At twenty past two the cart trotted slowly forward towards the harbour. There was just room to turn it round to face back towards the shore. The two men got out and waited by the steps that led down to the water. One of them was smoking a pipe as if he spent every evening like this, waiting for guns to come out of the sea.
As the boat drew up there was a brief greeting. Then the dark jerseys unloaded the packages from their little boat. One thick oilskin packet went into the inside pocket of the man with the pipe. Powerscourt thought that was probably money. Then came the heavy ones. Powerscourt saw to his astonishment that two wooden coffins with brass handles were being placed in the back of the cart. Two more followed. Hay and the tarpaulins were quickly strewn on top of them. Coffins. What on earth were they doing with coffins? Surely the Germans weren’t exporting dead bodies to Ireland for some final Celtic cremation up in the black hills of Wicklow? The Irish might want to put their enemies into wooden boxes but they were perfectly capable of making their own. Then it struck him. As the rowing boat set off back to the yacht, the Germans pausing only to give a solemn salute when they left the steps, Powerscourt thought he had the answer. He swore violently to himself as the cart trotted gently along the bay and passed the Imperial Hotel, unaware of the tall figure hiding behind his curtains to watch their passing.
20
Powerscourt couldn’t decide about the horse. Should a mounted Powerscourt set off in pursuit of the coffin-laden cart? Or should it be a single infantryman running along the country roads? He had a very thick coat for the night was cold. He had stout boots in case the going got rough. He had heavy leather gloves. He took another look at his quarry. The cart, little clouds of pipe smoke drifting up into the moonlight, had reached the end of the village and was heading south on the coast road. He sped down the stairs and led his horse in pursuit. The binoculars were his only weapon. He didn’t like to think what might happen if the enemy found out they were being pursued. He smiled grimly to himself as he remembered that they had the coffins ready for him, an unknown body to be buried in an unknown grave. He wondered for the tenth time since he first saw them what was inside the coffins that arrived from the sea so secretly, now trotting serenely along the lanes of Wicklow.
The hearse was going quite slowly, no more than five or six miles per hour. Occasional bursts of conversation or laughter drifted back towards Powerscourt trotting very slowly on his horse. It was called Paddy, not a name that would have found favour with Old Mr Harrison and his collection of classical heroes. Hercules, Powerscourt thought, that’s what you would want your horse to be called on a night like this.
The road was still skirting the coast, the moonlight bright on a silver sea. Owls were calling from the woods ahead. They were passing the walls that surrounded a great estate. Powerscourt remembered playing there as a child. Just beyond the main entrance, a proud and elaborate pair of gates topped by a couple of stone lions, there was a church, flanked by a handsome vicarage and a row of empty houses. My God, that’s clever, Powerscourt thought to himself. They’re going to bury the coffins in a Protestant cemetery. Nobody in authority would think of looking there. Catholic ones, of course, but the dead of the Church of Ireland would never be suspected of harbouring German coffins with their unknown cargo.
He left Paddy tied to a tree some hundred yards from the church and tiptoed forward to get a better view. These were grave robbers in reverse, he said to himself, come to leave rather than take, their mission unknown, the coffins to stay with their dead companions until Judgement Day was closer. The Irishmen had their spades out and were digging fast but quietly. The first layer of turf was carefully removed and laid in neat piles beside the headstone. Then the dark Wicklow earth was thrown as quickly as they could into a mound. Powerscourt could hear the dull thud as the spade hit the coffin.
Like figures in a dance the men moved automatically towards the two ends. Powerscourt wondered if they were undertakers by profession. After a couple of grunts the old coffin was hauled out of the hole. A further period of digging followed. The hole was being made deeper. They’re superstitious, Powerscourt thought. They’re going to leave the body in its grave. They’re just going to put a couple of German coffins in underneath. Neither man spoke. Some bird or animal howled in the distance, a protest at the desecration of the dead. They stopped digging. Two of the coffins were lowered into the open grave. The original coffin was put in on top. The earth was replaced. Powerscourt was getting pins and needles in his leg. He hoped the horse was all right, waiting by its tree. Only two of the seaborne coffins were interred. There must be two left. Powerscourt wondered if another grave was going to be opened up, or if they were destined for a different resting place.
Powerscourt had to know what was inside those dark boxes. He searched desperately in his pockets. He didn’t have a penknife. He didn’t even have a screwdriver. He doubted if he could open one of those coffins with his bare hands and the stones that lay around the paths. He swore to himself. If only Johnny Fitzgerald was here. He always carried a strange miscellany around in his pockets.
It seemed the burial party was about to move on. Powerscourt drew back into the shadows as the two men mounted the cart once more. There was a certain amount of business with matches being struck to relight the pipe. No smoking in church or cemetery, he thought. Take off your hats when you go in and make the sign the of the cross.
As he strained forward from his tree, Powerscourt’s prayers were answered. The gravediggers were having a conversation. The words floated back to Powerscourt across the cemetery.
‘Do you think those rifles will be safe in there, Michael?’ asked the first gravedigger. The man called Michael laughed. ‘Oh yes, they will. But not as safe as where we’re going to take the others.’
So that was it. Rifles, German rifles, the latest German rifles were in the coffins. Deadly rifles, Mausers or Schneiders, with the very newest sights, no doubt, capable of killing a man at eight hundred yards or more. Snipers’ rifles. He remembered his dream. With one of these an accurate marksman, perched on top of Admiralty Arch, could pick off somebody in a carriage leaving Buckingham Palace before they were half-way down the Mall.
The deadly cortege moved off away from Greystones towards the mountains. Powerscourt crept quietly into the churchyard. The grass on the top had been perfectly replaced. Two bunches of withered flowers had also been left to conceal the disturbance. They must have brought those with them, he thought, hidden on the back of the cart. He felt renewed respect for his adversaries. George Thomas Carew, the tombstone said, of Ballygoran, 1830-1887. Powerscourt had eaten his strawberries as a child. The Carews said they were the finest strawberries in Ireland, eaten with lashings of home-grown cream on the Carews’ immaculate lawn, Carew children playing happily on the grass, George Thomas Carew presiding happily at the head of his table. Powerscourt remembered the smell that followed Mr Carew wherever he went. He smoked a pipe. His children used to joke that he smoked it in his sleep. May he rest in peace, he said to himself, tiptoeing back towards his horse. One of the Carew daughters had been very pretty, he remembered. She must be married now with a family of her own. Pray to God she never hears what has been done to her father’s grave.