Death on the Holy Mountain

8

Johnny Fitzgerald was in the Mitre, a mere hundred yards from the Archbishop’s Palace. Tuam, he said sadly, did not have a Cathedral Arms. He would have to wait another day.

‘Satisfactory meeting?’ he asked his friend. ‘Archbishop well? Holy pictures in good order?’

‘All well,’ said Powerscourt. ‘I’ll tell you about it when we get back to Butler’s Cross.’

After less than three minutes in the train Johnny Fitzgerald was asleep, possible tribute to the powers of the Mitre’s ministrations. Powerscourt stared idly out of the window, thinking about the threat of violence that might erupt when the Orangemen came to town. He noticed a brown ruined tower with no windows, sitting in a field enclosed by the remains of the walls that once surrounded it, another memorial to the violence of Ireland’s past. Ireland is a land of stone walls and ruins, he thought, Franciscan friaries, abandoned in Elizabeth’s time, with jagged walls etched against the sky. A whole religious settlement at Clonmacnoise, founded in the sixth century, finally destroyed by the English garrison in Athlone a thousand years later, the remains of the buildings now lying open to the sun and the rain and the clouds by the side of the Shannon. Great Norman castles like Ballymote, square in construction with round towers for extra protection, where Red Hugh O’Donnell marshalled his forces in 1598 before marching south to defeat at Kinsale, ransacked and ruined. Only the crows are left, Powerscourt remembered, perched happily on the rough edges of the battlements. Manor houses and castles burnt in those wars like that of the poet Edmund Spenser who had composed his Faerie Queen in County Cork. After the rebels destroyed his house, his son burnt to death inside it, Spenser had written that Ireland would never find peace until all the native Irish were killed. Catholic abbeys and churches ravaged by Cromwell’s men, raven and crow now living where the host had once been present and the peasant Irish had knelt to receive the sacrament. Anglo-Irish houses which had once been loud with music and laughter at the balls of the gentry, now stark ruins, torched in the 1798 rebellion. Tiny cottages in Connemara, roofless now and windowless, abandoned to death or emigration in the famine years. Cairns and dolmens that bore witness to earlier times, relics of earlier Irish in an earlier Ireland. Sprinkled all over the thirty-two counties of Ireland, like jewels fallen from a casket, bare ruined choirs where late the sweet birds sang.

Two days later Powerscourt and Johnny Fitzgerald were sitting in the library of Ormonde House, talking to Dennis Ormonde. His anger had faded slightly though Powerscourt thought it could erupt at any moment.

‘No wife?’ had been his first words to Powerscourt. ‘Couldn’t come? What a pity.’

‘It’s Sylvia Butler,’ said Powerscourt. ‘Lucy sends her deepest apologies but feels her place is with her at this time.’

‘Women,’ said Dennis Ormonde. ‘Do you know what my one has done? She’s gone and locked the Picture Gallery, both doors, and she won’t let me have the keys, that’s what she’s done. If I want to work myself into a rage about the missing pictures I have to go and peer in through the window like a bloody burglar.’

Powerscourt and Fitzgerald made sympathetic noises.

‘Now then,’ he went on. ‘Our friend from Dublin Castle is working on a bench in the garden. Doesn’t come in here very much. Doesn’t trust the servants, he says. Can’t say I blame him really. Ulsterman, funny little man with one of those ghastly accents they all have up there. Name of Harkness, William Harkness, probably named after King Billy at the Battle of the Boyne. Seems strange to have one Ulsterman here one day when we may have a hundred of them the day after. Anyway, preparations are well under way for the reception and feeding and sleeping of the Orangemen in the barns and outhouses out the back. Cook is baking mountainous quantities of potato bread. She says they like potato bread, the Ulster people. Harkness does most of his business in the evening. He’s got a lad with him, can’t be more than twenty-five, comes from Dingle, name of O’Gara. One from one end of the island, one from another. God help us all.

‘Now then …’ He rummaged around in a pile of papers on a table beside him. ‘I’ve got a list of all the houses they’ll guard when they come. This copy’s for you, Powerscourt.’

Powerscourt looked at a neat list of grand houses. There was a line drawn halfway down.

‘Don’t think we can manage those places at the bottom of the list,’ Ormonde said. ‘Only got one or two pictures anyway. I’m banking on the thieves only going for houses with pictures. Can’t think of any other means of elimination.’

Ormonde looked at his watch. ‘You’d better go and make your mark with our friend from the Castle. He’s got to go into Westport soon. Must be the only bloody policeman in the whole of Ireland with his office on a park bench.’

‘Just one thing before we do that,’ said Johnny Fitzgerald. ‘Do you know if they’re bringing a band?’

‘Do I know if who is bringing a bloody band?’ Ormonde sounded cross.

‘The Orangemen,’ Johnny persisted, ‘are they bringing a band?’

‘Do I know if the Orangemen are bringing a band? How the hell should I know?’

‘I just thought you might know,’ said Fitzgerald. ‘Could be a bit tricky, having an Orange band marching about the place banging those big drums.’

‘Bugger the band,’ Ormonde was working himself up well now, ‘why don’t you go and talk to Harkness and I’ll see what I can find out about Orange bands. Damn Orange bands!’

William Harkness’s bench was strategically placed two-thirds of the way between the back of Ormonde House and the sea. If he looked to his right he had a clear view of any miscreants who might be foolish enough to approach the house in broad daylight. To his left he could spot any piratical invasion sailing across Clew Bay.

‘How are ye, Lord Powerscourt, are ye well?’ he began. ‘It’s great to meet ye. They’ve got a file on you back there in Dublin, you know, all of it very complimentary.’

‘Have they indeed, Inspector?’ said Powerscourt. ‘Tell us this, sorry to be brief but I understand your time is short, what do you think your chances are of finding the thieves?’

Harkness looked at the two of them carefully. ‘To be honest with you, to be truthful with you now, and I wouldn’t say this in front of your man Ormonde, I don’t think we’re going to do it. Not in a week. Might do it if it was longer. The trouble is that the word has got out about these Orangemen. The constabulary here and in Castlebar are worried sick about them. The commanding officer of the Castlebar garrison has cancelled all leave for the foreseeable future. Everybody’s clammed up.’

‘I don’t want to pry,’ said Powerscourt, ‘but do you have any informants inside the gang of thieves who stole Ormonde’s paintings?’

‘I couldn’t swear that we do,’ admitted Harkness. ‘If we did they’d all be locked up and under interrogation.’

Powerscourt shuddered slightly. He knew what interrogation could mean in these parts.

‘Are you able to tell us,’ asked Johnny, ‘how many informants you do have? Just so we have an idea.’

‘I don’t think that would be helpful at all,’ Harkness replied.

‘You mean you haven’t got any,’ said Johnny.

‘I wouldn’t say that.’ Harkness’s attention was suddenly drawn to a figure who must have been O’Gara from Dingle, ambling slowly towards the house. ‘How’s about ye, O’Gara, you hoor!’ he shouted. ‘What are you doing going over to the house, for Christ’s sake? We’re here, you fool, not there.’ O’Gara broke into a slow run. ‘What do you have to tell us, man? What news?’

‘The policeman has done as you asked, sir,’ he said. ‘All the senior officers from Westport and round about will be meeting you when you go into Westport later this morning. It’s all arranged.’

‘I’ve been to Castlebar and Newport and lots of places talking to the police,’ Harkness told Powerscourt and Fitzgerald. ‘Some good may come of it. I’d better be off.’

The first stirrings of a plan were beginning to form in Powerscourt’s brain. He didn’t want to mention it to anybody yet, not even to Johnny Fitzgerald. But it might, it just might help to catch the thieves.

‘When are you going back to Dublin?’ he asked.

‘The day after tomorrow,’ said Harkness, tidying up the papers lying around on the bottom of his bench.

‘I have an idea I may want to discuss with you,’ said Powerscourt. ‘I need to turn it over in my mind first, Inspector. Would you be able to break your journey home in Athlone? I am staying near there.’

‘I would,’ said Harkness, ‘I’d be happy to. No bother.’

‘In which case I shall send a message to Ormonde tomorrow, if I wish to proceed. No message, no meeting.’

‘Understood,’ said the man from Dublin Castle and fastened his briefcase with the most formidable lock Powerscourt had ever seen. ‘Good day to you, gentlemen.’

Powerscourt and Fitzgerald watched them go.

‘Do you think they know anything at all, Francis?’ said Johnny.

‘You can look at it in two ways, I think, Johnny. Either they know nothing at all, or they know a lot more than Harkness is letting on. If you forced me to place a bet either way I think I’d say they know more than they are letting on. But I could be wrong.’

They took an early lunch with the Ormondes, a clear chicken soup, roast lamb with redcurrant jelly that Powerscourt presumed was home-made, a fruit pie with cream. Johnny Fitzgerald had a long discussion with Ormonde about the local birds. Mrs Ormonde, a petite pretty woman in her early thirties with bright red hair, kept a firm but unobtrusive eye on her husband. The raging fury of days before, the Attila the Hun mood, had gone. You could see that he might easily be moved to anger but at this lunch table he was tamed. Just as she had done with the Picture Gallery, Powerscourt thought, Mrs Ormonde had locked her husband up and kept possession of the keys.

‘In Dublin’s fair city

Where the girls are so pretty

I first set my eyes on sweet Molly Malone,

As she wheeled her wheelbarrow

Through streets broad and narrow,

Crying cockles and mussels, alive alive oh.

Alive alive oh, alive alive oh,

Crying cockles and mussels, alive alive oh.’

The children’s concert party in Butler’s Court had begun. All the adults and a number of friends whose children were being cared for by Young James had assembled in the audience in the Long Gallery on the first floor. This was the most spectacular room in the place, nearly ninety feet long and twenty-five feet wide with huge windows looking out over the gardens and the river. Richard Butler was in the middle of the front row, wearing a deep red smoking jacket and a bow tie, looking, Powerscourt thought, rather like a man about to introduce acts in the music hall. Sylvia Butler was beside him, the two smallest Butler children sitting on either side, resentful that they were not allotted a part in the performance. The vicar was there, Reverend Cooper Walker, with that cheerful air vicars wear to fetes and parties. Johnpeter Kilross and Alice Bracken were sitting suspiciously close to one another in the back row. The first performers were three small girls in white dresses, aged, Powerscourt thought, about seven or eight. Maybe these were some of those who could not remember their lines. They sang a verse each on their own, all joining in for the chorus.

‘She was a fishmonger

And sure ’twas no wonder

For so were her mother and father before,

And they each wheeled their barrow

Through streets broad and narrow,

Crying cockles and mussels, alive alive oh.’

The child gave a great sigh as she finished as if it had all been a terrible ordeal. James, accompanying them on the piano, gave her a stern look. A makeshift stage, used in grown-up amateur dramatics, had been erected at one end of the room. To one side was a table with poles around it holding black cloth that ran round three of the four sides. It was open facing the audience. A set of steps led up to it and in front was what looked like a bath tub, also draped in black. Powerscourt wondered if there was going to be a mock execution.

‘She died of a fever,’

the final singer, a dark-haired little girl with a very serious expression, put tremendous emphasis on the word fever,

‘And no one could save her,

And that was the end of sweet Molly Malone,

But her ghost wheels her barrow

Through streets broad and narrow,

Crying cockles and mussels, alive alive oh.

Alive alive oh, alive alive oh,

Crying cockles and mussels, alive alive oh.’

Many of the audience were humming along to the final chorus. The three girls bowed solemnly and departed through the door at the back of the room. Great giggling and laughter could be heard coming from the children awaiting their turn.

‘Didn’t they look sweet, Francis,’ Lady Lucy whispered to Powerscourt. ‘I hope their parents are here to see them.’

Next up was a boy of about ten years, in a dark blue sailor suit. He delivered a short extract from a speech by Daniel O’Connell at Tara, home of the legendary High Kings of Ireland, which declared that the country was making its way towards reform with the strides of a giant. Seven hundred and fifty tousand people, the boy assured them, had listened to O’Connell that day.

There was a round of applause. ‘Well said, wee Jimmy!’ ‘You tell them, son!’ ‘Three-quarters of a million, by God!’ James was back at the piano now, two girls of about thirteen standing demurely on either side of him, but turned to face the spectators. James, Powerscourt noticed, was dressed entirely in black, black trousers, a black jacket that was slightly too small for him. Only the shirt was white.

‘Down by the salley gardens my love and I did meet,’

they sang in unison,

‘She passed the salley gardens with little snow-white feet.

She bid me take love easy, as the leaves grow on the tree;

But I, being young and foolish, with her

would not agree.’

The girls were old enough, Powerscourt thought, to dream of love, but too young as yet to have known it.

‘In a field by the river my love and I did stand,

And on my leaning shoulder she laid her snow-white hand.

She bid me take life easy, as the grass grows on the weirs;

But I was young and foolish, and now am full of tears.’

Another prolonged round of applause followed, loud cries of Bravo and Encore coming from the back of the room. How innocent it all was, Powerscourt thought, and how charming. How far removed from the world outside where thieves broke in and stole, and blackmail letters came in through the front door. Now he saw the significance of the table and the black drapes. Two tall boys in dark shirts were dragging a third, dressed in rags, his hands tied in front of him, to the front of the table nearest the audience. Everything about him, his posture, his gestures, spoke of defiance. He waited until there was complete silence in the Long Gallery.

‘My lords’ – the words were spoken with extreme contempt as the prisoner stared with hatred towards the front row – ‘you are impatient for the sacrifice and my execution. Be yet patient. I have but a few more words to say.’ The guards pulled viciously at his arms at this point. ‘I am going to my cold and silent grave. My lamp of life is nearly extinguished; my race is run, the grave opens to receive me and I sink into its bosom. I have but one request to ask at my departure from this world – it is the charity of its silence. Let no man write my epitaph, for as no man who knows my motives can now vindicate them, let not prejudice or ignorance defame them. Let them and me repose in obscurity and peace and my tomb remain uninscribed until other times and other men can do justice to my character. When my country takes her place among the nations of the earth, then, and not till then, let my epitaph be written. I have done.’

With that the two guards pulled him away, crying, ‘To the scaffold!’, ‘Death to the traitor!’, ‘Hurry up with the drawing and quartering, for God’s sake!’ but the boy managed to turn and face his executioners one last time. ‘Robert Emmett, speech from the dock after his conviction, Dublin, 1803.’

A vast cheer went up. ‘Hurrah for Emmett!’ ‘Hurrah for Johnny Mason!’ ‘Didn’t he do well!’

Powerscourt suddenly remembered Uncle Peter’s description of Parnell’s funeral and his final journey through the streets of Dublin. The coffin and the vast crowds accompanying it had stopped for a minute or two outside the house in Thomas Street to pay their respects to the martyred Robert Emmett. Lady Lucy was whispering very close to his ear as the applause and the shouts went on.

‘Was he a bad man, Francis, this Robert Emmett?’

‘No,’ said Powerscourt, ‘yes. Depends whose side you’re on.’

Now it was the turn of the girls again. Three willowy sisters, aged from ten to fourteen, with identical blonde hair came to the front of the stage and held hands. James was playing something very romantic on the piano with the soft key pressed down as far as it would go so the music sounded as if it came from far away.

‘I will arise and go now and go to Innisfree,’ said the smallest sister,

‘And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made,

Nine bean rows will I have there, a hive for the honey-bee,

And live alone in the bee-loud glade.’

The audience had gone very quiet now. ‘And I shall have some peace there,’ the middle sister carried on,

‘for peace comes dropping slow,

Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings;

There midnight’s all a glimmer and noon a purple glow,

And evening full of the linnet’s wings.’

The eldest sister picked up the baton. She had a beautiful speaking voice, distinct and clear.

‘I will arise and go now, for always night and day

I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore;

While I stand on the roadway or on the pavements grey,

I hear it in the deep heart’s core.’

James finished his piano solo with an elaborate twirl. The sisters bowed low and said as they rose, in unison, ‘William Butler Yeats.’

Voices could be heard, breaking through the clapping. ‘Peace comes dropping slow, that’s really good,’ said a woman from the second row. ‘Linnet’s wings?’ said a cynic at the back. ‘Did you ever hear linnet’s wings? I ask you. Bloody poets.’

Then the room was suddenly filled with activity. Most of the children seemed to have a task to perform. Some went and closed the great shutters and pulled the curtains tight to block the late afternoon sunlight that had been pouring into the room, leaving long golden patches on the floorboards. Before the lights went out Powerscourt saw two children, dressed in very tattered clothes, lie down on the floor formed by the black draped table. Other children were putting some bulky objects into the bath tub. Others still brought wooden planks and laid them carefully from the edge of the table nearest the audience down into the bath tub. Four solemn children, two boys and two girls, took up their position at each of the corners of the table, each carrying a single lighted candle.

There were two great doors in the middle of the Long Gallery. One of these now opened to reveal a tall young man of about fifteen. He too carried a lighted candle and he had a small book with his words written in front of him. All he lacked, Powerscourt thought, was a bell.

‘These are the words of a Protestant gentleman farmer on the potato crop of 1846,’ he began. The young man checked his words.

‘On 1st August I was startled by hearing a sudden rumour that all the potato fields in the district were blighted; and that a stench had arisen emanating from their decaying stalks. I immediately rose up to visit my crop and test the truth of this report, but I found it as luxuriant as ever, in full blossom, the stalks matted across each other with richness and promising a splendid produce. On coming down from the mountain I rode into the lowland country and there I found the leaves of the potatoes on many fields I passed were quite withered and a strange stench filled the atmosphere adjoining each field of potatoes.

‘Five days later I went back up the mountain again. My feelings may be imagined when, before I saw the crop, I smelt the fearful stench. No perceptible change except the smell had as yet come upon the apparent prosperity of the deceitfully luxuriant stalks, but the experience of the past few days taught me that all was gone and that the crop was utterly worthless, the luxuriant stalks soon withered, the leaves decayed, the disease everywhere.’

The audience was whispering anxiously. ‘My God, it’s the famine.’ ‘What’s James doing with these children and the famine, in God’s name?’ ‘What are they going to do now, for heaven’s sake?’

The answer came from right behind them. A tall girl with bright red hair had crept round to the back of the audience and was reading her account, the candle steady in her left hand and casting a dramatic light on her hair.

‘An eyewitness sent to Skibereen in December 1846,’ she began, ‘found that there had been as many as one hundred and sixty-nine deaths from starvation in that little town alone in the previous three weeks. His report contained the following detail. On Sunday last, 20th December, a young woman begging in the streets of Cork collapsed and was at first unable to move or speak. After being given restorations and taken home to her cabin she told those helping her that both her mother and father had died in the last fortnight. At the same time she directed their attention to a heap of dirty straw that lay in the corner and apparently concealed some object under it. On removing this covering of straw the spectators were horrified on beholding the mangled corpses of two grown boys, a large proportion of which had been removed by the rats while the remainder lay festering in its rottenness. There they had lain for a week or perhaps a fortnight.’

‘Oh, my God!’ ‘How frightful!’ Lady Lucy was holding Powerscourt’s hand very tight.

The next voice came from the centre of the stage. Another young man, another book, another candle, another report from the front line of the famine.

‘The parish priest of Hollymount, County Mayo,’ the young man said clearly. ‘Deaths, I regret to say, innumerable from starvation are occurring every day. The bonds of society are almost dissolved. The pampered officials, removed as they are from scenes of heart-rending distress, can have no idea of them and don’t appear to give themselves much trouble about them – I ask them in the name of humanity, is this state of society to continue and who are responsible for these monstrous evils?’

By the light of the candles on the stage the audience now saw two girls moving across the arena. The smaller one leant heavily on the shoulder of the taller one, her clothes in tatters, her hair streaked with dirt, her feet bare and bleeding, her face, what they could see of her face, ashen. They moved slowly and began to climb the steps at the back of the table.

‘This is the Black Room,’ said an invisible voice. Was it meant to be God? Powerscourt wondered. Surely not in a story like this. ‘This is a County Roscommon workhouse in the year of our Lord 1848.’ The rest of Europe was having revolutions, Powerscourt remembered. In Ireland people were dying in their thousands, or tens of thousands. ‘The Black Room,’ the voice went on, ‘was where people were brought to die. Up to seven people were permitted in here at any one time.’ As he spoke the girl in rags lay down on the floor to join the other two bodies already there. ‘Nobody would disturb you in here. No efforts would be made to stop you dying.’

Now another voice came from underneath the shutters in the centre of the gallery.

‘This is a Justice of the Peace, writing to the Duke of Wellington,’ the young man said. ‘Six famished and ghastly skeletons, to all appearance dead, were huddled in a corner on some filthy straw, their sole covering what seemed a ragged horsecloth and their wretched legs hanging about, naked above the knees. 1 approached in horror and found by a low moaning they were alive, they were in a fever – four children, a woman and what had once been a man.’

The audience were silent now, as if transfixed. A girl took up the story from one of the great doors opposite.

‘An eyewitness from County Cork in April 1847 described how: Crowds of starving creatures flock in from the rural districts and take possession of some hall door or the outside of some public building where they place a little straw and remain until they die. Disease has in consequence spread itself through the town. There are now over four hundred afflicted with fever and dysentery. The graveyard has its entrance in the centre of the main street, and in several instances when the gates were closed and parties seeking to bury the remains of their friends, the coffins were placed on the wall and abandoned.’

Now a boy from the back of the room.

‘Every avenue leading to and in this plague-stricken town has a fever hospital having for its protecting roof the blue vault of heaven. Persons of all ages are dropping dead in each corner of the town, who are interred with much difficulty after rats have festered on their frames.’

A girl from the back of the Black Room.

‘A parish priest with five hundred out of three thousand dead in his congregation, most with no coffins. They were carried to the churchyard, some on lids and ladders, more in baskets, aye and scores of them thrown beside the nearest ditch, and there left to the mercy of the dogs which have nothing else to feed on.’

Another young man, wearing a white coat and flanked by two burly attendants, now made his way across the stage and up the stairs into the death chamber. ‘Medical staff,’ the invisible voice resumed its melancholy commentary, ‘made regular inspections of the Black Room.’ The white-coated figure knelt down and inspected two of the wretches. He shook his head slowly. The two attendants picked up the first body and brought her over to the edge where the planks were waiting. ‘It was necessary, to avoid infection, to remove the bodies of the dead as soon as possible.’ The corpse was rolled down the planks into the bath. The second one followed immediately afterwards. The white-coated young man and his colleagues left. A girl wearing an apron and carrying a sack approached the bath and began emptying large quantities of what looked like flour over the bodies. ‘The workhouse had no coffins,’ the invisible voice went on, ‘lime was thrown over the bodies as they were dumped in a pit outside the window of the Black Room and they were eventually buried in an unknown grave.’ The voice stopped for a moment and then resumed. ‘Over one million men, women and children died in Ireland in the famine.’

There was a pause for about five seconds. The tableau on stage remained absolutely still. The dead did not attempt to rise from the bathtub. Then there must have been some signal from James for the vicar rose to his feet.

‘Let us pray,’ he began. ‘Let us pray for the souls of all those who departed this life in that terrible famine. Let us pray for their descendants, those who came after, whose lives were so deeply affected by the tragedy that had devastated their families. Let us pray for all those in poverty or sickness or hunger in this unhappy world today.’ The vicar paused to let his congregation address their Maker.

‘Lighten our darkness, Oh Lord,’ he said, moving into the closing words of Evensong, ‘and defend us from all perils and dangers of this night. May the Lord bless you and keep you, may the Lord make the light of his countenance shine upon you and be gracious unto you and give you His peace, in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Ghost, Amen.’

The Reverend Cooper Walker turned to the young people on stage. ‘And now,’ he said, ‘let there be light!’ As the curtains were pulled and the great shutters opened, he turned to Sylvia Butler. ‘I’ve always wanted to make that announcement,’ he said, ‘let there be light, never have, until today.’

Richard Butler raised his voice above the hubbub. ‘Interval time!’ he cried. ‘Punch! Cake! Jellies if you’re small! In the garden!’

On his way out Powerscourt bent down to pick up one of the famine scripts that had fallen on the floor. It was written in a very distinctive, rather ornate hand, and had the reader’s name at the top and ‘Good Luck, James’ at the bottom. He put it in his pocket. Outside he joined Lady Lucy and found Johnny Fitzgerald standing by himself with two glasses of punch, one in each hand.

‘I was holding this one for a chap,’ he explained, looking suspiciously at the drink, ‘but he seems to have disappeared. Ah well, duty calls.’ He began work on the glass in his left hand. ‘Hasn’t Young James a fine eye for the dramatic,’ he went on. ‘Quite moving it was, all those voices coming at you from all quarters. Maybe he’ll be a great impresario fellow like that chap Beerbohm Wood over in London.’

‘Tree,’ said Powerscourt.

‘Tree?’ said Johnny, peering at the glass in his left hand, now bereft of liquid. ‘Are you obsessed with trees now, Francis? Not content with bumping into them, you’re now referring to them at every opportunity.’

‘Tree,’ said Powerscourt, ‘the theatrical fellow, he’s called Tree, not Wood. Beerbohm Tree.’

‘Well, I knew it was something like wood anyway.’ Johnny had started on his other glass. ‘Will you look at this lot, Lady Lucy, it must be the memory of the famine. They’re eating everything in sight. You’d think they hadn’t been fed in weeks.’

Sure enough the Butler spread was disappearing fast. Four whole cakes had been polished off in minutes. Three great salvers of sandwiches had nothing left. Two of the smaller children had collected three bowls of jelly each and were scoffing them happily underneath the tables where the food was set out.

‘Johnny, Lady Lucy,’ said Powerscourt, ‘one of the things the Archbishop told me concerned the fires of hatred that still burn strong in the minds of some of the younger priests and Christian Brothers because of the famine. Do you think Young James feels the same thing? That famine stuff was pretty powerful. Do you suppose something dreadful happened to his family back then?’

‘I think it’s more likely he just has an eye for the dramatic, Francis,’ said Lady Lucy. ‘I have a cousin like that, always putting on amateur theatricals and rushing off to see the latest plays.’

Powerscourt resisted the temptation to say that any member of Lucy’s family involved in amateur dramatics would always be able to command a large cast.

‘I think I’ll just get hold of a glass of this punch before the second half,’ said Johnny, ambling off towards the drinks department. ‘Maybe I should get two in case that fellow comes back. You never know.’

‘Do you know what was in that bath tub, Francis?’ asked Lady Lucy. ‘Those little girls could have been hurt rolling down into it.’

‘No, they couldn’t, Lucy. Whole thing was filled with pillows. I looked at the time. Pillows everywhere.’

Lady Lucy tucked her arm into her husband’s as they climbed the stairs. ‘Let’s hope there’ll be some more songs and romantic poetry, Francis. Much nicer than the political speeches and all that.’

Some of Lady Lucy’s wishes were granted, and some were not, in Part Two of Young James’s entertainment. A lad of about ten with the voice of a choirboy gave a spirited rendering of ‘The Minstrel Boy’. A lively reading from a novel by George Moore followed. James himself was involved in the finale. Powerscourt noticed with interest that the candles were back again, for the young man came to the front of the stage, surrounded by three girls, all with lighted candles. James waited for complete silence and then he began.

‘When you are old and grey and full of sleep,

And nodding by the fire, take down this book,

And slowly read, and dream of the soft look

Your eyes had once and of their shadows deep.’

The first girl looked at James, blew out her candle and left the stage. James was now looking at Lady Lucy.

‘How many loved your moments of glad grace,

And loved your beauty with love false or true,

But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you,

And loved the sorrows of your changing face.’

Powerscourt squeezed Lady Lucy’s hand. The second girl had now blown out her candle and she too departed. James’s eyes moved off to another female.

‘And bending down beside the glowing bars,

Murmur, a little sadly, how love fled

And paced above the mountains overhead

And hid his face amid a cloud of stars.’

Powerscourt wondered if the words bitch goddess were about to appear but they did not. The third girl blew out the third candle of lost love and left. James said, ‘William Butler Yeats’ in a voice of great reverence and bowed. There was tumultuous applause and cheering. All the children came back on stage and formed a great semicircle. James returned to the piano. They gave a united rendering of ‘Molly Malone’ with the audience belting out the chorus. As the last Alive Oh was fading away, people beginning to rise from their seats and stretch themselves, there was a loud knock on the door in the centre of the Long Gallery. As it opened two footmen stood there, carrying a large parcel almost six feet across and about four feet high.

‘This was dumped at the bottom of the drive, sir,’ said the senior footman. ‘We thought you’d like to see it straight away.’ Everybody in the room, looking at the shape of the package, wrapped in brown paper secured with heavy string, knew what it was,

‘My God, it’s one of Butler’s stolen paintings.’

‘It’s been recovered, thank the Lord.’

‘One of the pictures, it’s come back.’

One or two people cast admiring glances at Powerscourt as if he were responsible for the miracle but he was apprehensive, very apprehensive.

‘Let’s have a knife and a pair of scissors, by God,’ said Butler, advancing towards his property.

Powerscourt had shoved his way through the crowd to stand at his side.

‘Don’t open it now, Butler, for heaven’s sake. Not in front of all these people.’

‘Damn it,’ said Butler, ‘it’s my house, it’s my picture. I’ll open it whenever I bloody well like.’

‘Don’t you see,’ Powerscourt pleaded, ‘there’s going to be some trick or other, maybe some horrible message contained in the thing. Please don’t open it now. Do it later. Somewhere quieter.’

Everybody in the room was staring at the parcel left at the bottom of the drive. The scissors and knife had appeared. Powerscourt made one last plea.

‘Please do it later, I beg you, when all the visitors have gone. You can open it then.’

‘I’m going to open it now, damn your eyes,’ said Richard Butler, beginning to hack at the brown paper and string. When it was finally clear, he placed it on a chair for everybody to see before he turned and had a look at the contents.

In one sense this certainly was one of the stolen paintings. It was the one called The Master of the Hunt. There was Butler’s Court, looking elegant as ever. There were the riders in their scarlet coats and the horses ready to ride off. There in the background were the hounds. But the faces were different. Richard Butler’s had been replaced with a passable likeness of Pronsias Mulcahy, proprietor of Mulcahy and Sons, Grocery and Bar. The rider to his left now had the disagreeable features of Father O’Donovan Brady. Two of the Delaneys of the solicitors’ firm of Delaney, Delaney and Delaney, down in the town square, were sitting happily on horseback to one side of Pronsias Mulcahy, formerly Richard Butler. Diarmuid McSwiggin of MacSwiggin’s Hotel and Bar was there, and Horkan the man who sold agricultural machinery and offered drink in his bar. The cast of the original painting had been replaced with the leading citizens of Butler’s Cross. The Town had replaced the Big House. ‘I’m sure Papa was in the middle of that picture,’ said a small Butler, his voice breaking the shocked silence that filled the room, ‘but he’s changed into that nice Mr Mulcahy who sells you sweets down in the square.’

‘My God,’ said Richard Butler and fled the room. Powerscourt and Johnny Fitzgerald managed to remove the painting before anybody could stop them. Sylvia Butler, assisted by Lady Lucy, ushered her guests down the stairs and out the front door. By the time they had all gone Richard Butler had reappeared in his Long Gallery. He looked as if he had been weeping.

‘My God, Powerscourt,’ he said, ‘you were right and I was wrong about the painting. Forgive me. But what, in heaven’s name, does it mean?’

‘Mean?’ said Powerscourt. ‘It’s a message. Your time is up. You’re not wanted. Others are going to replace you.’

‘I think it means something else too, Mr Butler,’ said Johnny Fitzgerald.

‘And what might that be?’

‘It’s this,’ said Johnny Fitzgerald. ‘It’s the changing of the guard. Welcome to the new Ireland.’