GOLDEN JUBILEE

An old Irish man, living in unusually grim conditions within the heart of London, answered the knock upon his door. He came to find a courier of Queen Victoria standing before him with a sealed letter hanging off the tips of his glove. The courier bid good day before returning to the carriage on the cobble stone street on that frigid January day.

The hardened hands of the old man broke the delicate seal of the crown to unfold the crisp white parchment tucked inside. On the letter was an order for his service. The Queen was in need of a bronze smith for her Golden Jubilee. The man’s hands crushed the letter in spite and tossed it in the hearth of his vacant fireplace.

It was with his return back home, that his hardened heart turned to stone like the hills of his Irish youth. His black wool coat weighted with rain caught mud on its hem as he knelt over his wife’s granite grave. Tears fell down his snow-white beard and onto the fresh white irises that laid over her name. Etched in the tomb, “1848”, the last year he ever smiled.

Right there he swore his vengeance on the one who took his love, his wife.

“Queen Victoria, may she be damned; if it weren’t for her there would be no potato famine,” he cried out to the grey sky.

With hate flowing through his veins like the steam in a locomotive, the man now anarchist took the job of the Queen. Tasked with repairing the cogs of the oldest bell of the Northwest tower, the man perched himself in rafters of the Westminster Abbey. Returning to his forge, blazes of fire and clanks on the anvil shaped the cogs, that moved the singing bells which chimed on the hour.

June 20th , 1887 arrived. A Golden Jubilee, to celebrate the 50 years of Victoria’s reign, had begun. The very next day would mark an event that would free the commoners from the rule of the royals. In the wooden toolbox of the Irish man laid bombs set to go off at the chime of the bells. He placed his work around the perimeter, before His feeble body climbed to the Northwest tower to set his plan in play.

The Queen rode the streets that Tuesday morning, as 50 royals and internationals filled the hallowed hall of the Westminster Abbey. A parade escorted by an Indian regiment was led by their Indian Colonel. Ahead of the Queen, the Colonel entered the convent to ensure the safety of her Majesty. In the corner of his eye, the soldier caught the movement of the Irish man making his way to the bell tower. Step by step the Colonel ascended to the tower as the gears clicked away towards the bells next chime.

As the Irish man knelt on the boards to place the final bomb, the door to the bell room was opened by the Colonel. Stunned but calm, the Irish man responded.

“The death of the Queen is as inevitable as the ringing of these ten bells. The gears move in harmony with my sweet revenge born of hell. Alas I shall join my wife, as my sorrow is put to an end. All I await is the final verse of the choir’s hymn.”

Right then, the choir began to sing their hymn below as the Queen entered to sit at her throne. The Colonel made his dash across the boards to grab the bomb from the old man. The man’s grip was firm on the bomb. Knowing his Queen was seated below, he remembered his oath he swore to her. The Colonel took his wide hand to wrap around the anarchist’s neck. He squeezed it hard as he saw a smile begin to form on the dying Irish man.

“Kill me, kill me now. Soon you’ll be out of luck, for death will come to the one that makes you bow.”

The hymn was coming to an end. TICK-TOCK, TICK-TOCK. The Colonel’s eyes widened. The gears, the gears, he thought. The cogs of the bomb ticked with the cogs of the bell. This was not a coincidence and there was no doubt. With a burst of strength, the Colonel lifted the Irish man in the air. He gave one big grunt, as he tossed the body into the gears that drove the bells. The old man was crushed between the metal he had crafted for the Queen.

The angelic voices of the choir echoed out in the eaves of the buttresses. Silence blanketed the royals below as the bells had been curtailed by the corpse of the Irish man. Above the Queen was a ray of light. It shined down upon her and the crown like the finger of God. The royals sat in their pews gazing upon the grace of the Queen, ignorant to the Irish man hanging above them in the bell tower. The silence was broken by the future Queen of Hawaii, Liliuokalani, who called attention to the light shining on Victoria.

“The deities shine down on her in divine favor!”

A Golden Jubilee celebrated the reign of a monarchy. One that had brought affirmation to the rule of a Queen. A Queen who saw the famine of Ireland; a loss of one million souls. The last soul lost would stain the brass metal that adorned that Northwest tower of the Abbey. To the Irish man, a golden potato was worth more than the golden crown. A notion lost to the royals and to the Queen.

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