“Will we make Ireland better? In the end, will we have accomplished that?” he asked quietly.
I didn’t think Ireland would ever improve upon the likes of Arthur Griffith, Michael Collins, and Thomas Smith. She would never know better men, but she would know better days. “You will make her freer.”
“That’s enough for me,” he whispered.
In the last hour of the final day of debates, Michael Collins closed the proceedings and asked the Dáil for a vote to accept the Treaty or to reject it.
De Valera, though he’d already had his time on the floor, sought the last word, warning the Dáil that the Treaty would “rise up in judgment against them.” His attempt at a final oratorical flourish was cut off.
“Let the Irish nation judge us now and in future years,” Michael said, silencing him, and I felt the pangs of doubt and the weight of a nation pressing on every person in attendance. One by one, the elected representatives from every constituency cast their votes. The result was sixty-four in favor of the Treaty, fifty-seven against.
Like distant thunder, a cheer rose up in the streets when the result was announced, but within the chamber there was no gloating or gleeful celebration. The collective heartbeat stuttered and slowed, and one by one, became a cacophony of disparate rhythms.
“I wish to resign immediately,” de Valera intoned amid the emotional chaos.
Michael rose and, with his hands planted on the table in front of him, begged the room for calm. “In every transition from war to peace or peace to war, there is chaos and confusion. Please, let us make a plan, form a committee here and now to preserve order in the government and in the country. We must hold ourselves together. We must be unified,” he urged, and for a moment there was a hopeful pause, an indrawn breath, a possibility to defy destiny.
“This is a betrayal,” a voice cried out from the gallery, and all heads swiveled to the slight female in the front row who stood, hands clenched and mouth quivering, before the assembly. She was a suffering specter of Ireland’s not-so-distant past.
“Mary MacSwiney,” I whispered, close to tears. Terence MacSwiney, Mary’s brother, was the Cork mayor who had gone on a hunger strike and died in a British prison. Mary’s words would smash all hope of a united front.
“My brother died for Ireland. He starved himself to death to call attention to the oppression of his countrymen. There can be no union between those who have sold their souls for the fleshpots of the Empire and those of us who won’t rest until Ireland is a republic.”
Collins tried again amid the calls of support and cries for revolt. “Please don’t do this,” he begged.
De Valera interrupted him, raising his voice like a southern preacher. “My last words as your president are these. We have had a glorious run. I call on all of you who support Mary in her sentiments to meet with me tomorrow to discuss how we will go forward. We cannot turn away from the fight now. The world is watching.” His voice broke, and he could not continue. The room dissolved into weeping. Men. Women. Former friends and new foes. And war returned to Ireland.
I awoke to voices and shadows and lay listening, drowsy and drifting, alone in Thomas’s Dublin bed. We’d left the Mansion House in the swell of reveling crowds; the mood in the chamber was not reflected on the streets, and the people were ebullient, rejoicing in the birth of the Free State. A few of Mick’s men had embraced Thomas as we exited the chamber, visibly relieved that the vote had gone in favor of the Treaty, but the tension in their faces and the strain in their smiles indicated an acute awareness of the trouble to come.
We hadn’t seen Michael after the session adjourned. He was swallowed up in another round of meetings, this time to cobble together a plan to proceed without half the Dáil. But obviously, Michael had found Thomas. I recognized the burr of his brogue rising up through the vents even though I couldn’t hear what he was saying. Thomas, his voice soft and low when he spoke at all, was clearly soothing his friend. I waited to see if I would be summoned to look into my crystal ball but heard the front door close and a hush descend on the house once more. I slid out of bed, pulled my robe around my naked body, and padded down the stairs to the warm kitchen and my brooding husband. He would be brooding, I had no doubt.
He sat at the kitchen table, knees splayed, head bowed, coffee cradled in his hands. I poured myself a cup, doused it with milk and sugar until it was the color of caramel, and drank deeply before I parked myself on the table in front of him. He reached out and wrapped one of my long curls around his finger before letting his hand fall back in his lap.
“Was that Michael?” I asked.
“Yes.”
“Is he okay?”
Thomas sighed. “He’s going to kill himself trying to give the people what they want while trying to appease the few who want the opposite.”
It was exactly what he would do. For the final months of his life, Michael Collins would be a man slowly being drawn and quartered. My stomach twisted, and my chest burned. I steeled myself against it. I would not think about that now. Not now.
“Have you slept at all, Thomas? Has he?” I asked.
“You wore me out last night, lass. I slept hard for a few hours,” he murmured, touching a finger to my lips, a touch meant to remind me of our kisses, but he pulled away again, as if he felt guilty about the peace and pleasure I had given him. “But I doubt Michael has slept,” he finished quietly. “I heard him rooting around in the kitchen at three a.m.”
“It’s almost dawn. Where is he going?”
“Mass. Confession. Communion. He goes to Mass more than any murderous traitor I know,” he whispered. “It comforts him. Clears his head. They mock him for that too. It’s an Irish trait. We refuse a man communion while berating him for his sins. Some say he’s too pious; others say he’s a hypocrite for even setting foot in a church.”
“And what do you say?” I asked.
“If men were perfect, we wouldn’t need to be saved.”
I smiled sadly, but he didn’t smile back.
I took the cup from his hands, set it aside, and climbed onto his lap, my hands splayed lightly on his shoulders. He didn’t wrap his hands around my hips and pull me into his body. He didn’t bury his face in my neck or lift his face for my kiss. His despondence filled the space between us and tightened the muscles of his thighs, which were bracketed between my knees. I began to unbutton his shirt. One button. Two. Three. I paused to press a kiss to the exposed skin at his throat. He smelled of coffee and the rosemary-scented soap Mrs. O’Toole made.
He smelled of me.
Heat coiled in my belly, crowding out my fear, and I rubbed my cheek against his, back and forth, nuzzling him, my hands continuing their work. He would need to shave again soon. His jaw had grown rough, and his eyes were bruised as he watched me remove his shirt. When I urged his arms over his head to pull his undershirt free, he wrapped one hand around my jaw, drawing my mouth within a breadth of his.
“Are you trying to save me, Anne?”
“Always.”
He shuddered, letting me kiss the corners of his mouth before I touched my tongue to the crease between his lips. His chest was warm and firm beneath my hands, and I felt the quickening of his heart, the parting of the darkness from the dawn, as he closed his eyes and opened his mouth against mine.
For a moment we communed in caresses, in kisses that deepened and drew us out of ourselves only to softly set us down again. We rose and fell into each other, mouths sated and slow, lips languorous and lush, tongues tangling only to unravel and reunite.
Then his hands were sliding up my calves beneath the blue robe cinched at my waist, gripping the length of my thighs and kneading the flesh of my bottom. His palms skimmed, frantic, over my ribs and across my breasts only to circle back, cupping and cradling, worshipful but insistent. He slid, taking me with him, abandoning the chair for the floor, forsaking misery for commiseration. His mouth made the journey of his hands, parting my robe and pushing it aside until I was naked beneath him, breathing love into his skin and life into his body and being saved in return.
17 January 1922
On 14 January, the Dáil met again, its numbers almost halved by the exit of de Valera and all those who refused to recognize the vote. Arthur Griffith had been voted president of the Dáil upon de Valera’s resignation, and Mick was appointed as the chairman of the new provisional government organized under the terms of the Treaty.
Anne and I had not remained in Dublin after the final debate and the vote that shattered the Dáil. We were anxious to escape Dublin, to return to Eoin and the peace of Dromahair, relative as it was. But we returned, Eoin in tow, to watch as Dublin Castle, the symbol of British dominion in Ireland, was handed over to the provisional government.
Mick was late for the official ceremony. He rolled up in an open-top government car, his old Volunteer uniform pressed, his boots gleaming. The people roared their approval, and Eoin waved madly from where he was perched on my shoulders, calling out, “Mick, Mick!” as though he and Michael were old friends. I was so moved that I couldn’t speak, and Anne cried openly beside me.
Mick later told me that Lord FitzAlan, the viceroy who had replaced Lord French, sniffed and said, “You are seven minutes late, Mr. Collins,” to which Mick responded, “We’ve been waiting seven hundred years, Governor. You can wait seven minutes.”