David Dickinson - Death of a Pilgrim

Powerscourt was trying to remember what he had been told years before about the encierro , the running of the bulls. It didn’t last very long, he seemed to recall. Only the brave or the foolhardy tried to run with the bulls for as long as they could before they slipped off to one side. Some reckless souls, he thought, started their run near the end and tried to time it so they just beat the weary bulls into the ring. Above all, he remembered, it may be many things, an ancient ritual, a trial of manhood, a test of nerve, but it’s not a race. There was no medal for the first runner or bull into the ring. Above all it showed the same Spanish obsession with death that marked the bullfight itself. There it was usually the bulls who died. Here on these narrow streets with the crowds behind the barriers and up on their balconies it was the humans who were more likely to perish. The prospect of sudden and violent death brought that extra frisson to the spectacle.

Waldo Mulligan was just two paces behind Powerscourt now. He could trip him up, or shove him into the path of a bull. It was five to seven. The young men began to sing to San Fermin to ask for his protection. ‘We ask of San Fermin, for he is our patron, to guide us in the bull run and give us his blessing.’ They waved their rolled-up newspapers and shouted ‘Viva San Fermin!’ in Spanish and in Basque. At three minutes to seven they sang it again.

Suddenly Powerscourt turned round. His eyes locked on to those of Waldo Mulligan as surely as a matador might lock eyes with a bull in the ring. Powerscourt knew. He knew that Waldo Mulligan was the killer. Worse, looking at Mulligan, Powerscourt was certain that Mulligan knew that Powerscourt knew that he, Mulligan, was the killer. The prayer rang out for a third and final time. Powerscourt joined in where it talked about guiding us in the bull run. Mulligan was going to try to kill him in the next few minutes. Death would come for him in the morning.

Lady Lucy felt helpless when she realized Francis had gone in pursuit of the missing pilgrims. She wondered what she should do. If she went out on to the streets she could be another potential victim. She remembered the two bolsters hacked to shreds in the hotel in Aire-sur-l’Adour. She opened the doors and went out on to the balcony. The sun was high in the sky now. It was going to be a beautiful day. She could hear the noise of the running of the bulls but she could not see it. Lady Lucy didn’t know that her husband was in deadly peril, and not just from the twelve-hundred-pound bulls.

Johnny Fitzgerald too had been sucked into the event, but further down the course from Powerscourt. He had made friends with a man with a couple of wineskins tied round his waist. Johnny thought the day was beginning to look up already.

At seven o’clock precisely the clock of San Cernin struck the hour. A rocket shot up into the sky, announcing that the mighty gates of the corral holding the bulls and the oxen had been opened. The police removed the barriers that had held the runners in. The encierro was under way. Powerscourt’s group began to run, not very fast, down Santa Domingo towards the Plaza. Other braver or more foolish souls waited to run as long as they could with the bulls in this opening stage. You could hear them before you saw them, Powerscourt thought, a rumbling noise like thunder getting closer or the pounding noise the closest spectators heard as the horses came round the last bend in the Derby.

As he looked round he saw that Waldo Mulligan was right behind him and trying to trip him up. Very suddenly Powerscourt turned and smashed his elbow into the centre of Mulligan’s mouth as hard as he could. Mulligan stumbled and held his hand to his face. The crowd was so tightly packed that he only slipped back a little, but he was no longer directly behind Powerscourt. Looking back again Powerscourt saw the bulls for the first time, dark brown brutes running as fast as they could, threatening to trample anybody who stood in their way. They were about twenty yards behind them now. Mulligan, swearing to himself, had returned to a position behind Powerscourt. Again he tried to trip him up. Then the crowd behind carried him to the right-hand side of the course. Powerscourt had been edging to his left, to the side of the street, away from the centre where the bulls were running. They had reached the Estafeta Bend now and the bulls were ahead of them now, two young men running just in front of them at top speed waving their rolled-up newspapers in the air.

Then disaster struck. The cobblestones were slippery. The largest and fiercest-looking bull slipped on the wet surface right at the edge of the ninety-degree bend. He fell slowly to the ground, less than ten feet from the crowd. The bull didn’t seem to know how to get up again for it took him the best part of a minute. He looked around sadly. All his companions had disappeared. He staggered towards the centre of the street. Runners swerved left and right to avoid him. He straightened himself up at last and seemed to Powerscourt to have an expression that said, Somebody is going to pay for this. Powerscourt pressed himself up against a wall. Some of his companions flung themselves to the ground and curled up into human balls. Powerscourt had often been in positions of extreme danger in his military service, under attack from mounted Pathan tribesmen on the North-West Frontier, strafed with shell fire in the Boer War, climbing up dangerous mountains for a night attack in India. Never had he been as frightened as this. The bulls were so big and so stupid. Anything could happen. This one, stumbling about in the wet street, might soon be close enough to shake hands or shake horns.

There was a scream from one of the balconies. The surrounding crowd had fallen silent, holding on to each other in their fear. Was the bull strong enough to break through the barrier? Would he soon be amongst them, goring as he went? The bull turned, still disoriented, and went back towards the other side. Powerscourt saw Waldo Mulligan shaking his head and trying to make himself invisible pressed against the barrier. Younger, fitter or more frightened people were climbing over the top of the fences, helping hands waiting to lift them to safety. Maybe it was the movement that tipped the bull over the edge. He stared at Waldo Mulligan. Mulligan looked at the bull and raised his fists to cover his face. The bull may have taken that as a hostile act. A couple of steps and the bull bent down. He gored Mulligan just above the groin, the horn ripping deep into his body, and flung him backwards to land on the cobblestones of the Calle Estafeta.

Blood was pouring onto the street. The crowd was screaming. Mulligan’s blood, almost the same shade of red as the scarves and the sashes, dripped across the cobblestones. The bull glowered at Mulligan as if thinking of a second goring to reinforce the first. Powerscourt remained pressed against his wall. The bull lumbered down the edge of the barrier where the crowd were now running away as fast as they could; he was looking for another victim. A group of cowherds with long sticks who were policing the event forced the bull back into the middle of the road and down the street to rejoin his companions in the bullring. Four medical orderlies raced through the gap in the barriers and put Mulligan on a stretcher. They carried him down to the hospital in the bullring. The staff there were used to gored people. They saw them virtually every afternoon on the days of the bullfights. Another rocket shot up into the morning sky. The bulls were all in the bullring. It was four minutes past seven.

Lady Lucy could sense the excitement as she looked at the crowds streaming past her balcony, heading for the bullring to hear news of the victim. When she went downstairs to the reception a porter with a little English told her that an Englishman had been gored running with the bulls. He pointed her in the direction of the hospital. Lady Lucy found she could not hurry as she would have wished. The crowd, sombre now, the high spirits before the start ebbing away like Mulligan’s blood, was so thick that all she could do was to allow herself to be carried along. Was it Francis? Was it Johnny? Were they even now breathing their last, their insides ripped to shreds by the horns of a bull, and she wasn’t there to hold their hands and stroke their faces?