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communiqué from Commandant MacDonagh for C-in-C Pearse.
    After a quick look up and down, he saw that I was no threat to the revolution. They let me in and brought me to a young officer named Collins. I handed over the letter to Captain Collins, and, after that, I felt faint. The next thing I knew I hit the deck in front of Collins, out for the count.

6

    C ollins picked the boy up and called out for Róisín O’Mahony. She was a nurse and a member of the Cumann na mBan , the women’s auxiliary of the Irish Volunteers, and she was all business: “Where’s he hit?”
    “Looks like his back,” said Collins, the boy’s blood all over the arms of his impeccable uniform.
    O’Mahony rolled the boy over and felt his back from the shoulders down. No blood. She was puzzled. “Help me with his pants,” she said to Collins.
    “Yes, Countess O’Mahonyevicz,” said a mocking Collins, knowing that Róisín was a fervent admirer and follower of the real Countess Markievicz.
    “Come on, ya big git,” shot back O’Mahony. “Come on, big fella, for once show you have a set of brains.” Collins first instinct was to retort, but one look at the determined O’Mahony quickly put that thought out of his mind. The nurse wondered why she had to put up with such testosterone-fueled eejits. She looked at the gangly twenty-five-year-old Collins and figured his actions were dictated by his bollocks, not his brains. By right, she should have been with Markievicz over in Stephen’s Green, but she was urgently needed at the GPO. Collins undid Eoin’s belt, and O’Mahony pulled the britches down, displaying Eoin’s long-johns. She unbuttoned the arse trapdoor and exposed the wound in the right buttock. “He’s lucky,” she said. “A clean flesh wound. Just nicked him. All the blood makes it look worse than it is.”
    Eoin opened his eyes and looked at Collins and then at O’Mahony, who was swabbing his arse with disinfectant. “Am I dying?” he asked, the sting of the medication bringing him further into consciousness.
    “You’ll live to be a hundred,” said Collins.
    “I gave me only arse for Ireland,” said Eoin, which forced both Collins and O’Mahony to smile in rare unison.
    “What’s going on?” said Commander-in-Chief Padraig Pearse. He was surveying Eoin’s bare butt with interest, perfectly framed by the longjohns’ trapdoor. But it was never easy to tell what direction Pearse was actually looking in because of that cast eye. The right one was straight on, but the other was heading off in the direction of Belfast.
    “Messenger from Jacob’s,” said Collins, leading Pearse away from the boy. “He has a dispatch from Commandant MacDonagh for you.”
    Collins handed him the blood-smudged envelope, and Pearse opened it and read aloud. “‘All quiet on Bishop’s Street. Phones are dead. Rain has quenched the British. Jacob’s well cracked. The men are ready to fight. MacDonagh’s doing his best to help de Valera over at Boland’s Mills.’” Collins nodded, and Pearse went back to the command center, which was in the front of the building where they sold stamps.
    O’Mahony was bandaging Eoin’s aching, stinging behind. “That’s one penny-ha’penny bottom you have there,” said Nurse O’Mahony. By now Eoin was wide awake and covering up his privates, as his mother called them. O’Mahony smiled at his modesty, and Eoin felt his willie getting hard.
    “Yeah,” said Collins to O’Mahony, “he has an arse on him just like you—that of a skinny thirteen-year-old boy.”
    “I’ll be fifteen in October,” corrected Eoin.
    “Get away from me,” shouted O’Mahony to Collins, her voice rising. “You’re nothing but a Cork culchie, a ruffian, a bogman, and a Nighttown guttersnipe.”
    Eoin looked around at O’Mahony and saw that she was beet-faced. Beet-faced but beautiful, with long brown hair, exquisite eyes, and a smile stolen from the Irish Madonna. He didn’t mind this beauty patting