Death on the Holy Mountain lfp-7

by David Dickinson

  ‘She was a fishmonger

  And sure ’twas no wonder

  For so were her mother and father before,

  And they each wheeled their barrow

  Through streets broad and narrow,

  Crying cockles and mussels, alive alive oh.’

  The child gave a great sigh as she finished as if it had all been a terrible ordeal. James, accompanying them on the piano, gave her a stern look. A makeshift stage, used in grown-up amateur dramatics, had been erected at one end of the room. To one side was a table with poles around it holding black cloth that ran round three of the four sides. It was open facing the audience. A set of steps led up to it and in front was what looked like a bath tub, also draped in black. Powerscourt wondered if there was going to be a mock execution.

  ‘She died of a fever,’

  the final singer, a dark-haired little girl with a very serious expression, put tremendous emphasis on the word fever,

  ‘And no one could save her,

  And that was the end of sweet Molly Malone,

  But her ghost wheels her barrow

  Through streets broad and narrow,

  Crying cockles and mussels, alive alive oh.

  Alive alive oh, alive alive oh,

  Crying cockles and mussels, alive alive oh.’

  Many of the audience were humming along to the final chorus. The three girls bowed solemnly and departed through the door at the back of the room. Great giggling and laughter could be heard coming from the children awaiting their turn.

  ‘Didn’t they look sweet, Francis,’ Lady Lucy whispered to Powerscourt. ‘I hope their parents are here to see them.’

  Next up was a boy of about ten years, in a dark blue sailor suit. He delivered a short extract from a speech by Daniel O’Connell at Tara, home of the legendary High Kings of Ireland, which declared that the country was making its way towards reform with the strides of a giant. Seven hundred and fifty tousand people, the boy assured them, had listened to O’Connell that day.

  There was a round of applause. ‘Well said, wee Jimmy!’ ‘You tell them, son!’ ‘Three-quarters of a million, by God!’ James was back at the piano now, two girls of about thirteen standing demurely on either side of him, but turned to face the spectators. James, Powerscourt noticed, was dressed entirely in black, black trousers, a black jacket that was slightly too small for him. Only the shirt was white.

  ‘Down by the salley gardens my love and I did meet,’

  they sang in unison,

  ‘She passed the salley gardens with little snow-white feet.

  She bid me take love easy, as the leaves grow on the tree;

  But I, being young and foolish, with her

  would not agree.’

  The girls were old enough, Powerscourt thought, to dream of love, but too young as yet to have known it.

  ‘In a field by the river my love and I did stand,

  And on my leaning shoulder she laid her snow-white hand.

  She bid me take life easy, as the grass grows on the weirs;

  But I was young and foolish, and now am full of tears.’

  Another prolonged round of applause followed, loud cries of Bravo and Encore coming from the back of the room. How innocent it all was, Powerscourt thought, and how charming. How far removed from the world outside where thieves broke in and stole, and blackmail letters came in through the front door. Now he saw the significance of the table and the black drapes. Two tall boys in dark shirts were dragging a third, dressed in rags, his hands tied in front of him, to the front of the table nearest the audience. Everything about him, his posture, his gestures, spoke of defiance. He waited until there was complete silence in the Long Gallery.

  ‘My lords’ – the words were spoken with extreme contempt as the prisoner stared with hatred towards the front row – ‘you are impatient for the sacrifice and my execution. Be yet patient. I have but a few more words to say.’ The guards pulled viciously at his arms at this point. ‘I am going to my cold and silent grave. My lamp of life is nearly extinguished; my race is run, the grave opens to receive me and I sink into its bosom. I have but one request to ask at my departure from this world – it is the charity of its silence. Let no man write my epitaph, for as no man who knows my motives can now vindicate them, let not prejudice or ignorance defame them. Let them and me repose in obscurity and peace and my tomb remain uninscribed until other times and other men can do justice to my character. When my country takes her place among the nations of the earth, then, and not till then, let my epitaph be written. I have done.’

  With that the two guards pulled him away, crying, ‘To the scaffold!’, ‘Death to the traitor!’, ‘Hurry up with the drawing and quartering, for God’s sake!’ but the boy managed to turn and face his executioners one last time. ‘Robert Emmett, speech from the dock after his conviction, Dublin, 1803.’

  A vast cheer went up. ‘Hurrah for Emmett!’ ‘Hurrah for Johnny Mason!’ ‘Didn’t he do well!’

  Powerscourt suddenly remembered Uncle Peter’s description of Parnell’s funeral and his final journey through the streets of Dublin. The coffin and the vast crowds accompanying it had stopped for a minute or two outside the house in Thomas Street to pay their respects to the martyred Robert Emmett. Lady Lucy was whispering very close to his ear as the applause and the shouts went on.

  ‘Was he a bad man, Francis, this Robert Emmett?’

  ‘No,’ said Powerscourt, ‘yes. Depends whose side you’re on.’

  Now it was the turn of the girls again. Three willowy sisters, aged from ten to fourteen, with identical blonde hair came to the front of the stage and held hands. James was playing something very romantic on the piano with the soft key pressed down as far as it would go so the music sounded as if it came from far away.

  ‘I will arise and go now and go to Innisfree,’ said the smallest sister,

  ‘And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made,

  Nine bean rows will I have there, a hive for the honey-bee,

  And live alone in the bee-loud glade.’

  The audience had gone very quiet now. ‘And I shall have some peace there,’ the middle sister carried on,

  ‘for peace comes dropping slow,

  Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings;

  There midnight’s all a glimmer and noon a purple glow,

  And evening full of the linnet’s wings.’

  The eldest sister picked up the baton. She had a beautiful speaking voice, distinct and clear.

  ‘I will arise and go now, for always night and day

  I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore;

  While I stand on the roadway or on the pavements grey,

  I hear it in the deep heart’s core.’

  James finished his piano solo with an elaborate twirl. The sisters bowed low and said as they rose, in unison, ‘William Butler Yeats.’

  Voices could be heard, breaking through the clapping. ‘Peace comes dropping slow, that’s really good,’ said a woman from the second row. ‘Linnet’s wings?’ said a cynic at the back. ‘Did you ever hear linnet’s wings? I ask you. Bloody poets.’

  Then the room was suddenly filled with activity. Most of the children seemed to have a task to perform. Some went and closed the great shutters and pulled the curtains tight to block the late afternoon sunlight that had been pouring into the room, leaving long golden patches on the floorboards. Before the lights went out Powerscourt saw two children, dressed in very tattered clothes, lie down on the floor formed by the black draped table. Other children were putting some bulky objects into the bath tub. Others still brought wooden planks and laid them carefully from the edge of the table nearest the audience down into the bath tub. Four solemn children, two boys and two girls, took up their position at each of the corners of the table, each carrying a single lighted candle.

  There were two great doors in the middle of the Long Gallery. One of these now opened to reveal a tall young man of
about fifteen. He too carried a lighted candle and he had a small book with his words written in front of him. All he lacked, Powerscourt thought, was a bell.

  ‘These are the words of a Protestant gentleman farmer on the potato crop of 1846,’ he began. The young man checked his words.

  ‘On 1st August I was startled by hearing a sudden rumour that all the potato fields in the district were blighted; and that a stench had arisen emanating from their decaying stalks. I immediately rose up to visit my crop and test the truth of this report, but I found it as luxuriant as ever, in full blossom, the stalks matted across each other with richness and promising a splendid produce. On coming down from the mountain I rode into the lowland country and there I found the leaves of the potatoes on many fields I passed were quite withered and a strange stench filled the atmosphere adjoining each field of potatoes.

  ‘Five days later I went back up the mountain again. My feelings may be imagined when, before I saw the crop, I smelt the fearful stench. No perceptible change except the smell had as yet come upon the apparent prosperity of the deceitfully luxuriant stalks, but the experience of the past few days taught me that all was gone and that the crop was utterly worthless, the luxuriant stalks soon withered, the leaves decayed, the disease everywhere.’

  The audience was whispering anxiously. ‘My God, it’s the famine.’ ‘What’s James doing with these children and the famine, in God’s name?’ ‘What are they going to do now, for heaven’s sake?’

  The answer came from right behind them. A tall girl with bright red hair had crept round to the back of the audience and was reading her account, the candle steady in her left hand and casting a dramatic light on her hair.

  ‘An eyewitness sent to Skibereen in December 1846,’ she began, ‘found that there had been as many as one hundred and sixty-nine deaths from starvation in that little town alone in the previous three weeks. His report contained the following detail. On Sunday last, 20th December, a young woman begging in the streets of Cork collapsed and was at first unable to move or speak. After being given restorations and taken home to her cabin she told those helping her that both her mother and father had died in the last fortnight. At the same time she directed their attention to a heap of dirty straw that lay in the corner and apparently concealed some object under it. On removing this covering of straw the spectators were horrified on beholding the mangled corpses of two grown boys, a large proportion of which had been removed by the rats while the remainder lay festering in its rottenness. There they had lain for a week or perhaps a fortnight.’

  ‘Oh, my God!’ ‘How frightful!’ Lady Lucy was holding Powerscourt’s hand very tight.

  The next voice came from the centre of the stage. Another young man, another book, another candle, another report from the front line of the famine.

  ‘The parish priest of Hollymount, County Mayo,’ the young man said clearly. ‘Deaths, I regret to say, innumerable from starvation are occurring every day. The bonds of society are almost dissolved. The pampered officials, removed as they are from scenes of heart-rending distress, can have no idea of them and don’t appear to give themselves much trouble about them – I ask them in the name of humanity, is this state of society to continue and who are responsible for these monstrous evils?’

  By the light of the candles on the stage the audience now saw two girls moving across the arena. The smaller one leant heavily on the shoulder of the taller one, her clothes in tatters, her hair streaked with dirt, her feet bare and bleeding, her face, what they could see of her face, ashen. They moved slowly and began to climb the steps at the back of the table.

  ‘This is the Black Room,’ said an invisible voice. Was it meant to be God? Powerscourt wondered. Surely not in a story like this. ‘This is a County Roscommon workhouse in the year of our Lord 1848.’ The rest of Europe was having revolutions, Powerscourt remembered. In Ireland people were dying in their thousands, or tens of thousands. ‘The Black Room,’ the voice went on, ‘was where people were brought to die. Up to seven people were permitted in here at any one time.’ As he spoke the girl in rags lay down on the floor to join the other two bodies already there. ‘Nobody would disturb you in here. No efforts would be made to stop you dying.’

  Now another voice came from underneath the shutters in the centre of the gallery.

  ‘This is a Justice of the Peace, writing to the Duke of Wellington,’ the young man said. ‘Six famished and ghastly skeletons, to all appearance dead, were huddled in a corner on some filthy straw, their sole covering what seemed a ragged horsecloth and their wretched legs hanging about, naked above the knees. 1 approached in horror and found by a low moaning they were alive, they were in a fever – four children, a woman and what had once been a man.’

  The audience were silent now, as if transfixed. A girl took up the story from one of the great doors opposite.

  ‘An eyewitness from County Cork in April 1847 described how: Crowds of starving creatures flock in from the rural districts and take possession of some hall door or the outside of some public building where they place a little straw and remain until they die. Disease has in consequence spread itself through the town. There are now over four hundred afflicted with fever and dysentery. The graveyard has its entrance in the centre of the main street, and in several instances when the gates were closed and parties seeking to bury the remains of their friends, the coffins were placed on the wall and abandoned.’

  Now a boy from the back of the room.

  ‘Every avenue leading to and in this plague-stricken town has a fever hospital having for its protecting roof the blue vault of heaven. Persons of all ages are dropping dead in each corner of the town, who are interred with much difficulty after rats have festered on their frames.’

  A girl from the back of the Black Room.

  ‘A parish priest with five hundred out of three thousand dead in his congregation, most with no coffins. They were carried to the churchyard, some on lids and ladders, more in baskets, aye and scores of them thrown beside the nearest ditch, and there left to the mercy of the dogs which have nothing else to feed on.’

  Another young man, wearing a white coat and flanked by two burly attendants, now made his way across the stage and up the stairs into the death chamber. ‘Medical staff,’ the invisible voice resumed its melancholy commentary, ‘made regular inspections of the Black Room.’ The white-coated figure knelt down and inspected two of the wretches. He shook his head slowly. The two attendants picked up the first body and brought her over to the edge where the planks were waiting. ‘It was necessary, to avoid infection, to remove the bodies of the dead as soon as possible.’ The corpse was rolled down the planks into the bath. The second one followed immediately afterwards. The white-coated young man and his colleagues left. A girl wearing an apron and carrying a sack approached the bath and began emptying large quantities of what looked like flour over the bodies. ‘The workhouse had no coffins,’ the invisible voice went on, ‘lime was thrown over the bodies as they were dumped in a pit outside the window of the Black Room and they were eventually buried in an unknown grave.’ The voice stopped for a moment and then resumed. ‘Over one million men, women and children died in Ireland in the famine.’

  There was a pause for about five seconds. The tableau on stage remained absolutely still. The dead did not attempt to rise from the bathtub. Then there must have been some signal from James for the vicar rose to his feet.

  ‘Let us pray,’ he began. ‘Let us pray for the souls of all those who departed this life in that terrible famine. Let us pray for their descendants, those who came after, whose lives were so deeply affected by the tragedy that had devastated their families. Let us pray for all those in poverty or sickness or hunger in this unhappy world today.’ The vicar paused to let his congregation address their Maker.

  ‘Lighten our darkness, Oh Lord,’ he said, moving into the closing words of Evensong, ‘and defend us from all perils and dangers of this night. May the Lord bless you and keep you, may the L
ord make the light of his countenance shine upon you and be gracious unto you and give you His peace, in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Ghost, Amen.’

  The Reverend Cooper Walker turned to the young people on stage. ‘And now,’ he said, ‘let there be light!’ As the curtains were pulled and the great shutters opened, he turned to Sylvia Butler. ‘I’ve always wanted to make that announcement,’ he said, ‘let there be light, never have, until today.’

  Richard Butler raised his voice above the hubbub. ‘Interval time!’ he cried. ‘Punch! Cake! Jellies if you’re small! In the garden!’

  On his way out Powerscourt bent down to pick up one of the famine scripts that had fallen on the floor. It was written in a very distinctive, rather ornate hand, and had the reader’s name at the top and ‘Good Luck, James’ at the bottom. He put it in his pocket. Outside he joined Lady Lucy and found Johnny Fitzgerald standing by himself with two glasses of punch, one in each hand.

  ‘I was holding this one for a chap,’ he explained, looking suspiciously at the drink, ‘but he seems to have disappeared. Ah well, duty calls.’ He began work on the glass in his left hand. ‘Hasn’t Young James a fine eye for the dramatic,’ he went on. ‘Quite moving it was, all those voices coming at you from all quarters. Maybe he’ll be a great impresario fellow like that chap Beerbohm Wood over in London.’

  ‘Tree,’ said Powerscourt.

  ‘Tree?’ said Johnny, peering at the glass in his left hand, now bereft of liquid. ‘Are you obsessed with trees now, Francis? Not content with bumping into them, you’re now referring to them at every opportunity.’

  ‘Tree,’ said Powerscourt, ‘the theatrical fellow, he’s called Tree, not Wood. Beerbohm Tree.’