Free Ashes In the Wind by Christopher Bland Page A

jack-knifed body with a blanket. They walk to the Ha’penny Bridge and drop their revolvers into the river as they cross.
    ‘We’re to make for McCarthy’s boarding house in Mountjoy Street later,’ says Frank. ‘Dublin will be crawling with Black and Tans and Auxiliaries.’
    ‘Did you see she was pregnant?’ says Tomas. Frank does not reply.
    They get to McCarthy’s in the evening; most of the Apostles are already there in an upstairs room. This time Michael Collins is triumphant.
    ‘We’ve killed fifteen of their best men, it’s a knockout blow. They’ve taken McKee and Clancy, and I think Fitzpatrick is dead, God help him. The Tans and the Auxies went mad in Croke Park this afternoon, opened fire on the crowd, killed more than a dozen, two of them children. But believe me, boys, it’s been worth it. Just mind how you go for the next week. They’ll not be particular who they pick up.’
    ‘Newbury’s wife was pregnant,’ says Tomas.
    There is a long silence; as they leave the room Michael Collins pats Tomas on the shoulder. ‘Newbury had to be killed,’ he says.
    Two days later Tomas is picked up by a patrol of the Auxiliaries on his way out of the Dispensary; Frank has already gone back to Cork. Tomas is taken to Jury’s Hotel in Great Dame Street, commandeered as an Auxiliary stronghold. He is pushed into a small room by three Auxiliaries, who set about Tomas with fists, boots and blackthorn sticks without speaking. Tomas winds up on the floor, bleeding from a deep cut on his forehead, one eye completely closed, bruised all over his body.
    ‘That’ll teach you to resist arrest,’ says the last one to leave, giving Tomas a parting kick.
    The next day he and three other Volunteers are taken to Mountjoy Jail. They don’t acknowledge each other. As they walk through an inner courtyard their guards point out bullet holes on the far wall.
    ‘That’s where we shoot rebels. Your lot’ll get the noose.’
    There are over a thousand men in Mountjoy; every evening a crowd collects outside the walls to shout encouragement to the prisoners. In a series of identity parades the British try to weed out the active Volunteers. Tomas can barely stand at the first parade; he is wrongly identified by a policeman as one of those involved in a murder two days before. His documents prove he was already a prisoner at Jury’s.
    At the second identity parade, the Baggot Street housekeeper is there. The soldiers escort her, shaking, white-faced and terrified, to the security of a sentry box with a slit cut in its back at eye level. She identifies Tomas, who is immediately put into solitary confinement. A fortnight later he is tried, found guilty of murder.
    ‘You killed three people,’ says the judge. ‘You shot Captain Newbury in cold blood, and you were responsible for the death of his wife and unborn child when she miscarried the following day.’
    Tomas is condemned to death. After the trial he is taken to Kilmainham Jail, where he is weighed, measured, washed and photographed. This, he is told by his escorts, is where he will be hanged.

9
    B URKE ’ S F ORT IS insulated from the world of The Troubles. Only the Irish Times , arriving a day late, keeps John in touch with the turbulence that killed his mother and William, and swept him up and out of Kerry. He has pushed the horrors of a year ago to the back of his mind, until one morning over breakfast Charles, uncharacteristically reading the news pages instead of going straight to the racing section, asks John, ‘Know any Sullivans from Drimnamore?’
    ‘I do.’
    ‘Well, they’ve convicted a Tomas Sullivan, one of the IRA squad who killed the Intelligence officers. They’re all to hang.’
    John reads the paper carefully when Charles has finished breakfast. It describes in detail the trial, conviction and sentencing of Tomas and two others, including the words of the judge as he condemned Tomas, ‘not for one murder, but for three’.
    John wonders what,