Death on the Holy Mountain (29 page)

‘For God’s sake, Francis, will you give the thing here,’ said Johnny Fitzgerald, holding out his hand. ‘We want to find the bloody place this year, don’t we? If
you’re in charge of the map, we’ll end up going round in circles like these sheep here.’

Powerscourt handed it over. ‘According to this,’ said Johnny doubtfully, ‘there’s a wood with a little river going through it about a mile or so up the road. Inishturk
House, the first of these places, is in the middle of that. Quite how we find a wood in this empty space I don’t know, but that’s what the man says.’

On their left now they could see that the ground had been cut open to reveal black sections where turf had recently been cut. Turf, Powerscourt remembered, the free fuel of the poor, used to
heat their homes and cook their food, always taking a long time to dry out before it would burn properly. He remembered an aunt of his who had refused to have it in the house on the grounds that it
was tainted with Catholicism, only good for the poor Papists of the west, not the respectable Protestants of Dublin who had the sense to burn proper English coal in their fires. After five minutes
or so they came upon the wood, a sad affair now, the trees diseased or stunted, battalions of crows nesting in the upper branches. The little river was behind the house, gurgling its way towards
the Atlantic. An overgrown path, heavy with brambles, led off to their right.

‘The house must be down there, Francis,’ said Johnny, folding up his map. ‘What do we do now?’

‘I think we stop and listen for a moment or two. If we don’t hear any noises, you and I will go and have a look.’

The two cavalrymen stayed on guard at the entrance. Powerscourt and Fitzgerald tiptoed very slowly down the little track. Their feet seemed to be making a vast amount of noise. The brambles
scratched their clothes. After a hundred yards Johnny tapped Powerscourt on the arm. Just visible ahead was the roof of a fairly large house. One or two of the slates seemed to have come off and
one of the gutters was hanging down the side of the upper wall. Fifty yards further and the whole thing came into view. Powerscourt could just make out the words Inishturk House on a faded sign to
the left of the front door. He made gestures with his hands to indicate that he was going to go round the left of the building and Johnny should take the right. He passed what had once been a
tennis court or croquet lawn, a lopsided net full of holes still in place in the centre, but with only one post still standing. All the windows on the ground floor were enclosed by shutters that
had once been white and were now a grubby grey. On the floor above there were curtains with holes in them. Towards the back of the house he came across a window that stood clear with no shutters.
Spiders had been having a competition on the inside to see who could produce the most webs to stretch across the panes. He rubbed at the glass to get a better view. All he could see was a large
dresser, looking in pretty good shape, he thought, and a stove where the cooking surfaces were thick with dust. At the back he met Johnny Fitzgerald, trying to rub the dirt off his hands.

‘What the devil do you think you two are doing, creeping round this house like a couple of burglars!’ An old man with a dog and a shotgun in his hands was addressing them from the
front of an outhouse about thirty feet away. Powerscourt and Johnny both reached instantly for their right-hand pockets and then stopped. Was the old man the guard, the sentry for the people
holding the hostages? Were they in the stables rather than the house? Was there another building further back where the captives lay?

‘We might ask the same of you,’ said Powerscourt pleasantly. ‘Just what are you doing wandering round the place with a gun in your hands?’

‘I’m no burglar,’ said the old man, ‘not like you two, though quite what you’d find to steal here I don’t know. I’m the caretaker here, they pay me a
little to keep an eye on the place.’

‘Well, we work for Dennis Ormonde back at Ormonde House,’ said Powerscourt. ‘We’re trying to find his wife. She’s been kidnapped. All the empty houses round here
are being inspected.’

‘I heard about the missing wife, and that’s a fact,’ said the old man. ‘Come to think of it now, you don’t look very much like burglars.’

‘Have you seen any strangers about the place,’ asked Johnny, ‘some people with a couple of women in tow?’

The old man spat neatly between his feet. ‘Couple of women, did you say? Single woman would be a bloody miracle round here. Something went wrong with the breeding business in these parts.
Males everywhere. Hardly any women. I think it’s the peat in the water myself. One woman would be a bonus. Two would be a gift from God. No, I haven’t seen anything suspicious at all
now.’

Powerscourt wondered if he was telling the truth. The party could still be hidden round the back somewhere. ‘We’ll be on our way then, Mr . . .?’ said Powerscourt.

‘O’Connell’s my name. Daniel O’Connell,’ the old man replied. ‘Named after the Liberator, you see.’

‘Splendid, Mr O’Connell,’ said Powerscourt, handing over five shillings as a mark of good faith and loyalty to the memory of the Liberator.

‘Tell me this, Mr O’Connell,’ said Johnny, ‘are there any pubs round here at all?’

‘Pubs? Pubs?’ The old man laughed and spat on the ground once more. ‘There’s no more chance of finding a pub in this district than there is of finding a woman. Less, I
should say. You’ll have to go back to Louisburg or further on to Leenane to find a bloody pub and that’s a fact.’ The old man inspected Johnny carefully. ‘I could sell you a
bottle of home-made, if you follow me, for a half a crown, so I could.’

Johnny handed over the money. The old man disappeared into his shed and brought back an innocent-looking dark brown bottle that might once have contained beer. ‘There you go,’ he
said. ‘I’ve always found that if you drink enough of the bloody stuff you forget about the women altogether.’

The next house was a couple of miles further down the road. The sun had gone in and dark clouds were coming in from the sea, threatening rain later in the day. They were climbing deeper into the
hills, the great empty wastes rolling across on either side of them. Johnny announced that Masons Lodge was just off the road and proposed that they should ride past it and then double back for an
inspection. Rain was just beginning to fall as Powerscourt and Fitzgerald set off back down the road with Jones the cavalryman bringing up the rear. Bradshaw was in charge of the horses.

Masons Lodge was in much better repair than the previous one. Every tile was in place on the roof and the pale grey shutters on the ground floor looked as if they had been painted last year.
This time Powerscourt and Fitzgerald checked the outbuildings first, stabling for four or five horses, a carriage house, and a large barn half filled with turf. Then they watched the house for ten
minutes. Nobody came out to greet them. No old man with a dog and a gun tottered forth from any of the outbuildings. Powerscourt motioned his little band forward. He was trying to think what he
would do if he was holding the two women. One person on permanent sentry duty watching the road. Once you see four people go past you go into emergency routine. Close all the shutters. Pull the
curtains upstairs. Tell the women they will be shot if they speak a word. Put out the fires if there are any. Was that what had happened here? He checked the rubbish bins. They were empty.
You’d need to be really careful to carry your rubbish to some outhouse, he thought. Still he wasn’t sure.

Johnny Fitzgerald had found a window whose latch had not been fastened. He began to draw a venomous-looking instrument from a pocket in his jacket. Powerscourt shook his head. If they were
wrong, a hand coming through a window could be a death sentence. Always in his mind’s eye he included Lucy among the captives. He motioned to Johnny to be still for five minutes. They watched
the house as if their lives depended on it. A couple of rooks came and settled on the roof. Then Powerscourt signalled to Johnny to watch his back. He walked very slowly up to one of the windows on
the ground floor. The shutter was sealed tight. Then he tried another one. Sealed tight again. The third one had a shutter whose bolt was broken so it did not fit as tightly as it should to the
window. Through a small sliver of light Powerscourt peered into the room. It was empty. He thought he could make out dust sheets spread over the furniture to keep it in good condition while the
owners were away. He continued his tour and found that once again the kitchen window was in the clear. There was no sign of any living soul inside. Were they all upstairs? He glanced up and
wondered if he could find a ladder in one of the stables. Then he made up his mind.

‘Don’t think there’s anybody here, Johnny. Let’s go.’

‘Christ, Francis, your voice made me jump then, coming after we’d been quiet for so long.’

As a final thought Powerscourt strode up to the front door and rang the bell. They could hear it echoing round the empty house. As they set off again down the road, Johnny Fitzgerald munched on
one of his chicken sandwiches and gave a further bulletin from his map. ‘The road’s going to go between the Sheffry Hills on our left, boys, and some mountains that seem to be called
Mweelrea on our right. Bloody odd name, Mweelrea, might be a form of low life in one of Dickens’s novels, forever skulking in the dark by the docks and the East End. I expect it means
something in Irish, though God knows what.’

‘Please, sir,’ said Bradshaw, the trooper from Norfolk, ‘it means bald hill with the smooth top, sir. In Irish, sir.’

‘How the devil do you know that?’ asked Johnny. ‘Did they teach you Irish in your primary school in the Fens?’

‘No, sir. I like climbing mountains, sir. I’ve got a book about them in the west of Ireland, sir. That’s how I know what it means.’

‘You should have been with us on Sunday,’ said Johnny, whose memories of the climb were mixed. ‘You could have gone to the top of bloody Croagh Patrick in your bare feet if
you’d wanted to. Bloody mountain.’

‘I was on patrol, sir, or I would have done it.’ Powerscourt thought they were absurdly young, these cavalrymen, Bradshaw very slim and wiry, Jones a more solid citizen with wavy
brown hair.

‘Anyway,’ Johnny referred back to his map, ‘after a couple of miles more of this barren stuff we come to a lake sitting between the hills. On the far side of that there’s
a little river and a very long drive leading down to Butler Lodge. Or so the map says, and grandfather Ormonde hasn’t let us down yet.’

The rain stopped and the sun came out again. Looking behind him from a spur in the road Powerscourt could see Croagh Patrick in the distance. It must dominate the view of over half of County
Mayo, he thought, popping into sight sometimes when you least expected it.

Now the road was twisting along the side of the lake. Small ripples crossed the surface of the water. On their left the hills were bathed in sunlight, the green and brown of the land as desolate
as any they had passed that day. On the far side of the lake the hills were in shadow, dark, almost black. There was a sudden burst of noise. A lone horseman, riding very fast and going the other
way, crashed through the middle of their party. When he saw them the young man tried to increase speed and put a hand over his face. Within a minute he was gone, racing away in the direction of
Louisburg.

‘Do you think that might have been a messenger, Francis?’ said Johnny. ‘Some news being sent back to enemy headquarters? I don’t think he was very pleased to see us, mind
you. He didn’t have the air about him of a man who was going to stop and pass the time of day.’

‘Damn!’ said Powerscourt. ‘Don’t you see, Johnny, that we’re a kind of message? Four men, two of them cavalry troopers, out on this road at this time. You
don’t have to be Daniel O’Connell to work out that we are probably looking for the women. That young man will send a message back to where he came from when he can after he’s
delivered his first one. There’s a party of four on the road, lads, and they’re coming this way.’

‘Let’s get a move on,’ said Johnny, ‘we can’t have far to go now.’

At one point the mountains on either side seemed to meet in the distance. It seemed impossible for the little road to pass through. There simply wouldn’t be room. Then the perspective
changed and a narrow slit opened up for the four horsemen.

Johnny consulted his map again. They were surrounded by tall trees now. ‘In a hundred yards or so,’ he said very quietly, ‘there should be a drive or a road to the right. That
leads to Butler Lodge.’

They had passed the end of the lake now. As they trotted up to the turning to the right Powerscourt motioned them forwards. After a couple of hundred yards they found a track on the left. After
another hundred yards they came to a little clearing in the wood, great piles of logs all around them.

‘I think we should make this our base for now,’ said Powerscourt. ‘We can’t see the road but a man stationed halfway down could. Bradshaw, young man, how good is your
eyesight?’

‘It’s good, sir,’ said the young man. ‘They test us for it before we enter the regiment. My captain lent me a telescope, sir, just for this expedition. He said it might
be more useful to me than it would be to him on patrol round the streets of Westport.’

‘Excellent,’ said Powerscourt. ‘Do you think you could climb further up this hill or mountain or whatever it is and see if you could catch a sight of this house for
us?’

‘Of course,’ the young man replied and began digging about in his luggage for the telescope. He slung it round his neck and disappeared into the trees.

‘Jones,’ said Powerscourt, ‘two things. Can you get back on your horse and ride down into Leenane? Book us four rooms in the Leenane Hotel. I think Dennis Ormonde may have sent
word ahead of us. When you get back here I want you to go down the path until you can see the main road. In an ideal world you might be able to make your way through the trees to find a position
where you can see the entrance too. Just watch what goes in and comes out, if anything.’