To Kingdom Come (17 page)

My employer took his knife, carefully slipped the blade under the lid’s edge, and pried open the case. It had been half emptied, but at the bottom were dozens of identical cakes of explosives.
Most of them had a waxy residue on the outside. Reaching in, I found that it had glued most of the cakes together.

“Do you think it is inert?” I asked.

“Most of it appears viable. I think we must separate the cakes, and scrape some of the wax from the fuses. We must be careful, of course, or this Welsh coastline will look like another Krakatoa. I daresay inserting one of the new sticks into the mass would have the effect of livening up the others, much as adding a new bull to a herd of cattle.”

Barker took his pipe, and glanced at the beach. “I believe I will take a walk and clear my head. I have much to think over. You may begin to prepare dinner.”

There was no getting around it. As far as explosives are concerned, I have a certain talent, but when it comes to cooking I’m completely inept. Five minutes into the preparation, and I was considering giving up rabbit forever. I don’t know how butchers do not become vegetarians. It was all I could do to make a stew without getting clumps of fur in it. About forty-five minutes later, I swung the big pot out from the fire on the iron bracket, and spooned the bubbling mixture into a wooden bowl. Everything appeared to be cooked through, and it at least somewhat resembled stew.

Barker dipped in a spoon and brought it to his mouth. I was in a very unenviable position. He was close friends with two London chefs, Etienne Dummolard and Ho, and was part owner of at least one of their restaurants. My only hope was that Dummolard was correct in his assertion that Barker had almost no sense of taste. My employer chewed slowly and swallowed. After a few seconds, he nodded and took another bite. I let out my breath. As long as I hadn’t poisoned him, everything was fine. I dared a nibble of the stew myself, then regretted it. My taste buds were perfectly intact. I put a carrot in my pocket and left Barker alone, chewing on the stew and staring abstractedly into space.

After dinner, we went back to the barn and began to remove the old dynamite from the crate. Barker took out his knife and began scraping the waxy buildup from the cakes.

“Careful,” I warned.

“Don’t worry, lad,” he said. “I rather exaggerated the dangers of the decayed dynamite for Dunleavy’s benefit.”

We began getting out the equipment to set up our makeshift laboratory, and fell into conversation about what to blow up and how. Nothing of any import occurred during the next several days. Barker wished to put on a demonstration using several types of explosives: dynamite, picric bombs, timed and fuse bombs, anything that we could put together. Barker and I debated whether to test our explosives on a nearby dolmen. It was someone’s tomb, after all, and had remained untouched for a thousand years. It seemed a pity to destroy it.

Barker continued taking walks along the shore, and eventually, I joined him. A family of otters amused us, and I was glad they were there, for their antics diverted us. It was not easy living in such close quarters with Barker. When I am with Israel Zangwill, we can talk for hours over nearly any subject, but Barker prefers contemplation to conversation. The week passed slowly and quietly.

They arrived Saturday morning, the whole lot of them: Dunleavy, Yeats, O’Casey, McKeller, and the Bannon boys. Even Maire O’Casey had come, which I considered entirely improper. I thought it wrong of her brother to include her in these illegal proceedings.

“Hello, Penrith,” Willie Yeats said, pumping my hand. Though he still wore a flowing tie over his celery-stalk collar, he’d traded his city suit for country tweeds.

Fergus McKeller looked a bit moody, though I saw they’d brought a large picnic hamper, and a barrel of stout in the cart.
All that was left was the entertainment, and our demonstration would be it.

The moment she arrived, Maire O’Casey took over the kitchen, where she deputized Yeats and one of the Bannons, I believe it was Padraig, to peel potatoes. I showed her where everything was and hoped she didn’t ask about my puny attempts at cooking.

“I’m rather shocked to see you here,” I admitted to her when we were alone. “I thought your brother would keep you out of this.”

“I am a sister and the daughter of republican patriots, Mr. Penrith. My father was a great man and a true patriot. I would not have you think me a coward.”

I felt myself blush at the word. “Certainly not.”

“I do more than merely feed the lot of you. There are many ways to contribute to the cause, such as writing poetry. Willie is very talented at that.”

“Did I hear my name?” Willie Yeats spoke up from the corner, where he was peeling. I felt a trifle envious of him, and I suspected he was jealous of me.

“We were talking about your poetry,” Maire went on. “It’s marvelous. You should read it, Mr. Penrith. At times it is so simple, any peasant can read and understand it, but it has such a mystical and intellectual quality to it, one would have to be a Blake to interpret the deeper meanings.”

“Oh, really, it’s just scribblings, you know,” Yeats said.

“Scribblings! Willie Yeats, you say that again, and I’ll take one of Eamon’s sticks to you. Someday you shall go far with those little scribblings.”

What can one say after such praise from a beautiful girl? Yeats puffed out his thin chest like a carrier pigeon, while I felt insignificant indeed.

“I’ve written a new one, Maire, about Queen Mab and the
fairy world. Perhaps I can bring it over in a couple of days, when I return from Dublin.”

“I should love to read it, Willie.”

Yeats bowed and walked off in stiff, long strides.

“Why does he walk like that?” I asked under my breath.

Maire gave a smile for the first time since I had met her. “Ever since he took me to the theater in London a few months ago, he has emulated the gait of Mr. Henry Irving.”

I couldn’t help it. I choked and began coughing. Maire tried to hide her own giggles behind her hand, but it was too late. Yeats turned around and scowled at us. I noted that his walk after that was far less theatrical.

About an hour before sundown, the time for the big event arrived. I went over to the lighthouse and rechecked the various charges and the wires hooked up to the new detonator for probably the hundredth time. If Barker’s plan went off as hoped, we would give them a show they wouldn’t soon forget.

As if on cue, everyone came together and perched on a ring of rocks that had once formed the base of an ancient home or fort. We sat in a semicircle, facing the sea, while Alfred Dunleavy stepped up on a tall, flat rock and addressed us.

15

“SONS OF IRELAND,” DUNLEAVY BEGAN, CLUTCH
ing the lapels of his military coat, “I thank you for taking time away from your daily lives and coming all this way for a demonstration. I must admit to you that I had grown a little discouraged lately regarding our situation with England. Mr. Parnell does little save flatter society matrons and squander our precious funds, while Gladstone stands like a farthing in a crack, refusing to fall either way. I was sure that our little attack upon London would topple him, but apparently he’s set in stone. They are a flinty-hearted race, the English. We had shot our bolt, and they’d absorbed it, almost without a trace, and our supply of precious dynamite was old and faulty. What would we do next? I wondered.

“Then, as if by Providence, whom should I meet but the great Johannes van Rhyn himself. His reputation as a bomb maker and revolutionary is legendary. He understood our struggles and offered his services to us. I took heart again. With such expertise, surely we cannot fail!

“But, I see I have forgotten Mr. Penrith. He began as an
apprentice in the revolutionary trade under Mr. van Rhyn, but even the maestro will admit that in some matters, the student has surpassed his teacher. He was trained at Mr. Alfred Nobel’s own factory near Glasgow. When looking at Mr. Penrith, one is first struck by how young he looks. Yet he is a seasoned veteran in the war against tyranny and as anxious to help us as Mr. van Rhyn. We are privileged to have such a fine young man with us today.”

Everyone applauded. I could feel the heat of my blushes around my collar.

“These two gentlemen have worked for days to set up a display of their abilities for us all. Foreign governments would have traveled far to witness these marvels. And you can believe that after seeing such a sight as this the representatives of Her Majesty’s government would be shaking in their boots. But none of them may see it, for this demonstration is for our eyes alone. I must ask you, on your oaths as protectors of Ireland, to keep absolutely silent about what you see here today for a while, at least. Someday, perhaps, this event will be spoken of with pride and hushed tones in the pubs of Dublin and Cork, Boston and Chicago, but for now I ask silence.

“Speaking of silence, it is time for me to stop rambling and to turn this rude stage over to the gentleman who has done more for the cause of freedom than I ever shall. Gentlemen, and lady, I give you Johannes van Rhyn!”

Barker stood and bowed gravely. He cleared his throat and began in that bass rumble of his. “Mr. Penrith and I have collaborated in preparing for you a demonstration of some of the latest advancements in infernal devices. Perhaps you will allow me a moment to light a cigar, because I shall need it for my work.”

After Dunleavy’s introduction, my employer was deliberately lowering their expectations. They were expecting a show and he appeared ready to deliver a lecture instead.

“Mr. Penrith, the sphere, please.” Barker took the bomb and
held it aloft for all to see. “
Danke.
This black sphere I hold in my hand, gentlemen, should be recognizable to you all. It is a picric bomb, full of the acid of the same name. One just like it was used to end the life of Czar Alexander the Second in St. Petersburg.”

Barker used his cigar to light the fuse, and it sputtered to life.

“I am not a dynamiter, of course,” he said conversationally, as the fuse vanished inch by inch, “nor am I as young as I once was, but I hope to throw this far enough so that the shrapnel does not harm any of you.”

My employer leaned back and hurled the bomb, watching as it arched to the left. It bounced and rolled across the clearing like a
sliotar
before finally striking a rock. There was a loud crack and flash, and clods of earth and rock showered down. Everyone cried out in fear and wonder. The bombers were more accustomed to leaving their deadly devices to explode after they had gone. Now they were seeing the results of their art firsthand.

“Here now are three sticks of dynamite Mr. Penrith has tied together. Dynamite is nitroglycerin which has been soaked into kieselguhr to render it safe, though not too safe, I fear, as the brother of Mr. Nobel would attest, were he alive to do so. Dynamite has been a boon to bombers everywhere.”

He lit the fuses with his cigar and threw the bundle of dynamite among some clumps of sea grass. The explosion was louder and more powerful than the one before, blowing stalks high into the air. Miss O’Casey and Willie Yeats held their ears.

“Let us move on,” Barker said in a professional manner. “I draw your attention to that ancient dolmen over there, close to the sea. We have taken the opportunity to build a low-grade bomb from materials we acquired, and attached it with a pistol and primer to a timing device. How much time have we left, Mr. Penrith?”

I had made my way to the dolmen and set the timer as he was
speaking. I came back, consulting the watch Barker had lent me for the demonstration.

“Forty-five seconds, sir,” I called out, making my way back to the circle. Everyone was leaning forward. They were looking the worse for wear, I thought, with bits of grass in their hair and dirt on their clothes. Fifteen seconds went by. No one spoke. Thirty. Forty-five. A minute.

“It didn’t—” Eamon O’Casey began, when the air was suddenly ripped by an explosion. The large rock atop the dolmen convulsed and split down the middle, like the veil in Herod’s temple on Easter morning. The air was full of smoke and dust.

“It was late,” Barker complained.

“I am sorry, sir.”

“It is not an exact science, you see, gentlemen,” the Guv explained. “The more complicated the bomb, the more things can go wrong. Complications can also lead to better results. Mr. Penrith has been playing with the old cakes of dynamite and has added a little something of his own to liven them up. So far, we have used fuses and a timer. I have here a commercial detonator. I would like to demonstrate how easy it is to use. Miss O’Casey, would you like to come forward and do the honors?”

“I?” the girl asked, looking reluctant.

“It is easy to use. Come, miss. Just put both hands on this rod of wood here. Now push down.”

Gingerly, Maire O’Casey pushed down the plunger. The old lighthouse gave a convulsive leap in a massive explosion, rising it at least ten feet off the ground. The bottom half shivered into bits, but the top flew headfirst into the sea. The concussion blew past me and knocked everyone flat except the two of us, who had been prepared. Barker made some final comment loudly, but I had momentarily lost my hearing.