The White Plague (64 page)

Herity put his bottle aside gently and lifted a sheet of paper from the stack on the table. He read from it, glancing occasionally at John.

“We say first that you, prisoner, are John Roe O’Neill. We say you are the author of the plague which has outraged our poor land and much of the world besides, making an exception for the British and the heathens to whom it was a just punishment. We say you had no cause to harm us in this cowardly fashion. And how do you plead, John Roe O’Neill?”

John stared at the head in the bottle. It was speaking to him in the voice of O’Neill! “What was my crime?” it asked. “I was wronged. That priest knows! I was grievously wronged.”

Who can deny that?
John thought.

“What did I ever do,” the head asked, “that those terrorist killers whom the Irish tolerated and openly abetted – what had I ever done to deserve the callous murder of my family?”

“It was a terrible provocation,” John whispered.

“Is the prisoner speaking?” Kevin asked.

John did not hear him. The head was speaking: “It’s the Irish who should be on trial here! They’re the ones who fed the disease of terrorism!”

John nodded silently.

Father Michael glanced sidelong at John, wondering at the sudden odd stillness in the man, as though he had locked himself into some secret place where no sound could penetrate.

Doheny turned then and looked full at John.
Sic semper Irish honor,
Doheny thought.
What will this poor Madman think when he learns that I’m his prosecutor?

What a price to pay!

But Kevin O’Donnell would surely destroy this lab if his orders were not obeyed. Even Adrian Peard would suffer, damn him! But they had to continue with what the Madman had given them. A cure for the plague, that was the only priority. Ireland might yet do it alone!

Kevin glanced at Father Michael. “Have you an opening statement, Priest?”

Father Michael coughed and lifted his attention to John. “Whatever the Madman did, it’s plain there was no malice in him before he suffered outrage.”

“We will refer to the prisoner as O’Neill!” Kevin said.

Herity smiled slyly and took another swallow from his bottle.

Father Michael said: “Even malice is not the word to describe his intentions. O’Neill appears to have been motivated by blind rage rather than any other emotion. He wanted to strike insanely in the vicinity of those who had destroyed his world. We must admit his aim, in this respect, was accurate – not totally, but perhaps sufficiently so for his mad rage.”

John rattled his manacles against the pipe, staring at the head in the bottle. The head remained silent. Why wouldn’t O’Neill come to his defense?

“I do not argue that O’Neill acted from any principle,” Father Michael said. “I presume he knew full well who was responsible for his act and for the outrage which was committed against him. If there was any faith involved it was only his faith in his ability to strike us down.”

Father Michael stood and turned to look at the jurors. The boy stepped back a pace.

“Passion there was and no doubt of that!” Father Michael thundered. “Passion against the authors of his agony! Against us!” He lowered his voice to a gentle monotone. “He has given us passion as well. What will we do with it?”

Father Michael returned his attention to Kevin. “If it’s revenge we’re after, then let us call it by its rightful name. If we are to ignore the holy injunction against passing judgment, then let us judge with revenge in mind and thereby expose ourselves to the consequences.”

Herity sneered: “Judge not lest ye be judged.”

“Let him speak,” Kevin said. “I have promised that we will suppress no line of defense.”

“Yes!” Father Michael said. “We swore a holy oath on the sacred honor of Ireland! Truth and justice, that is what we swore by Almighty God to uphold.”

“Almighty God,” Herity said. He took another pull from his bottle.

“Joseph Herity reminds us,” Father Michael said, “of the holy warning. Christ intended it to be the thorn in our side. It raises the terrible question: Who judges? Dare we pass judgment on the judges? If we say that only men can be judges, we deny God. Do we deny God?”

“I do!” Herity said.

“Shush, Joseph,” Kevin said. “Let him rant.”

Father Michael sent a burning stare around the room. “We were civilized in Ireland when the rest of the world was a pagan mudhole. Let us act like civilized men.” He directed his stare at Doheny, who stood in front of the table with a glowering look of displeasure.

“If we make any pretense at being a court of Irish Law, as
Judge
Kevin O’Donnell says, then let us have no hypocrisy in our court. Let us not soothe ourselves with illusions. Let us not pretend we are the purely good and this poor Madman… Mister O’Neill, is purely evil. That is the issue which our oath forces us to address.”

“Must we?” Herity asked.

“We must!” Father Michael shouted. “What is this man charged with?”

“Charged with?” Herity repeated in mock solemnity. “He’s only charged with destroying the flower of Irish beauty.”

“He was certainly insane at the moment!” Father Michael said.

“Moment?” Herity demanded. “Surely it took more than a moment!” He glanced at Peard, who stood now just out of the stacks. “Have you anything to say to that, Doctor Adrian Peard?”

“He’s behaved sanely every time I’ve seen him,” Peard said. “And I’ve watched him carefully ever since being alerted that he was O’Neill.”

“And what has he done here?” Father Michael asked.

“Pretended to show us how the plague was created,” Peard said.

“For the love of heaven, man!” Father Michael protested. “He’s revealed everything we need for us to find a cure.”

“I see no cure,” Peard said. “I think we’ll find one, but not because of him.”

“Ahhhhhh.” Father Michael nodded. “And the cure will be the work of Adrian Peard. Oh, I see it now.” He looked at Doheny, who refused to meet his gaze. Father Michael turned once more to look at the jurors, thinking they were a motley lot, giving every appearance of boredom. Had they already consulted with Kevin and Joseph and arrived at a verdict? Was this trial only a sham?

“The ultimate conflict is between good and good, not between good and evil, is that our contention?” Father Michael asked. “I say to you that in this room, we are exposing the conflict between evil and evil. Does evil have the right to judge evil? You may ask: ‘Who could know it better?’  But I warn you to face this with clear heads and a full understanding of the admission you make when you judge!”

Father Michael returned to his chair and sat down. The boy came back to his side.

John stared at the head in the bottle. Would the head speak? That head was the true judge in this room. John held this thought close to him, warming himself on it.

Kevin looked at Doheny and nodded, finding a restorative amusement in the thought of how Doheny had been forced into assuming the role of prosecutor. How that must gall the man!

Doheny noted the quickening of interest on the faces of the jurors. Judgment was a foregone conclusion, as Kevin had made clear by his private instructions to those men chosen from among his own forces. But the taste for tragic spectacle had not vanished from Ireland, Doheny thought. The attraction of the capital trial could not be denied. We throng to the spectacle of agony and the course of death. We throng to Golgotha. He girded himself with this thought as he prepared to speak.

My task is a simple one
, Doheny thought.
I must merely give them sufficient words of justification before they announce the judgment
.

In his most reasonable voice, Doheny addressed the jurors. “I have no desire to humiliate O’Neill. I agree that he could only have been mad when he did this thing. But that is no excuse. Granted that insanity has been lodged as excuse for other heinous crimes, this goes beyond anything in our history. It ranks only with the crucifixion.”

Doheny shot a glance at Father Michael. Raise the religious issue, would he?

“Passion, the priest says,” Doheny intoned. “It is the ultimate passion of humankind. Can humanity show mercy to O’Neill? Can we face the obvious fact of his insanity, saying this was a mitigating circumstance? I say we cannot! There are crimes for which insanity is no plea! There are crimes, the very contemplation of which, demand that the insane be judged guilty!”

Doheny turned to look at O’Neill. Why did the man stare so at the head of poor Alex? The Madman made no response to this trial other than a low hunching of the shoulders, but his gaze remained fixed on the head in the bottle.

“The priest says: ‘Judge not lest ye be judged.’  A tempting quotation and one I expected to hear. But whose judgment do we deliver here? Are we to assume that God approves of O’Neill’s crimes?”

Doheny glanced at Father Michael, thinking:
Let him return to his insanity plea now!

Still looking at the priest, Doheny said: “Only the devil himself could approve of O’Neill’s crime. And perhaps this is the devil’s seventh day when he rests to admire his work. I do not admire his work. I cannot say: ‘Let God judge this man because we mere humans cannot judge.’”

Doheny returned his attention to the jurors, noting that they had lapsed into boredom. Had he already given them enough justification?

“God knows best. Is that our judgment?” Doheny asked. “Do we assume that we, mere humans, cannot know what O’Neill has done? Have we no powers of observation?”

One of the jurors, a man with a red scar down his right cheek, winked at Doheny.

Doheny turned away, feeling that he had somehow joined in a crime. His voice was low when he continued, prompting Kevin to order: “Speak up, man!”

“I say to you,” Doheny said, starting over, “that the judgment is ours. We are the survivors of outrage. It is up to us to clean the slate. It is not evil against evil in this room. We are warring against evil! War! This is a principle that we must recognize and apply!”

In what he hoped was a dramatic gesture, Doheny pointed at John.

“What denial does he make? His puny explanation is that it was not he but another who lives within him. But we here know the truth that we swore to uphold.”

Again, John’s manacles rattled against the pipe that confined him. And the head in the jar spoke to him! The voice was surely O’Neill’s: “What are these fools doing? I did what I had to do. I was driven to it. And why do they have you here, John Garrech O’Donnell? Because no one was closer to me than you. Because you knew me best!”

“Does the priest have anything to add?” Kevin asked. “I’ll have no man saying we silenced you.”

Father Michael stood slowly, shot a glance at Doheny, then said: “Law and, presumably, this Irish court pretend to share an ethical principle with science. Truth! We must have the truth no matter what follows. Truth though hell should bar the way.”

He turned and swept his gaze along the row of jurors. “All I’ve said to you is that if you once assume this principle, you abandon it at your peril. I am happy to hear
Judge
O’Donnell say he will not suppress any line of defense. Whenever we silence a line of Inquiry that might lead to unwanted disclosures, we do disservice to truth. We abandon law – Irish Law or any other moral law to which men should give allegiance. One breath of truth and a false edifice tumbles. We have embraced the principle of open disclosure and no legal excuse may be used against it.”

Father Michael passed a mild gaze around the room. The jurymen still appeared bored. Well, they would not be bored in a moment! There was no telling what went on in Kevin O’Donnell’s muddled head. Doheny was listening carefully, as though he suspected where this might lead. And the Madman had looked up, staring around him with a confused expression.

“War?” Father Michael asked. “Is this a principle that I have overlooked? Is there such a thing as a principle of war? If so, do we dare confine this principle only to nations? Or to political societies such as the Proves and the Finn Sadal? If such a principle exists – as Mister Doheny suggests – it must be able to stand by itself or it is no principle at all. Is it a principle? One man alone can embrace a principle. Any man can do that. May we rail against his choice or denounce his choice of weapon?”

Kevin raised the length of Cashell roof timber, but lowered it gently.

“Was the plague a weapon in a war?” Father Michael asked. “Do we dare rail against it? Well might he rail against the bomb!” Father Michael turned and stared up at Herity, who had just drained the last of his whiskey. “Joseph Herity’s bomb!” Father Michael thundered. “Can he sit there in judgment when it was his bomb that killed O’Neill’s wife and wains?”

The jurors perked up, glancing from the priest to Herity. Kevin’s face held a look of secret glee. Herity appeared not to have heard. He stared at his empty bottle on the table in front of him.

John glanced wildly around the room. He could feel the words still leaping about him, live things. The head in the jar spoke to him then, commanding: “Well, speak up! It was Herity who killed Mary and the twins!”

John fixed his gaze on Herity. A voice came out of him, high-pitched and twittering: “How do you like your war now, Joseph Herity?” He giggled, rattling his manacles, his head weaving from side to side as though there were only infant muscles in the neck.

Father Michael looked at John, then across the room at Peard. “Sane is it, Adrian?”

Peard would not meet the priest’s eyes.

Kevin brought his block of timber crashing onto the table. “Enough! We are not on trial here! The issue of sanity has been laid to rest.”

“May I not speak about this question of war that Mister Doheny has raised?” Father Michael asked, his voice soft. He saw that some of the jurors were grinning. The grins disappeared as Kevin looked at them.

When Kevin did not respond, Father Michael continued: “This man, O’Neill, wedded before God, lost his whole family to men who bragged that it was war, that they acted in the name of the people. War, the Provos called it.”

Once more, Kevin brought the wood crashing onto the table. “I said that was enough!”