The Blood Upon the Rose (17 page)

He lugged Slaney and the boy back into the car. He took off the handbrake and rolled the car back down the slope to the foot of the bridge. Then he turned the steering wheel, and pushed the car hard down the bank towards the river. It was deep this side of the bridge, he knew, and the current was flowing strongly.

The car tipped one front wheel in, rolled on its side, and slipped slowly under the brown, muddy water. To Andrew's intense relief, it disappeared completely from view.

He hurried back across the bridge, and put the logs back on their pile. Then he picked up the fallen revolvers and looked at the road.

It was covered with blood.

He had a water bottle in his fishing bag, and he spent the next ten minutes carrying river water up and pouring it over the road. At the end of ten minutes the stains were less obvious. The sleet had stopped, but a steady drizzle continued to wash it away.

It was nearly dark now.

As he tried to dismantle his fishing rod, he found his hands were shaking. Carefully, he folded his arms and breathed deeply. After a few minutes, the shaking had lessened. He folded the rod, emptied his keepnet, and slung his bag over his shoulder.

When he turned round, he saw a man watching him from a car.

‘Any luck?’ the man asked. ‘Rotten day for it, I should think.’

‘Yes,’ Andrew heard himself saying. ‘It was fine earlier, though. I got a few.’

‘Jolly good show. I say, do you want a lift?’

‘No. Thanks all the same. I like the walk. It's not far.’

‘Suit yourself.’ The man put his head back inside his car and drove away over the bridge. Andrew watched as he disappeared into the darkness across the bog.

‘Drive carefully, old chap,’ he whispered to himself. ‘A fellow could easily have an accident in weather like this.’

He fingered the scar on his face, wondering if the man had seen it. Then he walked quickly down the road into the forest, to the place where he had hidden his car.

9

IT WAS VERY peaceful in the church. Sean fancied he could still hear the echo of the funeral hymns murmuring to each other in the stone galleries high above his head. There was the scent of incense and candle wax, the resonance of distant footsteps, the quick mutter of prayers from the side chapels, where people knelt in the pews, clicking their rosary beads.

Martin's parents had left a few minutes ago, after the last wreath had been laid on the grave. They were ordinary farming folk from the County Mayo: the father big, red-faced, with a wide leather belt and a suit that had seen better days; and his wife, a solid, decent woman, white-faced under her black shawl. Both had looked confused, uncomfortable at a ceremony at which they knew so few of the mourners. Michael Collins himself had helped to carry the coffin; Paddy Daly had been there too. It was risky to gather together so openly, but it would have been a dishonour to have skulked away, and sent him to his grave alone. Volunteers and kilted boys of the Fianna had kept watch outside. There was no danger in staying behind; as far as Sean could see, no known G man could have got within half a mile of the place unseen, and a detective would have needed a company of armed troops to have broken into the church itself.

They had fired a volley of shots over the grave, but there had been no speeches. As Collins had said two years ago over the grave of Thomas Ashe, the gunfire itself said everything that needed to be said.

Sean had spoken a word or two to Martin's parents, but they seemed dazed, unable to distinguish him from the crowds of other unknown friends their son had acquired. They reminded him of his own parents - solid honest country folk, anxious for their son to get on, bewildered by the discovery that he was so deeply involved with a movement of which they knew so little.

Sean had never told his parents he was a Volunteer. His father, a prosperous dairyman in the County Wexford, had sent his son to the Jesuits of Belvedere College in Dublin, the best school he could afford, and had been delighted beyond measure when Sean had got his place at UCD. No one else in the family had ever shown signs of joining one of the professions. His elder brother, Liam, was to inherit the business, and his three sisters seemed destined to marry farmers or tradesmen as their mother had done, and raise large families of their own. Sean had been the child prodigy - but it was because he had been at Belvedere in 1916, visiting a schoolfriend for the holidays, that he had seen the heroism and black tragedy of Pearse's Rising at first hand. The boys had slipped out, watching as much as they could, once or twice running errands, on one famous occasion smuggling two old rifles into Boland's Mill; and from then on Sean had been convinced that the cause of the Volunteers was one for him. But he had never told his family. Although the old Fenian songs could bring tears to his father's eye, it would have been a mortal shock to the old man had he learnt his brilliant son was one of them.

A shock not dissimilar to that which Martin's parents were suffering now.

Sean felt the need to confess more urgently than ever before. The guilt of Martin's death weighed him down; only a priest could absolve him of it. But it was important that, if he were to bare his soul, he should receive comfort and understanding, rather than condemnation. When he saw that Father Desmond was due to receive confession after the service, he decided to take advantage of it.

A middle-aged woman came out of the confessional box. Sean got up and stepped inside. He bowed his head close to the grill, his cap in his hand.

‘Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned.’

‘Dominus sit in corde tuo. The Lord is always ready to forgive.’ The familiar comforting phrases took him back to the church at home, the fine new suit he had worn for his confirmation. ‘Do your sins lie heavy on you, my son?’

‘Very heavy, Father.’

‘And how long is it since you have been to confession ?’

‘A month, Father. Maybe more.’

‘That is a long time, my son. What are the sins that oppress you, which you would like to lay on the shoulders of Our Lord?’

Sean took a deep breath. ‘I … have sought the life of another man, Father.’

The response from the other side of the grill became less automatic. ‘I see. When was that, my son?’

‘I was with Martin Savage, Father. I was his friend.’

‘You were one of those who sought the life of Lord French?’

‘I was, Father.’

There was a pause. Sean had the impression that the priest glanced up towards the grill. But it was impossible to see a face clearly through it, even if he had wished to.

The priest asked: ‘Did you do this out of hatred?’

Sean thought for a moment. ‘Not out of hatred for the man, no, Father. Hatred for the things he stands for. Hatred for the oppression of our people. It was an act of war. I did it as a soldier of Ireland!’

There was a silence.

‘And there is another sin, Father, greater than the first. I ... you see, it was because of me that Martin died.’ His voice cracked slightly. Although he had confessed it before, to Catherine, there was an importance in telling the priest that brought the tears more easily.

The voice from the other side of the box was gentle, sympathetic. ‘Take your time, my son. Tell me about it.’

So he went through it, slowly: the wait outside the station, the trouble they had had with the cart, the bomb that came too early and alerted the policeman, and then his - Sean's - shout to Martin: ‘We've got to be sure of French. Can you not get closer and put a bomb right inside it?’ A few seconds after those words, Martin had died.

‘Were you his officer, to order him to do that?’

‘No, Father, I was just his friend. We were in it together. But he died and I lived.’

As he finished Sean heard the clock chime outside, and the murmur of voices, raised, somewhere in the nave.

‘My son, it was not you that killed Martin. That was done by a bullet from a British Army rifle. And it was not you that made him risk his life and run out into the road. That was a thing he chose to do. You ran into the road with him, as I understand it?’

‘I did that, Father. But only afterwards.  I had no bombs left, you see.’

‘But it was a risk you took as well. You all shared it together. It has pleased God to take Martin Himself now, and to spare you for other things. That is His way, and it is not for us to question the wisdom of the Almighty. But I am sure He did not mean you to wear a cross of blame for your friend’s death. That was a matter outside your control entirely. I absolve you of it freely. Let us say a prayer together for your friend’s soul, and let the burden be lifted from you.’

And it did feel like that, quite literally. As he prayed, following the priest with the ritual, healing phrases, Sean felt as though his shoulders were somehow lighter. He sat up, after the prayer, straighter than before.’

‘As for the motive for your action, the military ambush upon Field Marshal Lord French …’ Father Desmond paused, as though seeking precisely the right words. The argument outside had not eased. It penetrated Sean’s mid dimly, as something vaguely improper in a church. The priest resumed: ‘Many things are done by soldiers in war, which involve men in a burden of most grievous sin. The deliberate seeking out of a human life is always one of them. But as in all human action, the underlying motive in our hearts is the key which must guide us. If a man kills another in warfare out of hatred or a desire for gain, that would indeed endanger his immortal soul. As his soul would be endangered if he killed with cruelty, or deliberately slaughtered noncombatants, like women or children or ordinary civilians – that would be a foul and cowardly business surely. But you have done nothing as low as that, my son. It is for you to look into your heart and be sure of two things. Firstly, that your motive for this action was pure; and secondly, that the action itself was one which you will be able to lay before the Lord God Almighty on the final Day of Judgement. If you can do that, then the sin was not a mortal one. Let us pray that it was so.'

After they had prayed together again, the priest laid a penance on Sean of twenty Hail Marys to be said every night. Then he said: ‘Are there any other sins I should know about, my son?’

Sean answered: ‘Oh. Well, there is one.’ He had not, truly, thought of mentioning this before, but the relief the priest had given to him was so unexpectedly great that he thought the man might understand everything. If he could confess it all, he would be able to walk out of here truly cleansed and innocent, and begin his life anew as the church intended.

He said: ‘I have lain with a woman.’

The priest sighed. It was a small sigh, quickly covered up, but it pained Sean greatly. The sigh implied that the sin was an ordinary one, the sort the priest had heard many times before. Sean was not sure, but it also sounded as though this sin might not be so easily forgiven as those which had gone before.

‘Tell me about it, my son.’

That was not easy either. Sean felt his face grow hot. ‘Oh, it … that's not really necessary, is it, Father?’

‘If you wish to be absolved of the sin, first you must confess it, and lay it before the Lord. Tell me.’

‘Well, I … we went to my room and, we lay together, Father.’

‘You say that you lay together. Did you perform the carnal act of lust?’

‘I … well, yes, Father, we did.’

‘How many times?’

Sean's blush had gone, and his face was now quite drained of blood, white. This was awful. He felt like a Judas, whispering secrets to some spy outside the door. But all through his childhood he had been taught that the rite of confession was sacred. He whispered: ‘Four times, Father. Four separate days.’

‘And the girl. Was she a street girl that you paid?’

‘No!’
His denial was so vehement that he wondered if it had been heard outside. He could not stand this. He thought he would get up and leave now. But somehow he could not. The weight of everything he had learnt in childhood kept him there.

‘So. Did she go with you willingly, or did you force yourself upon her?’

‘Oh, Father! Willingly, of course willingly! It was an act of love, for God's sake! I should never have told you of it - it was between her and me!’

‘My son! My son! Don't you understand? God was there in the bedroom with you, just as He is everywhere. Such an act of lust as you describe was a sin, not only for you, but for the girl also.’

‘I'm sorry, Father, I don't want to talk about it.’ Quite suddenly, Sean pulled back the curtain, and stepped out of the box. He was shaking, furious. Everything he had ever learnt told him the priest was right and yet it was not so. What did he know about it after all, the shrivelled old fool? Probably knows nothing about women except what he hears in that box.

Sean felt more than ever like a Judas. He had betrayed Cathy to the Pharisees. Still white-faced, he stalked towards the door.

A hand gripped his arm.

He brushed it off angrily. ‘Leave me alone, you old eejit!’ Then he saw it was not the priest at all, but a big man in a thick coat and hat. Square, determined face, short thick moustache - what the devil did he want?

Two black-robed canons were tugging at the man's coat, remonstrating with him. One said: ‘Really, Inspector Kee, you cannot … this is a holy place of sanctuary … in the name of God, I implore you!’

Then Sean understood. He remembered the voices he had heard arguing when he had been in the confessional. The police must have come in after the service, looking for anyone who had stayed behind. The detective snatched at Sean's arm again but Sean jerked back, nearly falling over his own feet. He ran towards the door. The detective was held back for a few precious seconds by the fluttering canons, then he brushed them aside and sprinted after Sean. Sean was almost at the door when another man, big, in a thick coat like the first, stepped through it. There was a large uniformed constable behind him.

‘Lord save us!’ Sean turned to the right, and sprinted back into the church, up the nave towards the altar. He heard shouts, and the clatter of shoes on the polished floor behind him. They were chasing him towards the altar, for heaven's sake! For a moment he thought of running up to it and seizing the altar table itself, claiming sanctuary indeed. But would they respect it? And where would he go then, anyway? They could just besiege the church until they got him out. He had a gun in his pocket but he couldn't use it, not here, in a holy place like this.