David Dickinson - Death and the Jubilee

‘Should we go and let him know we’re here?’ whispered Docherty.

‘He knows. He knows exactly where we are going to be. Don’t move. I don’t think we were followed here but you cannot be too careful.’

The three conspirators had chosen Glendalough for its innocence. Any trip there could be excused as a visit to one of the ancient seats of Irish learning, the fifth-century tower further up the hill still visible like a beacon against the Wicklow hills, a lighthouse placed by God to illuminate the journeys of his people. Even a clandestine conspiratorial assembly like this could be excused by the need to pray at the lakeside. And Glendalough had a further advantage. It was a largely Protestant village, its loyalty rewarded by the visit some years before of the Prince of Wales himself with a large party of friends. It was one of the most unlikely places in Ireland for a Catholic conspiracy to be launched.

‘God be with you, Michael Byrne. God be with you, Thomas Docherty.’ Fergus Finn, the last arrival, made his apologies. Docherty worked on the railways, Byrne was a schoolteacher and Finn was a clerk in a solicitor’s office in Dublin.

‘Let’s get down to it,’ said Byrne, the acknowledged leader of the group. They sat on the damp grass beneath the trees, even more invisible to any watchers from Dublin Castle. Behind them the water lapped as it had done for thousands of years. The circle of hills around Glendalough, the glen of the two lakes, was black.

‘This Jubilee. Two months from now,’ Byrne went on. ‘Should we make a noise in Dublin or in London?’

The others knew perfectly well what he meant by noise, an assassination, a bomb, a terrorist outrage that would bring their cause on to the front pages of all the countries of the known world.

‘London,’ said Finn. ‘There will be enormous crowds there. Surely it would be easy to send a couple of our people in without the police knowing. They couldn’t possibly vet every single citizen arriving in the city. It’s beyond reason.’

‘Dublin,’ said Docherty. ‘Sure, it has to be Dublin. However big the crowds are over there, it would still be impossible to get away. Whether it’s a bomb or a bullet we are thinking of, the man doing it would be seized by the Londoners themselves. In Dublin there’s more chance of getting our man away, of being able to hide him decently afterwards.’

‘But it wouldn’t have the same impact in Dublin as it would in London.’ Finn was making his point emphatically, punching his right fist into his left palm as if he were addressing a public meeting. ‘Think of all those troops from across the Empire marching through the city. Think of the crowds hanging off every balcony, sitting in their stands in Piccadilly, lining the rooftops to get a better view. And then an incident somewhere just away from the main parade, a great explosion. That would make them sit up a bit. It would be grand, wouldn’t it?’

Docherty was not impressed. ‘You’d never get away,’ he said dismissively. ‘They may all be watching the parade but there will still be thousands of them milling about the streets, trying to get as close as they can. A good bomb in Dublin would do just as well. Michael Byrne, what is your opinion on the matter?’

Byrne paused before he replied. He pulled a small branch from the tree above him and peeled the twigs off one by one as he made his points.

‘I think it should be a bomb. We’ve got four lads just discharged with good records from the Royal Engineers. They’ve served all over the place and they know all there is to know about making bombs. Two of them have settled in Hammersmith, not far from the bridge. Two more have come back to Dublin and they’re living beyond the brewery.’

He paused. A sudden gust of wind ruffled the surface of the lake and sighed its way around the trees that guarded its presence.

‘I think it has to be Dublin,’ he said finally. ‘It will be easier to organize in our own city. A bomb early in the morning of Jubilee Day. There must be some bloody statue we could blow up. Then the Castle people will be worried all day in case there are more to come. Maybe even in London. I think that is going to be our best plan.’

He held his hand to his lips suddenly.

‘What was that noise?’ he said ever so softly. Three pairs of ears bent to one side, straining for the noise of policemen on the march, soldiers on patrol. Behind them the lake continued to murmur, the roar of the waterfall on the other side occasionally breaking through.

‘Nothing, Michael, it was just the wind in the trees,’ said Finn, rather loudly.

‘We’re all too jumpy. Even here.’ Byrne began demolishing another branch. ‘There have been too many arrests in the last six months. Too many of them the right people too. I think we should go. Could you both draw up some possible targets before the next meeting on the beach at Greystones?’

Finn and Docherty left at five-minute intervals to return to their homes. Byrne heard their steps gradually fading on the path back to the village. He turned and looked at the dark waters of the lake. For months now he had suspected that Finn was an informer. He had set the meeting up as a trap. All informers were encouraged to press for the most extreme action, to provoke the terrorists to the most violent measures. He had learnt this from two members of his own organization whom he had encouraged to sell their services to Dublin Castle. The information he obtained from their instructions was invaluable; the payments the two men received strengthened the terrorists’ arsenal. Within two days, he thought, possibly three, news of this meeting would have reached the authorities. He hoped they would believe what Finn had to tell them.

For Michael Byrne, implacable opponent of English rule, rated by his enemies as the cleverest foe they had, intended to make a noise in London all along.

He knelt down to the water’s edge and splashed his face. He made the sign of the cross. He tapped his jacket pocket to make sure his pipe was inside. Then, like the others, he left the lake to make his plans.

Lady Lucy Powerscourt had been practising her German for some days.

‘Don’t worry too much if there are pauses while you turn the English into German in your head,’ her husband had told her. ‘Old Miss Harrison wanders in and out of the last fifty years, so a second or two here and there won’t make any difference.’

She began with the rituals of sympathy. ‘I was so sorry to hear about your brother’s death, Miss Harrison,’ she said very properly, sitting in the same chair in the same salon that her husband had sat in the week before.

‘Death comes for us all,’ the old lady said firmly, ‘maybe it will come for me very soon. Nobody can escape it in the end.’

‘I’m sure you will be with us for a long time,’ said Lady Lucy brightly. ‘You look remarkably well to me.’

The old lady smiled a thin smile. The lines on her face suddenly multiplied as she did so, running down in crooked lines from the corner of her mouth.

‘I believe you wished to talk to me about my brother.’ The old lady looked up at Lady Lucy. ‘I find it so much easier to talk in German. You speak it very well, my dear. When we came here I found it so very difficult to learn English. Such an illogical language, English.’

Lady Lucy remembered her husband’s advice to her as their carriage rolled up the curving driveway of Blackwater House. ‘The most important thing, Lucy, is to get her on to her brother and his worries as soon as you possibly can. If you go in for the normal pleasantries her mind will have left before you get to the business. There is not a moment to be lost.’

‘My husband tells me that your brother was worried about something in the weeks before he died.’ Lady Lucy leant forward to make sure Miss Harrison could hear her. She wished she had a notebook. Now she understood why all those policemen were forever writing things down.