Powerscourt looked up the slope. He could just see the horse, still waiting by its tree. With the horse he could go back to his hotel or he could try to complete his mission. He had heard the cart going on up the path. Then the sound had been blown away by the wind. If he waited an hour or so he could ride after them in the hope of discovering where the other rifles were buried. Then he would know all there was to know, all except, he reflected wearily, the names of the two men, the dates of their proposed assassinations, the destinations of any bombs.
Afterwards he told Lady Lucy that he hadn’t thought he would ever make it back to the path on the hill. Every step was painful with his bad ankle. His head throbbed. The blood was still flowing on to his coat. The various bruises around his body ached with a throbbing pain.
He crawled the last hundred yards to the horse, inching his way up the slope, digging his bruised elbows into the hard ground, stray rocks doing him fresh injury on his via dolorosa. He thought of his children to ease the pain. He thought of sitting in some quiet English garden with Lady Lucy, green lawns spread in front of them, a river or a lake at the bottom. Sometimes he thought he was hallucinating and Lucy was actually beside him, helping him up the slope.
‘Don’t worry, Francis, not much further to go. Just a few more steps, my darling.’ Lady Lucy was mopping the blood from his face, stroking a soothing salve on to the bruises that pulsated all over him.
At last he reached the horse. He leaned against Paddy’s side for a full five minutes, thanking the horse for waiting for him. He knew it would be painful getting up into the saddle. It was excruciating, the pain shooting up his left ankle in blinding flashes. Then he began to ride very slowly up the hill in pursuit of the cart. He hoped he would find another church. He thought he might collapse inside it, sanctuary for the wounded man, respite from his enemies.
Our Lady of Sorrows, the name perfectly matching his mood, held no secrets for him. The gravediggers must have run out of flowers by now, he thought. But then maybe any flowers would have looked out of place in this desolate spot. The eternal rest of Martha O’Driscoll, 1850-1880 had been disturbed. Poor woman, Powerscourt thought, she had only lived for thirty years before having to wait for the Second Coming up here with the mountains glowering down on her and the wind whistling through the damaged trees. And then she got company, German rifles come to disturb the long sleep of the dead.
Powerscourt set out to ride back to the hotel. The horse seemed to know the way. Once or twice he nearly passed out on the road down the mountain. At a quarter to seven in the morning Paddy trotted slowly into the stables of the Imperial Hotel. Powerscourt noticed that the wind had caused some damage to the roses in the night. Red petals lay strewn across the lawn like patches of dried blood.
As he staggered upstairs and fell asleep the first train of the morning was pulling out of Greystones station on its journey up the coast towards Dublin. Sitting very quietly, looking out to sea, a man lit a fresh pipe.
22
‘Gentlemen, gentlemen. Could I have your attention, please.’
A portly man with a huge handlebar moustache had climbed on to a bench in the home side’s dressing room. The creases on his cricket flannels were razor sharp, his white sweater was immaculate.
‘Hopwood’s the name, Aston Hopwood. I’m your captain for the day.’
He surveyed his companions, some still lacing up their boots, others rehearsing imaginary strokes with great concentration.
‘I’ve got to do the batting order before the toss,’ Hopwood said. ‘Someone here called Powerscourt? Opening batsman?’
Lord Francis Powerscourt raised a nervous hand in acknowledgement. Nearly a fortnight had passed since his ordeal in Ireland and his aches had almost gone. He had passed on all he knew about the German rifles lying in Irish graves to Dominic Knox of the Irish Office. Knox had been effusive in his thanks.
‘Welcome to the team, Powerscourt.’ Hopwood boomed. ‘Smythe? You happy to be the other opening man?’
An elderly gentleman who looked as though his cricketing days should have been over long ago nodded his consent.
‘Where’s the Bank of England?’ Hopwood demanded of the changing room. The Bank was nowhere to be seen.
‘Bloody Bank,’ said Hopwood bitterly. ‘He’s always late. Anyway, I’ll put him in at Number Three.’
Gradually Hopwood worked his way down the batting order. Powerscourt noticed that James Clarke, William Burke’s bright young man, was down to bat at Number Nine. Clarke’s whites had not received as much attention as those of his colleagues. The trousers were too short and his sweater too small.
‘What do you know about the opposition, Hopwood?’ asked a slim young man who was a fast bowler. Powerscourt was to learn later that he was known as Ivan the Terrible because of the speed and ferocity of his deliveries.
‘They’re a party of Americans come to tour here this summer called the Philadelphians. Bloody Americans.’ Hopwood shook his head, remembering a recent coup where an American firm from New York had removed a valuable contract from right under his nose. ‘I don’t know much about them as cricketers. Expect they’ll run about a lot and make a great deal of noise. I don’t know what they all do for a living. There’s a couple of money people, an academic from somewhere called Princeton, maybe a preacher or two.’
Aston Hopwood departed to the cricket square for the toss. The pavilion was new, built in the mock Tudor style, and it nestled among the tall trees that surrounded the little ground. Rows of chairs had been placed on either side of it and further chairs or benches were dotted about the outfield. To one side was a huge marquee with rows of servants hurrying to and from the great house bearing trays of food and consignments of glasses.
Powerscourt felt acutely nervous. He hadn’t expected such a large crowd to witness his humiliation. Lady Lucy was talking to William Burke, taking a tour of the little ground.
‘It’s so pretty, this cricket ground, isn’t it,’ said Lady Lucy. ‘Look, here are the umpires coming out with the two captains. Do you know who the umpires are, William?’
Burke inspected the two men in the white coats. ‘The one on the left is a Bishop, Lady Lucy, Bishop of Oxford, I believe. They say he’s a coming man. And the other one is a policeman, Chief Constable of Oxfordshire, name of Bampfylde.’
‘Mr de Rothschild isn’t expecting any trouble, is he? I mean, they seem very grand personages to be the umpires, William.’
‘There was a terrible fight here some years ago, Lucy.’ William Burke laughed. ‘A man from one of the tea importers had a very good lunch. He’d not been drinking his own produce at lunchtime, he had rather a lot of Rothschild’s vicious punch. The stuff tastes perfectly innocuous but it’s lethal, Lucy, absolutely lethal. In the third or fourth over after lunch, there’s a huge appeal and the umpire says the tea importer has been caught behind. Finger goes up, normal sort of business. Not Out! shouts the tea man. Yes you are, says the umpire. No I’m bloody not, says the tea man. Then the tea man advances down the wicket and knocks the umpire out cold. There was a general scrimmage all round. The match had to be called off. Ever since then old Rothschild has tried for very important men as his umpires. He even got the Governor of the Bank of England to do it one year. Only trouble was, he was half blind and had to be replaced after lunch. The poor man could hardly see a thing.’