By eight o’clock Johnny Fitzgerald was getting thirsty, muttering to himself the names of the pubs he knew along the river, the Dove, the Blue Anchor, the Old Ship as if it were a final blessing on the dead.
‘Who the hell was Zachariah?’ he asked Powerscourt at one of their occasional conferences. ‘I’ve seen quotations from the old bugger about five times in the last half an hour.’
‘Old Testament,’ said Powerscourt. ‘Prophet. Long white beard.’
Fitzgerald looked at him doubtfully but returned to his stretch of tombs. There was a breeze coming off the river, rustling the leaves of the trees, whispering its way through the tombstones. At nine o’clock they failed to notice a small boy who had climbed into the cemetery by a tree at the southern end and hid himself in its branches, keeping a careful eye on the two interlopers.
Powerscourt was thinking about Lucy and the journey they would take when all of this was over. Maybe the Italian Lakes, he said to himself, remembering Old Miss Harrison in Blackwater House describing her holidays there all those years ago. Charles William Adams, he read, Mary Nightingale, Albert James Smith, beloved husband of Martha.
Maybe the Italian coast, Portofino in its fabulous position right on the sea’s edge. Somebody had told him about Corsica, wild and mountainous but with magnificent scenery and great peaks rising out of the very coastline itself. Anne Louisa Jackson, Catherine Jane O’Malley, Thomas Piper, Gone but not Forgotten.
Maybe we shouldn’t go abroad at all, he thought. Maybe we should just go about our lives very quietly rejoicing in each other and the fact that we’re still alive and not in a place like this. The roll call of the dead went on, the names tolling in his head as he passed them by.
Peter John Cartwright, Rest in Peace, Bertha Jane Hardy, George Michael Simpson, Gone to his Father in Heaven.
‘Francis, Francis!’ Johnny Fitzgerald was beckoning to him from about two hundred yards away. Powerscourt ran the whole way, his spade over his shoulder, hoping that the long search was over at last.
‘Here he is,’ said Fitzgerald softly, ‘Dermot Sebastian Freely, born 18th February 1820, passed away 30th May 1897. I am the Resurrection and the Life.’
Powerscourt looked carefully round the cemetery. He saw no living soul, only the birds rising and swooping over the rich pickings of Belgravia. In his tree the small boy snuggled into his branches, scarcely daring to breathe.
Resurrection was coming early for Dermot Sebastian Freely. In a few minutes Fitzgerald was lying on top of the grave, great piles of earth on one side of him, screwdriver in hand.
‘One,’ said Fitzgerald, placing a large screw between his teeth. Powerscourt was gazing round the four corners of the West London Cemetery.
‘Two,’ said Fitzgerald. Powerscourt turned from his inspection and peered down into the open grave.
‘Three,’ said Fitzgerald rather indistinctly as the third screw was clamped between his teeth. The small boy saw that the two men had their backs to him now. The fisherman’s jersey wasn’t looking round the place any more. He knew what they were doing, opening up the grave. The Christian Brothers at school had told him this was a mortal sin. Very slowly, very quietly, he began to make his way down the tree onto the path outside the walls.
‘Four,’ said Fitzgerald, placing the screws carefully on the ground beside his spade. Powerscourt made his way to the other end of the coffin. They began to pull at the lid as hard as they could.
The small boy had reached the ground. He looked around him quickly. Then he began to run as fast as he could to find his father. His Pa and his new friend from Dublin would be pleased with him.
‘Heave,’ said Fitzgerald, panting hard. ‘Heave for God’s sake.’ Powerscourt put his feet on the bottom section of the coffin and pulled with all his might. Very slowly the lid came off, inch by tantalizing inch. The coffin did not want to reveal its secrets. Then it came off completely, throwing Powerscourt and Fitzgerald back on to the grass. Dermot Sebastian Freely was not inside.
36
Platoons of pink clouds were drifting across the sky, floating gently towards the west and the setting sun. Powerscourt and Fitzgerald looked at each other. Then they stared, mesmerized, at the contents of the grave. Dermot Sebastian Freely’s coffin contained no mortal remains, but four long packages, wrapped in brown paper. At the bottom were a number of small boxes. Mauser Gesellschaft, Berlin, said the legend.
Here, thought Powerscourt, here is the final, the conclusive proof of the links between the German secret society and the Irish revolutionaries. He had watched these coffins come ashore in the middle of the night in the little harbour of Greystones, borne into land by muffled oars from a great yacht out at sea. He had followed them on their sinister journey into the Wicklow Mountains just a month ago. Now he met them again, sent from Ireland to this enormous cemetery to lie among the English dead, before being collected and sent on their deadly mission.
Fitzgerald opened one of the boxes. The bullets looked sinister in the gloaming, the dying sun glinting off the tips as Fitzgerald held them up to the light. Powerscourt opened one of the packages. The rifle was shorter than the ones he had seen so often in India, but beautifully made.
‘Right, Johnny. The most important thing is to get these rifles away from here. Somebody can watch over Freely’s grave later to see who turns up. Let’s get these damned things out of the cemetery. We can put the coffin back in the grave later.’
Carrying two rifles each, Powerscourt and Johnny Fitzgerald set out for the entrance to the cemetery, some two hundred yards away. The light was fading fast now, the long shadows from the tall tombstones fading into the ground. Suddenly Powerscourt saw a tree moving by the rear wall. He tapped his friend on the arm and put two fingers to his lips. They were no longer alone. Two men were climbing slowly down to the ground.
Powerscourt and Fitzgerald ducked behind a pair of ornate gravestones. It may have saved their lives. The first shot sounded very loud, echoing round the dead. The bullet whipped into one of the tombstones and ricocheted off towards the opposite wall.
‘Christ!’ whispered Fitzgerald to Powerscourt, pulling a pistol from his pocket, ‘these people aren’t very friendly. Must be colleagues of the late Mr Freely.’ With that he crawled off into a long patch of shadow to the left.
Powerscourt saw that the opposition were still advancing. He dropped to the ground and took careful aim with his gun at the man closest to him. He heard a scream. He didn’t wait to see how badly hurt the man was. He gathered up the rifles and sprinted half-way towards the rabbit warren of Belgravia and its mausoleums.
There were another two shots. Johnny Fitzgerald must be firing, Powerscourt thought, covering my position. Another bullet sang into a tombstone a few feet to his left. This was getting too close for comfort. He peered round the side of his tombstone and fired at his opponent, less than fifty yards away. He missed. He gathered the rifles again and set off. Belgravia was only a few feet away when he heard the shot. Then he felt the bullet pass through his left shoulder. Blood was pouring down the fisherman’s jersey. He staggered into the shadows of one of the mausoleums and let the rifles drop to the ground. He peered out through the iron grille at the cemetery in front of him. Bats were squeaking all around, flapping dementedly at the night air. The rooks and the crows were fleeing the cemetery of the dead and the dying as fast as they could.
Powerscourt sat on the ground and tried to staunch the blood. He looked out. His adversary was advancing very slowly towards him, unsure which mausoleum he was in. Powerscourt took careful aim and fired. Damn, Damn. He had missed. The wound must be upsetting his aim. He had given his position away. I’m damned, he thought to himself, if I’m going to end my days in a bloody cemetery. I want to die in my bed. He worked his way backwards, inching slowly, painfully away from his previous position.