Death on the Holy Mountain

by David Dickinson

  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 Lord 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.’

  ‘Well, I knew it was something like wood anyway.’ Johnny had started on his other glass. ‘Will you look at this lot, Lady Lucy, it must be the memory of the famine. They’re eating everything in sight. You’d think they hadn’t been fed in weeks.’

  Sure enough the Butler spread was disappearing fast. Four whole cakes had been polished off in minutes. Three great salvers of sandwiches had nothing left. Two of the smaller children had collected three bowls of jelly each and were scoffing them happily underneath the tables where the food was set out.

  ‘Johnny, Lady Lucy,’ said Powerscourt, ‘one of the things the Archbishop told me concerned the fires of hatred that still burn strong in the minds of some of the younger priests and Christian Brothers because of the famine. Do you think Young James feels the same thing? That famine stuff was pretty powerful. Do you suppose something dreadful happened to his family back then?’

  ‘I think it’s more likely he just has an eye for the dramatic, Francis,’ said Lady Lucy. ‘I have a cousin like that, always putting on amateur theatricals and rushing off to see the latest plays.’

  Powerscourt resisted the temptation to say that any member of Lucy’s family involved in amateur dramatics would always be able to command a large cast.

  ‘I think I’ll just get hold of a glass of this punch before the second half,’ said Johnny, ambling off towards the drinks department. ‘Maybe I should get two in case that fellow comes back. You never know.’

  ‘Do you know what was in that bath tub, Francis?’ asked Lady Lucy. ‘Those little girls could have been hurt rolling down into it.’

  ‘No, they couldn’t, Lucy. Whole thing was filled with pillows. I looked at the time. Pillows everywhere.’

  Lady Lucy tucked her arm into her husband’s as they climbed the stairs. ‘Let’s hope there’ll be some more songs and romantic poetry, Francis. Much nicer than the political speeches and all that.’

  Some of Lady Lucy’s wishes were granted, and some were not, in Part Two of Young James’s entertainment. A lad of about ten with the voice of a choirboy gave a spirited rendering of ‘The Minstrel Boy’. A lively reading from a novel by George Moore followed. James himself was involved in the finale. Powerscourt noticed with interest that the candles were back again, for the young man came to the front of the stage, surrounded by three girls, all with lighted candles. James waited for complete silence and then he began.

  ‘When you are old and grey and full of sleep,

  And nodding by the fire, take down this book,

  And slowly read, and dream of the soft look

  Your eyes had once and of their shadows deep.’

  The first girl looked at James, blew out her candle and left the stage. James was now looking at Lady Lucy.

  ‘How many loved your moments of glad grace,

  And loved your beauty with love false or true,

  But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you,

  And loved the sorrows of your changing face.’

  Powerscourt squeezed Lady Lucy’s hand. The second girl had now blown out her candle and she too departed. James’s eyes moved off to another female.

  ‘And bending down beside the glowing bars,

  Murmur, a little sadly, how love fled

  And paced above the mountains overhead

  And hid his face amid a cloud of stars.’

  Powerscourt wondered if the words bitch goddess were about to appear but they did not. The third girl blew out the third candle of lost love and left. James said, ‘William Butler Yeats’ in a voice of great reverence and bowed. There was tumultuous applause and cheering. All the children came back on stage and formed a great semicircle. James returned to the piano. They gave a united rendering of ‘Molly Malone’ with the audience belting out the chorus. As the last Alive Oh was fading away, people beginning to rise from their seats and stretch themselves, there was a loud knock on the door in the centre of the Long Gallery. As it opened two footmen stood there, carrying a large parcel almost six feet across and about four feet high.

  ‘This was dumped at the bottom of the drive, sir,’ said the senior footman. ‘We thought you’d like to see it straight away.’ Everybody in the room, looking at the shape of the package, wrapped in brown paper secured with heavy string, knew what it was,

  ‘My God, it’s one of Butler’s stolen paintings.’

  ‘It’s been recovered, thank the Lord.’

  ‘One of the pictures, it’s come back.’

  One or two people cast admiring glances at Powerscourt as if he were responsible for the miracle but he was apprehensive, very apprehensive.

  ‘Let’s have a knife and a pair of scissors, by God,’ said Butler, advancing towards his property.

  Powerscourt had shoved his way through the crowd to stand at his side.

  ‘Don’t open it now, Butler, for heaven’s sake. Not in front of all these people.’

  ‘Damn it,’ said Butler, ‘it’s my house, it’s my picture. I’ll open it whenever I bloody well like.’

  ‘Don’t you see,’ Powerscourt pleaded, ‘there’s going to be some trick or other, maybe some horrible message contained in the thing. Please don’t open it now. Do it later. Somewhere quieter.’

  Everybody in the room was staring at the parcel left at the bottom of the drive. The scissors and knife had appeared. Powerscourt made one last plea.

  ‘Please do it later, I beg you, when all the visitors have gone. You can open it then.’

  ‘I’m going
to open it now, damn your eyes,’ said Richard Butler, beginning to hack at the brown paper and string. When it was finally clear, he placed it on a chair for everybody to see before he turned and had a look at the contents.

  In one sense this certainly was one of the stolen paintings. It was the one called The Master of the Hunt. There was Butler’s Court, looking elegant as ever. There were the riders in their scarlet coats and the horses ready to ride off. There in the background were the hounds. But the faces were different. Richard Butler’s had been replaced with a passable likeness of Pronsias Mulcahy, proprietor of Mulcahy and Sons, Grocery and Bar. The rider to his left now had the disagreeable features of Father O’Donovan Brady. Two of the Delaneys of the solicitors’ firm of Delaney, Delaney and Delaney, down in the town square, were sitting happily on horseback to one side of Pronsias Mulcahy, formerly Richard Butler. Diarmuid McSwiggin of MacSwiggin’s Hotel and Bar was there, and Horkan the man who sold agricultural machinery and offered drink in his bar. The cast of the original painting had been replaced with the leading citizens of Butler’s Cross. The Town had replaced the Big House. ‘I’m sure Papa was in the middle of that picture,’ said a small Butler, his voice breaking the shocked silence that filled the room, ‘but he’s changed into that nice Mr Mulcahy who sells you sweets down in the square.’

  ‘My God,’ said Richard Butler and fled the room. Powerscourt and Johnny Fitzgerald managed to remove the painting before anybody could stop them. Sylvia Butler, assisted by Lady Lucy, ushered her guests down the stairs and out the front door. By the time they had all gone Richard Butler had reappeared in his Long Gallery. He looked as if he had been weeping.

  ‘My God, Powerscourt,’ he said, ‘you were right and I was wrong about the painting. Forgive me. But what, in heaven’s name, does it mean?’

  ‘Mean?’ said Powerscourt. ‘It’s a message. Your time is up. You’re not wanted. Others are going to replace you.’

  ‘I think it means something else too, Mr Butler,’ said Johnny Fitzgerald.

  ‘And what might that be?’

  ‘It’s this,’ said Johnny Fitzgerald. ‘It’s the changing of the guard. Welcome to the new Ireland.’

  PART THREE

  PILGRIM’S PROGRESS

  I do most earnestly beseech you, as Irishmen, as citizens, as husbands, as fathers, by everything most dear to you, to consider the sacred obligation that you are called upon to discharge, to emancipate your country from a foreign yoke, and to restore to liberty yourselves and your children; look to your own resources, look to those of your friends, look to those of your enemies; remember that you must instantly decide; remember that you have no alternative between liberty and independence, or slavery and submission.

  Theobald Wolfe Tone

  9

  Lord Francis Powerscourt took himself for a walk by the Shannon the next morning. A mist was rising slowly from the waters. He was thinking about the returned painting and the havoc it had caused in Butler’s Court. For Richard Butler, he felt, it must have been like a lash from a whip across his face, an assault this time not upon the faces of his ancestors but on himself and his family, and all the current residents of the Big House. There was, he thought, one small consolation. The painting left at the bottom of the drive was a copy, he was sure of it. He had checked it again early that morning. Where had it been painted? The unknown artist must have taken a good look at Messrs Mulcahy, Horkan, MacSwiggin and the rest of them. Had he been hidden away in the store rooms of the grocery or some unused part of Father O’Donovan Brady’s disagreeable residence? Nobody, he was sure, nobody who was in on the secret would tell him a thing. Down there in the square where they sold sweets to the Butler children, that was now enemy territory. Then another terrible thought struck him. If there was one copy there could be another. Who would be the new faces next time? Would The Master of the Hunt effect a second coming into Butler’s Court, adorned with the faces of Theobald Wolfe Tone and Robert Emmett and Charles Stewart Parnell and the martyred heroes of the nation’s past? Even worse perhaps, would they replace the Master and his companions with the servants, the steward and the footmen now riding off to hounds, the cook and the parlour maids bringing up the rear? God in heaven.

  He met Lady Lucy on his way back.

  ‘Francis,’ she said, smiling rather feebly at him, ‘is there nothing we can do for these poor people? It’s like a funeral in there only the corpse is still in the building. I’ve seldom seen people look so miserable. The only consolation is the children, they think the whole thing is the most enormous joke. They’ve a theory the other pictures will come back soon with famous cricketers in them or stars from the stage and the music hall.’

  ‘I’ll have to go and talk to Richard Butler about it all,’ said Powerscourt. ‘Maybe he’ll show me the original blackmail letter now, though I rather doubt it. Have you seen him this morning, Lucy? How is he bearing up?’

  ‘I saw him a few minutes ago. He was picking at his breakfast as if the sausages were poisoned and the tomatoes about to explode. Oh, I nearly forgot, Francis, there’s a letter for you, forwarded from London. I don’t know if it’s important or not.’

  ‘“Dear Lord Powerscourt,”’ her husband read aloud, ‘“Thank you for sending me the details of the stolen paintings. I am writing to inform you of the results of our fishing expedition in the American art market with the New York firm of Goldman and Rabinowitz. You will recall that they offered eight Irish ancestor portraits for sale, four full-length and four half. So far, they have received sixteen queries about the works, all of them serious, none of them over-concerned about price. For the time being the dealers are fobbing off their potential clients with excuses about complications with customs, that sort of thing. But Goldman’s have asked me to secure a dozen or more of these pictures with all possible speed in case their clients lose interest. I have therefore placed advertisements in a number of Irish newspapers offering good prices for such material. Mr Farrell, of Farrell’s Gallery, is also looking for such portraits for me. Maybe, Lord Powerscourt, we have discovered a new niche in the art market! I trust the Irish air is refreshing, Yours etc, Michael Hudson.”’

  ‘What does that mean, Francis?’ asked Lady Lucy.

  ‘I don’t think it takes us much further forward apart from finding this market for Irish ancestors in the United States. But if our thieves reply to the next round of advertisements with some of these stolen paintings, we’ll be home and dry. We’d just have to wait until somebody turned up with them under their arm, as it were, and then we could all go home.’

  Powerscourt found Richard Butler half an hour later sitting in his study, the door closed, staring at the horses on his walls, a bottle of Bushmills and a crystal glass sitting on the little table to the side of his desk.

  ‘Powerscourt,’ he said, and his voice was the voice of a beaten man, ‘do you have any comfort for us all this morning?’

  ‘Well,’ Powerscourt replied, trying to sound more hopeful than he felt, ‘perhaps you’d be able to show me that letter you had from the thieves now, the blackmail letter.’

  Butler shook his head. ‘Can’t do that,’ he said, the words slurring slightly, ‘especially now, can’t do it. Swore an oath, you see. To my father. Promised to keep all we had.’

  ‘Let me try again in a different way then. Was there a deadline in the letter, a date by which you had to do whatever it is you’re meant to do? I think there must have been a deadline.’

  Butler nodded and poured himself a Johnny Fitzgerald sized slug of his whiskey. ‘Yes, there was, bloody deadline.’

  ‘Two more things then, if I may,’ said Powerscourt. ‘Whatever it was that they asked you to do, have you done it?’

  Butler shook his head once more. ‘Haven’t done it. Couldn’t do it. Told you. Impossible.’

  ‘My other question then, has the deadline passed?’

  ‘No, it hasn’t,’ said Butler, ‘not yet.’

  ‘But it’s close now?’

&n
bsp; ‘Very close.’

  ‘How close is very close, Butler?’

  ‘Can’t tell you that either. Not safe.’

  ‘What do you mean, not safe? Have they threatened violence? Have they said they’ll take away some people rather than some pictures?’

  ‘Can’t say.’

  ‘Can’t say, won’t say. Damn it, man, how am I supposed to find out what’s going on if I don’t know most of it?’

  ‘Sorry,’ said Butler, ‘can’t say.’

  ‘Let me tell you a couple of things which I can say at any rate. That picture that came yesterday is not the one that was taken all those weeks ago. It’s a copy. And, if you think about it, the thieves have got very cocky. I think they must have brought the artist into the town to look at the people and paint their faces unless Pronsias Mulcahy or one of the Delaneys is a dab hand with the paintbrush. He may have spent a couple of days here, staying perhaps in the best room in MacSwiggin’s Hotel and drinking in his bar with the locals. Word may leak out in the next few days. You know, Butler, how everybody in these Big Houses thinks the servants listen in to everything they say? Well, I think the boot’s on the other foot now. We must all listen in to whatever they’re saying whenever we can, without being too obvious about it. You never know what we might find out.’