A sixteen-year-old Powerscourt had once declaimed the whole speech from the rooftop of Powerscourt House when his parents were away, his sisters a captive audience on the steps beneath. Two of
them had fallen asleep, he remembered bitterly. One of the men in the cart was whistling softly as they headed into the mountains at the crossroads. The road had turned into little more than a
track now. Puddles left from the recent rain glistened in the moonlight. Powerscourt wondered if the muffled feet would slip more easily. He checked his watch. It was a quarter to four. Not much
time left for the second burial of the night. The cart was moving slowly now as the path wound its way ever higher into the mountains. On Powerscourt’s left the hill sloped precipitously down
to a stream below. Then disaster struck.
A dog barked from up ahead. It seemed to come from the cart. Powerscourt hadn’t noticed any animals at all in the vehicle, only the straw and the tarpaulins and then the coffins beneath
them. He stopped. The cart stopped. The barking did not. He heard one of the men get out. He could hear whispering up ahead. Did they suspect they were being followed? You could suspect anything in
the shadows of this night, carrying cases of German rifles across a darkened landscape to be interred with the already buried dead. Powerscourt swore. If they thought they were being followed they
would come back another night and dig up the grave of George Thomas Carew and move his companion coffins somewhere else. They might not bury the other two at all tonight, merely returning the cart
to the remote farm it had come from and turning gravediggers again another time. The knowledge he had was priceless. Once the authorities in Dublin Castle knew where the rifles were buried they had
the manpower to watch them right round the clock. But even the suspicion of a follower, the fear that they had not been alone, and the guns would be moved. The dog kept barking. Powerscourt thought
it could bark all night. Maybe it had enjoyed a long sleep and its lungs were fit to bark until dawn.
He heard somebody coming down the path towards him, very quietly. He retreated towards the trees behind. The man held something in his hand. Still the dog barked. It was enough to wake the dead,
even though they had been disturbed once already this evening.
The pistol shot was louder than the dog. It echoed around the mountains. Powerscourt knew nobody would take any notice. Turn your faces to the wall, While the gentlemen go by. One hundred yards
was too far for a pistol. Powerscourt thanked God they hadn’t taken out any of those German rifles from their coffins. But then, he smiled incongruously, they would come with pages and pages
of instructions, impossible to read in the dark, probably impossible to understand in the daylight.
The man fired again. Powerscourt felt the bullet pass a few yards away from him and land with an ominous plop in a pine tree further down the hill. He could run. His horse would be faster than
man or dog. He didn’t like the thought of running away.
A third pistol shot. The dog was barking non-stop now, engaged in a trial of noise with its master.
Powerscourt looked down at the terribly steep slope to his left. The man fired again, twice in quick succession. Powerscourt screamed. He fell to the ground. His body rolled down the slope,
slowly at first, then with increasing speed, bumping into rocks, bouncing off trees, until it came to a stop two hundred and fifty yards beneath, the head dangling forward into the stream. The
other man came from the cart to peer down below.
‘Who the divil was that, do you suppose?’ said the first gravedigger.
‘God knows. He’s dead now. If the bullet didn’t get him, the fall will have done,’ replied his friend with the pipe.
‘Do you want me to go down and make sure he’s dead? Finish him off if he’s not?’
‘I’m sure the bullets got him. He’ll have been dead before he reached the bottom.’
The man with the pipe was a regular winner at shooting competitions all round the county. He was certain. The two men made their way back to the cart. At the bottom of the slope, his curly hair
floating in the stream, the body of Lord Francis Powerscourt lay very still. By the side of the path above, the horse waited for its master.
The cart moved off up the hill deeper into the impenetrable mountains. The dog was quiet now, its duty done. A mile and a half further up, the cart stopped by a tiny chapel on
the hillside. Stunted trees, their branches bent into weird positions by the wind, guarded a desolate graveyard. The headstones were poor up here, not the marble slabs that graced the tombs of the
Protestants in the lush valleys below. The gravediggers resumed their routine in silence, the pipe once again left burning fitfully by the side of the road. The earth was rockier here and it took
longer to dig down the extra depth to hide the German visitors. Faint streaks of dawn were appearing in the Irish Sea behind them as the two men mounted their cart once more, their mission
accomplished, the weapons hidden where no one would know their burial place.
‘Are you going back to Dublin this morning?’ said the first gravedigger.
‘I am that,’ replied the man with the pipe. ‘I’ve a class to teach at nine o’clock this morning. I’ll get the train from Greystones if you can drop me
off.’
At the bottom of the hill Lord Francis Powerscourt was examining every bone in his body, very slowly and very carefully. Christ, he was sore. He remembered the training
McKenzie had given them in falling down hills without being hurt. He thanked God he had paid attention. He thought he would try standing up. It was extremely painful. His left ankle didn’t
feel too good. It was a sprain, a bad sprain, he told himself. He could feel bruises, nasty bruises, all over his arms and his legs. Blood was running from a deep cut on his temple, dripping on to
his coat. His head felt as if it had been battered by a hundred rocks. But he wasn’t dead. Not yet anyway.
Powerscourt looked up the slope. He could just see the horse, still waiting by its tree. With the horse he could go back to his hotel or he could try to complete his mission. He had heard the
cart going on up the path. Then the sound had been blown away by the wind. If he waited an hour or so he could ride after them in the hope of discovering where the other rifles were buried. Then he
would know all there was to know, all except, he reflected wearily, the names of the two men, the dates of their proposed assassinations, the destinations of any bombs.
Afterwards he told Lady Lucy that he hadn’t thought he would ever make it back to the path on the hill. Every step was painful with his bad ankle. His head throbbed. The blood was still
flowing on to his coat. The various bruises around his body ached with a throbbing pain.
He crawled the last hundred yards to the horse, inching his way up the slope, digging his bruised elbows into the hard ground, stray rocks doing him fresh injury on his via dolorosa. He thought
of his children to ease the pain. He thought of sitting in some quiet English garden with Lady Lucy, green lawns spread in front of them, a river or a lake at the bottom. Sometimes he thought he
was hallucinating and Lucy was actually beside him, helping him up the slope.
‘Don’t worry, Francis, not much further to go. Just a few more steps, my darling.’ Lady Lucy was mopping the blood from his face, stroking a soothing salve on to the bruises
that pulsated all over him.
At last he reached the horse. He leaned against Paddy’s side for a full five minutes, thanking the horse for waiting for him. He knew it would be painful getting up into the saddle. It was
excruciating, the pain shooting up his left ankle in blinding flashes. Then he began to ride very slowly up the hill in pursuit of the cart. He hoped he would find another church. He thought he
might collapse inside it, sanctuary for the wounded man, respite from his enemies.
Our Lady of Sorrows, the name perfectly matching his mood, held no secrets for him. The gravediggers must have run out of flowers by now, he thought. But then maybe any flowers would have looked
out of place in this desolate spot. The eternal rest of Martha O’Driscoll, 1850–1880 had been disturbed. Poor woman, Powerscourt thought, she had only lived for thirty years before
having to wait for the Second Coming up here with the mountains glowering down on her and the wind whistling through the damaged trees. And then she got company, German rifles come to disturb the
long sleep of the dead.
Powerscourt set out to ride back to the hotel. The horse seemed to know the way. Once or twice he nearly passed out on the road down the mountain. At a quarter to seven in the morning Paddy
trotted slowly into the stables of the Imperial Hotel. Powerscourt noticed that the wind had caused some damage to the roses in the night. Red petals lay strewn across the lawn like patches of
dried blood.
As he staggered upstairs and fell asleep the first train of the morning was pulling out of Greystones station on its journey up the coast towards Dublin. Sitting very quietly, looking out to
sea, a man lit a fresh pipe.
‘Gentlemen, gentlemen. Could I have your attention, please.’
A portly man with a huge handlebar moustache had climbed on to a bench in the home side’s dressing room. The creases on his cricket flannels were razor sharp, his white sweater was
immaculate.
‘Hopwood’s the name, Aston Hopwood. I’m your captain for the day.’
He surveyed his companions, some still lacing up their boots, others rehearsing imaginary strokes with great concentration.
‘I’ve got to do the batting order before the toss,’ Hopwood said. ‘Someone here called Powerscourt? Opening batsman?’
Lord Francis Powerscourt raised a nervous hand in acknowledgement. Nearly a fortnight had passed since his ordeal in Ireland and his aches had almost gone. He had passed on all he knew about the
German rifles lying in Irish graves to Dominic Knox of the Irish Office. Knox had been effusive in his thanks.
‘Welcome to the team, Powerscourt.’ Hopwood boomed. ‘Smythe? You happy to be the other opening man?’
An elderly gentleman who looked as though his cricketing days should have been over long ago nodded his consent.
‘Where’s the Bank of England?’ Hopwood demanded of the changing room. The Bank was nowhere to be seen.
‘Bloody Bank,’ said Hopwood bitterly. ‘He’s always late. Anyway, I’ll put him in at Number Three.’
Gradually Hopwood worked his way down the batting order. Powerscourt noticed that James Clarke, William Burke’s bright young man, was down to bat at Number Nine. Clarke’s whites had
not received as much attention as those of his colleagues. The trousers were too short and his sweater too small.
‘What do you know about the opposition, Hopwood?’ asked a slim young man who was a fast bowler. Powerscourt was to learn later that he was known as Ivan the Terrible because of the
speed and ferocity of his deliveries.
‘They’re a party of Americans come to tour here this summer called the Philadelphians. Bloody Americans.’ Hopwood shook his head, remembering a recent coup where an American
firm from New York had removed a valuable contract from right under his nose. ‘I don’t know much about them as cricketers. Expect they’ll run about a lot and make a great deal of
noise. I don’t know what they all do for a living. There’s a couple of money people, an academic from somewhere called Princeton, maybe a preacher or two.’
Aston Hopwood departed to the cricket square for the toss. The pavilion was new, built in the mock Tudor style, and it nestled among the tall trees that surrounded the little ground. Rows of
chairs had been placed on either side of it and further chairs or benches were dotted about the outfield. To one side was a huge marquee with rows of servants hurrying to and from the great house
bearing trays of food and consignments of glasses.
Powerscourt felt acutely nervous. He hadn’t expected such a large crowd to witness his humiliation. Lady Lucy was talking to William Burke, taking a tour of the little ground.
‘It’s so pretty, this cricket ground, isn’t it,’ said Lady Lucy. ‘Look, here are the umpires coming out with the two captains. Do you know who the umpires are,
William?’
Burke inspected the two men in the white coats. ‘The one on the left is a Bishop, Lady Lucy, Bishop of Oxford, I believe. They say he’s a coming man. And the other one is a
policeman, Chief Constable of Oxfordshire, name of Bampfylde.’
‘Mr de Rothschild isn’t expecting any trouble, is he? I mean, they seem very grand personages to be the umpires, William.’
‘There was a terrible fight here some years ago, Lucy.’ William Burke laughed. ‘A man from one of the tea importers had a very good lunch. He’d not been drinking his own
produce at lunchtime, he had rather a lot of Rothschild’s vicious punch. The stuff tastes perfectly innocuous but it’s lethal, Lucy, absolutely lethal. In the third or fourth over after
lunch, there’s a huge appeal and the umpire says the tea importer has been caught behind. Finger goes up, normal sort of business. Not Out! shouts the tea man. Yes you are, says the umpire.
No I’m bloody not, says the tea man. Then the tea man advances down the wicket and knocks the umpire out cold. There was a general scrimmage all round. The match had to be called off. Ever
since then old Rothschild has tried for very important men as his umpires. He even got the Governor of the Bank of England to do it one year. Only trouble was, he was half blind and had to be
replaced after lunch. The poor man could hardly see a thing.’
‘So with the Bishop at one end and the Chief Constable at the other, it should be a peaceful day.’ Lady Lucy smiled at her brother-in-law, glancing round the ground to see if either
umpire had brought any reinforcements, members of the heavenly host hiding in the long grass, plain-clothes policemen lurking in the woods.
‘Let’s hope it’ll be peaceful, Lucy. Ah, I see the visitors have won the toss. The Americans are going to bat.’
Richard Martin and Sophie Williams had come to watch Richard’s friend James Clarke play for the City Eleven. They were lying in the grass as far away from the pavilion as they could
get.