The streets were lined with armed Volunteers. Behind them, ragged peasants craned their necks and jostled for position with better-dressed shopkeepers and lawyers and doctors. Above street level, the windows were packed with spectators. Ladies waved handkerchiefs, serving maids their feather dusters and bare hands. Grenadiers carrying Irish battle-axes marched behind the open cart in which Connor rode. Drummers pounding out a deafening rhythm on their huge kettledrums strode ahead. Here and there Straw Boys with green scarves tied around the ends of their shillelaghs broke through the ranks of the stolid Volunteers to yell Gaelic words of encouragement and wave their embellished staffs. More often than not, the outraged Volunteers rewarded their efforts with a split head.
Heavy artillery had been broken out for the occasion. It rolled with an escort of mounted dragoons behind the Grenadiers, the guns decked out incongruously in multicolored ribbons. Farther back came a band of Calvinists, who marched under a banner stating: "Open thou our mouths, O Lord, and our lips shall sing forth thy praise." A line of flutists was followed by a quartet of bagpipers. Their music trilled and swirled through the chill of the morning, competing with the booming of the drums, the thud of marching feet, the rattle of wheels, and shouts, catcalls, and raucous singing from the crowds. Last of all came an army of ragtag marchers who fell in behind the procession willy-nilly, fighting and carousing as they followed the condemned to the gallows.
The crowds along the pavement cheered as he passed, for all the world as if they were spectators at a sporting match. With a wry smile, Connor acknowledged the huzzahs. If he had had a hand free to wave, he would have. But the guards who stood tensely on either side of him had already tied his hands behind his back. Iron shackles linked by a length of stout chain encircled his ankles. They were taking no chances on a possible escape.
The noise was deafening, the spectacle as colorful as a circus. If he himself had not been the centerpiece of all the hoopla, he might even have been enjoying himself as were the rest of those who had turned out. But for him, the bright dawn might well have a very different ending. They would go back to their lives, to their small concerns and prejudices, to their families and homes. He could hang.
As the cart rolled up the hill leading to Phoenix Park, Connor had all he could do to stand upright against its lopsided pitching. He would not fall, if he could help it, to be dragged ignominiously to his feet again by the men who stood guard over him. If he was to die, then he would do it like a man. He would not shame his country, his family, or himself. Though he hoped, nay, prayed, that Father Patrick's scheme would come to fruition in time to prevent such a gruesome end.
Spectators stood on the gray walls lining Phoenix Park, except in those parts where the stones had already tumbled to earth. It had been built by a swindler not so many years before, and from the day the last stone had been put in place, it was constantly falling down. The deer that customarily roamed the park had been put into an enclosure for the occasion. Their human replacements occupied every bit of the vast, ordinarily empty green fields.
The gallows had been built hastily for Connor's exclusive use. After his corpse was duly disemboweled, his head would be cut off and placed on a pike to serve as a signal warning to those who might emulate his deeds. What remained of his body would be wrapped in a sheet and placed in a proper coffin in a hearse that waited beneath the gallows at that very moment, to be borne in some state to Arbour Hill. There, without benefit of word or prayer, his remains would be thrown into the pit that had long been the receiving ground for Irish martyrs: it was popularly known as the Croppies' Hole. The gallows would be torn down, and Phoenix Park would be just as it was before, with the addition of one more ghost to scare the superstitious.
At the moment, however, the gibbet stood on a small rise just inside the park, its raw lumber clumsy-looking against the graceful willows and blue pond slightly beyond.
A cheer rose up as the cart jolted to a halt in front of the gallows. The crowd surged forward, to be held back by the extended rifles of the Voluteers. A dead cat sailed out of the crowd to land on the head of one of the nearby guards. He let out a startled oath, but to no avail. More dead cats pelted the cringing Volunteers.
"Come along, now." The guards who helped Connor from the cart were not unfriendly. They were brusque men, merely doing their job. Connor stepped down, took the few steps that would bring him to the foot of the gallows, and began to climb, awkward because of the chain linking his feet. On the platform above, the black-hooded hangman waited. Connor scanned the crowd, looking, vainly, for a familiar face. All within his view were strangers. He could only hope that his brothers were where they should be. There was no sign of them either. Had everything gone awry already?
There was no time to ponder. He would carry through the plan as best he could. He closed his eyes briefly, muttering a prayer that the complicated interweaving of elements would come together as they must for his salvation. Despite the cold, he could feel himself begin to sweat. Caitlyn's face rose up in his mind's eye. Father Patrick had promised that she would be kept away today, just in case… He loved her more than he had ever imagined he could love a woman-and she was carrying his child. Dear God in heaven, he was not yet ready to die!
As he set foot on the platform from which he was shortly supposed to fall to his death, another cheer went up. Rotten apples and other fruit pelted the gallows, landing indiscriminately on him as well as on the guards and the hangman. There was no priest present to give him comfort, the practicing of the Catholic religion having been outlawed years before. Though if aught went wrong, and he ended this day in Hell instead of safe away, it comforted him to reflect that Father Patrick had already given him Final Absolution.
Once he gained the platform, one of the guards stopped him with a hand on his arm and the other bent to unlock his shackles. His hands they kept bound behind him.
They flanked him across the platform to the hangman's side. The black-hooded executioner stepped forward to ask his pardon, as was traditional. Connor nodded, said, "I give it freely," and prayed there would be nothing to pardon the man for. Then the guards and the hangman alike stepped back, and Connor turned to face the crowd. Every condemned man, before he died, was permitted to make a statement. Though frequently, if what he said was unpopular with his audience, the prisoner would be jerked to his doom without being permitted to finish his (sometimes very long) speech.
Clad in the tattered silver coat, black breeches, and boots, but without a neckcloth though he had managed, in the last few minutes before they had led him from the gaol, to beg a razor and water for shaving, he was a lean, impressive figure as he strode to the edge of the gallows, looked down at the crowd that was thousands strong. A raw egg slapped into the wood just inches from where he stood. He ignored it, gazing out at the spectators as they subsided into muttering silence. The rising sun sent bright rays through the scattered cumulus clouds above that touched on the black waves of his hair and the gleaming silver medallion on his chest. He was a figure out of legend, a myth. Every man, woman, and child in that crowd had heard more than one tale of the Dark Horseman.
When at the last the crowd was silent enough to suit him, Connor took a deep breath and stood for a moment more looking out across the shifting sea of humanity. Then, with a quick inner plea that God would inspire his words, he began, his voice echoing across the fields, gaining strength as he went.
"My friends, I stand before you today condemned to die, accused and convicted of crimes against God and man. Those against God I deny. And of those I am held to have committed against man, I say to you that I committed them in the service of mankind, inspired by God against the very men who would have my blood-and yours. Aye, your blood, and the lifeblood of Ireland! Ireland, my country-and yours. An Irishman I was born, and as an Irishman I will die, and proudly too. Long after my body lies rotting in the Croppies' Hole, my soul will cleave to her green velvet meadows and floating mists, to her rivers and valleys and hills. Long after carrion crows have picked the flesh clean from my bones, I wish for you, my Ireland, and for you, my Irishmen, slante geal."
During that brief, passionate speech, many a tear rolled down the cheeks of many a man and many a maid. At the forbidden Gaelic of his farewell, a roar went up. Irish Catholics beyond the ring of Volunteers rushed forward. The heavy artillery that had been stationed for show at the perimeter of the park was suddenly shifted, aimed at the Volunteers. From the distance came the sound of running feet. A battalion of armed Straw Boys appeared, and scuffled with the Volunteers. Rifles fired. Women screamed. Men swore and stormed the gallows. In the distance, a cannon boomed.
"It's a Rising! A Rising!" came the cry from somewhere in the crowd. Connor waited for no more. As the guards grabbed for him, he kicked aside the plank on which he would have stood for hanging and jumped down into the blackness below as Father Patrick had instructed him to do. He tumbled into an open hearse, felt hands grab and steady him as the hearse shot forward. Then they were away with a jolt and a jerk, plowing through the battling crowds that nevertheless parted for this symbol of death.
"Whip 'em up, Mickeen, for the Lord's sake! And ours!" a familiar voice shouted, adding the last as an urgent afterthought. Connor, shifting to his side after landing flat on his face in what he rather suspected was his own coffin, looked up. Cormac, garbed all in black as befitted a pseudo-undertaker, grinned at him. Rory clapped his shoulder. Liam, on the seat with Mickeen, looked around.
"By damn, 'tis good to see you. Conn!" he yelled over his shoulder, even as Cormac and Rory sawed at the ropes binding his hands.
"Aye, we've got you safe away, yer lordship, by God we have, though it took a bloody revolution to do it!" Mickeen sounded exultant as he whipped up the horses and sent them galloping away from Phoenix Park.
"Let's go retrieve Caitlyn and get the hell out of here!" Connor grinned and wrapped an arm around Cormac's shoulders as his brother helped him climb out of his would- be coffin.