‘Plain water, that’s what he needs,’ said a farmer from nearby Murrisk.
‘Plain water?’ said a carpenter from Westport. ‘You must be mad. When did plain water do anything for anybody, for God’s sake? Stout, that’s what he wants.’
‘No, no, not stout. It’ll puff him out like a football,’ said a small farmer. ‘whiskey, that’s the thing.’
‘Brandy,’ said the landlord, who had left his seat of custom for a close inspection of Charlie. ‘Here, take this very slowly. Don’t rush it or you’ll be ill.’ He handed over a large glass half filled with cognac and Charlie sipped it gently, like a man taking his medicine after a long illness. Gradually he felt himself returning to something approaching normal. Certainly the state of semi-inebriation brought on by the brandy was a condition well known to Charlie. And when he outlined the recent events concerning Jameson, he had the attention of every single person in the public bar.
‘He’s mad, the animal,’ said one. ‘Who ever heard of a mountaineering donkey?’
‘Take him to the Alps, Charlie,’ said another, who had not excelled at geography with the Christian Brothers. ‘See if he can climb the Horn of Matter!’
‘Matterhorn, you eejit,’ said his friend. ‘Why don’t we organize a donkey race up Croagh Patrick every summer? Jameson would be hot favourite. I’d put five shillings on him now, so I would.’
‘It just goes to show,’ said a solicitor’s clerk, ‘that all donkeys are mad. You can never tell with them, they’re so stupid.’
‘The spirit of St Patrick has entered the animal,’ said a teacher who had once contemplated a career in the priesthood. ‘Jameson has taken on the mantle of the patron saint.’
Charlie paid little attention to any of these theories. Jameson had certainly returned to health. He even attained a brief moment of local fame when the editor of the Mayo News, a veteran of the journalistic profession, florid of countenance and portly of figure, heard about the mountaineering donkey and sent one of his brightest young men to interview Jameson. The reporter quickly realized that donkeys, like the dead, cannot sue for libel and that he was therefore free to print whatever took his fancy. Jameson, he informed his readers, was an avid supporter of Home Rule as he much preferred staying in the field next to Charlie O’Malley’s house to going to work. And he deduced from the considerable amount of time the donkey spent outside Campbell’s public house that Jameson would favour a relaxation of the licensing laws and a lowering in the duty on the spirit that bore his name. Parties of schoolchildren would make appointments to come and see Jameson after this, bringing gifts of vegetables and stroking him happily. Twice a month Charlie took him up to the summit of Croagh Patrick to keep his health up. Charlie rejected all the theories about his donkey’s behaviour. Charlie knew the truth. Jameson was a pilgrim.
The Archbishop of Tuam, the Very Reverend John Healey, was perusing a large pile of documents on his desk as Powerscourt was shown into his study.
‘Lord Powerscourt, how good to see you again. Please take a seat. Is your mission to Ireland nearly completed?’
Powerscourt quite liked the thought of his mission. It linked him to the saints and scholars of Ireland’s past, perhaps even to Patrick himself out here in the country where a great mountain was named in his honour.
‘I believe I am on the last lap, Your Grace. I hope so anyway.’
‘So you think you have found the answer?’
‘In this case, Your Grace, I think it will come down to answers in the plural rather than answer in the singular. So often in my investigations there has been one perpetrator, one single individual who committed the crime or murdered the innocent or forged the paintings. Here I think there may be a number of individuals. It has made it very difficult to work out the links that held them together.’
‘I’m sure you will get to the bottom of it all. Tell me, Lord Powerscourt, I have received a great many letters complaining about the shooting of a young man on the Maum road very recently. My correspondents say that the young man was totally innocent and was victimized by the soldiers for no reason. And his companion, another young man, had been badly beaten up. Do you know anything about this?’
Powerscourt smiled. ‘Is it possible, Your Grace, that some of these letters are in the same hand? Or that the words in one are remarkably similar to those in another?’
The Archbishop frowned. He riffled through the stack of letters. ‘God bless my soul! Both of those statements are true,’ he said in surprise. ‘How very strange. Do you think somebody is orchestrating this campaign?’
‘That might indeed be the case, Your Grace,’ said Powerscourt, ‘but let me give you the facts. You see, I was present, or almost present, at the time. Those two young men were responsible for the kidnapping of two Protestant women from Ormonde House. They kept them locked up in a fishing lodge near Leenane for some days. The ladies were only freed when Johnny Fitzgerald and I substituted ourselves for them, and became hostages in our turn. We were all going to Galway in the finest Ormonde coach, with Johnny and I told not to move or we would be shot.’
Dr Healey’s ample eyebrows shot high up the archepiscopal forehead. ‘Goodness me,’ he said, ‘what colourful lives you people lead. I’m sure Lord Edward Fitzgerald would have been proud of his descendant’s gallantry, mind you. Please go on.’
‘Well, Your Grace, we managed to set ourselves free by a violent assault on the young men when they were nearly asleep and kicking them out of the coach. Then they were intercepted by a party of troopers who were following our progress at a discreet distance. The young man who was shot could have allowed himself to be arrested. He must have known he and his colleague were outnumbered. But he did not. We only knew him as Mick, Your Grace. That was not his real name and he was a very excitable young man. He fired at the cavalrymen. They fired back. He was killed. I am sure he preferred death and glory to capture and a prison sentence in Castlebar Jail. No doubt there will be a ballad about him soon.’
‘I think there already is,’ said the Archbishop. ‘One of the grooms here heard it last night in the Mitre across the road. I see, Lord Powerscourt. I feel I should pay little attention to these protesters. But tell me, I only saw you on the way up the mountain, not on the way down. Did you enjoy the Croagh Patrick pilgrimage? Did it have meaning for you?’
‘It most certainly did,’ replied Powerscourt. ‘It was, for me, a spiritual experience. I am most grateful to Your Grace for inviting us. Could I extend, on behalf of Lucy and myself, an invitation to you, Your Grace, to come and see us when you are next in London? You could meet the children. We live in Markham Square in Chelsea. Sir Thomas More lived not far away, we have the Royal Hospital close by, one of the most beautiful buildings in London, designed by Sir Christopher Wren, we have the river Thames, but we have no mountains and no pilgrimages.’
‘Thank you, thank you.’ The Archbishop beamed with pleasure. ‘Are you familiar with the works of John Donne, Lord Powerscourt? He began life in a very distinguished Catholic family and ended up as Protestant Dean of St Paul’s. I have had this quotation from him on my desk these twenty years now.’ The Archbishop opened up a little notebook which Powerscourt saw was filled with neat copperplate handwriting. ‘It comes from the passage about for whom the bell tolls: “And when the Church buries a man, that action concerns me: all mankind is of one author, and is one volume: when one man dies, one chapter is not torn out of the book, but translated into a better language; and every chapter must be so translated; God employs several translators; some pieces are translated by age, some by sickness, some by war, some by justice; but God’s hand is in every translation, and his hand shall bind up all our scattered leaves again for that library where every book shall lie open to one another.” Donne talks of many translations, my friend. I like to think there are many mountains, too, not only ones made out of stone and rock and rough scree like our Croagh Patrick. There are mountains of hatred and bigotry in men’s hearts here in our little island which the Church must try to remove. There are mountains or lofty places of the spirit, if we are to believe Donne and the mystics and the poets, where love can take its adherents to the highest peaks of happiness or ecstasy. There are many translations, Lord Powerscourt. There are many mountains too and many different paths to the summit, whether in Mayo or Chelsea.’