The Secret Scripture by Sebastian Barry Read Free Book Online

burst into violent tears, and threw himself across the body of his fallen comrade, and let out a thin roar of grief that had never been heard before nor since, though it was a little temple of grief.
    'Go on easy, John,' said one of the others. 'We're in the town though the bone-yard here is dark and quiet.'
    But the first man continued to wail, and lay across the chest of the dead man like – I was going to say, like a girl, but hardly that.
    At any rate I was up to the neck of my school blouse in horror, of course I was. My father had lost his calmness and was walking up and down quickly between the fireplace and his chair, with its few flattened old cushions of once-red cloth.
    'Mister, Mister,' said the third man, a long thin boy I had never seen, who looked straight off of a mountainy holding, with trousers in no manner reaching his ankles. 'You've got to be burying him now.'
    'I can't bury a man without a priest, not to mention the fact that I expect you have no plot bought here?'
    'How would we be buying plots when we're fighting for the Irish Republic?' said the first man, wrenching himself from his tears. 'The whole of Ireland is our plot. You can set us down in it anywhere. Because we are Irishmen. Maybe that's something you don't know anything about?'
    'I hope I am an Irishman too,' said my father, and I knew he was offended by the remark. Truth was, Presbyterians were not much loved in Sligo, I hardly know the reason for it. Unless it was that in the old days there was a lot of that proselytising going on, with a Presbyterian mission to the west and the like, which though it had not been a raging success, had yet gathered a number of Catholics to the fold in a time of terrible hunger and need, and thereby increased the level of fear and mistrust among the people.
    'You have to be burying him,' said the third man. 'Isn't that John's little brother there on the table?'
    'This is your brother?' said my father.
    Suddenly the man was absolutely quiet, still.
    'It is,' he said.
    'That is very sad,' said my father. 'That is very sad.'
    'And he has had no priest to absolve him. Would it be possible to have a priest fetched for him?'
    'It is Fr Gaunt is the priest here,' said my father. 'He is a good man, and I can send Roseanne to get him, if you wished.'
    'But she's not to say anything to him, just for him to come here, and she's not to speak to anyone on her way, and by no means to speak to any Free State soldier, for if she does, we will be killed here. They will kill us as easily as they killed Willie on the mountain, that's for sure. I would say to you, we will kill you if she speaks, but I am not sure if we would.'
    My father looked at him surprised. And it seemed so honest and polite a thing to say, I resolved to do as he asked, and speak to no one.
    'And anyhow, we have no bullets, which is why we stayed in the heather, like hares, and didn't stir. I would we had stirred, lads,' said the brother of the dead man, 'and risen up, and thrun ourselves at them, because this is no way to stand in the world, with Willie dead, and us living.'
    And the young fella broke down again, pitifully weeping.
    'Look it, have no heed to that,' said my father. 'I'll have Roseanne fetch Fr Gaunt. Go on you out, Roseanne, like I say, and run to the Parish House, and get Fr Gaunt, good girl.'
    So I ran out into the windy, winter yard, and through the avenues of the dead, and out onto the top of the hilly road that sails down into Sligo, and hurried down there, and finally reached the house of the priest, and in his little iron gate, and up the gravel, and throwing myself against his stout door, painted as green as the leaf of an aspidistra. Now I was loosed from my father I wasn't thinking of curling irons and hair, but of his very life, because I knew those three living men had seen horrors, and those who see horrors may do horrors just as bad, that is the law of life and war.
    Soon thank God Fr Gaunt showed his thin face at the door,