Death on the Holy Mountain

by David Dickinson

  ‘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.’

  ‘What do I do if see anybody coming out, sir? Do I arrest them?’

  ‘No, no, not yet,’ said Powerscourt hastily, ‘just keep watch for now. Johnny and I are going to see if we can get a sight of the place. We’ve got binoculars but the person with the best view is going to be young Bradshaw up the hill.’

  Powerscourt and Fitzgerald made their way back down to the road and turned left away from the entrance. After a hundred yards or so the trees thinned out and they saw another lake in front of them. ‘Look, Francis,’ said Johnny, pulling his friend off the road. ‘That lodge must be very near the edge of this damned lake. If we follow the reeds in the water to the end of the lake and round to the other side we should be able to get a sight of the place. We might have to go right round through one hundred and eighty degrees but it would be worth it, surely.’

  ‘Let’s go,’ said Powerscourt.

  It was just after five o’clock in the afternoon. There were about four hours of daylight left. The cross-country journey round the lake was not difficult. Occasionally the ground turned soft and boggy and the mud level crept slowly up their trousers. Powerscourt kept glancing back over his shoulder to check whether he could see Butler Lodge. If he could see it, somebody in Butler Lodge could see him. But most of the time all he could spot was the lake and the mountains behind it. Now they were further away he was struck by the steep rise of the mountain behind the house. It seemed to shoot up out of the lake at an angle of about sixty degrees. Then they came to another wood and Johnny Fitzgerald pulled out his glasses. He inched his way to a gap between the trees.

  ‘Not yet, Francis,’ he whispered, ‘can’t be far to go now.’

  After another hundred yards he looked again. He motioned to Powerscourt to pull out his binoculars. The two men lay on the ground fiddling with their apertures. Through them, across the lake they could see the side of what must be Butler Lodge. It was a handsome Georgian building, well-proportioned, looking, Powerscourt thought, about the size of a decent hotel. There were great windows looking out over a well-kept lawn down to the lake. Behind it the mountains shot up towards the sky. And, coming in a regular flow from two of the chimneys, smoke was rising to mingle with the pure air of Connemara.

  Cathal Rafferty spent three afternoons in a row watching the Head Gardener’s Cottage. He didn’t think Protestants would change their routines for the pilgrimage to Croagh Patrick. Nobody came. Nobody went. He wondered if the two young people were going earlier, or maybe later. He thought of playing truant from school one afternoon so he could begin his vigil around lunchtime, but decided that another beating from Brother Riordan and another summons for his parents to attend the school was too high a price to pay. One part of Father O’Donovan Brady’s instructions he had successfully carried out. Through a cousin in the town who worked part time in the kitchens up at Butler’s Court he had learned that the young man was called Johnpeter Kilross and that he was single, and the young woman was Alice Bracken, married, with her husband away in India or some other foreign part. Cathal felt the Father would be pleased with him. He did not know what appealed to the priest about this kind of information. He supposed he was curious, like himself. For young Cathal had been thinking a lot about what he had seen through the bedroom window. He couldn’t make any sense of it. Why were they taking all their clothes off unless they were going to have a bath – he knew that the gentry went in for baths – and he hadn’t seen any sign of one of those things.

  So here he sat, in the last lesson of the Monday after Reek Sunday, listening to Brother Riordan droning on about the rivers of Ireland. Quite what use it would be to anybody, acquiring knowledge of these waterways, Cathal had no idea. The bloody man was sticking a great map all over the blackboard now with these damned rivers marked on it. The Shannon, the wretched fellow was saying, pointing halfway down his map. Were they even now setting off for the Head Gardener’s Cottage, ready for the fray? The Liffey, running into Dublin, serving Ireland’s greatest city, Brother Riordan blathered on. Perhaps they were in the cottage already? Perhaps they were beginning to take their clothes off and he, Cathal, was not there to see it. The Lagan, which flows into the sea at Belfast Lough – did the man never stop talking, even for a minute? – and nourishes many of the great industries of that northern city. And now? Here Cathal’s imagination failed him. Only reality would do, and reality was half an hour or more away when the last bell of the day would be rung and the boys would be free to leave.

  Then Father Riordan did a terrible thing, quite against all the rules in Cathal’s view. He took down his map, told his class to take out their exercise books, draw a map of Ireland in outline and fill in the routes of the three rivers they had been discussing. Not so, Cathal thought. You, Brother Riordan may have been discussing these rivers. We, the boys, have not. It was a low trick asking people to fill in a map of Ireland when they mightn’t have been paying full attention. The Brother should have said at the start that the class would have to do an exercise. Then they would have tried to pay attention. Desperate glances were exchanged all around the room. Anybody whose map was deemed unsatisfactory, Brother Riordan declaimed from his desk, would have to stay behind after school.

  Cathal opened his exercise book. Page after page contained harsh comments from Brother Riordan. ‘Poor,’ ‘Very poor,’ ‘Why were you not paying attention in class? See me after school.’ Cathal often felt that his progress through the place was marked out by the critical remarks in his exercise book and the lashings of the strap. It wasn’t fair. He opened a new page and began to draw what he thought was an outline map of Ireland. It wasn’t too bad, except that the south-western section, which shou
ld have been filled with the long inlets of Kerry and Dingle, had turned out completely round. And the north was square, completely square like the top of a biscuit box. The Shannon, on Cathal’s page, began life at the top of the square and flowed into the sea south of Belfast. The Liffey entered the Atlantic Ocean north of Galway and the Lagan was a pathetic dribble which seemed to begin at Wicklow and terminate at Waterford. Cathal looked at his map. There was, he felt, something not quite right about it. And here was Brother Riordan, strap in hand, coming to inspect his work as most of the class filed out. The Christian Brother looked carefully at the map. His finger ran experimentally down his strap. His face turned red. ‘Get out!’ he shouted at Cathal. ‘Get out of my sight! You’re so stupid it’s a waste of time trying to teach you! Get out now!’ Cathal needed no second invitation. Before the Brother had finished his tirade he was out of the door and heading at full speed for the demesne.

  When he reached the Head Gardener’s Cottage he tiptoed round the front to look for any signs of life. All seemed quiet. Then he went on the detour that brought him behind the hedge close to the bedroom window. He thought he could hear sounds coming from inside. There was a gap in the curtain once again. Very slowly, so as not to draw attention to himself by a sudden movement, he rose to his full height and peeped in the window. Nobody had any clothes on. The pair of them were as naked as the day they were born. The man seemed to be lying on top of the girl and jolly uncomfortable it looked too. Cathal dropped down slowly behind his hedge. He thought the young man might have been looking out of the window. He ran back to Butler’s Cross as fast as he could. After all, he reflected as he went, he had a good start. Anybody trying to follow him would have to put their clothes on first. Surely, he said to himself, this has to be worth another five shillings from Father O’Donovan Brady. Maybe even ten.