The 13th Apostle: A Novel of a Dublin Family, Michael Collins, and the Irish Uprising Read Online Free Page A

stale bread apart to feed his favorite birds. “Here, here,” he said, tossing the bread into the water, where it was quickly scooped up, the swans beating a hasty retreat. Soon Mary handed him two pamphlets she had found and asked her big brother to turn them into paper sailboats. Eoin dutifully made two boats, saying, “This one is the Lusitania , and that one is the Titanic !” The kids didn’t understand his black sense of humor and rushed to the “lake” to set sail. With that, Eoin took a seat and watched them playing joyfully with their ships by the pond.
    Eoin was still thinking about the proclamations posted to the front gate. Was it more empty Fenian talk, or was this the real thing? The war in Europe was getting closer to Ireland, he knew, and he had heard his parents talking about him eventually being conscripted into the British army. They were against it, he knew, because they considered themselves Irish, not British, like Uncle Charlie. Both his parents’ families had managed to live through the famine because they lived in Dublin City and were not subjected to the utter devastation of the countryside. Still, old memories—and hatreds—died hard in the Kavanagh and Conway families. They would cut the British no slack.
    Eoin unrolled his copy of the proclamation and read the top again. His Irish was miniscule, but he knew that Poblacht Na Éireann meant “Irish Republic.” He then looked at the names of the signatories but recognized only two, Pearse and Connolly.
    Pearse was famous because of the oration he had given at the grave of the old Fenian Jeremiah O’Donovan Rossa last summer at Glasnevin Cemetery: “The fools, the fools, the fools!—They have left us our Fenian dead. . .” The whole episode had made an impression on Eoin because Rossa had died on Staten Island in New York City, but the Volunteers had dug him up and brought him back to Ireland. His father had even brought him to the City Hall to see Rossa, lying in state in his open coffin. It always impressed Eoin that Rossa had been dead for more than a month, and he didn’t stink, even at the height of summer. Could Rossa, Eoin thought, be Ireland’s Lazarus?
    Eoin knew Connolly because he was Jim Larkin’s successor at the Irish Workers and Transport Union. A lot of people said he was a troublemaker and a rabble-rouser because he was a socialist and for the working man. He was also considered dangerous because he had his own militia, the Citizen Army. At the beginning of the Great War, he had hung a sign on the front of his headquarters at Liberty Hall: “We Serve Neither King Nor Kaiser, But Ireland.” Eoin had heard his father say that if there were more men like Connolly in Ireland, the Kavanaghs wouldn’t be living in the putrid, godforsaken Piles Buildings.
    Soon it got noisier near the front gate, and Eoin’s curiosity got the better of him. He fetched the children and headed back to where the action was. The first person he bumped into was young Byrne, who was howling his eyes out. “Vinny,” Eoin said to his new friend, “what happened?”
    “Lieutenant Shiels sent me home,” he said, tears pouring uncontrollably. “He said I was too young to take Jacob’s.”
    “What’s going on here?” said one of the Volunteer officers. Vinny explained his demise. “Sure, come along out of that, and don’t mind him,” reassured the officer.
    “Yes,” interrupted Major John MacBride, impeccable in his sartorial splendor and beautifully coiffed hair and mustache. “We need all the men we can muster. Sure, I just volunteered meself. Everyone should volunteer for Ireland!” MacBride had been on his way to the Wicklow Hotel to attend a luncheon for his brother, who was getting married, when he ran into the Volunteers assembling on Stephen’s Green for revolution. The temptation was too great, and he couldn’t resist an “invitation” to take Jacob’s for the new Republic. Eoin knew him from the newspapers. He was