Death on the Holy Mountain (34 page)

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:

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.