no more than a disintegrating thought, and when they laid me in the cart—a cart that reeked of cabbage and wet dog—it slipped away entirely. I felt their urgency and their fear, but the fog, not unlike the mist that hid the men with guns, stole my questions and my consciousness.
24 February 1917
Michael Collins was campaigning for Count Plunkett in North Roscommon, south of Dromahair, and I went to hear him speak. It’s only been two months since he was released from Frongoch, yet he’s already in the thick of things.
Mick saw me in the crowd and bounded down the steps when he was finished speaking, grabbing me up in his arms and swinging me around like I was his dearest friend. Mick has that way with people. It is something I have always admired, as it is not a trait I possess.
He asked after Declan and Anne, and I had to tell him the news. He didn’t know Anne well, but he knew Declan and admired him.
I took him home to Garvagh Glebe for the night, anxious to hear what was simmering in Brotherhood circles. According to Mick, the public perception is that we’re all Sinn Féiners. “But Sinn Féin’s core principles vary from my own, Tommy. I believe it will take physical force to rid my country of British rule.”
When I asked him what he meant, he refilled his whiskey and sighed like he’d been holding his breath for a month.
“I’m not talking of holing up in buildings and burning down Dublin. That doesn’t work. We made a statement in 1916, but statements aren’t good enough. It’s going to take a different kind of warfare. Stealth. Strikes on the important players.
“We’re going to reorganize the Irish Volunteers and invite Sinn Féin and the Irish Republican Brotherhood to join us. All the factions that came together in some form or other during the Rising need to come together again with one goal: getting the British out of Ireland, once and for all. It’s the only way we’ll ever win a damn thing.”
When I asked him how I could help, he laughed and pounded me on the back. He stewed for a minute and asked about my house in Dublin. They needed safe houses all over the city to hide men and stash supplies at a moment’s notice.
I agreed immediately, giving him a spare key and promising to contact the old couple who looked after the residence in my absence. He pocketed the key and said mildly, “We’re going to need guns too, Tommy.”
I was silent, and his dark eyes grew sober.
“I’m setting up networks to smuggle weapons throughout Ireland. I know how you feel about taking a man’s life when you’re sworn to save them. But we have to be able to fight a war, Doc. And the war is coming.”
“I won’t run guns for you, Mick.”
“That’s what I thought you’d say.” He sighed. “But maybe there’s another way you can help.” He eyed me for a moment, and I was certain he’d thrown the idea for arms smuggling out first, knowing I’d say no and that it would be harder to refuse him twice.
He asked if my father was an Englishman.
I told him my father was a farmer. His father was a farmer, and his father before him, back for hundreds of years. I told him the land they farmed now lies fallow since my great-great-grandfather was accused of being a croppy and was dragged away by the yeomanry to be flogged and blinded with pitch. I told him my great-grandfather lost half his family in the famine of 1845. My grandfather lost half his children to emigration. And my father died young, working land that didn’t belong to him.
Mick’s eyes grew bright, and he clapped me on my back again. “Forgive me, Tommy.”
“My stepfather was an Englishman,” I admitted, knowing all along it was what Mick meant but feeling the sting of past wrongs that I hadn’t righted.
“So I thought. You are well respected, Tommy. And you don’t have the taint of Frongoch like the rest of us. You have a position and connections that may be of use to me here and in Dublin.”
I nodded my assent, not certain that I really could be of use to him. But Mick said no more, and we began to talk of better days. But even writing of the conversation here, in a book I keep hidden away, makes my heart pound.