and pain broke out from the back of her neck. ‘When?’
Vianney was looking at his feet, contemplating his extremely expensive new runners. ‘Next month. There’s a couple of festivals on that I want to go to. West Cork has a literary festival. I might do a screenwriting class, and then there’s the Galway Arts Festival.’ His voice lifted with excitement. He got off the bed and walked bouncily around. ‘I really want to see Iarla O’Lionáird perform again. Maybe even get to meet him. And I’ll probably do some family research as well, visit Davitt’s grave and see the museum, and I might do a sean-nós master class.’
She looked at him, felt his excitement. Clearly this was no sudden idea. This was planning. He stopped bouncing on his shoes and looked back at her. Smiled even, as if her silence meant she just wanted more explanation. ‘It will be great to be singing in the Tradition.’
I know what fucking sean-nós singing is, she thought. ‘So when do we go?’ She was playing dumb.
‘We don’t. I am.’
‘You are?’ Really dumb.
‘This is for me.’
Hilary felt a surge of anger – rising like reflux in her throat.
‘David said I needed to do something I really wanted to do.’
‘Christ almighty – who is this fucking counsellor!’ Hilary propped herself up in the bed, ignoring the spinning head. ‘I’m going to go see this guy.’
‘No you’re not’. His voice, friendly enough up to now, came down hard and cold. Very cold. ‘You could just try and take some action yourself about your own life.’
She flopped back onto the bed. ‘Gee that was nasty.’
He didn’t respond. Just stood up and walked out, off to the coastal walkway on his brand new exercise schedule.
Chapter 12 - A most dangerous experiment
London, 27 January 1881
‘So here it is, finally. The constitutional rights of the Irish people to be held at nought. The end of habeas corpus in Ireland.’ Charles Parnell was speaking quietly but he had their complete attention. ‘No public meetings, no right to free speech.’ He looked up from the Hansard documents in front of him. Prime Minister Gladstone had finally introduced the 1881 Protection of Person and Property Act.
‘The government has abandoned the rule of law!’ Young John Dillon, the Land League’s newly elected MP for Tipperary, protested.
‘Yes,’ Parnell nodded gravely. ‘We can now look forward in Ireland to imprisonment without trial, and trial without jury.’
‘Gladstone has plunged his own country into the abyss.’ Tim Healey, MP for Wexford, was shaking his head. ‘England has returned to its old tyranny.’
‘Well, we have proved that they will never get a conviction from an honest Irish jury.’ Davitt reminded them. 'We have just beaten them again.'
The State Trials of fourteen leading members of the Land League had finished just that week in Dublin - in a ten to two refusal by the jury to convict the League leaders of any crime or charge of sedition. Far from delivering any convictions, the British government’s hugely expensive trials had instead provided massive worldwide publicity for the League, an opportunity to promote its view of the causes of Irish poverty and agrarian disturbances.
The trial had even included a rousing reading of Fanny Parnell’s Hold the Harvest. Her poem had been read out as supposedly damning evidence of the League’s incitement to violence, and delivered so dramatically by the Crown prosecutor that the last verse “But God is on the peasant’s side/ The God that loves the poor” had been greeted with thunderous applause, and some sobbing tears, from the crowded courtroom.
It had all ended in cheering crowds at Holyhead pier bombarding Parnell with handkerchiefs, kisses and flowers, as their leader returned to his work at Westminster.
But Parnell had had another of his premonitions. ‘We have pushed this movement as far as it can constitutionally go!’ he spoke quietly to Tim Healey at his side, as more bouquets of roses were thrust upon him.
Parnell had stalked the British Parliament for years – the Irish David against the English Goliath. His slingshots were tactics of parliamentary delay and procedural blockade. Patiently, calmly, reasonably - aided and abetted by incredible, some said supernatural powers of physical stamina, and his growing cohort of Irish Parliamentary Party colleagues, Parnell obstructed the Westminster processes for as long as he could, exploiting every loophole, every procedural point, serenely exasperating, infuriating, and sleep depriving the House of Commons.
For all this, Charles Stewart Parnell, MP for Cork City, and President of the Irish Land League, was hated by the British press and people, and worshipped by the Irish at home and abroad. None of it appeared to bother him. He remained above them all, a hunting and shooting lord.
English in accent, Protestant in religion, Cambridge educated, unemotional in speech, frugal in hospitality, woefully ignorant of Irish poetry and song, Parnell had yet won the confidence, Davitt said, of the most loquacious, generous and impulsive of races. He was now at the helm of a global extra- parliamentary organization of half a million members. The League had branches in England, Scotland, the United States, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. And the numbers were rising. No wonder Gladstone was running scared.
Davitt did not share Parnell’s gentlemanly horror at the British abandonment of the rules of the game. Trial without jury? Imprisonment without charges? What rules had the British followed in 1847 when an entire people had starved?
Parnell did not respond to Davitt's comment immediately. He appeared to be lost in thought, pondering some inner process, seeking something. Something forgotten? Or something not yet appeared...
John Dillon, looking from one man to the other, noted again the physical similarity of the two leaders. Both were tall, dark-haired, with deep set brown eyes, high foreheads, prominent cheekbones. Michael Davitt and Charles Stewart Parnell were both children of the Great Famine – born in the same year, 1846, although one was born into privilege and the other into poverty. Yet one was light, swift, rapid in his movements, quick in his responses, interested in everything. The other was a man under a much harsher self-rule.
Parnell looked over at Davitt, his gaze intense. ‘Yes, we have beaten them again,’ he nodded, but without smiling. ‘And now they will come for you.’
Davitt felt a slight chill enter him with Parnell’s quietly spoken words. As a paroled ex convict, Davitt had always been the most vulnerable of the League executive.
‘They will be coming for all of us,’ John Dillon said quickly, as if to protect Davitt from Parnell’s prediction. ‘It is only a matter of time. We are all at risk.’
‘I will leave for Paris,’ Patrick Egan, the League treasurer, spoke with urgency, ‘as soon as we can organise the safe transfer of League funds.’
Parnell nodded in agreement. ‘Yes, Egan, you must go. Those funds are the people’s sole resource.’
‘They’ll need access to it.’ Davitt said.
‘Lines
