‘Please, sir,’ said Bradshaw, the trooper from Norfolk, ‘it means bald hill with the smooth top, sir. In Irish, sir.’
‘How the devil do you know that?’ asked Johnny. ‘Did they teach you Irish in your primary school in the Fens?’
‘No, sir. I like climbing mountains, sir. I’ve got a book about them in the west of Ireland, sir. That’s how I know what it means.’
‘You should have been with us on Sunday,’ said Johnny, whose memories of the climb were mixed. ‘You could have gone to the top of bloody Croagh Patrick in your bare feet if you’d wanted to. Bloody mountain.’
‘I was on patrol, sir, or I would have done it.’ Powerscourt thought they were absurdly young, these cavalrymen, Bradshaw very slim and wiry, Jones a more solid citizen with wavy brown hair.
‘Anyway,’ Johnny referred back to his map, ‘after a couple of miles more of this barren stuff we come to a lake sitting between the hills. On the far side of that there’s a little river and a very long drive leading down to Butler Lodge. Or so the map says, and grandfather Ormonde hasn’t let us down yet.’
The rain stopped and the sun came out again. Looking behind him from a spur in the road Powerscourt could see Croagh Patrick in the distance. It must dominate the view of over half of County Mayo, he thought, popping into sight sometimes when you least expected it.
Now the road was twisting along the side of the lake. Small ripples crossed the surface of the water. On their left the hills were bathed in sunlight, the green and brown of the land as desolate as any they had passed that day. On the far side of the lake the hills were in shadow, dark, almost black. There was a sudden burst of noise. A lone horseman, riding very fast and going the other way, crashed through the middle of their party. When he saw them the young man tried to increase speed and put a hand over his face. Within a minute he was gone, racing away in the direction of Louisburg.
‘Do you think that might have been a messenger, Francis?’ said Johnny. ‘Some news being sent back to enemy headquarters? I don’t think he was very pleased to see us, mind you. He didn’t have the air about him of a man who was going to stop and pass the time of day.’
‘Damn!’ said Powerscourt. ‘Don’t you see, Johnny, that we’re a kind of message? Four men, two of them cavalry troopers, out on this road at this time. You don’t have to be Daniel O’Connell to work out that we are probably looking for the women. That young man will send a message back to where he came from when he can after he’s delivered his first one. There’s a party of four on the road, lads, and they’re coming this way.’
‘Let’s get a move on,’ said Johnny, ‘we can’t have far to go now.’
At one point the mountains on either side seemed to meet in the distance. It seemed impossible for the little road to pass through. There simply wouldn’t be room. Then the perspective changed and a narrow slit opened up for the four horsemen.
Johnny consulted his map again. They were surrounded by tall trees now. ‘In a hundred yards or so,’ he said very quietly, ‘there should be a drive or a road to the right. That leads to Butler Lodge.’
They had passed the end of the lake now. As they trotted up to the turning to the right Powerscourt motioned them forwards. After a couple of hundred yards they found a track on the left. After another hundred yards they came to a little clearing in the wood, great piles of logs all around them.
‘I think we should make this our base for now,’ said Powerscourt. ‘We can’t see the road but a man stationed halfway down could. Bradshaw, young man, how good is your eyesight?’
‘It’s good, sir,’ said the young man. ‘They test us for it before we enter the regiment. My captain lent me a telescope, sir, just for this expedition. He said it might be more useful to me than it would be to him on patrol round the streets of Westport.’
‘Excellent,’ said Powerscourt. ‘Do you think you could climb further up this hill or mountain or whatever it is and see if you could catch a sight of this house for us?’
‘Of course,’ the young man replied and began digging about in his luggage for the telescope. He slung it round his neck and disappeared into the trees.
‘Jones,’ said Powerscourt, ‘two things. Can you get back on your horse and ride down into Leenane? Book us four rooms in the Leenane Hotel. I think Dennis Ormonde may have sent word ahead of us. When you get back here I want you to go down the path until you can see the main road. In an ideal world you might be able to make your way through the trees to find a position where you can see the entrance too. Just watch what goes in and comes out, if anything.’
‘What do I do if see anybody coming out, sir? Do I arrest them?’
‘No, no, not yet,’ said Powerscourt hastily, ‘just keep watch for now. Johnny and I are going to see if we can get a sight of the place. We’ve got binoculars but the person with the best view is going to be young Bradshaw up the hill.’
Powerscourt and Fitzgerald made their way back down to the road and turned left away from the entrance. After a hundred yards or so the trees thinned out and they saw another lake in front of them. ‘Look, Francis,’ said Johnny, pulling his friend off the road. ‘That lodge must be very near the edge of this damned lake. If we follow the reeds in the water to the end of the lake and round to the other side we should be able to get a sight of the place. We might have to go right round through one hundred and eighty degrees but it would be worth it, surely.’
‘Let’s go,’ said Powerscourt.
It was just after five o’clock in the afternoon. There were about four hours of daylight left. The cross-country journey round the lake was not difficult. Occasionally the ground turned soft and boggy and the mud level crept slowly up their trousers. Powerscourt kept glancing back over his shoulder to check whether he could see Butler Lodge. If he could see it, somebody in Butler Lodge could see him. But most of the time all he could spot was the lake and the mountains behind it. Now they were further away he was struck by the steep rise of the mountain behind the house. It seemed to shoot up out of the lake at an angle of about sixty degrees. Then they came to another wood and Johnny Fitzgerald pulled out his glasses. He inched his way to a gap between the trees.
‘Not yet, Francis,’ he whispered, ‘can’t be far to go now.’
After another hundred yards he looked again. He motioned to Powerscourt to pull out his binoculars. The two men lay on the ground fiddling with their apertures. Through them, across the lake they could see the side of what must be Butler Lodge. It was a handsome Georgian building, well-proportioned, looking, Powerscourt thought, about the size of a decent hotel. There were great windows looking out over a well-kept lawn down to the lake. Behind it the mountains shot up towards the sky. And, coming in a regular flow from two of the chimneys, smoke was rising to mingle with the pure air of Connemara.
Cathal Rafferty spent three afternoons in a row watching the Head Gardener’s Cottage. He didn’t think Protestants would change their routines for the pilgrimage to Croagh Patrick. Nobody came. Nobody went. He wondered if the two young people were going earlier, or maybe later. He thought of playing truant from school one afternoon so he could begin his vigil around lunchtime, but decided that another beating from Brother Riordan and another summons for his parents to attend the school was too high a price to pay. One part of Father O’Donovan Brady’s instructions he had successfully carried out. Through a cousin in the town who worked part time in the kitchens up at Butler’s Court he had learned that the young man was called Johnpeter Kilross and that he was single, and the young woman was Alice Bracken, married, with her husband away in India or some other foreign part. Cathal felt the Father would be pleased with him. He did not know what appealed to the priest about this kind of information. He supposed he was curious, like himself. For young Cathal had been thinking a lot about what he had seen through the bedroom window. He couldn’t make any sense of it. Why were they taking all their clothes off unless they were going to have a bath – he knew that the gentry went in for baths – and he hadn’t seen any sign of one of those things.