LITMIR.BIZ

      ‘And to think I nearly missed it!’ said Peadar for the tenth time, regaling the company with news of his good fortune in witnessing the conversion of Chastity McCoy.

      ‘It was a great day for the town all right,’ said a wee man from Drumarg who had been stranded in the bar since early evening. From somewhere further up the town there came the dull thud of another explosion.

      ‘Not that I saw a thing with the crowds, and the leg killing me after kneeling so long on the cold marble.’

      The Tyrone man was at the window, cautiously peering out at the riot through a crack in the plywood shutters. ‘It’s as good as over, I’d say,’ he said.

      ‘Go off home then!’ Peadar shouted.

      ‘I will like fuck! Magee and that crowd will be out and about and they won’t rest till they’ve killed someone.’

      ‘They’ll be out searching high and low for her, no doubt about it,’ said the wee man from Drumarg.

      ‘The trouble’s only starting, if you want my opinion,’ Peadar said.

      ‘Aren’t we as safe as houses where we are,’ the Tyrone man insisted, ‘with Eugene on the roof.’

      The Tyrone man had been right. The riot was as good as over, but Eugene stuck to his place. From the skylight in the attic he had control over most of the Shambles, a clear line of sight halfway down Irish Street in one direction and in the other, over the roof of the Martyrs Memorial the length of English Street. The Armalite felt good against his cheek again. Good too to smell the cordite and hear grenades once more at Easter. In the Shambles below him no one was moving. The square was littered with glass and cobblestones and strewn with coils of collapsed bunting. Beyond the concrete latrine he could make out the giant ice-cream cone on the roof of McCoy’s Salvation Wagon. He took aim and gently squeezed off a round. The shot echoed round the square. The bakelite shattered into jagged fragments. He laughed at the thought of McGuffin’s discomfort, lying like a dog under the van while some maniac took potshots at the ice-cream cone above. Eugene set the rifle down and groped for a cigarette. He’d loose off a round or two more and then call it a night.

      There’d been wild rumours in the bar earlier that the Donatists were heading for the town looking for trouble, but there was no sign of them, thank God. Magee wouldn’t be bothering them any more tonight either. He’d seen the butcher and his cronies, bad-looking bastards, heading out of town and into the hills earlier. They’d be ransacking the high ground, plundering isolated farms, as much to vent their anger as in any hope of finding the runaway. He lowered his head before striking the match. From the bar below came the muffled sounds of querulous drinking, but it was oddly peaceful in the attic. At his side the figure of the Dancing Madonna silently surveyed the rooftops with a vacant, enigmatic stare.

      Only two people in the whole of Ireland, himself and the Patriot, knew of her hiding place. Muire na nGael, Mary of the Gael, the Patriot had called her. She had been there since the night Frank’s father had returned with her from the Antrim plateau, the Patriot decreeing that she would never be subjected to such ignominy again. She would stay under his roof till her mission became clear. Some day, if you believed the prophecy, she would call the people together, planter and dispossessed, and we would be a nation once again. It was the Patriot’s last great hope, to be spared to see that day.

      She was a small statue, crudely carved from weather-beaten timber, yet with a hauteur that distinguished her from the thousand other representations of the Virgin. It was hard to think sometimes that a thing so small, so insignificant, so patently manmade could be the cause of so much conflict. But it was ever so. The icon had long ago become what every man wanted her to become. To one side a symbol of the unbroken line of their faith, a repository for their aspirations. To the other side an object of fear and illicit fascination.

      Eugene finished his smoke and carefully stubbed the butt out on the joists. There’d been enough fires in the town that night already, he didn’t want to go starting another one. Carefully he eased open the skylight and scanned the town below. All was quiet. He fired once more, in the general direction of Scotch Street, and ducked down. He waited five minutes. There was no return fire. The sniper who had pinned down the head of the town must have been disposed of all right. He fired once more and waited. All was quiet. He lifted the one-legged statue and slid it under the skylight. ‘Be a good girl and keep an eye on things for us for a while,’ he said, ‘while I oil, strip and grease the rod.’