Death on the Holy Mountain

14

Lord Francis Powerscourt delayed his breakfast as long as he could. He spent a great deal of time shaving. He pottered about in the bedroom for so long that Lady Lucy was quite stern with him, saying he should come along to breakfast now and stop daydreaming like one of the children. The Major interrupted them during the kippers. ‘Had to borrow a hotel sheet for the flag of truce, Powerscourt. Told the hotel fellow we’d make it up to him. Expect we’ll be charged some giant bill in recompense. My chaps are just about to totter off now. Back soon, I hope. Do you think these peasant people will recognize a flag of truce? Just thought I’d ask. Tough luck on my men if they don’t. Never mind. Tally ho!’ With that, Arbuthnot-Leigh strode off to the stables to supervise the troopers’ departure. Powerscourt and Lady Lucy had moved on to the toast and marmalade now. Suddenly Powerscourt could bear the deception no longer.

‘Lucy, my love, there’s something I’ve got to tell you. I meant to tell you yesterday but my courage failed me.’

As he told her Powerscourt thought he could see the tears forming in her eyes, then she fought them back. Her family, the Hamiltons, he remembered, had been soldiers for generations. Her first husband had been a soldier, lost with Gordon at Khartoum. Now, he knew, she was thinking about losing another one. ‘I’ll be perfectly safe,’ said Powerscourt. ‘It may never happen. I’ll come back. I promise you.’

He took her hands in his. She was sobbing now. ‘Just let me go to our room alone for a few minutes, Francis. I’ll be back. Just a few minutes.’

She took the key from the table and went off. Powerscourt wondered, not for the first time, if he was doing the right thing. Johnny Fitzgerald appeared, took one look at his friend and fled. The waiters began clearing the breakfast things away. Powerscourt looked at his watch. The two troopers should be at the house by now. He wondered if the two ladies would be able to watch them come, messengers from another world, a world they had left behind.

Lady Lucy came back, looking more cheerful. Powerscourt marvelled at her courage. It was nearly half past nine.

‘Powerscourt, Lady Powerscourt!’ The Major was back, slightly out of breath. ‘Good news. Our lads are back. The meeting is on for eleven o’clock.’

‘What happened exactly?’ said Powerscourt.

‘Might have been an exchange of invitations to afternoon tea in Tunbridge Wells by the sound of it,’ said the Major cheerfully. ‘My chaps ride up, waving white flags vigorously as if they had just relieved Mafeking. Redheaded Paddy answers the doorbell. Disappears off to find Head Man Paddy or maybe Head Boy Paddy – why are they all so bloody young, for Christ’s sake – and comes back inside a minute. “That’s fine,” he says. “Truce. Ceasefire.” Then he closes the door. That’s it.’

‘Good,’ said Powerscourt, part of whose brain had been hoping the meeting would be rejected. He had told the army man the details of his plan the night before. ‘If, for whatever reason,’ he had said finally, ‘I don’t come out and the kidnappers do, follow them, follow them all the way home or wherever they are going to. Unobtrusively, of course, but all the way.’

‘Of course,’ the Major had replied. ‘Let’s pray it doesn’t come to that.’

‘Look, Lucy,’ Powerscourt turned to his wife, ‘there’s nearly an hour before I have to go. Why don’t we take the hotel boat out on the water? It’s a lovely morning.’

Five minutes later Powerscourt was stroking the little boat up the dark waters of Killary Harbour. Lady Lucy was wearing an enormous hat to shade her from the sun. She thought you could hide all sorts of things under a wide brim. ‘Is Butler Lodge up there, Francis?’ she said, pointing towards the mountains on the right.

‘It is, my love,’ said Powerscourt, ‘it’s on the far side of that mountain with an unpronounceable name, Mweelrea I think it is. It’s got its own lake in the front and a river that’s supposed to be full of fish.’

‘Is it pretty?’ said Lady Lucy. Powerscourt knew she was trying to form a picture in her mind of the site where she might lose another husband, another one lost not to the fogs of war but in the mists of civil strife.

‘I can’t say that I have been inspecting it with the eyes of a tourist,’ said Powerscourt, ‘but it would be very beautiful if it was being used properly.’

Lady Lucy fell silent. A couple of fishermen shouted good morning at them from a hundred yards away. A herd of cows was making a leisurely progress towards Leenane, mooing loudly as they went. Powerscourt turned the boat round and began the return journey towards the hotel.

‘Francis,’ she said at last, ‘you will be careful, won’t you. You see, I’ve just worked it out, we’ve been married for thirteen years now, it’s scarcely credible, is it, and I love you as much now as I did on the day I married you. More even. I couldn’t bear it to end. Not here. Not now. Not like this. I want to be with you till the end, Francis, as I hope you’ll be there for me. Please remember that I love you so much. Take care. Take very great care. I shall be thinking of you and praying for you every moment of every day until you come back.’ She held his hand and kissed it. ‘Now, I won’t say any more. Semper Fidelis, Francis.’

Semper Fidelis, forever faithful, was a sort of motto, or talisman, between the two of them. It had first been mentioned to Powerscourt by a young man who killed himself in an earlier investigation when he first met Lady Lucy. It had followed them through their lives ever since, a punctuation point on their journey through love and time.

‘Semper Fidelis, Lucy,’ said Powerscourt gravely. Out there on the still waters of Killary Harbour, under the wide Connemara sky, he wished he did not have to continue his investigation, to embark on his hazardous mission to Butler Lodge. He wanted to be somewhere else, to stay with Lucy and row out to the mouth of the great fjord. Then he thought of the Ormonde family, of husbands whose wives had been abducted, of the Butlers and the Moores whose very identity was under threat from forces they neither knew nor understood. He kissed Lady Lucy after he handed her out of the boat and set out to prepare for his ordeal.

Half an hour later he and Johnny Fitzgerald were standing by the front door of Butler Lodge. They knew that the hills around the house concealed the Major’s troops, rifles at the ready in case things went wrong.

‘Your round or mine, Francis?’ said Johnny, looking at the bell.

‘Mine, I think,’ said Powerscourt and pushed it firmly. A clear peal could be heard inside. Powerscourt wondered if the two ladies had heard it. They heard footsteps. The door opened to reveal the redhead who had answered it earlier that day. Perhaps he was acting as butler for the duration.

‘Come in, please,’ said the young man politely. ‘Would you wait here for a moment now?’

Powerscourt looked around the hall. The floor was marble, you could find marble everywhere in Connemara, he remembered. A couple of hurling sticks were resting in an umbrella stand. There was a table to the left of the door. A pair of fish in glass cases looked across at them from the opposite wall. Powerscourt suddenly remembered the fascination of stuffed creatures for the Anglo-Irish. The birds of the air and the beasts of the field were all fair game for the taxidermists, owls and badgers, voles and squirrels, pike and salmon and trout, otters and owls, bream and perch, all ended up stuck on the walls of the Anglo-Irish in their glass coffins. Powerscourt had been to houses in his youth where they were so numerous that he would not have been surprised to see a stuffed human staring out at him from hall or passageway. Privately he suspected that the gentry identified with these dead creatures. Were they not preserved too, pickled in their past and their history until they had little relevance to the modern world?

‘Come this way, please,’ the redhead interrupted his reverie and showed them into a little sitting room on the left of the hall. There were bookcases here from floor to ceiling and a great window that looked out over the lake. The redhead motioned them to a sofa and indicated they were to sit down.

‘Posh dentist’s waiting room, Francis?’ said Johnny.

‘Doctor’s, I think,’ said Powerscourt. ‘No magazines at all here.’

Two slim young men of average height came in through the other door and sat down on the chairs opposite the sofa. They were both wearing dark trousers and green shirts, some kind of private uniform, Powerscourt suspected. One had black hair. The other one was so fair he was almost blond.

‘Which of you is Powerscourt?’ asked the black-haired one.

‘I am he,’ said Powerscourt.

‘Then you must be Johnny Fitzgerald.’

‘The same,’ Johnny nodded gravely, wondering if he should mention his ancestor. Not yet, he thought, not yet, maybe later.

‘Traitors, the pair of ye,’ muttered the blond.

‘You can call me Seamus,’ said the black-haired young man, making it abundantly clear that whatever he was called, it was not Seamus, and that he had no intention of revealing his true identity. ‘And he’s Mick,’ he added, pointing to his companion. ‘Now then,’ he continued, ‘it was youse who asked for this meeting. What do you have to say for yourselves?’

‘Principally this,’ said Powerscourt, ‘I think it’s time you considered your own position. You have pulled off a most daring piece of kidnapping. But for our good fortune in finding you here, everything would have gone your way.’

‘We were betrayed,’ said Mick viciously, ‘another bloody traitor in the ranks. Well, he’ll get what’s coming to him, youse mark my words.’

Powerscourt did not bother to tell the blond that they had not been betrayed. Dissension in the ranks might work to his, Powerscourt’s, advantage.

‘But now,’ he continued, ‘think of it. You are surrounded here. Over twenty cavalrymen are on patrol in the woods. More are expected this afternoon. I do not know how many of you there are in this house but I do not believe you number more than six or seven at the most. And with the greatest possible respect, these men outside are more experienced in battle than you are. They fought in the Boer War after all.’

Even as he said it he knew mention of the Boer War was a mistake.

‘Imperialist racket!’ said the blond in anger. ‘Whole war just so the City of London could get its hands on the South African diamonds! Women and children herded into concentration camps to die! Bloody disgrace!’

‘Then think of the position of the two women you have seized. I presume they are still alive, they certainly were yesterday afternoon. If anything were to happen to them now, the authorities would know who to charge.’

Powerscourt sensed as he spoke that he was not making much impression. Rational argument might not be the best way to reach these young men. He felt that they rejoiced in what they saw as their emotional and moral superiority. They probably thought he was old. He suddenly remembered the appeal of a glorious death fighting in Ireland’s cause against overwhelming odds. He wondered if they would prefer death to a prison sentence, a blood sacrifice in the cause of Ireland’s freedom. That, he felt, might be their most likely and the most dangerous option. He ploughed on.

‘If anything were to happen to the women, if they were to be killed for instance, it would go very badly for you. I am certain you would hang. If you give them up, and give yourselves up, the authorities would, I am sure, look at your cases sympathetically.’

He felt even more like a schoolteacher who has lost all rapport with his pupils. He felt that he was probably making things worse.

‘Is that what you came here to say?’ Mick was almost on his feet. ‘Hand ourselves over to the authorities, as you call them? We’d rather die.’

‘I don’t think you do want that really,’ said Johnny Fitzgerald affably. ‘You’re young, for heaven’s sake. You’ve got your whole life in front of you. Think of all the wine and women and song waiting for you in the years ahead. Give yourselves a chance, lads.’

‘The wine and the women and the song may appeal to people like you from the Big Houses,’ said Seamus. ‘We have a higher cause, the rights of the Irish people to their freedom, the rights of the Irish people to own the land of Ireland, the rights of the Irish people to govern themselves in their own way.’

‘Fair enough,’ said Johnny, ‘but you won’t be able to advance that cause very much if you’re in a wooden box. By the time you become a hero and a martyr in Ireland you don’t know about it, it’s too late, you’ve gone to join your ancestors in the cemetery up on the hill.’

‘What about the two of you?’ said Seamus. ‘Intelligent men, well educated, plenty of talent. And you’re Irish. Why do you run around doing the bidding of those people in the Big Houses? Why are you trying to support the crumbling Protestant Ascendancy? For I tell you, I am certain that I will see it disappear in my lifetime. The struggle may be long, it may be bloody, or the whole pack of them may fall in like a pack of cards, but their day is passing. I’m sure of it. Why support all that if you’re Irish? Wolfe Tone rose above his Protestant heritage to advance the cause of liberty in Ireland. Charles Stewart Parnell was a bloody Protestant landlord in County Wicklow, for Christ’s sake, and he nearly brought us Home Rule. Why can’t you join the right side?’

‘Perhaps we’re too old,’ said Powerscourt, nodding at Johnny by his side on the sofa, ‘and perhaps you’re too young. I was brought up into one world, it may be passing now, I grant you, but it was the world my parents lived in. It was the only one I knew. You are growing up in a different world. Each fresh generation embraces a cause, certain with all the certainty of the young that their mission is just and all earlier missions misguided and wrong. As they grow older, that generation is surprised in its turn by the fact that their children espouse different causes, take up another mission. Their creed, their beliefs that they held so strongly in their youth are now ancient history. They’ve been washed away, like sandcastles on a beach. So it goes on, down the generations, like the rising and the setting of the sun or the passing of the seasons. I don’t apologize for my beliefs. I don’t condemn you for yours. All I would remind you is that you’re going to be better placed to advance them if you’re alive rather than if you’re dead.’

Powerscourt suddenly realized that he had another problem. Pride, the pride of the young, the pride that would not let them lose face. He remembered himself as a young man, willing to argue on long after he had lost because he did not want to back down. He suspected it would be almost impossible for Seamus to agree to his requests. He would only show himself to be a leader without courage, a general who surrendered without a fight. He tried to find a way to ease his path but he couldn’t do it. There were no inducements he could think of offering.

He tried all the same. ‘Perhaps you’d like to take a break from our conversation and confer with your colleagues elsewhere in the house? Give yourselves a bit of time to think? As long as you go on holding those two women, I think your position is very difficult. If you start a fight here and they are injured or killed you’re in a desperate state, Seamus, you really are.’

It was Mick who replied. ‘Weasel words!’ he cried. ‘Time to think? You people have had centuries to think and you haven’t come up with anything better for Ireland than croquet on the lawn and hunting six days a week in the winter. You’re a bloody disgrace, the pair of you!’

Seamus was boxed in. He could not, Powerscourt knew, give way now in face of the defiance of his friend. Powerscourt felt sick inside.

‘I have made my mind up,’ said Seamus finally with an air of slight reluctance as if he might have behaved differently on his own. ‘Thank you for coming. Your offer is rejected. One of my men will escort you to the front door. The truce will end half an hour from now.’

This is not the best of times, Powerscourt said to himself, it is the worst of times. It is not the season of Light, it is the season of Darkness. Suddenly he remembered reading Charles Dickens’s A Tale of Two Cities at the age of fourteen, lying on the grass in the summer at Powerscourt House, oblivious to the noises of his sisters, and weeping uncontrollably at the end.

‘Perhaps I could make another proposal,’ he said firmly.

‘And what is that?’ replied Seamus.

‘Take no bloody notice,’ cried Mick, ‘it’ll just be another piece of Protestant trickery!’

‘My proposal, quite simply, is this. You let the two ladies go. They must have suffered enough by now. Johnny and I replace them as your hostages. You lose nothing. You still hold a couple of hostages of some value to the authorities here and in England.’

‘Just let me make sure I understand you, Lord Powerscourt, I find it hard to comprehend. We let the women go. You volunteer to replace them. Is that right?’

‘It is.’

‘Well, I’ll be damned,’ said Seamus. ‘You’re sure about that?’

‘Quite sure,’ said Powerscourt.

‘This time I do need to talk to the others,’ said Seamus, ‘I think I may have to put it to the vote. Wait here. Don’t try anything stupid.’

So, Powerscourt said to himself, their fate was to be decided by half a dozen twenty-year-olds, their heads probably filled with the nationalist rhetoric of the Christian Brothers and the wild songs of rebel Ireland. He took comfort in one thought. He did not think that these young men would have felt happy holding female hostages. They might have rejected orthodox religion or they might have not, but the Marian cult was probably stronger in Ireland than in any other country in Europe. They had been looking at statues of the Virgin Mary by the roadside, paintings of her on the walls of convent and schoolroom, huge representations with halo and sanctity on the altars of their churches, further icons no doubt displayed in their own homes since before they could walk. She was everywhere. Reverence for her was instilled into every generation. The young men would probably be relieved to be rid of the two women. Then he realized to his horror what else the Marian cult meant. Seamus and Mick would have fewer scruples killing men. Especially Protestant men.

Johnny strolled over to the window and stared out at the lake. Powerscourt took a close interest in a stuffed badger standing to attention in another glass case. They did not speak. Suddenly Powerscourt remembered the system of hand signals they had learnt in India, a private language without words. With their backs to the door so they could not be observed, they ran through a bewildering variety of gestures involving hands and feet, fingers in a variety of combinations, slight movements of the feet. Fifteen minutes passed, then twenty. Their revision class was complete. Johnny tried to work out how many of the Major’s troopers he could see, hiding in the woods. Powerscourt wondered if indeed it was a far far better thing they were doing now than they had ever done, if it might be a far far better rest they were going to than they had ever known. Half an hour had gone now. Powerscourt found himself wondering how the Major would behave if their offer were accepted. He hoped he would be calm in making his plans and ruthless in carrying them out. Forty minutes. Powerscourt found himself thinking of Lady Lucy in her wide-brimmed hat out on Killary Harbour so very very long ago now. He wondered what she was doing. The door opened to reveal Seamus and the redhead who had opened the door.

‘Very well,’ said Seamus, ‘we accept your offer. We will exchange the two of you for the wife of Ormonde and her sister. Please listen carefully while I outline the other arrangements. When we have finished our conversation, you, Powerscourt, and my colleague here will go outside under another flag of truce and explain the position to your friends skulking in the bushes out there.

‘In half an hour the two ladies will be escorted out of the house to the top of the drive. What happens to them from then on is up to your companions. Half an hour after that four of my colleagues will leave and set out towards their homes. They are not to be arrested. I am sure they will be followed but it is an essential part of this bargain that they are allowed home to see their families. That great carriage that came here the other day is to be brought here. You and I and Mick and Mr Fitzgerald here are going on a journey in it. The coachman can drive us. Any attempt to intercept us, to attack the vehicle, to impede its progress in any way and you will both be shot. Do I make myself clear?’

‘Perfectly clear,’ said Powerscourt, ‘and I am grateful for your decision about the two women.’ Not quite so keen on the decision about the two of us, he said to himself, but he kept his counsel.

‘Could I ask you about one aspect of your proposal, which may be hard to sell to the people outside?’

‘You may.’

‘Your four colleagues who are to be allowed to go home in the first instance. Do you think the people outside will feel able to permit that?’

‘I have two things to say to that, Lord Powerscourt,’ said the one called Seamus. ‘The first is that they were not involved in the actual kidnap in any way. Mick and I did all that. Those four joined us here to help look after the women. If you care to ask the women before they go how they have been treated, I am sure they will agree they have been well looked after. Only yesterday Ormonde’s wife was telling one of the lads that he must come and see them when all this is over. The two women have never seen either Mick or myself, not properly. We wore balaclavas when we seized them and we have kept out of sight here. So what would the charge be? Not kidnapping because they weren’t involved. Holding people against their will? They weren’t the ones making the decisions. Harsh treatment of poor women in captivity? Hardly likely when the women might testify in their defence. Indeed the two ladies have already said they would appear in court on behalf of the four young men if things turned out that way. And the second thing is quite simple. If the people out there don’t agree, then the whole deal is off. The women stay as our hostages. You two could go.’

‘That’s very clear,’ said Powerscourt with just a trace of bitterness in his voice. The redhead appeared again wrapping the tattered remains of what had once been a white shirt round a hurling stick The flag of truce was prepared. As Powerscourt and the young man stepped outside the front door, they could hear a faint rustling in the undergrowth ahead. A couple of crows flew past to explore the lake and the desolate hills beyond. The sun was shining. Major Arbuthnot-Leigh was wearing civilian clothes today, a tweed suit that might have seen stalking duty in the past and a hat that looked as though it could once have belonged to Davy Crockett. Powerscourt outlined the plans.

‘Not a particularly good hand, what?’ was the Major’s first reaction.

‘It could be worse,’ said Powerscourt. ‘All things considered, I think we should accept the offer.’

‘Are you sure? You don’t think the Paddies have got too many aces?’

‘I don’t think we have any choice,’ said Powerscourt. ‘At least one of those young men would rather die than make a deal of any kind. Blood sacrifice, that sort of thing.’

‘Bloody fool,’ said the Major. ‘Well then, I’ll get the carriage brought up. We’ve got a couple of spare horses here for the ladies to go to Leenane first of all. Damned pity their carriage has been hijacked – just like they were, I suppose, what? Never mind. The ladies coming out to the top of the drive in half an hour, you say? Do you think we should have a sort of honour guard to welcome the fillies home? Troopers lined up, rifles in the air, serenade of shots to greet them?’

‘No,’ said Powerscourt and turned back to the house. He didn’t see Mrs Ormonde and her sister go. He didn’t see the carriage arrive or the four young men depart, two to a horse and moving out on the Louisburg road. Nor did he see a group of six horsemen following them after a five-minute interval.

‘Now then,’ said Seamus, carrying a rough pack over his shoulder, ‘we’re ready to go. Let me tell you the rules. Mick and I have a pistol each, so we do. Any hostile move from either of you and you’ll be shot. You’re not to converse on the way. Any attempt at a rescue mission from the authorities and you will be shot. When we have reached our destination safely and unimpeded, you will be allowed to go. Is that clear?’

Powerscourt had a sudden vision of tens of carriages like this one sweeping up to Butler Lodge in the days of its glory, visitors come for the fishing or for parties or for balls, the music wafting out over the waters of the lake and disturbing the fish in the river. As he was ushered into the red velvet interior he saw himself being shown into a different sort of vehicle, the rough cart that had carried Sydney Carton to the guillotine, the doomed aristocrats packed close together, hair shaved off, a last journey across the streets of Paris to the mocking gibes of Madame Defarge and the awful finality of the guillotine. The worst of times.

He and Johnny were on one side of the conveyance, the two young men opposite. The Ormonde coachman, warned no doubt to be on his best behaviour, perched in his place on the top and muttered to his horses as they cantered slowly down the drive. The windows were tightly closed. Powerscourt had a slight sense of being in a luxurious coffin on its way to the grave. The two young men were conversing in Irish. Powerscourt tried to work out which direction they were going in as they reached the top of the drive and turned into the main road. If they went uphill they would be heading for Louisburg and Westport. If they went downhill they were going towards Leenane and Lady Lucy.

Five minutes after the coach departed, a group of horsemen, the hooves of their animals muffled, trotted slowly down the gravel track. As the road joined the main thoroughfare to Westport it passed a small waterfall, much favoured by local watercolourists and picnickers. After a few more miles along the side of Killary Harbour it crossed a bridge into Leenane. There the road forked, the right hand turning into a winding road that skirted the coast to Clifden, the left hand climbing up into the hills towards Maam Cross. Had Powerscourt or Fitzgerald been able to look out, they would have seen a female figure, standing back from the road to watch the coach and see where it went. The figure still had a hat with a very wide brim on top of her curls, and it made no move at all. She waited some more and received grave salutes from Major Arbuthnot-Leigh and his troopers as they passed. At least I know where Francis is going, Lady Lucy thought to herself, he’s going into the mountains. She had learnt the news of the exchange of the hostages when the man came for the carriage. She hurried back to the hotel and stared for a long time at a map on the dining-room wall. She could not see anywhere inland where the young men would want to go. They could catch a boat at Oughterard on Lough Corrib and escape detection for a couple of days on one of the islands. But she didn’t think these young men would be happy with that. Then she realized. She knew where Francis must be going. If you went on past Maum, over Teernakill Bridge and across the mountains to Maam Cross, on past Lough Bofin to Oughterard, down through Roscahill and Moycullen, you would come to Galway. Galway had many amenities, Lady Lucy thought, though she would not have classed herself as an expert. But she felt sure there were boats, plenty of boats. There might not be boats that sailed straight across the Atlantic from there, but there would be boats that could take you, discreetly, no doubt, to places where you could sail to America, Cork probably, the young men stowed away in some obscure cabin, or pressed into service as waiters in the restaurant. Galway – Lady Lucy suddenly remembered the song:

If you ever go across the sea to Ireland

Then maybe at the closing of your day,

You will sit and watch the moon rise over Claddagh

And see the sun go down on Galway Bay.

She didn’t like the bit about the closing of your day very much. She prayed that Francis would find a way to escape long before he could see the sun go down on Galway Bay.

Powerscourt knew that the road would be bumpy whichever direction they went. He was sure that they had gone down the hill towards Leenane but which fork in the road they had taken he could not tell. There were occasional shrieks from the wild birds and loud bleatings from the sheep whose tenure of the road was so rudely interrupted by the carriage. He and Johnny could only wait.

He began piecing together in his mind random thoughts that might have a bearing on his investigation. They were like fragments of unsolved code in his brain, or strings of numbers that could mean so much to a mathematician, looping and circling round each other, spiralling away on a journey of digits that could lead to chaos or infinity. What had the young man called Seamus said that morning? He talked about the right of the Irish people to own the land of Ireland. Somebody else had talked about land, Connolly, that was it, the very first man with the vanished paintings he had seen, who had virtually thrown him out of the house. Hunger, Connolly had said, there’s a hunger for land so strong out there that on market days you could practically smell it. He thought of the tall, impossibly slim figure of Young James at Butler’s Court, saying very firmly that he never played cards for money. He thought of Uncle Peter’s account of Parnell’s funeral and the honour guard of young men from the Gaelic Athletic Association with their hurling sticks who accompanied the dead hero all the way from the railway station around the city to his final resting place at Glasnevin Cemetery. Why, only that morning he had gone out to meet the Major under a homemade flag of truce that consisted of a battered shirt wrapped round a hurling stick. He thought of Johnny Fitzgerald’s drinking companion, the defrocked Christian Brother, and his account of how to seize power in Ireland. He thought of the young man opposite, Mick, saying he’d rather die than capitulate. Suddenly he remembered a different young man singing ‘The Minstrel Boy’ in the concert party at Butler’s Court, Thomas Moore’s lament for his friends slain in the ’98 Rebellion. In the ranks of death you’ll find him. Maybe, Powerscourt thought, defeat had to be celebrated because victory never came. Maybe Ireland’s glory compensated for failure, the failure of every rising, the failure of every land campaign to dislodge the English from Dublin Castle. When the men with the pints of porter in their hands belted forth the words of ‘The West’s Awake’ or ‘A Nation Once Again’, they could, briefly, believe in Ireland’s glory. For, in truth, the west was not awake, the nation was as far away as ever. The songs took over from the truth, a whole nation incapable of distinguishing dream from reality. A nation once again, his history tutor at Cambridge had once asked acidly, when was the again? How far back did you have to go, to the High Kings of Tara or Finn McCool or the Firbolgs or the Tuatha De Danann, creatures all well dressed and clad in Irish myth? It was all nonsense, his tutor said, in a dusty room in Cambridge where reason thought it had long ago defeated the myths of glory.

He raised his eyes briefly for his first eye contact with their jailers. They were no longer conversing in Irish. The one called Mick was reading a slim volume extracted from his pocket. Somehow Powerscourt doubted if it was Patriotic Ballads of England. Seamus was staring at the floor. They were beginning to look a little drowsy – it was now quite hot in the coach with no fresh air coming in and the Major’s men had kept them awake for most of the night – but they were not asleep. This was not the spring of hope, it was much closer to the winter of despair. The worst of times.

Lady Lucy had a strange conversation with the liberated ladies. The Major had escorted the freed fillies, let out into the paddock, as he mentally referred to them, into the main sitting room of the hotel and brought a bottle of champagne. Then he fled, saying he could not bear the thought of not being with Powerscourt and Johnny Fitzgerald in their time of need. They had, they assured Lucy, been well treated, apart from the food which was bad except for the days when a very slight young man made them his grandmother’s Irish stew. The first time, said Mary Ormonde, it was excellent, the second time it was acceptable, the third time it was revolting, the young man seemed to have forgotten some of the ingredients, like the meat and the potatoes. They absolutely refused to go back to Westport until Lady Lucy’s ordeal was over. If Ormonde wants to come and see his own, his wife declared, he could get on his horse and ride here.

As she and her sister departed to their rooms to rest after their ordeal, Lady Lucy wandered out into the little garden on the edge of the water. The battered nymph was still spouting erratic bursts of water on to the flowers. A red rose beside it was losing its leaves, perfect red petals drifting down to lie on the ground, the colour of blood. Lady Lucy thought of Francis rowing her out there that very morning, the time passing impossibly quickly. She remembered the look of complete pleasure on his face as the two of them lay back in their gondola in Venice several years before and were transported up the Grand Canal to the art gallery, the Accademia. She remembered the ecstasy on his face as he stood, transfixed, in front of Giovanni Bellini’s altarpiece of the Madonna and Child with Saints in a side chapel of the Franciscan church there, the Frari. He had quoted Henry James to her, she remembered, nothing in Venice is more perfect than this. She tried to blot out the memories of Francis and the children but they kept coming in like the tide. Francis bowling for hour after hour to Thomas in their makeshift nets at Rokesley Hall, teaching his little boy some of the strokes of cricket. Francis out riding with Olivia, trekking all afternoon through the paths of Rockingham Forest before they returned, exhausted, for an enormous tea. Francis chasing the twins round and round the dining-room table and up the stairs in Markham Square. She began to pray. Our Father which art in heaven, Hallowed be thy name. The words of the pilgrims came back to her as they walked round and round the first station on the Holy Mountain. Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee, blessed art thou amongst women. Lady Lucy could see no reason why it couldn’t be a Protestant prayer as well. She found it comforting, even the last words, pray for us sinners now and in the hour of our death, Amen. There between the hills and the mountains with Killary Harbour in front of her, Lady Lucy said seven Our Fathers and seven Hail Marys as the faithful had done at the stations on Croagh Patrick. She called it the Leenane Station. She offered it up to her husband, wherever he was.

Johnny Fitzgerald had fallen asleep. Occasional low snores broke the silence in the red velvet carriage. The one called Seamus was drifting away, sitting up suddenly every now and then to remind himself that he was on duty. The one called Mick had the book open on his lap but it was some time since he had turned a page. Powerscourt too drifted in and out of sleep. The heat was making him feel uncomfortable and he longed for a glass of water. He wondered when they planned to change the horses, these present ones couldn’t last much longer. Then the road surface seemed to improve. The great lurches that had marked their progress so far were, for now, a thing of the past. Powerscourt could only guess where they were. His sense of geography, never very accurate at the best of times, had abandoned him altogether. All he could tell from the regular bleatings of the sheep was that they were somewhere up in the mountains. He wondered what a shepherd would have made of this strange vehicle, doors closed, no sign of life inside, rattling along near Maam Cross.

After ten minutes on the good road, Powerscourt decided it was time to move. The two young men were dozing or asleep. He nudged Johnny Fitzgerald very gently in the ribs. They both arched back very slowly on their seats to gain maximum purchase. Then, in unison, they drew their knees up to their chins and they launched themselves as hard as they could, boots first, into the crotches of their enemies. Powerscourt followed this up with an enormous punch with his right hand into Seamus’s cheek. Out of the corner of his eye he could see Johnny doing the same thing. Seamus fell to his right. Powerscourt reached out his left hand and opened the door. He grabbed the young man by the top of his shirt and the seat of his trousers and propelled him towards the door. Two vigorous kicks were enough to send him into the outside world. Powerscourt closed the door and turned to administer a final kick to the departing figure of Mick on the other side. Johnny closed the door. They had left the season of Darkness behind them.

‘By God, that was good, Johnny,’ said Powerscourt. ‘Give it ten seconds or so and go tell the coachman to keep going for another four hundred yards as fast as he can. Then we can review the situation.’

No pistol shots followed them up the road. Powerscourt rubbed at the knuckles of his right hand. They would be sore for some time from the punch that felled the one called Seamus. Johnny clambered out and took up his position beside the coachman. Now they heard shots behind them, three fired at brief intervals first, and then two volleys of about eight or nine rounds at a time. A scream echoed round the mountains and its noise and the gunshots sent the sheep scurrying for whatever cover they could find. Johnny stopped the coach. Powerscourt had picked up the book Mick had been reading. It had fallen on the floor at his departure. The Wind Among the Reeds, Fisher Unwin, London, 1899, the title page said. W.B. Yeats. And him, Powerscourt thought, a Protestant poet from Sligo, a man of the Anglo-Irish, read by such an ardent and uncompromising Catholic nationalist as the young man called Mick.

They could hear horses coming at speed. ‘Powerscourt,’ shouted the Major, ‘are the two of you all right?’

‘Never better,’ Powerscourt replied cheerfully, ‘bit thirsty, that’s all. Catering department non-existent among these nationalists. Thirst must be meant to be good for you. What was that firing a moment ago?’

‘Young fool,’ said the Major, ‘the one you must have thrown out on the left-hand side of the road, thought he’d take us on. Must have seen he was outnumbered about twelve to one. Maybe the natives never learn to count out here. Anyway he loosed off a few, couldn’t shoot straight incidentally, so we had to reply. He’s gone,’ the Major looked round at the desolate landscape for a moment, ‘to the great peat bog in the sky.’

‘I think he always preferred death and glory, that one,’ said Powerscourt. ‘Nothing finer than giving your life in Ireland’s cause. What about the other fellow? He told us his name was Seamus but he’s really called something else. I think he was the brains of the enterprise.’

The Major laughed. ‘Brains, was he? Well, he’s not looking too clever at the moment. Doubled up, he is, whichever of you two kicked him in his private parts did for him good and proper. Pity we’ve only got one in the bag, but better than nothing.’

Powerscourt thanked the Major for his swift appearance on the scene. ‘We were right behind you all the time,’ said the military man. ‘Had a bet on what time you’d break out, actually, Powerscourt.’ He looked at his watch. ‘Damn it, I think I may have won. I said you’d see off the little green people five minutes ago. Good show, what?’

Johnny made a special request. ‘Does anybody have anything to drink in this godforsaken place?’

The Major looked at his troops. ‘I am blind,’ he said, ‘I cannot see a thing.’

Half a bottle of John Jameson was handed over to Johnny Fitzgerald who took an enormous swig. ‘Thank you,’ he said, ‘thank you so much. By God, that tastes good.’

‘I say,’ said the Major, ‘I’m forgetting my duties. We’ve got a couple of spare nags with us. Thought you might like to totter back on your own. Leave all this mess to us,’ he waved his hand at the corpse on one side of the road and the doubled-up figure on the other, ‘we’ll clear it up.’

As Powerscourt and Fitzgerald began the ride back to Leenane a vicious hiss pursued them down the road. ‘Traitors, bloody traitors to Ireland, both of you.’ The face of the one called Seamus was doubled up with pain as he spoke but there was no doubting his sincerity. One of the troopers kicked him hard on the side of the head.

‘Shut up, you piece of Fenian shit,’ said the trooper. ‘From now on you can learn some bloody manners. Don’t speak, unless you’re spoken to first.’

Lady Lucy Powerscourt was still at her prayer station in the garden late that afternoon. She watched the street that led up to the Maum road. Twice in the last half-hour she had heard horses’ hooves and human voices but it was only a farmhand and a man come in to buy some tea from the store. Still she waited. She said more prayers. She looked at some fishermen unloading their catch and a man from the hotel kitchens obviously haggling about prices. A priest went by on his bicycle and smiled at Lady Lucy. Three small boys trotted past her kicking at a stone in the road. Then she heard laughter that she thought might be Johnny Fitzgerald’s. Johnny had a very distinctive laugh. She wondered if she should run down the road to meet them, if it was them. Something told her not to. If her prayers had been answered, then it was only proper to wait in that place for her deliverance. She heard Francis’s voice. The two of them were hidden temporarily by a bend in the road. Then she saw them, rather dirty, rather dishevelled as if they had been in a fight, but not wounded or hurt. She pulled out a handkerchief and waved it furiously.

‘Francis!’ she shouted. ‘Francis!’

One of the horses broke into a gallop. ‘Lucy, my love! Lucy!’

Then Francis was beside her, holding her tight in his arms. ‘My own love,’ she said, ‘you’ve come back! Thank God! Oh, thank God!’

Half an hour later Lord Francis Powerscourt was lying in his bath. Lady Lucy was plying him with champagne as she listened to his adventures.

‘There’s to be a great dinner tonight, Francis,’ she told him. ‘To celebrate the release of the ladies and your escape. The Major organized it before he left. He said he might sing a song, the Major.’

‘God save Ireland,’ said Powerscourt, ‘if the Major sings a song.’ He wondered if a wake had been organized too in case he and Johnny had not returned but he didn’t like to ask.

‘And Dennis Ormonde is coming from Ormonde House,’ Lucy went on. ‘He’ll be so pleased to see his wife again.’

Lady Lucy left to attend to some matters in the bedroom. There was still some time before dinner. Powerscourt rose slowly from the waves and draped himself in a series of towels. He thought of A Tale of Two Cities again. It is a far better thing I do now, he said to himself with a wicked grin, than I have ever done before. He advanced into the bedroom and kissed Lady Lucy firmly on the lips.

‘Francis,’ she said, and then in a different tone altogether, ‘Francis!’ She moved to close the curtains. The worst of times were over.