"There's an old poem I learned during my travels in America that goes something like . . . one if by land and two if by sea . . . I'm thinking in terms of number two."
Long Dan Sweeney's torn old eyes narrowed to slits. He stared at Conor for a full three minutes. "You've my undivided attention," he said at last.
Conor returned from the cottage with a map of County Londonderry and pointed it out as he spoke.
"Lettershanbo sits right of Magilligan Point at the entrance of Lough Foyle to open sea."
"I know where the hell it is," Dan said crustily.
"I agree the defenses cannot be penetrated by land, scratch that. Here at Magilligan Point, the way over to Inishowen at the narrowest point is about a mile. There are coves on both sides to take off and land."
"You're speaking in terms of crossing behind the castle?"
"Aye."
"How? The coast on the castle side is a treachery of reefs."
"Well, you know those, stupid Irish and their stupid little tar and wood curragh boats that ride right on top of the water?" Conor said slyly.
"Curraghs . . . go on, go on."
"Right. There's an abandoned Martello tower where we can hide the boats. It's about a quarter-mile hike to Lettershanbo."
"All right, we've crossed the channel by curragh. We've hiked up behind the castle. Now what? Parade around the walls for seven days and seven nights waiting for the Lord to tumble it down?"
Conor closed the map and smiled. "My village used to have wrack rights just over the lough from the castle. Lettershanbo was abandoned in those days. We'd slip over, a few boat loads of boys and girls, and picnic in the ruins. I got to know the old place right well. As kids adventure, we found a cave with a secret tunnel into the castle. In later years, when I was an ironmaster, Lettershanbo was restored. I did a goodly part of the ironwork. The tunnel is still there."
"Let me see that map," Dan rasped. His bony hands opened it and trembled, then he stared at Conor with a begging curiosity.
"Sure, I wouldn't be fooling a kind old gentleman like yourself," Conor said.
"But wouldn't they know about the tunnel?"
Conor shook his head. "It's bricked up and there's no access visible to the naked eye. Only the fairies could have found it. It leads into a fireplace, of all things, in the basement."
"Jesus," Dan whistled, "Jesus!"
In a manner true to himself, Conor laid out a plan that was a masterpiece of simplicity and Dan knew now why he had traveled to Dunleer to see this man. Dan questioned long and hard but Conor seemed to have the answers.
"Why didn't you tell us about this before?"
Conor shrugged. "I knew the Council would ask for ideas when the time came."
Dan shook his head in disbelief. They went over it all again and again. This was beyond Sweeney's wildest hopes. Not only would half the Ulster Volunteers' weapons and ammunition go up in a single blast, it would win the Brotherhood credence. Such an accomplishment would establish its own esprit de corps, give it a sense of winning. It was that kind of blow from which the British would never fully recover. It was epic, the most daring undertaking since Wolfe Tone over a century before.
"What will you need and how much time?"
"Twenty or so hand-picked men and one month to prepare them."
"You'll have it," Dan said, "and I'm going to be one of them."
"Sure, Dan," Conor said knowingly. "You'll be in my boat."
It took an hour for the magnitude of it to settle. They sat in the endless twilight, drinking and dreaming. Long Dan, not terribly attuned to whiskey, mellowed and became more and more lucid.
"You should have told us about it," Dan repeated. "But I see you now, Larkin, with all your puzzling aloofness disassociating yourself from players and games because you've already figured out who the winners and losers are going to be and you refuse to ignore your own honest conclusions."
"Maybe it's something like that, Dan."
"But I know the same things," Dan said, "and I go on playing the games. That's all of it for me, the illusion of a rising. So I ask which is the better? Is it easier for someone like myself to be a player and keep up a pretense that he doesn't believe in the ending? Don't all men deceive themselves in one way or another, cling to vestiges of the dream, no matter how unreal? Or is it easier to be a Larkin, know the ending and disassociate yourself from the dreamers?"
"All I know is that I could never knowingly lead men to their defeat."
"Blistering question," Dan said, "blistering indeed. See, the problem with reality and the Irish is an inbred failure to analyze our defeats. All John Redmond had to do was read the life of Parnell to know how far he'd get with a British Parliament and what his end would be." Dan downed another belt of whiskey and his voice, blurred instantly. "However, in the end, the oppressor inevitably bumbles into unifying and angering the oppressed. Sure as I sit here drunk, the British are going to make a blunder that will finally arouse the Irish."
"They've done that already," Conor said. "It doesn't seem to help."
"I mean a monumental blunder, a thundering, disgusting blunder. I want to press them into that blunder when we rise . . ." Dan suddenly cried aloud with pain.
"Do you have anything for that, Dan?"
"Some pills."
"Can I get them?"
"No. I don't take them. Pills cloud my mind. At least with the pain I know I'm still alive. You piss me off, Larkin. You'd have made us one hell of a commander."
"We've a lot to get started," Conor said. "I'm after getting some sleep."
"Sleep? Who sleeps?" Dan laughed in irony. "We'll both have time for that in eternal measure soon enough."
Conor got up and strolled to the water edge, grabbed up a handful of pebbles and flipped them into the still pool, watching their circles widen. Dan came up alongside him. The old man looked awful, suddenly shriveled.
"What do you think about these days?" Conor whispered.
"A girl. I think about a girl a lot," Dan said. "I even forget her name."
"Aileen," Conor said.
"That's her, Aileen O'Dunne. Funny you should remember. But don't you know, with all the lovelessness and life on the run and dirty little rooms, I was there on the night we declared ourselves a free people. Beyond this raid and this rising I am now a part of Ireland's story. No one can take that away from me,"
"Is that enough, Dan? Is it enough for this nagging burden of emptiness we've carried, knowing we are not natural men and can never have normal lives?"
"It has to be enough. It's all I have. All I know is that fools like you and me were walking toward a prison cell the day we were born."
"Well now, this talk is becoming grim," Conor said. "Let us consider the positive side. Atty can travel about with our bones from town to town eulogizing us and raising funds and my sister will only have to wait for my brothers Dary and Liam to have a churchyard filled."
"Conor, I'm about to ask yourself a personal favor."
"Sure, Dan, anything you want except to ask me to take absolution."
"Before we go tearing up that castle, say something handsome to Atty. I think I'm the only man alive, including yourself, who knows how much she loves you. Tell her a lie, if you must, but don't go off without leaving her something."
"Aye, I should and I promise I will."
Dan braced for another shooting pain that passed without striking, then retreated to the cottage for another bottle. When he returned Conor was at water's edge, looking off into infinity. The hours of night darkened, making a challenge at the sun. The Twelve Bens and the lough became muted fires in harvest hues.
Conor looked to Dan strangely as he approached, as though he were looking at someone from another time and another place.
"What is it?" Dan said.
"For a moment . . ." Conor began in a harsh voice not totally his own.
"What?"
“Dan, what is death like?"
"I don't know, Conor. You seem to see
it more clearly than I have. You seem to be looking at it half the time."
"You don't want to come back from that raid, do you, Dan?"
"No," Dan answered. "Tell me, Conor, who did you just see?"
"My daddy . . . Tomas . . . I see him often. It's always me down by the village crossroad running op the path when he's coming down from the fields. He takes me up in his arms . . . Dan . . . Dan, I'm scared."
"Sure, I know that feeling. We are men of little consequence and less property. Once you were a man of substance. You were heir to forty acres of Larkin land . . . and then . . . you left Ballyutogue."
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
For five weeks I was a member of a hand-picked task force of twenty-two men and Atty Fitzpatrick training at Dunleer for an undisclosed mission. We lived at the monastery, eating, drinking, breathing and sleeping the drills our taskmaster, Conor Larkin, beat into us.
I was among the chosen, not because of my size or prowess, but to chronicle the event The target was a tightly held secret known only to Conor, Dan and Charley Hackett, a dynamite man of considerable skill.
We trained by night, always racing against a clock with a forty-pound pack on our backs and an emphasis on rough-water drills in curraghs with a lot of belly crawling through caves of the Twelve Bens. A "silent" communications system was built by hand signals, with discipline broken only when we were out of sight of one another, then we went to bird and animal calls.
This much was known:
Atty was in charge of a lorry which contained a first aid station.
Lord Louie stressed navigation and handling of the fragile little boats.
Gilmartin, an old hand from the Boer War and member of the Supreme Council, worked in league with Dan Sweeney at manning a machine gun. Gilmartin was somewhat of a blowhard but the most military among us as well as a competent seaman.
Charley Hackett and his team of Jennings and Pendergast were going through a lot of wiring drills, ostensibly on dynamite.
Any time we felt we were getting razor sharp, Conor kicked the notion and pushed us beyond our previously known capacities. He was a martinet, an ugly man, during those weeks, striving for perfection beyond perfection. Whatever Dan and Conor had up their sleeves, we felt from their vibrations we were going to something gigantic.
In the beginning of June 1915 we broke camp and in twos and threes made our way to Derry where we contacted Barren Costello, Brotherhood commander of the area, and disappeared into the sanctuary of the Bogside. Conor, Dan and Charley Hackett were all on the run and needed a few days longer to reach Derry.
When we had all assembled, we were still told nothing, loaded aboard a pair of lorries and whisked from Derry into territory familiar to me as we headed in the direction of Ballyutogue.
Just after nightfall-we came to a stop in a clump of trees off the road between Ballyutogue Township and the Upper Village and were whisked into St. Columba's Church, which was strangely deserted. The only villagers present were Boyd McCracken, the older brother of Myles, who had inherited one of the worst farms in Ireland, and his son Tim, a lad of fourteen whom I scarcely knew.
Some benches had been moved, some bedding was on the floor along with a makeshift kitchen. The windows were covered to block light. Twenty back packs of the sort we had trained with were stored in a corner behind the pulpit.
We milled about, reaching new bounds of curiosity and not a little tension, with orders not to leave the building. There were a number of consultations between Conor and some of the others in the vestry and, at last, we were called together.
A semicircle of wrought-iron candlesticks was placed around a slate board near the altar. As we gathered in close, Conor scratched out a map of some sort in chalk, then turned to us.
"From here on out you are all under stringent security," he began. "You will remain inside the church during the day. You may go out into the yard as long as it's dark. There are guards outside with orders to shoot to kill if you go any farther."
Sure, this was Conor Larkin the military commander speaking! There was not a tinge of warmth or humor in his voice but a continuation of the authority the situation required and it was entirely welcomed.
"We are in the village of Ballyutogue," he continued, "it is the village of Seamus O'Neill and myself. Most of the villagers are off harvesting kelp on the annual wrack rights. No contact is to be made with anyone remaining. Father Cluny and Boyd McCracken have been using this church and Boyd's home as safe houses for years."
The loudest noise was the flickering flames. The church was bathed in mellow light, giving an orangeish glow to the sorrowful Virgin and the bleeding Jesus.
"You have all assumed a number of things by now," Conor said. "Our target is somewhere in this area, we must cross water to reach it and we will do it by night. All three assumptions are correct."
He turned to the slate and encircled a point on his diagram. "We are going to destroy Lettershanbo Castle," he said.
My God! MY GOD ALMIGHTY! I felt the sweat come right through my palms, my tongue go dry and my stomach tighten in a grip of sheer unadulterated fear. I was afraid to look at the others but I suspected it was likewise with them.
"All right, your attention," Conor called. "What we're after is fifty thousand rifles, three thousand automatic guns and mortars and a stash of three hundred tons of dynamite." He X-ed a place on the board. "This is Ballyutogue, our present location. Tomorrow at dusk we move up the coast in two lorries. The first will be driven by a local brother, the second by Atty, which is outfitted as a first aid station."
She nodded.
"We proceed to this point just beyond Ballybrack House to a small cove known as Ballybrack Hole. Lord Louie will give you your compass points there. Boyd and the brothers in the area have five curraghs hidden at Ballybrack Hole for the crossing. Tomorrow was selected because of moon, tides and probable weather. Obviously we want as little light on the subject as possible. Questions so far?"
There were none.
"Lord Louie and Gilmartin were advised of the crossing just before this meeting. Louie?"
Always looking strangely out of sight in our company, Lord Louie came to his feet "It should all go just as it did during practice. We've done enough rough-water maneuvers to know what to expect. Perhaps a bit more weather here. But even under adverse conditions the crossing should be negotiated in no more than a half hour. Mind your drifts, keep a good eye on the compass, wear your life belts."
"We cross in the teams we've been working with," Conor carried on. "We move out in the order we've, been practicing. Dan, Seamus, myself, Charley Hackett in boat number one. Gilmartin's team in number two. Lord Louie in number three, and so forth. Boyd will join Gilmartin's boat."
Conor marked another X on the board. "We head for this Martello tower," he said. "The landing should be similar to the ones you've practiced at Slyne Head, hard surf, tricky undertow, rocky footing. Get your boats up on dry land, assemble at the tower. Questions?"
"Are you certain the area isn't patrolled?"
"Aye," Boyd McCracken said. "I've made three dry runs including one last night. The tower is abandoned and the landing area unguarded."
"What about the Royal Navy? Isn't there a patrol boat on Lough Foyle particularly moving against poachers at night?"
"Barren Costello and the lads in Derry will be conducting a supporting maneuver to make certain the Royal Navy is locked up in port and unable to enter the lough," Conor answered. "Likewise there will be a diversionary movement against the Greencastle Barracks, although most of them will be up in the hills on maneuvers. So we'll only have a skeleton force of three or four to contend with."
Murmurs of concurrence greeted Conor as we all realized the thought that had gone into the plans.
"As you know, the Martello towers were built by the British as coastal defense points against a possible Napoleonic invasion. Although they can't stand up under today's naval guns, they're still formidable. Dan and Gilmartin will establish
a machine gun post to cover our return crossing."
He walked to the pulpit, picked up a back pack and held it aloft "The packs you practiced with held forty pounds of rocks. The rocks have been removed and replaced by dynamite. They're waterproof and hold no danger of going off by themselves . . . but don't go around lighting any matches."
Nervous laughter.
"From the Martello tower we move down the beach to this point . . . here into a cave and cliff area. By low tide you'll enter the designated cave in waist-high water. Thirty yards into the cave it's belly crawling for some fifty yards. Then a tunnel into Lettershanbo."
Another round of comment stopped him for a moment As Conor talked I had remembered it as well from our own wracking days as young lads chasing that girl . . . what was her name, now?
"We estimate no more than a half hour from cave entrance to the castle. I will remain in the cave to unreel the wire and set up the detonators. Charley and Boyd will lead you to the castle. When you reach the end of the tunnel you'll find a brick wall. Boyd, do you want to take over?"
"Aye." The pre-aged angular brother of Myles still showed faint family familiarities even with the passage of so much time. "I went over and lived in the cave and tunnel for three days," Boyd said. "Conor gave me the job of chipping away the mortar from the brick wall. He reckoned I was eminently qualified due to my off-season work in the stone quarry. Working silently and with nothing larger than a penknife, I loosened everything so the bricks can be removed by hand and provide a sufficient crawl space. When we go through the hole we will be coming in by a fireplace to a basement room. From there, the target is just down the corridor. I was able to move around without detection. The basement seems to have no regular guard or patrol. Nevertheless, don't stomp around."
Boyd held up a pair of pampooties, rubber-soled shoes for negotiating slippery rocks around the surf which would also deaden footsteps on the stone floors of the castle. "We've a pile of pampooties in the vestry. Find a pair that fits you."