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prepared before handing them over; prepared spiritually as well as physically.
    He insisted they attend Mass. “Slip quietly into church and stand at the back. Attract no attention and leave before anyone else does, lads. As for confession … best not. For the sake of your fellow Volunteers say nothing to outsiders.”
    U RSULA Halloran was a rebel. From time to time she tried to shock Eileen Mulvaney out of her unquestioning Catholicism. “Institutionalised religion is a poor substitute for spirituality, Eileen. People should listen to the spirit within themselves, that’s the voice of God. It doesn’t come from some male spinster in a long dress.”
    â€œOch now, that’s not fair.” The older woman knew she could not debate Ned’s educated daughter. Her defensive technique was to let her lips quiver and her eyes fill with tears.
    â€œI blame Eamon de Valera,” Ursula countered, warming to the topic. “He fought to free Ireland from England in 1916, only to hand the country over to the Church as soon as he got into power.”
    â€œSure we’ve always belonged to the Church,” Eileen said.
    â€œThat’s what’s wrong. The Church is supposed to belong to its people . But for centuries the English forced the Irish to be deferential until it became part of our nature. Now that quality has delivered us to McQuaid’s theological terrorism.” Ursula liked that phrase. She said it again, savouring the words: “Theological terrorism. McQuaid’s policies are designed to protect the institution, not to enhance the life of the spirit. Anyone who doesn’t agree with them is publicly condemned from the altar.
    â€œFear and abnegation, that’s what the Church in this country
demands of us. It’s not like that in other countries. I’ve been to Europe, I’ve seen with my own eyes what Catholicism is like in places like Italy and Switzerland. It’s joyous! Not here, though. In Ireland people are not only frightened of the clergy, they’re even afraid of their own bodies. And who taught us to be that way? The priests!
    â€œDo you think it’s natural for men to sit on one side in the church and their wives on the other, as if they didn’t sleep in the same bed at night? Or for boys and girls to have to enter the school by different doors? Is it an act of Christian charity when the priest reads out in public how much each family gave to the collection, shaming those who could not afford to give enough—in his opinion? The Church does everything it can to keep us terrified.”
    Ursula had proved that she was not afraid. She had borne a son out of wedlock and raised him in defiance of both the Church and social convention. When she met a priest in town she held her head up proudly and looked him right in the eyes.
    Usually it was the priest who looked away first.
    Yet Ursula had insisted that Barry have a Catholic upbringing. At first the Church was glad to have him, seeing him as a sort of token penitence on the part of his mother. He had even spent a year as an altar boy in surplice and soutane—until dismissed by the parish priest. “Your nephew has too much energy to serve on the altar,” the priest told Eileen. “It’s like trying to contain a whirlwind in a bottle.”
    â€œDon’t think this means you can get out of Mass and midweek Benediction,” Ursula had warned Barry. “We live in a Catholic country. Whatever about me, I don’t want you to grow up feeling like an outsider.”
    Yet Barry, fatherless in a patriarchal country, an only child in a land of large families, a dreamer given to wandering off by himself, did feel like an outsider. Until the moment when he stood on a frozen hillside in County Leitrim and Feargal O’Hanlon punched his shoulder.
    W HEN the column moved off from the deserted village, Feargal and Barry walked together. Feargal, two years older