David Dickinson - Death on the Holy Mountain

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.