‘Trouble might indeed be coming, in battalions. What a terrible situation, Lord Powerscourt. The original wrong is done to the Protestants in the Big Houses. I don’t approve of their presence here any more, I think their day is done, but having your ancestors stolen off your walls must be terrible. It’s as if their past has been violated in front of them. I know how I would feel if somebody stole some of my Irish landscapes and I’m not even descended from them. I think I can sense where you see the Church might fit in, but tell me your thoughts first, if you will.’
‘I do not see,’ said Powerscourt, ‘how I can ask anything from you at all, Your Grace. You have been more than kind in hearing me out today and at such short notice too. I am not a member of your faith. I no longer live in this country. But I do care about it, about Ireland, I care passionately about it, and I pray that the peace should not be broken and more misery heaped on a population who have endured far too much of it already in the last hundred and twenty years. The people, Your Grace, will look to the Church for guidance. Moral leadership in Ireland today rests with you and your bishops and priests. The Church is more powerful today than it has ever been. When these outrages start, or rather if these outrages start between Orangemen and Catholics, the local priests will need guidance. You know far better than I do about the various ranges of opinion in the priesthood in your diocese, but I suspect that some of them would condemn any violence and others would condone it, either by word or by inaction.’
Powerscourt found the Archbishop’s next question truly astonishing. ‘Have you come across our local priest in the Butler’s Cross area, Lord Powerscourt? Father O’Donovan Brady?’
‘I have,’ said Powerscourt.
‘There are many like him,’ said the Archbishop. ‘Sorry, I interrupted you. Please continue.’
‘Please don’t think I would like the Church to turn into some kind of auxiliary police force, Your Grace, encouraging people to turn their neighbours in to the authorities or anything like that. But if there is no message, no instruction to the faithful through the priesthood, the men of the night may think they have the Church’s blessing. If, on the other hand, the Church urges calm, encourages people not to resort to violence, then there might be hope.’
‘I see,’ said the Archbishop, closing his eyes briefly. ‘I do not think I could give you any guidance on what my position might be until we have something more concrete to deal with. I do not believe that the men of the night, as you call them, would pay any attention to what the Church might say. Only at the end, when they need to confess their sins and receive the last rites, do they take any heed of priests at all. And then, of course, we cannot fail them in their hour of need. But the Church must give a lead, we must offer guidance. I am as concerned in a way – I speak freely in front of you as you have with me – with some of the priests and the younger Christian Brothers as I am with the men of the night. In many of them, second or third generation descendants of the dark years of the 1840s, the fires of hatred left by the famine burn very bright. They blame the landlords and what they describe as the English garrison. But we cannot build a new Ireland on theft and robbery by night and letters of blackmail by day. Certain principles will guide me. If these Orangemen come, with or without the bands, we must be patient. Our congregations must remember that however objectionable their presence may be, it was the actions of our own people that brought them here in the first place. Restraint and calm must be our watchwords. Of course, I shall have to be very circumspect in what I say. I shall pray for God’s guidance to find the right language, and I shall pray that He guide me in the right path.’
‘Thank you,’ said Powerscourt.
Then the Archbishop produced another of his astonishing changes of tack. ‘Tell me, Lord Powerscourt, how soon do you think your leg will be better?’
‘My leg?’ said Powerscourt in astonishment. Did the man possess healing powers?
‘Your leg. I noticed you were in some difficulty when you came in.’
‘Oh, that,’ said Powerscourt, ‘it’s nothing. The doctors say it should be fine in a week or so.’
‘In that case,’ the Archbishop was smiling now, ‘let me issue you an invitation. I shall explain. As Archbishop of Tuam I am charged, along with my other duties, with the supervision of the pilgrimage to Croagh Patrick, Ireland’s Holy Mountain. It takes place on the last Sunday in July. I am sure you know of it. All these papers here’ – he waved an enormous fist at the documents on his desk – ‘are concerned with it. We are consecrating a new chapel on the summit this year. I think this pilgrimage is a very special event, Lord Powerscourt. Few who take part are unmoved by it. Surrounded by all these pilgrims, most of them saying their prayers as they go, some climbing barefoot, I have often felt very close to God. Certainly His Grace is present on the hillside that day, I am sure of it. I am inviting you and your wife and your friends to take part this year, as my guests. Of course I am not asking you to be in my party. We shall be many and shall stop many times for moments of devotion. Nor would I dream of asking you to take part in any of our services. But St Patrick is the patron saint of all Irishmen, whatever their particular denomination. As Protestants you would be most welcome. I think it would be good for your immortal soul, Lord Powerscourt, and I am certain you will find it a moving experience.’
‘I am most touched and honoured, Your Grace,’said Powerscourt. ‘I accept. Of course I accept. It will be a privilege to be your guest on that day.’
‘And now, if you will forgive me, I must attend to three local MPs who have come to talk to me about secondary education. They have been waiting fifteen minutes already.’ The Archbishop was ushering Powerscourt to the door in person. ‘We must keep in touch. Write to me for another appointment if you need. Don’t hesitate. I can find you through Butler’s Court?’ Powerscourt nodded. ‘Good.’ The Archbishop opened his massive front door. ‘If we don’t meet before I shall hope to see you on that Sunday. On the Holy Mountain.’
8
Johnny Fitzgerald was in the Mitre, a mere hundred yards from the Archbishop’s Palace. Tuam, he said sadly, did not have a Cathedral Arms. He would have to wait another day.
‘Satisfactory meeting?’ he asked his friend. ‘Archbishop well? Holy pictures in good order?’
‘All well,’ said Powerscourt. ‘I’ll tell you about it when we get back to Butler’s Cross.’
After less than three minutes in the train Johnny Fitzgerald was asleep, possible tribute to the powers of the Mitre’s ministrations. Powerscourt stared idly out of the window, thinking about the threat of violence that might erupt when the Orangemen came to town. He noticed a brown ruined tower with no windows, sitting in a field enclosed by the remains of the walls that once surrounded it, another memorial to the violence of Ireland’s past. Ireland is a land of stone walls and ruins, he thought, Franciscan friaries, abandoned in Elizabeth’s time, with jagged walls etched against the sky. A whole religious settlement at Clonmacnoise, founded in the sixth century, finally destroyed by the English garrison in Athlone a thousand years later, the remains of the buildings now lying open to the sun and the rain and the clouds by the side of the Shannon. Great Norman castles like Ballymote, square in construction with round towers for extra protection, where Red Hugh O’Donnell marshalled his forces in 1598 before marching south to defeat at Kinsale, ransacked and ruined. Only the crows are left, Powerscourt remembered, perched happily on the rough edges of the battlements. Manor houses and castles burnt in those wars like that of the poet Edmund Spenser who had composed his Faerie Queen in County Cork. After the rebels destroyed his house, his son burnt to death inside it, Spenser had written that Ireland would never find peace until all the native Irish were killed. Catholic abbeys and churches ravaged by Cromwell’s men, raven and crow now living where the host had once been present and the peasant Irish had knelt to receive the sacrament. Anglo-Irish houses which had once been loud with music and laughter at the balls of the gentry, now stark ruins, torched in the 1798 rebellion. Tiny cottages in Connemara, roofless now and windowless, abandoned to death or emigration in the famine years. Cairns and dolmens that bore witness to earlier times, relics of earlier Irish in an earlier Ireland. Sprinkled all over the thirty-two counties of Ireland, like jewels fallen from a casket, bare ruined choirs where late the sweet birds sang.