‘It’s not up, Francis, it’s down,’ said Johnny Fitzgerald, grinning at Lady Lucy. ‘Down towards Galway, the other direction entirely. I’m coming with you, Francis, to make sure you get on the right train. We don’t want you ending up in Bundoran or Ballina, for God’s sake. I’ve just been to look up the details of the trains. There’s plenty of time but we need to get moving. I’ll check out the hostelries while you’re down on your knees with the Archbish, confessing your sins or being accepted into the true faith. Maybe they’ve got a Cathedral Arms or the Bishop’s Mitre down there where a chap could quench his thirst. I’ve always wanted to have a drink in a pub called The Cathedral Arms. It’ll make a change from the saloon in MacSwiggin’s.’
Lady Lucy sat on the steps in front of Butler’s Court and watched her men being driven off to the station. Why, she wondered, was Johnny Fitzgerald going with Francis today? He wouldn’t normally accompany him on a mission to an archbishop. Francis might be pretty hopeless about directions and that sort of thing, but even he could make his way on to a train. He’d been managing that for years now. Was Francis in some sort of danger? Even going to an archbishop, for goodness sake? Was Johnny going as some sort of bodyguard? Going to keep Francis safe? Then another terrible thought struck her and refused to go away. That accident on the bicycle, was it really an accident? Lady Lucy wasn’t an expert on bicycles but she was sure there must be ways you could tamper with the things, loosening the saddle so the rider would fall off or unscrewing the bolts that held the wheels to the frame. Maybe you could do something with the brakes, she just wasn’t sure. Throughout the morning she tried to put these fears out of her mind but they refused to go away. By lunchtime she knew that the knot was back, the knot in her stomach, the knot she had lived with for years, the knot she thought had gone away, the knot of anxiety and terror that her beloved might be in danger and might never come back from his journeys.
Father Fintan O’Shaughnessy, SJ, the Archbishop’s Chaplain, was one of those irritating priests who don’t walk. They glide. They shimmer, Powerscourt thought, as if the Holy Ghost has placed a slim buffer between them and the ground that ordinary mortals walk on. Father Fintan was definitely shimmering this afternoon as he led Powerscourt down a long corridor lined with Irish landscapes and religious paintings which led to the Archbishop’s study.
The Most Reverend Dr John Healey was a great bullock of a man with grey hair, about six feet four with broad shoulders. One of his more irreverent curates once said that he looked like a cattle dealer from Mullingar. Certainly, Powerscourt felt, Dr Healey would be in the vanguard of his flock, an onward Christian soldier marching as to war. Powerscourt bowed slightly and shook Dr Healey’s hand. There was a reproduction of a Renaissance crucifixion on the wall behind his desk. More Irish landscapes lined the walls. Perhaps, Powerscourt thought, he liked collecting paintings.
‘Lord Powerscourt, welcome to Tuam,’ he boomed as if speaking to some mighty congregation. ‘Have you been here before?’ He waved his visitor to the chair opposite his own.
‘I don’t believe I’ve had the pleasure,’ Powerscourt replied.
‘Well, you must look round before you go, if you have time. A fine little town.’ The Archbishop looked closely at Powerscourt’s face as if sin or salvation could be discerned there by people like archbishops who knew what they were looking for.
‘There’s a definite likeness, you know,’ he said with a smile. ‘I met your father years ago now when I was at Maynooth, at the college there. He was a fine man, your father. You remind me of him.’
Powerscourt smiled. Maynooth, he remembered, was the principal seminary and Catholic college in Ireland. His father, a man with a deep interest in human nature, had collected parsons and priests and padres of every description. He always said he enjoyed their company, whatever their particular faith might be. Maybe a younger Dr Healey had been one of those.
‘But come, Lord Powerscourt,’ the Archbishop opened his hands out in front of him, ‘to business. You must tell me of your concerns.’
Powerscourt told him everything. He told him about the stolen paintings and the letters that had accompanied them. He explained that he did not know the precise content of the letters, but said they were blackmail letters and that they contained a terrible threat if the contents were revealed to a third party. He mentioned the fury of Dennis Ormonde of Ormonde House and his threat to import one hundred Orangemen, possibly more, to guard the houses of the gentry of the west.
The Archbishop had been taking notes until the mention of the Orangemen. Then his jaw dropped slightly and he stared at Powerscourt.
‘One hundred Orangemen,’ he boomed once more, ‘one hundred of them! God bless my soul!’ His hands began stroking the great silver crucifix that hung from his neck. ‘I’ll come back to them in a moment if I may, Lord Powerscourt. Let me try to make clear in my mind the story so far, as it were. Some twenty portraits, all of them male, all of them the predecessors of these great landlords, have been stolen, and some Old Masters. Blackmail notes have been dispatched demanding we know not what. Do you know, Lord Powerscourt, if any of these blackmail threats have been met? Have the Butlers or the Moores paid up?’
‘I wish I knew the answer, Your Grace. I think not. There is an air of desperation abroad in all these houses now, I think. There may be a deadline for payment. Again, I do not know. I suspect they are waiting for the threats at the end of the letters to be carried out. And they are hoping against hope that the thieves will be caught before they can carry out their threats.’
‘These Orangemen now,’ the Archbishop was taking notes again, ‘you said they are, for the moment, a threat rather than a reality. Is that so? And, if so, under what circumstances will they come?’
‘My apologies, Your Grace, I should have made myself clearer. Ormonde has sent to Dublin Castle for an inspector and a colleague from the Special Branch, or the Intelligence Department to come and investigate the thefts. Ormonde is giving them a week to find the perpetrators. If they fail, the Orangemen and their bands will set forth from Enniskillen. They could be here in a day. I believe Ormonde intends to charter a special train to bring them down.’
‘Just one point, Lord Powerscourt, if I may, you’re not serious when you talk of bands? There are all kinds of things I can put up with as a proper Christian pilgrim but Orange bands are not one of them. Please tell me you jest here.’
‘I was speaking metaphorically, Your Grace, I have no idea if they propose to bring a band or not. But if you think about their activities, those Orangemen are scarcely able to move about in any numbers in Belfast and their other strongholds without a band. It would seem to be part of the Orange mind.’
‘You’re right, Lord Powerscourt,’ said the Archbishop sadly, ‘they are hardly capable of leaving their front doors without those terrible Lambeg drums. Maybe they will bring a band. God save Ireland.’
The Archbishop frowned. His hands moved faster round his crucifix now.
‘By my calculations, Your Grace, these Dublin Castle men should have arrived three days ago. There are four days left.’
‘I can see your concerns, Lord Powerscourt. You were certainly right to come to me. Tell me, do you have particular fears or is it just the general situation that concerns you? And do you envisage any particular role for the Church in these events?’
Powerscourt paused for a moment. ‘I think,’ he began, ‘that the situation becomes so combustible with the arrival of the Orangemen that anything might happen. But let me try out, if I may, some possibilities. Your Grace will, no doubt, be able to think of more. Look at it from the beginning. Suppose those Orangemen arrive in Westport station in their special train. At least they won’t have had to share their carriages with anybody else. The most logical way for them to reach Ormonde House is to walk or march – even Dennis Ormonde hasn’t enough carriages to carry a hundred of them there. Suppose they do bring a band and march out down the Mall in Westport towards the Louisburg road. Do you think they would reach the end of the town without bricks or bottles being thrown at them? I doubt it. Then suppose they arrive in Ormonde House and are put up in one of those great barns and outhouses out the back. How long before the buildings go up in flames? Or suppose these Orangemen go out drinking at one of those pubs like Campbell’s underneath Croagh Patrick. They’re nearly as fond of drinking as they are of marching. How long before a fight or a brawl breaks out and spreads? How long before the Protestant houses with the paintings guarded by the Orangemen are torched? Or boycotted? Trouble could come in any one of a number of ways, Your Grace.’