The Guns of Easter by Gerard Whelan Read Free Book Online

throat was what looked like a bandage. The man looked unwell. He was almost staggering as he marched up the street, but Jimmy was struck by the look of pride and triumph on his pale, haughty face.
    The third man Jimmy recognised as Mr Pearse, a schoolteacher who often addressed political meetings. He would speak fiercely about violence and bloodshed and death, and many people regarded him as the greatest lunatic of all the so-called Sinn Féiners – a would-be hero who in his school out in Rathfarnham taught middle-class boys to worship bloodshed and mythical heroes from Ireland’s savage past. Yet his face too, like Connolly’s, like the face of the sickly young man beside them, was odd now, set in grave lines yet somehow peaceful and happy. It was almost as though the three men were surrounded by a light that came from inside them, that had nothing todo with the real Dublin that they were walking through.
    It was unusual to see Connolly and his Citizen Army marching with Pearse and the Volunteers. The two groups didn’t really get on. Jimmy looked beyond the three men, at the column still emerging from Abbey Street. They must all be coming from Liberty Hall. Jimmy searched the faces, looking for Mick. There was no sign of him.
    The last of the men turned into Sackville Street now, but still Mick wasn’t among them. Then, at the very end, came two men with no uniforms. One was a handsome man leaning heavily on a stick, limping. Beside him was an old man with grey, receding hair and a big moustache. Wasn’t that the old man who kept the tobacco shop at the top of Sackville Street – Mr Clarke?
    What odd people the Sinn Féin leaders were: old Clarke, then the crippled man, the sick-looking young man with the bandaged throat, and Pearse with his fixed stare, and then Connolly like a stocky little bulldog with bandy legs. Yet today they looked different. They looked – yes, that was it – they looked like soldiers, real soldiers, going out to fight for a cause.
    Behind the marching men now Jimmy saw some boys of his own age trailing along, laughing and shouting. Jeering the men, Jimmy knew, though this time the marchers were ignoring them completely. The people around him too were making comments.
    ‘Where are they off to now, I wonder?’ said the old woman in the shawl.
    ‘They look like they’re going camping,’ laughed a man in a bowler hat. ‘Maybe they’re off to visit their friends in Germany, to collect their wages.’
    Some people said that the Volunteers were paid by the Kaiser, though Jimmy had never believed it. He’d heard that the Kaiser was mad and evil, but he couldn’t believe he would be foolish enough to pay good money to groups like the Volunteers.
    Jimmy was looking at the boys who were following the march. He recognised some of his friends. They’d soon pass the place where he stood. It was the moment he’d been dreading, and now it was here he was afraid. Should he turn and run down Henry Street? But something kept him standing there, something that had nothing to do with shame or fear. His eyes moved from the boys back to the marchers, and especially to the three men who led them.
    The three leaders came level with the General Post Office, only a few yards from Jimmy. As he watched, Connolly called the column to a halt behind them. The men stopped untidily, some of them bumping into each other. Someone tittered. Then the street seemed to grow suddenly still. Jimmy heard an Angelus bell ringing, and mutterings around him, but his attention was fixed on Connolly.
    The trade union man drew himself up to his full height. His face was flushed, but still it wore that air of certainty. He looked, Jimmy thought, as if his own inevitable moment had come. But what was going to happen? A speech? A demonstration?
    Connolly shouted. Jimmy felt his mouth drop open as Connolly’s words reached his ears.
    ‘Left turn!’ Connolly was saying. ‘To the GPO –
charge
!’
    For a moment even the