"What do you think we ought to do?" Ade MacDougall said.
"We ought to go immediately to the police."
"No, the dirty bitch has done no civil crime."
"Then let's see Reverend Maclvor for advice," Mae Duncan said.
"No," Heather snapped. "No, we must protect him. Now listen, I have always marked every passage he has ever spoken. I marked the passages in red concerning Shelley MacLeod." She opened her Bible. "If we read together closely, the message becomes very, very clear."
*
The cell door opened. Warder Hugh Dalton entered and stopped before Conor's bed, leaned down and shook him from his sleep. "It's your time, Larkin," he said.
Conor rolled over and stretched. "What a pity to awaken to your face, Dalton. I was having a sweet dream. What'd you say?"
"You're to come with me."
Conor saw the quintet of warders arced around the cell door.
"I see. The royal escort. Good day, gentlemen. Is my carriage waiting? Where to? To the Hotel Russell on St. Stephen's Green for dinner with the Archbishop? Or maybe to the Tower to chop off me head."
"It's the flogging frame," Hugh Dalton said.
"Oh yes, the frame. I did book that one a time ago. I was beginning to think my appointment would never come through."
"Are you going to give us trouble?" the warder asked.
"How the hell do I know? I've never been flogged before."
Dalton nodded to the guards. "Better put the bracelets on him." They clamped wrists already worn red by manacles. Hugh Dalton was a big man turned gray and blubbery by his years of working in cells. He was one of the few Catholic warders at Portlaoise Prison, a valuable man who was able to keep the R.C.s under control with real or false sympathy. He slipped a piece of hard rubber into Conor's hand. "Put this in your mouth and clamp down. It will help some."
As he was marched past cells of other men vaguely convicted of republican crimes, they beat on their doors and set up a crescendo of encouragement for Conor and curses for the Crown.
The convoy disappeared down to the basement with republican slogans ringing in their ears. Governor Green leaf, Chief Warder Hyde, Prison Dr. Fraiser and Warder Inch, who applied the whippings, were in waiting. Conor was stripped to the waist.
The chief warder read the official document authorizing the punishment. Warder Inch selected and tested a whip. Beyond the handle, the whip held nine braided leather thongs three feet in length, the tips leaded to keep them from unraveling.
Conor was shoved forward to a timber flogging frame with horizontal niches cut out at the waist and chest. He was laid into it on an angle, chained at ankles and hands and strapped around his middle. A leather collar was placed around his neck to keep it from being broken.
"Twenty lashes. Keep the count, Mr. Dalton. You may commence, Mr. Inch."
"One."
Fingers of pink suddenly appeared over the breadth of Conor's back.
"Two."
The color deepened.
"Three . . . four . . . five . . ."
When the lash struck, the leaded tips were rolled by whipper Inch in such a manner that they curled beneath Conor's exposed armpit and ripped away his flesh like shredded cabbage. Inch broke into a sweat and grunted as he threw his two-hundred-and-forty-pound might behind the strokes.
"Nine. . . ten. . ."
He stopped, gasping for breath as one of the tails broke, turned to the stand and selected another cat-o' nine. As he did, the rest of the observers stood fast except for the doctor, who bent under the frame in order to look up into the victim's face.
"Fuck off," Conor said.
"Continue, Mr. Inch."
"The count was ten," Hugh Dalton said. "Eleven . . . twelve . . . thirteen . . ."
Conor spit out the rubber piece . . . "Oh, they're hangin' men and women for the wearin' of the green . . ."
"What the hell is he doing!"
"I think you might say he's singing, Governor . . ."
"Mr. Inch, if you apply your strokes properly, he'll stop it . . ."
"When we were savage, fierce and wild,
Wack fol the diddle lol and di so say,
England came as a mother to her child . . ."
"Fourteen . . . fifteen . . . sixteen . . ."
"Gently raised us from the slime,
Stopped our drinking and our crime."
"Nineteen . . . twenty."
A red tide had erupted, a blood field, a site of a massacre. The governor snorted his displeasure, the whipper knew his whipping days were numbered. The doctor hastily felt pulse, heard heart, popped light into his eyes.
Conor Larkin smiled at him.
He stood and faced them all. "Keep your fucking stretcher, I'll walk," he said.
*
"Are you all right, sir?" the constable asked.
Inspector Holmes turned his eyes away from the sight. He was faint and reeling. He leaned against the wall for support. "God Almighty, God in heaven," he groaned.
The red hair that had been shorn from Shelley's head lay strewn on the ground glued up with a thicker, deeper red of her blood. Her face grotesquely ballooned from a hundred hammer blows. She was found tied to a lamppost at the middle of an alleyway behind the hospital.
"Never seen the likes of this . . . not in my thirty years" the inspector whispered. "It's the work of a lunatic."
"More than one," Detective MacCrae said. "I'd say a half dozen or more different weapons were used. I've counted over fifty stabs. All right, cut her down."
There was terrible screaming at the narrow end of the alley where a dozen constables held a gawking crowd at bay. One of the police rushed back to Detective MacCrae.
"What's going on down there?"
"It's her brother trying to get through."
"For God's sake, don't let him through. He can't see this."
Another detective came from the blind end of the alley. "We found one of her arms in the dustbin."
Inspector Holmes's eyes fixed on the words scrawled on the wall. PAPIST WHORE.
CHAPTER TWENTY
Governor Greenleaf called a meeting of warders the instant Conor learned of Shelley's murder. Portlaoise held the other Sixmilecross prisoners and extraordinary pressures were expected.
Warder Hugh Dalton was ordered to keep personal and intense watch on Larkin on the usual Catholic-to-Catholic logic. In his time Dalton had seen a hundred men learn of an ultimate tragedy on the outside. It broke a man quicker than any other calamity. After that first week of complete void and numbness during which the mind simply closes down operation and shuts out thought and pain, the sufferer will usually give off survival signs or death signs.
Conor did not utter a single word or shed a single tear. He sat on the edge of his cot, back to the cell door. His sole movement other than necessity of relief was to take a spoon or two of food, an occasional sip of water or fall back on the cot for a moment's sleep. It never varied, day or night. He rejected all visitors, all messages, all orders. He sat, dawn, day, evening, night, wordless, dead of eye.
Hugh Dalton had watched men go on in a like manner for several weeks, then burst apart when containment was no longer possible. Although Larkin showed the slightest of life signs, he gave no clue that he was heading to an explosion. A week, a fortnight, two weeks, three, four, five, six, seven, eight He sat, he stared blankly. It never varied.
*
The New Republican, a four-page newspaper spewed out of the Liberties of Dublin, was apparently the work of Seamus O'Neill but with no way of proof. Distribution was meticulously timed to reach beyond Dublin into every corner of Ireland and over the water to the Irish slums from Manchester to Glasgow to London. It created a furor.
The New Republican led off with Conor Larkin's devastating speech from the dock at the kangaroo court at the Aghavannagh Barrack. The inner pages carried a detailed account of the violation of the agreement between the Irish Republican Brotherhood and Sir Lucian Bolt. The final page dissecte
d the articles and meaning of the Detention and Emergency Powers Act, Larkin's agony, and the betrayal of the Sixmilecross men.
As the ink dried on the New Republican, Atty Fitzpatrick led a parade of republican orators in the halls and to the streets, addressing huge and flaming rallies in Dublin, Cork, Galway, Derry and Limerick. She was heading into the teeth of the hurricane, announcing a march on Belfast, when she was taken into custody, ostensibly for her own protection, and held aboard a prison ship anchored in Kingstown Harbor south of Dublin.
*
So long as the issue stayed hot it was incumbent on Governor Greenleaf to see to it that nothing further happened to Larkin. He was moved to a cell isolated from the main body of the prison with Hugh Dalton assigned as a sort of personal watchman.
And then the murder of Shelley MacLeod.
At the end of the third month it was still the same. Conor refused to cry out and there was no indication if he had even plumbed the bottom of his grief. Neither Hugh Dalton nor anyone else had seen the like of it. He began to wonder if Larkin had gone insane and he decided he had to force a contact.
For days on end he tried to talk to Conor without answer but each day there was the slightest hint that Conor was aware of his presence and knew him. A spoonful more of food, a minute or two of pacing . . . tiny, tiny clues.
After a few weeks of this Dalton tried again. He put a chair across from Larkin and leaned close to him one more time.
"You know who I am," the warder said, "I see that you know me. I see you lift your head when you hear me open the door. I know you can hear me now."
Conor turned his head away, a good sign, Dalton said.
"When you heard your woman was gone, something told you you were going to continue to live. If it hadn't, you'd be dead by now. People who want to die, die. Something kept you from dying then and from dying now. So if you're going to live you'd better get started on it."
Conor heaved several telltale sighs.
"I'm under orders to get you cleaned up and start exercising you with a walk in the yard. Don't worry about anybody being around. It'll just be me and you when the others are back in their cells. I'll escort you, personal."
The sighs became grunts and heightened in intensity, the first audible sounds from him in nearly four months.
"Man, you've taken enough punishment. Don't force me to add more. Are you going to walk with me, Conor?"
Conor's mouth trembled open.
"Tell me what you've got to say, Larkin!"
"Dalton," he moaned as though he were speaking in a hollow tube. "I'm ready to go . . . take me to the pit . . . don't let anyone see me . . ."
Conor was quickly removed down to a padded cell in solitary and made secure with chains so he would not destroy himself.
Hugh Dalton alone heard it. Conor Larkin screamed out his torment for thirty consecutive hours, repeating her name in agony a thousand times, flailing at his bonds, gagging on his tears and vomit. "Shelley! Shelley!"
Hugh Dalton had never lived through such an experience. At the end of an entire night and half of the next day of it, he was driven to his knees and he prayed Larkin would pass out . . .
But the screams went on . . . weaker . . . weaker .. weaker. . .
"Shelley. . . Shelley. . . Shelley. . ."
With a day and a night done, Conor's voice left but he continued to cry out, coming to life on the brink of darkness again and again. Then a stupor descended, followed by total collapse. Complete, total exhaustion.
*
By late spring a whisper of life returned to Conor during the days he went walking with Warder Dalton. Some color, some strength returned. He continued to remain isolated from the main prison body and was refused visitors. The public outcry continued and he remained an object of quandary for the authorities.
He and Dalton spoke very little during the exercise walks but Conor began to look forward to the daily turns about the courtyard.
"I'm off your case as of today," Dalton said as they passed the last guard gate into the stone court.
Conor remained silent but was disappointed. They paced the long diagonal way to the base of the wall, turned and started back.
"They're going to keep you isolated. You might want another person to talk to once in a while. Maybe you ought to start going to church on Sunday."
"You're talking to the wrong Roman," Conor answered.
"You're tough, Larkin. Looking back on thirty years in this business, I only remember one or two like you, before. They're always republicans somehow. Old Long Dan Sweeney, now there was a hard number, and Brendan Sean Barrett as well."
Conor slowed his gait and eyed Dalton suspiciously.
"Matter of fact," the warder said, "I had dinner with them last night."
Conor stopped and sat at a bench. The sight of prisoner Larkin and Warder Dalton walking, talking and sitting in the prison yard had been commonplace for the past days, so nothing was made of it either by the guards on the wall or the men in their cells.
"I'm listening," Conor said.
"We had to wait until I would be taken off this assignment with you. We want to let enough time pass by so suspicion doesn't come back to me."
"I've heard the names of those men but I don't know them," Conor said. "How does a person like yourself find people like that?"
"Through Seamus O'Neill."
"Sure, I didn't know old Seamus knew those men."
"I thought it was possible," Dalton said, taking off his cap and wiping the sweatband inside. "Just a hunch on my part."
"Really think I ought to attend mass?"
"Put in a request to begin serving the mass this Sunday. Father Dermott will send your name up to the office as a matter of routine."
"What's in it for me?"
"On the first Sunday of each new quarter there's a sort of open house. That would be Sunday, July 5, four weeks from now."
"What happens?"
"A few hundred prisoners on good behavior and in the honor cells are allowed visitors. They all go to mass together family style. On each quarter there are usually a dozen or more priests in from around the country visiting inmates, reporting back home, counseling, giving letters."
"Interesting."
"The chapel is small. On that particular day there are maybe eight or ten masses held. Some of the visiting priests spell Father Dermott and rotate giving mass. Others are floating about doing the visiting and guidance activity. There's lots of movement and security is loose. It's apt to get as confused as an Irish wake. If you start serving mass now it will appear natural for you to do so four weeks from now."
"My records show I'm not a churchgoer."
"A lot of men find religion here. They won't refuse your request to serve the mass."
"What happens?"
"You'll get further instructions when you go to the sacristy for the last mass of that day."
"Ever hear of ley fuga, Dalton?"
"What is it?"
"An old Spanish custom, quote, prisoner shot in the act of escape, unquote. Gets rid of a lot of unwanted deadwood. How do I know you're not setting me up?"
"Seamus O'Neill said to give you this message. He said the booley house was visited that summer by Mr. A.I. and Miss E.L. He said the message was signed with the name Runt."
"What about the other lads?"
"They're tunneling out the same day."
"Why are you doing this, Dalton?"
"I don't know, really. I guess I never got used to watching them kick the shit out of republican lads. I got to thinking, what the hell's my thirty years amounted to? Kissing British asses. The pet Catholic warder to keep the lads in line. I was curious about you. I read a copy of the New Republican. After, I went up to Derry so's nobody would recognize me and heard Atty Fitzpatrick speak. What's so strange about it? I'm an Irishman. We'd better start walking again."
*
SUNDAY, JULY 5, 1908
During Saturday, Great Southern trains stopping at Marybo
rough dropped off an unusually large number of passengers for the quarterly visits to inmates of Portlaoise Prison.
The prison gates cracked open at half five Sunday morning for some two hundred family and a few dozen priests on duty calls.
The final mass began at noon. Prisoner Larkin, who had served the mass since ten o'clock, went back to the small sacristy adjoining the chapel to assist the last priest with his robes.
As he knocked, he was jerked inside and Father Dary Larkin clamped a hand over his mouth. A second priest quickly locked the sacristy door.
Conor let go his first smile in months.
"This is Father Kyle," Dary said. "He's agreed to be the victim of some foul play which we are about to perpetrate."
Dary dug into his vestment bag and pulled out a rope, a hood, a mouth gag and a club. Father Kyle peeled off his clothes down to his underwear. The plan was obvious and simple. Father Kyle, a close friend of Dary, would act the role of having been attacked by Larkin, who took his clothing and escaped dressed as a priest.
"In order to make this look authentic, I'm going to give Father Kyle a rap on the head with this club," Dary said. "God forgive me for what I'm about to do, Kyle."
The second priest closed his eyes and girded. "Do your duty, Dary, and good luck to you, Conor," he said.
Dary clenched his teeth, lifted the club and whacked the taller priest on the forehead with a fine shot destined from impact to knot up and discolor.
"I've drawn blood. Are you all right, Kyle?"
"A bit woozy, but otherwise fine."
Conor dressed in the priest's clothes, then helped Dary tie him up and gag him. In a few moments Father Kyle was shoved into a closet which was locked after him. All of the priest's papers were in Conor's hands and he quickly sorted them out. He helped Dary dress in his vestments to give the last mass of the day.
The noon whistle sounded.
"Remain in the sacristy," Dary said. "I'll be right back after the mass and change. We will assemble with the other priests and visitors in front of the chapel."