Death on the Holy Mountain

7

Lord Francis Powerscourt was sitting in the Butler library, staring intently at a sheet of writing paper. In ten minutes’ time Lady Lucy and Johnny Fitzgerald were coming for tea and barm brack and a conversation about the way forward. It was difficult, he thought, to write a letter when you couldn’t say what you meant. It was a contradiction in terms. Maybe he should have learnt Morse Code.

‘Your Grace,’ he began, for his correspondent was none other than the mighty prelate Dr John Healy, Archbishop of Tuam, ‘I am writing to you on a matter of the gravest importance which could have dire consequences for your flock and for the politics of this country. I am reluctant to divulge any of the details in this letter.’ Powerscourt was sure the man would know what he meant. ‘I am an investigator, currently working on a case here in Ireland. In the past I have given service to the household of the Prince of Wales and to the previous Prime Minister, Lord Salisbury. I fear I must emphasize not only the gravity but the urgency of this matter. I believe the situation could turn very serious very soon. I would be most grateful if you could grant me an audience’ – did one ask for an audience or an interview with an archbishop? Just have to take a chance – ‘at your earliest convenience where I could lay the matter before you with all the details. I do hope you will be able to help, for your help, I firmly believe, could be pivotal. My apologies for such an importunate request, Yours, Powerscourt.’ He wondered if there was some special formula you had to insert at the end of ecclesiastical correspondence as if you were writing letters in the French language, but there was no time to find out.

‘I’ve been taking the lie of the land, as you might say.’ Johnny Fitzgerald was munching his way happily through his third slice of barm brack and butter. Powerscourt and Lady Lucy smiled at each other. Taking the lie of the land for Johnny usually meant spending a lot of time in the local pubs. ‘It’s not bad, MacSwiggin’s down in the square, though they start singing very early in the evening if you ask me. Anyway, the power in the land is that grocer man Mulcahy with his shop very near the hotel. It’s not the bread and ham that make his fortune, it’s the loans. Fall behind with your rent, Mulcahy’s your man. Need some ready cash to marry off a daughter and give her a dowry, the Grocer’s Bank has the answer. I don’t think he’d lend you money to bet on the horses but I wouldn’t be surprised. One fellow said Mulcahy had more money circulating, as he put it, than the Bank of Ireland.’

‘Are you allowed to set yourself up as a moneylender like that, Johnny?’ Lady Lucy asked.

‘This is Ireland,’ said Johnny Fitzgerald. ‘Ask no questions, hear no lies.’

‘Any word about the paintings at all?’ asked Powerscourt.

‘I’m coming to that,’ said Johnny. ‘I’ve absolutely no doubt that they all know something is going on, but the rumour factory has been working well. It’s the stout, I’ve always believed that stout makes people exaggerate things. One old boy, sitting under the Blessed Virgin Mary all evening and not moving an inch, claimed it was the furniture that had gone. All of it. There’s not a chair to sit on or a table to eat your bread off in the whole of Butler’s Court. He was certain of it. Another fellow maintained it was just the table in the dining room and the big mirrors that had been taken. Said it had been lifted to order for some coal merchant in Dublin who wanted antique stuff to furnish his new house. This theory didn’t take any account of the other robberies – maybe they went for the drawing-room furniture at Connolly’s and the beds from Moore Castle. Word of Ormonde House hasn’t reached them yet, which is surprising seeing that news usually travels faster than the railways round here.’

‘And the Orangemen? Any word of the Orangemen?’ Powerscourt wondered what they would make of that in the snug in MacSwiggin’s Hotel and Bar.

‘Not yet,’ said Fitzgerald cheerfully. ‘When that hits town it’ll probably be an army three thousand strong, enough to take Galway in a siege. I tell you one sad thing, Lady Lucy and Francis. I was talking to the middle Delaney – who’s one of the three Delaneys, solicitors with offices in the square, Lady Lucy,’ – Johnny remembered she had only arrived recently – ‘in the saloon bar of MacSwiggin’s, a nice place to take a drink if you like to be surrounded by religious pictures, and he was telling me sad stories about the cricket team. He’s a great fan of the cricket, Bartholomew Delaney, been playing for the local team for ages. He says it’s dying out, the Butler’s Cross Eleven, no new recruits coming in at all. Soon, according to Bartholomew, there won’t be any young fellows left out in the field to chase the ball and cut it off before it reaches the boundary. The opposing batsmen, he said, will just have to hit the bloody ball and it’ll go for four. Butler’s Cross fielders will all be too decrepit to run after the thing. The opposing side will make hundreds and hundreds of runs. Butler’s Cross cricket team, old age pensioners a speciality, will never win a match again.’

‘What’s happened, Johnny?’ asked Lady Lucy. ‘Where have all the young men gone?’

‘They’ve gone Gaelic, that’s what they’ve done. The Gaelic Athletic Association, or GAA as it’s called, is very strong in these parts. They’re allowed to play Gaelic football and hurling, but only Irish games. Once you sign up, you can’t play cricket or soccer, it’s against the rules. Ping pong, Bartholomew Delaney maintained sourly, was still allowed but the rest are proscribed as the games of the occupying power.’

‘And who runs this GAA, Johnny?’ Powerscourt had an improbable vision of the Pickwickian Father O’Donovan Brady, whistle in hand, refereeing a match, whiskey flask concealed in his baggy shorts.

‘Ah,’ said Johnny, ‘there’s a thing now. It’s the Christian Brothers, so it is. Militant for independence and Home Rule, most of them. There’s another thing, Francis, I nearly forgot. They’ve heard all about you down there in MacSwiggin’s – well, in the public they have. I’m not sure about the saloon. They say you’re a great detective man from London who’s never failed to solve a crime, so they do. You’ve got almost magical powers, according to them, a Merlin come to Meath.’

‘God in heaven,’ said Powerscourt, ‘I’m not sure I want my name bandied about in Diarmuid MacSwiggin’s Bar and Hotel. I might pick up all sorts of unappetizing clients.’

‘At least they’d be able to pay you,’ said Fitzgerald. ‘Quick loan from Mulcahy the grocer and they can pay you straight away.’

Powerscourt turned to Lady Lucy. ‘Time to get serious. Lucy, we need some advice. This case seems to revolve around the men, Connolly, Butler, Moore, Ormonde, but I’m sure the wives are at least as important. Have you had time to have a proper talk with Mrs Butler? What would you do if you were the mistress of one of these embattled houses?’

‘I know what I would do,’ Lady Lucy said firmly, ‘and I think I know what they are going to do. This being Ireland, you won’t be surprised to hear that they are not the same thing. It’s the children, you see, for me. And there seem to be so many of them running around. They would be even easier to steal than the pictures. Maybe the thieves would face such unpopularity if they kidnapped little ones that they couldn’t do it. I wouldn’t take the chance, myself. I’d take the whole lot of them over to England and wait till everything’s blown over.’

‘And Mrs Moore and Mrs Butler and the rest?’

‘I think they will stay. You and Johnny would understand this much better than I do, coming from here in the first place. It’s all this history, Francis. I’ve never known a place with so much history. They’ve been through so much of it, these families, wars in Cromwell’s time, the Battle of the Boyne and all that, the rising in 1798 I think it was,’ she looked at Powerscourt who nodded encouragement, ‘the famine, the land wars, it never seems to stop. At any point these Moores and Butlers and Connollys could have sold up, packed their bags and left.’

‘Wouldn’t have got very much for the land, selling up during those upheavals,’ said Johnny. ‘Sorry for interrupting.’

Lady Lucy smiled. ‘The point is, Johnny, that they didn’t sell up. They stuck it out. Sticking it out seems to be a key component of the Anglo-Irish character. They’ve all inherited these places from their fathers. When they look at all these adorable children they can see the Big Houses passing on to them. The children are tomorrow. If you take them away you take away the future. What’s the point of being here if you run away when a painting is taken from the walls?’

‘Too much history, that’s the trouble with Ireland,’ said Powerscourt. ‘Pity you can’t sell bits of it off to some of these new places where they haven’t got any at all.’

He rose from the tea table and went to the window. A loud game of tennis was taking place on the grass. Three small boys were having climbing races up the trees.

‘Johnny,’ he said, ‘I’d like you to keep your eyes and ears open down in Butler’s Cross. Somebody may say something they shouldn’t one day soon. Lucy, can you keep us informed about the state of feminine opinion about the place? I’d be most interested to know exactly what was in that letter the thieves sent Richard Butler. If you can winkle that out of Sylvia Butler it’ll be champagne all round. Now I must go down to the town to post this letter.’

Powerscourt went round to the far end of the stable block to collect his bicycle. It was a fairly old model with no known owner. He had been riding it for some days now and the stable lads kept it in a special place for him. He was thinking about what he might say to the Archbishop as he set off. The ground between Butler’s Court and the town rose slightly as you left the house and then dropped down steeply towards the square. Heavily laden carriages had been known to slow to walking pace or less as they toiled up the slope. Cyclists preferred the outward to the inward journey. Powerscourt pedalled hard as he began the descent for the last post was but minutes away. About halfway down his hair was streaming out behind his head and he thought he should slow down. He pulled on the brakes. Nothing happened. He tried the other right-hand brake. Nothing happened. He was travelling very fast now as he tried both brakes again. Nothing. At the bottom of the drive there was a great stone wall. Powerscourt knew he couldn’t control the bicycle much longer. It was never designed to move at this speed and it had begun to shake violently. Anything could happen now. He turned the handlebars slightly to the left and tried to steer a path into the woods where the undergrowth would slow him down. That wall at the bottom would surely kill him. Still travelling at slightly over twenty miles an hour he crashed into the brambles. The front wheel ran over a branch on the ground and Powerscourt was catapulted out of the saddle and dragged along the ground by the momentum until he hit a tree. For a moment or two he was unconscious. He had a gash on his right leg. His wrist ached. Blood was pouring from a long wound on his head. Briefly he thought of Lady Lucy. They were sitting in the drawing room in Markham Square. Then some sense of duty called him. He remembered his letter. Limping, lurching, occasionally dragging himself along the ground, he made his way to the end of the drive. He reeled across the street and posted his letter in the box. He turned and crawled back towards Butler’s Court and Lady Lucy. He collapsed by the ornamental arch at the gates, his blood dripping on to the hard hot ground. His last thought before he passed out was that if he was going to die, it was good that his last letter should have been to an archbishop. A stone lion with a stone ball stood sentry above him. Outside MacSwiggin’s an elderly customer nursing his pint watched in astonishment as the apparition vanished from sight. He didn’t think he’d been drinking that much. Later on, as he retold his story in the public bar, he remembered that the wraithlike figure reminded him of an engraving in his auntie’s parlour. It was, he averred, and many believed him, the ghost of Theobald Wolfe Tone, the man had a definite look of Tone about him, come to post a last letter to the French, asking for reinforcements.

Johnny Fitzgerald found him at about a quarter to eight. He took one look at his friend and sprinted over to MacSwiggin’s to find a doctor. The local doctor, Padraig MacBride, was, as it happened, having a quiet drink with his friend the vet in the saloon bar. As MacBride knelt down to look at Powerscourt Johnny wandered off to find the bicycle, or the remains of the bicycle. He looked very solemn when he returned.

‘Well,’ said the doctor, ‘I think it’s not quite as bad as it looks, so it’s not. It’s lucky he didn’t hit that tree the moment he came off the bicycle. That might have killed him. As it is, being pulled along the undergrowth by the momentum isn’t pleasant but at least you won’t hit your head so hard.’ The doctor was checking Powerscourt’s pulse and peering at his head.

‘Is it staying at Butler’s Court you are, the pair of you?’ he said. ‘You look like the sort of people who stay at Butler’s Court.’

‘We are,’ Johnny Fitzgerald, not sure if he was saying yes to the first or the second proposition on offer.

‘Right then. If you could stop here with your friend a moment, I’ll go and borrow some kind of horse-drawn transport to get him up the road to the house. I want to get that forehead cleaned up and I doubt we could carry him, with that hill and all.’

As Dr MacBride sped off towards MacSwiggin’s there was a low moan from the prostrate figure on the ground. Powerscourt managed to sit up, swearing violently.

‘Christ, my head hurts! Christ! Johnny, thank God it’s you. What happened? Did somebody hit me over the head?’

‘Francis, this is very important,’ said Johnny, leaning down and whispering. ‘Do you understand what I’m saying? Your wits haven’t gone wandering, have they?’

Powerscourt wriggled slightly to make himself more comfortable. ‘Wits present on parade,’ he said, wincing from the pain in his head.

‘Right, Francis, you must remember this, whatever else you remember. You fell off your bike and hit your head on a tree. It was an accident. Have you got that? You fell off the bike and hit your head on a tree.’

‘I fell off the bike,’ said Powerscourt. ‘I hit my head on a tree.’

From the direction of the hotel they could hear voices raised in argument, then the sound of a horse’s hooves.

‘Quick, Johnny, tell me before they come. What really happened?’

‘You mustn’t tell a soul, least of all Lucy,’ said Fitzgerald urgently. ‘Somebody round here doesn’t like you very much, Francis. You’re running out of friends. Some bastard cut the brake cable on that bicycle. It could no more stop than it could take off.’

‘Here we are,’ said the doctor, sitting on top of a pony and trap driven by a youth who looked about twelve years old. ‘This is Seamus, driving here,’ said the doctor as they helped Powerscourt into the trap. ‘Cheeky young bugger wanted sixpence to take us up the hill. I said it was an act of Christian charity, helping a fellow Christian in his hour of need. He said you were Protestants so that didn’t count. I shall tell the Christian Brothers about him.’

Seamus spat expertly into the side of the road and they set off up the hill.

One hour later Powerscourt was sitting up in bed, sipping soup, his wife by his side. His head had been expertly bandaged by one of the parlour maids called Sinead who had won her nursing spurs bandaging the cut legs and bruised arms of the small boys of Butler’s Court. Powerscourt was the first grown-up she had ever dealt with and she was proud of her work. The doctor had departed, prodding his patient in various places and peering into his eyes before he left. He was to return the following morning.

When she saw her husband being helped into the hall, the congealed blood on his forehead, the extreme pallor of his complexion, for one heart-stopping moment Lady Lucy thought he was going to die. Not again, she said to herself, please God, not again. She remembered the long vigils through the night, the weeping children sitting on her bed, when Powerscourt had been shot in one of his cases several years before, the certainty that he was going to pass away in front of her. He would drift from coma into death and she wouldn’t even know the moment to hold him in her arms.

Johnny Fitzgerald had been quick to reassure her as they arrived. ‘Don’t worry, Lady Lucy,’ he had said, putting an arm round her, ‘it’s not like last time. He fell off his bike, the silly old sod, and hit his head on a tree.’

‘Dr MacBride,’ the medical man had introduced himself and offered further reassurance: ‘There is no cause for serious alarm, I believe. He’ll be right as rain in a couple of days.’

‘Francis,’ Lady Lucy said, holding his hand, ‘I’m so glad you’re going to be all right. I was so worried when they brought you in, I can’t tell you.’

‘Don’t worry,’ said her husband, ‘Maybe I just need some lessons in bicycle riding.’

‘I always said,’ Lady Lucy was firm on the point, ‘that Thomas was safer on a bicycle than you are. He concentrates, you see. Your mind is always wandering off, looking for murderers or playing imaginary cricket matches or whatever your mind does while the rest of you is in the saddle.’

Powerscourt laughed and grimaced at the same time as a salvo of pain flowed through his head. ‘True, Lucy, very true. Maybe I shall get one of those motor cars, a great big one with a mighty horn.’

‘You could kill yourself more easily in one of those than you could on a bicycle,’ said Lady Lucy.

The mood was subdued in Butler’s Court for the next couple of days. The news of the thefts from Ormonde House and Powerscourt’s injuries seemed to take their toll. Sylvia Butler looked particularly subdued. Her husband tried to raise spirits with games of whist in the drawing room after dinner. Where the air had been filled before with the melodies of Thomas Moore, it was now filled with the shouts of the card players which grew louder with the passing of the port. ‘You had the ace of spades, you bastard!’ ‘I didn’t think you had any more trumps, damn your eyes!’ ‘Who would have thought you had all three of the buggers, ace, king and queen! You’ve won again!’ Great Uncle Peter came down to play in his green dressing gown, raking in his tricks like a croupier in a casino. Powerscourt noticed that Young James refused all offers to play, saying quietly, ‘I never play cards, never.’ Powerscourt and Lady Lucy, playing together, took three shillings and sixpence off Richard Butler and his wife.

‘We’re going to have an entertainment soon,’ Butler announced as the cards were folded away one evening, ‘a sort of concert party. Young James is organizing the children to recite poems, sing songs, all that sort of thing. He was going to do it with those aged eight and upwards, but the six- and seven-year-olds ganged up on him and beat him up in a pillow fight. Now Young James says the little ones can’t remember their lines. He’s going to fire the starting pistol when they can.’

Three days after his accident Powerscourt got what he wanted. There was a letter for him in a rather distinguished-looking envelope. He took Lady Lucy and Johnny Fitzgerald up to his room to read it.

‘Dear Lord Powerscourt,’ it began, ‘His Grace the Most Reverend Dr Healey acknowledges receipt of your letter. As you stress the urgency, His Grace has spared time for you at five o’clock on Tuesday afternoon. If that is not possible another appointment can be arranged the following day. We shall expect you on Tuesday unless we hear to the contrary. Yours, Fintan O’Shaughnessy, SJ, Secretary and Chaplain to the Archbishop.’ Johnny Fitzgerald disappeared for a moment or two and then returned.

‘By God, Lucy, I’d better get my skates on,’ said Powerscourt. ‘It’s Tuesday today. Where is Tuam, for Christ’s sake? I’ve no idea. I’ve got a feeling it’s up towards Sligo some place.’

‘It’s not up, Francis, it’s down,’ said Johnny Fitzgerald, grinning at Lady Lucy. ‘Down towards Galway, the other direction entirely. I’m coming with you, Francis, to make sure you get on the right train. We don’t want you ending up in Bundoran or Ballina, for God’s sake. I’ve just been to look up the details of the trains. There’s plenty of time but we need to get moving. I’ll check out the hostelries while you’re down on your knees with the Archbish, confessing your sins or being accepted into the true faith. Maybe they’ve got a Cathedral Arms or the Bishop’s Mitre down there where a chap could quench his thirst. I’ve always wanted to have a drink in a pub called The Cathedral Arms. It’ll make a change from the saloon in MacSwiggin’s.’

Lady Lucy sat on the steps in front of Butler’s Court and watched her men being driven off to the station. Why, she wondered, was Johnny Fitzgerald going with Francis today? He wouldn’t normally accompany him on a mission to an archbishop. Francis might be pretty hopeless about directions and that sort of thing, but even he could make his way on to a train. He’d been managing that for years now. Was Francis in some sort of danger? Even going to an archbishop, for goodness sake? Was Johnny going as some sort of bodyguard? Going to keep Francis safe? Then another terrible thought struck her and refused to go away. That accident on the bicycle, was it really an accident? Lady Lucy wasn’t an expert on bicycles but she was sure there must be ways you could tamper with the things, loosening the saddle so the rider would fall off or unscrewing the bolts that held the wheels to the frame. Maybe you could do something with the brakes, she just wasn’t sure. Throughout the morning she tried to put these fears out of her mind but they refused to go away. By lunchtime she knew that the knot was back, the knot in her stomach, the knot she had lived with for years, the knot she thought had gone away, the knot of anxiety and terror that her beloved might be in danger and might never come back from his journeys.

Father Fintan O’Shaughnessy, SJ, the Archbishop’s Chaplain, was one of those irritating priests who don’t walk. They glide. They shimmer, Powerscourt thought, as if the Holy Ghost has placed a slim buffer between them and the ground that ordinary mortals walk on. Father Fintan was definitely shimmering this afternoon as he led Powerscourt down a long corridor lined with Irish landscapes and religious paintings which led to the Archbishop’s study.

The Most Reverend Dr John Healey was a great bullock of a man with grey hair, about six feet four with broad shoulders. One of his more irreverent curates once said that he looked like a cattle dealer from Mullingar. Certainly, Powerscourt felt, Dr Healey would be in the vanguard of his flock, an onward Christian soldier marching as to war. Powerscourt bowed slightly and shook Dr Healey’s hand. There was a reproduction of a Renaissance crucifixion on the wall behind his desk. More Irish landscapes lined the walls. Perhaps, Powerscourt thought, he liked collecting paintings.

‘Lord Powerscourt, welcome to Tuam,’ he boomed as if speaking to some mighty congregation. ‘Have you been here before?’ He waved his visitor to the chair opposite his own.

‘I don’t believe I’ve had the pleasure,’ Powerscourt replied.

‘Well, you must look round before you go, if you have time. A fine little town.’ The Archbishop looked closely at Powerscourt’s face as if sin or salvation could be discerned there by people like archbishops who knew what they were looking for.

‘There’s a definite likeness, you know,’ he said with a smile. ‘I met your father years ago now when I was at Maynooth, at the college there. He was a fine man, your father. You remind me of him.’

Powerscourt smiled. Maynooth, he remembered, was the principal seminary and Catholic college in Ireland. His father, a man with a deep interest in human nature, had collected parsons and priests and padres of every description. He always said he enjoyed their company, whatever their particular faith might be. Maybe a younger Dr Healey had been one of those.

‘But come, Lord Powerscourt,’ the Archbishop opened his hands out in front of him, ‘to business. You must tell me of your concerns.’

Powerscourt told him everything. He told him about the stolen paintings and the letters that had accompanied them. He explained that he did not know the precise content of the letters, but said they were blackmail letters and that they contained a terrible threat if the contents were revealed to a third party. He mentioned the fury of Dennis Ormonde of Ormonde House and his threat to import one hundred Orangemen, possibly more, to guard the houses of the gentry of the west.

The Archbishop had been taking notes until the mention of the Orangemen. Then his jaw dropped slightly and he stared at Powerscourt.

‘One hundred Orangemen,’ he boomed once more, ‘one hundred of them! God bless my soul!’ His hands began stroking the great silver crucifix that hung from his neck. ‘I’ll come back to them in a moment if I may, Lord Powerscourt. Let me try to make clear in my mind the story so far, as it were. Some twenty portraits, all of them male, all of them the predecessors of these great landlords, have been stolen, and some Old Masters. Blackmail notes have been dispatched demanding we know not what. Do you know, Lord Powerscourt, if any of these blackmail threats have been met? Have the Butlers or the Moores paid up?’

‘I wish I knew the answer, Your Grace. I think not. There is an air of desperation abroad in all these houses now, I think. There may be a deadline for payment. Again, I do not know. I suspect they are waiting for the threats at the end of the letters to be carried out. And they are hoping against hope that the thieves will be caught before they can carry out their threats.’

‘These Orangemen now,’ the Archbishop was taking notes again, ‘you said they are, for the moment, a threat rather than a reality. Is that so? And, if so, under what circumstances will they come?’

‘My apologies, Your Grace, I should have made myself clearer. Ormonde has sent to Dublin Castle for an inspector and a colleague from the Special Branch, or the Intelligence Department to come and investigate the thefts. Ormonde is giving them a week to find the perpetrators. If they fail, the Orangemen and their bands will set forth from Enniskillen. They could be here in a day. I believe Ormonde intends to charter a special train to bring them down.’

‘Just one point, Lord Powerscourt, if I may, you’re not serious when you talk of bands? There are all kinds of things I can put up with as a proper Christian pilgrim but Orange bands are not one of them. Please tell me you jest here.’

‘I was speaking metaphorically, Your Grace, I have no idea if they propose to bring a band or not. But if you think about their activities, those Orangemen are scarcely able to move about in any numbers in Belfast and their other strongholds without a band. It would seem to be part of the Orange mind.’

‘You’re right, Lord Powerscourt,’ said the Archbishop sadly, ‘they are hardly capable of leaving their front doors without those terrible Lambeg drums. Maybe they will bring a band. God save Ireland.’

The Archbishop frowned. His hands moved faster round his crucifix now.

‘By my calculations, Your Grace, these Dublin Castle men should have arrived three days ago. There are four days left.’

‘I can see your concerns, Lord Powerscourt. You were certainly right to come to me. Tell me, do you have particular fears or is it just the general situation that concerns you? And do you envisage any particular role for the Church in these events?’

Powerscourt paused for a moment. ‘I think,’ he began, ‘that the situation becomes so combustible with the arrival of the Orangemen that anything might happen. But let me try out, if I may, some possibilities. Your Grace will, no doubt, be able to think of more. Look at it from the beginning. Suppose those Orangemen arrive in Westport station in their special train. At least they won’t have had to share their carriages with anybody else. The most logical way for them to reach Ormonde House is to walk or march – even Dennis Ormonde hasn’t enough carriages to carry a hundred of them there. Suppose they do bring a band and march out down the Mall in Westport towards the Louisburg road. Do you think they would reach the end of the town without bricks or bottles being thrown at them? I doubt it. Then suppose they arrive in Ormonde House and are put up in one of those great barns and outhouses out the back. How long before the buildings go up in flames? Or suppose these Orangemen go out drinking at one of those pubs like Campbell’s underneath Croagh Patrick. They’re nearly as fond of drinking as they are of marching. How long before a fight or a brawl breaks out and spreads? How long before the Protestant houses with the paintings guarded by the Orangemen are torched? Or boycotted? Trouble could come in any one of a number of ways, Your Grace.’

‘Trouble might indeed be coming, in battalions. What a terrible situation, Lord Powerscourt. The original wrong is done to the Protestants in the Big Houses. I don’t approve of their presence here any more, I think their day is done, but having your ancestors stolen off your walls must be terrible. It’s as if their past has been violated in front of them. I know how I would feel if somebody stole some of my Irish landscapes and I’m not even descended from them. I think I can sense where you see the Church might fit in, but tell me your thoughts first, if you will.’

‘I do not see,’ said Powerscourt, ‘how I can ask anything from you at all, Your Grace. You have been more than kind in hearing me out today and at such short notice too. I am not a member of your faith. I no longer live in this country. But I do care about it, about Ireland, I care passionately about it, and I pray that the peace should not be broken and more misery heaped on a population who have endured far too much of it already in the last hundred and twenty years. The people, Your Grace, will look to the Church for guidance. Moral leadership in Ireland today rests with you and your bishops and priests. The Church is more powerful today than it has ever been. When these outrages start, or rather if these outrages start between Orangemen and Catholics, the local priests will need guidance. You know far better than I do about the various ranges of opinion in the priesthood in your diocese, but I suspect that some of them would condemn any violence and others would condone it, either by word or by inaction.’

Powerscourt found the Archbishop’s next question truly astonishing. ‘Have you come across our local priest in the Butler’s Cross area, Lord Powerscourt? Father O’Donovan Brady?’

‘I have,’ said Powerscourt.

‘There are many like him,’ said the Archbishop. ‘Sorry, I interrupted you. Please continue.’

‘Please don’t think I would like the Church to turn into some kind of auxiliary police force, Your Grace, encouraging people to turn their neighbours in to the authorities or anything like that. But if there is no message, no instruction to the faithful through the priesthood, the men of the night may think they have the Church’s blessing. If, on the other hand, the Church urges calm, encourages people not to resort to violence, then there might be hope.’

‘I see,’ said the Archbishop, closing his eyes briefly. ‘I do not think I could give you any guidance on what my position might be until we have something more concrete to deal with. I do not believe that the men of the night, as you call them, would pay any attention to what the Church might say. Only at the end, when they need to confess their sins and receive the last rites, do they take any heed of priests at all. And then, of course, we cannot fail them in their hour of need. But the Church must give a lead, we must offer guidance. I am as concerned in a way – I speak freely in front of you as you have with me – with some of the priests and the younger Christian Brothers as I am with the men of the night. In many of them, second or third generation descendants of the dark years of the 1840s, the fires of hatred left by the famine burn very bright. They blame the landlords and what they describe as the English garrison. But we cannot build a new Ireland on theft and robbery by night and letters of blackmail by day. Certain principles will guide me. If these Orangemen come, with or without the bands, we must be patient. Our congregations must remember that however objectionable their presence may be, it was the actions of our own people that brought them here in the first place. Restraint and calm must be our watchwords. Of course, I shall have to be very circumspect in what I say. I shall pray for God’s guidance to find the right language, and I shall pray that He guide me in the right path.’

‘Thank you,’ said Powerscourt.

Then the Archbishop produced another of his astonishing changes of tack. ‘Tell me, Lord Powerscourt, how soon do you think your leg will be better?’

‘My leg?’ said Powerscourt in astonishment. Did the man possess healing powers?

‘Your leg. I noticed you were in some difficulty when you came in.’

‘Oh, that,’ said Powerscourt, ‘it’s nothing. The doctors say it should be fine in a week or so.’

‘In that case,’ the Archbishop was smiling now, ‘let me issue you an invitation. I shall explain. As Archbishop of Tuam I am charged, along with my other duties, with the supervision of the pilgrimage to Croagh Patrick, Ireland’s Holy Mountain. It takes place on the last Sunday in July. I am sure you know of it. All these papers here’ – he waved an enormous fist at the documents on his desk – ‘are concerned with it. We are consecrating a new chapel on the summit this year. I think this pilgrimage is a very special event, Lord Powerscourt. Few who take part are unmoved by it. Surrounded by all these pilgrims, most of them saying their prayers as they go, some climbing barefoot, I have often felt very close to God. Certainly His Grace is present on the hillside that day, I am sure of it. I am inviting you and your wife and your friends to take part this year, as my guests. Of course I am not asking you to be in my party. We shall be many and shall stop many times for moments of devotion. Nor would I dream of asking you to take part in any of our services. But St Patrick is the patron saint of all Irishmen, whatever their particular denomination. As Protestants you would be most welcome. I think it would be good for your immortal soul, Lord Powerscourt, and I am certain you will find it a moving experience.’

‘I am most touched and honoured, Your Grace,’said Powerscourt. ‘I accept. Of course I accept. It will be a privilege to be your guest on that day.’

‘And now, if you will forgive me, I must attend to three local MPs who have come to talk to me about secondary education. They have been waiting fifteen minutes already.’ The Archbishop was ushering Powerscourt to the door in person. ‘We must keep in touch. Write to me for another appointment if you need. Don’t hesitate. I can find you through Butler’s Court?’ Powerscourt nodded. ‘Good.’ The Archbishop opened his massive front door. ‘If we don’t meet before I shall hope to see you on that Sunday. On the Holy Mountain.’