47 pondered this. “He thought there was a lot of work to be done; but the situation was getting fairly well in hand. The people over here are fearfully hampered by the powers that be.” 47 looked carefully round the gardens without turning his head. “Listen to this,” he said, pulling some papers out of his pocket. “Here are one or two choice little extracts from the rules of the Cumann na mBan, the woman’s branch of the Irish Republican Army, of which Countess Markievicz is the head. The Countess is said to go about with an armed escort, and to carry a bag with a gun inside. The spring of the bag fires the gun. It may be a legend. Here we are.
“As a start, members have to subscribe to the following declaration: ‘I, mindful of my high responsibilities as an Irishwoman, am resolved to do my part in the service of the Republic. I enrol myself as a member of the Cumann na mBan. I bind myself by personal attention to duty as a member of this branch to aim at the highest degree of efficiency which alone will make us a valuable unit in the Republican Army. I pledge myself to keep perfectly secret all matters connected with the Irish Volunteers and Cumann na mBan,’ etc.
“This is what I am after: Rule 11. ‘That Cumann na mBan should be instructed in the use of firearms.’ Rule 12. ‘That Cumann na mBan include detective work and the acquiring of information about the enemy among its activities.’
“Dublin Castle has in its possession a full list of the executive of the Cumann na mBan—this organisation of enemy spies—yet none of these women are touched, but they are left to go about their work as freely as they like. The Irish Republican Army states that it is at war with Britain; the penalty for spies is death. These women could quite logically be executed; they most certainly should be interned. But no, not a finger must be lifted against them.”
“What else did you glean?” I urged.
“That these gardens were much used by the Sinn Feiners. My ‘cousin’ pointed out a man loitering on a little switchback path over there near the waterfall. He warned me most of us were shadowed now and again, but in most cases it was clumsily done. He warned me Sinn Fein was everywhere, that one could trust nobody, that the rot was even in the army and the police. The question was dividing fathers against sons, and husbands against wives. He urged me to believe in nobody who was not of the brotherhood: he need not have worried on that score.
“I was told to look out for men and women sitting together on the park benches—the man dictating, the woman taking shorthand notes. That’s how they often dictate their dispatches.
“My ‘cousin’ went on to say that after dark motor cyclists carried the Sinn Fein dispatches through the empty streets. One passed his house at great speed at a certain hour every evening, almost to the minute. He meant to get him.
“He told me, as I had guessed, that the bars were the great places for passing information. Important meetings were held in the houses of trusted people and in the private rooms of hotels with good escapes.
“He ended by announcing the Irish could breed horses, grow flowers, and conspire, and that was the sum total of their qualifications.”