The Blood Upon the Rose Read Online Free PDF

course, but I'm afraid I don't have that much time for them. I'm out most evenings.’
    ‘Doing what?’
    ‘Well now.’ The grin got wider, and more quizzical. ‘For one thing, I go to the Gaelic League. I'm learning the language.’ Then he said, in hesitant Irish: ‘Do you have the Gaelic?’
    ‘Of course I do,’ she answered fluently. ‘My nurse spoke it.’
    ‘But that's tremendous! You must come. You can teach us!’
    ‘Oh, I couldn't do that,’ she said. ‘It’s a long time since I had a nurse, you know. I'm sure there are a lot of things I'd say wrong, or I've forgotten.’
    ‘It doesn't matter!’ His face had lit up, in a way quite different from when they had been discussing medicine. ‘You had the Gaelic as a child - I wish I had. We should all learn it, you know! We'll never be a nation if we lose our language.’
    And so she had gone along to the Keating branch of the Gaelic League, in 46 Parnell Square, opposite the Rotunda Lying-in Hospital. It had been a strange experience. There was an odd mixture of people: students like themselves, working men, actors, one who claimed to be a playwright, some intellectuals with wispy beards, and several middle-aged women - including, once, a tall woman in a wide hat and sandals, who was said to be the Viceroy's elder sister. The use of the Irish language was equally varied. One or two spoke it fluently, others contented themselves with writing words down, or speaking about Gaelic enthusiastically in English. Catherine seemed to be the only one who had learnt the language as a child; and that was not such an advantage here, either, because nearly everyone in Parnell Square wanted to discuss politics, and she had not learnt the vocabulary for that, picking up seashells with her nurse on the beach in Galway.
    It was a busy, fascinating place. There were several classes going on every night, and some of these seemed to attract quite a different clientele. There was a group of men who met in a room upstairs, and came and went briskly on bicycles. Some she recognized - elected members of the Dail, prominent Sinn Feiners. They came down in ones and twos, smoking and talking busily, and rode away again into the night. One or two might look in on the way, and give Sean a friendly wave. She had been impressed, and teased him in Gaelic: ‘Is it yourself that's the armed revolutionary, then, a chara? A Fenian with a gun?’
    He had winked at her, his open eye sparkling above that wide engaging mischievous smile, and said: ‘I am that. ’ She had only half believed him, then; but today, in the Viceregal Lodge, she saw it was true. It was a thrilling, sobering thought. No wonder his eyes lit up more when he spoke about Ireland than about medicine. He was really at the heart of the movement she admired so much.
    Two weeks ago she had been with Sean to a ceilidh. It had been hot, noisy, charged with emotion. Catherine had danced all evening, relishing the sense of being part of a crowd of Irish people, touching, singing, swinging each other round in the dances. Her own life was so intense, so lonely, she had been intoxicated by the sense of togetherness - the sense of touch.
    So when at last they had come out into the cold night air she had leant against Sean, naturally, easily, wanting to make the warmth last a little longer.
    He had walked her home, one arm round her, wheeling his bicycle with the other. She wondered, now, if she had been a sort of passport for him, for the soldiers and the police were less likely to stop a young couple together. But it had been the natural thing to do, after all.
    She could not invite him in and she did not want the servants to see, so she had stopped on the corner of Merrion Square and pointed across the little park to her house.
    ‘That?’ he said. ‘Sure it's a mansion!’
    ‘A town house. I told you I was an aristocrat.’ She tried to make out his expression in the dim gaslight. ‘Are you shocked?’
    ‘No. Well, yes, maybe a