesus, Son of the living God, Christ, hear us, Christ, hear us
As the soft inspirational light bathed the mighty hall and the moment pressed ever closer, the Bishop prayed long, hard and ancient, then touched their hands and heads, attired himself holy, fed them ceremonially and planted upon them the kiss of peace.
Outside on the lawn in the burst of relief and flow of tears, photographers plied a thriving business before the stupendous tower for that photograph that hung in fifty thousand Irish homes and cottages. Over and over and over the gathered tested out that revered word, "Father."
"Father Dary," Brigid wept, "Father Dary."
CHAPTER FOUR
My play, The Night of the Pilgrim, was neither stop nor go. It had a few sparkling moments including a stirring soliloquy near the final curtain, a speech from the dock, no less, that never failed to mist up every Irish eye that saw it.
If there was a saving grace in The Night of the Pilgrim it was Atty Fitzpatrick, who played the leading role. When she agreed to do the part, they say you could hear my heart sing clear to Tralee.
Dublin in particular was a man's world, with its pubs and sporting scene. Our good Catholic girls learned their catechisms, bore their children and remained docile on worldly matters. Yet the revival was giving birth to a number of extraordinary ladies cut of different cloth. This breed, Anglo-ascendants for the most part, had been moved to outrage over the centuries of British misrule. None was more beautiful, more volatile than Atty Fitzpatrick, a sort of Irish Joan of Arc. Long Dan Sweeney himself characterized her as the best fighter in the Brotherhood a
nd sometimes the only one with balls on the Supreme Council.
She was born into this world as the daughter of Lord and Lady Royce-Moore, a landowning institution out of County Galway. By the time Atty Royce-Moore reached her twenties she had had her seasons of social graces and schooling in London and on the Continent. She had also been fatally bitten by the plight of the peasants and before her twenty-first birthday renounced her own class.
The first that Ireland was to know of Atty was when she became sole inheritor of the family holdings. She immediately broke up the estate by selling parcels for pittances to the peasants who had farmed it since time eternal. The move shocked the gentry and British down to their imperial roots but also endeared her to the people.
Atty was ever on the gallop. If a rent and rate strike was going on in Wexford or Waterford or an epidemic struck the Liberties in Dublin or if evictions grew heavy in the west, she was at the head of the protest. She had been jailed twice for her activities and boasted that it was her intention to be guest of the Crown in every bridewell in Ireland before she was through. And a mere woman at that.
Well, not exactly. She was a lithe statuesque beauty, standing taller than most men and casting an image only slightly less than that of Mother Ireland herself.
Her marriage to Desmond Fitzpatrick seemed as natural as heather in the mountains. Fitzpatrick was the scion of an old Norman Catholic family of that number who had originally conquered Ireland for the English in the twelfth century. After a time the Normans integrated so completely they became "more Irish than the Irish." The old families, the Morrises. Fitzgeralds, Barrys, Roches, Burkes, Plunketts, Joyces, Fitzgibbons and Fitzhughs, fared better than the croppies down through the ages. Before their integration they were the mighty "Earls of Ireland." As the Catholics emerged from their dark age, our non-Anglo middle and upper class was largely of Norman background.
Young Desmond Fitzpatrick was an early follower of Parnell, a barrister who fought the peasants' cause in the courts with stunning success. When they married and moved to Dublin, they plunged into the Gaelic revival with unabated fervor. Atty converted to Catholicism and in between bearing three children carried on her own work relentlessly. They were patrons of the fledgling national theater where she found time to participate as an actress mostly to help new playwrights.
The Fitzpatricks immediately identified with Arthur Griffith when he formed the Sinn Fein political party and were among the first secret members of the reviving Irish Republican Brotherhood.
Desmond Fitzpatrick dropped dead in the Four Courts defending a croppy at the age of thirty-eight. I was there when it happened.
We who loved her watched her closely for what seemed to be a crushing tragedy. Instead of the expected retrenchment, Atty battled her way out of her grief by fanatical devotion to the movement. Desmond Fitzpatrick had become among the first of our new martyrs and his widow venerated him with brilliance. Yet I was sometimes given to ponder just how deeply love ran between them. I came to the conclusion that the real power of their union had been based on a foundation of republicanism and that that was more important to them in their marriage than being man and woman.
All of this is to say that my play was smiled upon when she accepted the role several months after widowhood. I was nervous as a prostitute in the Vatican when Conor came to see The Night of the Pilgrim and redeemed by a bear hug of approval at the final curtain.
We went backstage to meet Atty and set up a late go in the pub at Jury's Hotel, a watering hole for the theatrical and newspaper crowd.
Neither came as a stranger to the other. Everyone knew of Atty Fitzpatrick. Being as she was the only woman on the Brotherhood Council, she was completely aware that Conor was the author of the gunrunning scheme, an artisan of note and a man of prowess on the sporting field. At the instant of their introduction, I knew it was on between them. Conor had been without a real woman for a long time and obviously liked what he saw. She had been a widow long enough to have precisely the same thoughts.
In that my small presence was not required, I suddenly remembered a news story I had to cover, and told them I'd catch up with them later at Jury's.
*
When Atty Fitzpatrick entered a room it was seldom unnoticed. She and Conor settled in the lounge and she received the usual homage. They nibbled at their drinks until Seamus O'Neill's absence became conspicuous.
"I wonder what became of him?" she said.
"I think the lad's gracious enough to think I'd like to talk to you alone," Conor said.
Atty liked that, right off. Most men either tried to brag to build themselves up to her presence or shriveled at her imposing stature. "Do you want to?" she asked.
"I'm not completely certain," he said. "I've been going through some of the same loneliness you've been going through. I can't say it's as severe as suffering the loss of one's husband but I can't say it's not very painful, either. When is the right moment to start coming out of it? I suppose it's natural to think in those terms when you meet someone like yourself."
Atty weighed the words, the man and the situation. No one really knew how terrible the loss of Desmond had been. Some said she was brave Atty. She knew others felt her callous. She had been around men, in their world, most of her life. She was unusual in that it had been on her terms. Seldom had there been a relationship she couldn't handle at the outset or later manipulate to her own liking. The big fellow was intriguing and refreshing and quite devoid of nonsense. He was also more than a little intimidating.
"I'm lonesome, Atty," Conor said, speaking directly into the big brown eyes which had melted half of Dublin.
Her hand came slowly over the top of his. "So am I," she said.
*
The next night the theater was dark and she invited him to her home, in the suburb village of Rathgar, a short tram ride south of Dublin. Atty Fitzpatrick's house was an attached, flat-fronted, three-and-a-half-story Georgian affair at 34 Garville Avenue, sporting a wild-colored door and brass polished to a fare thee well.
Atty's proletariat leanings stopped at the entrance. It was an immaculately run home with a selection of lovely graces. Her children seemed delightful and trained to accept the comings and goings of strangers as well as long absences of their parents on behalf of the movement. After a dinner during which Conor made himself deliberately popular with the kids, they seemed to disappear on cue, as if knowing that Mum and the stranger had republican business.
"Come along," she said, forgoing the formal parlor. She led him to the top floor and opened the door into the front room. It was a combination intimate parlor, library and office, and had been the private retreat with her late husband adjoining their bedroom. It was now a memory room filled with all his writings, law books photographs and other vestiges of the life they had lived for the movement. For the first two months after Desmond's death she had barely left the room. Once, she did, she had not re-entered till this moment.
In the small grate below a marble mantel, Conor fixed a turf fire with a farm boy's expertise, and he was taken back the instant he smelled it. They talked about the situation of the peasants in the west and the Land League and wrought iron screens and jails. They talked about the vitality of life these days in Dublin and of lands beyond Ireland. They talked about guns and the Brotherhood and they talked of the evasive republican dream.
The time came round when Conor could no longer stay on without awkwardness. "It's gotten late on us, Atty," he said, "I'd best be taking leave."
"It seems like we've just started," she answered. "Oh, I'm a well-known talker. I talk at speeches and Council meetings like an obsessed banshee. Dan Sweeney has out and out told me to shut up on more than one occasion. But I never really get to talk to one person. Sometimes Seamus and I do but it seems like we're either getting our backs slapped in a pub or we're rushing through dinner to get to a meeting or catch a curtain. Des and I would talk here sometimes through the night and be absolutely astonished to see daylight come up on u
s. You know?"
"Aye," Conor said. "When your lover is also your best friend, that's all the world in that room, the two of you."
“Oh, Lord” she said, "I'm doing the lonely widow thing and I detest pity."
"Not to worry, but I do think the last tram to Dublin is about due."
"Conor," she said, "put another brick on the fire. If you miss the tram there's a bed downstairs next to the children's room. Between having this as a safe house and all night meetings, the children are quite used to finding strangers there in the morning."
"All right," he said. He poured another drop of cognac. "You're a hell of a woman, Atty, and you'll have the worst of your sorrow behind you in no time."
"What makes you say that?"
"Because the thing you love in this world most is your own strength. I don't know if anything could break you."
She mulled over whether it was a compliment or a putdown. "And you?"
"I find I'm having a terrible time going it alone. I never minded being alone until Shelley came. With her gone, I hate every moment of being alone." He sat on the floor and stared into the glowing turf and she did likewise, both of them content to go their separate ways for a time. Then she found herself engrossed in Conor. He was a frightening man. Unlike almost every man she had ever known, he had no fear of his own frailties and made little attempt to hide them and no attempt to spout his masculinity. With him here in this room there seemed little choice but to compare him with Desmond.
Larkin ran deep and quiet. Seamus had told her he, went into monumental poet's rages now and again, but it often took years of stuffing it inside him to come to it. There was certainly none of Desmond's bravado and flamboyance. Des loved himself, loved his courtroom antics, loved the sound of his voice at a speech, loved what he was doing for Ireland in particular, for it reflected back to him in self-glory.