Читать книгу Dancing in Limbo - Edward Toman - Страница 10

The Irish News, with its blurred pictures of His Grace, all nose and teeth, posing with the cruet poised over Chastity’s forehead, wasn’t long in reaching the four corners of the province. No one doubted that serious trouble could be far behind. The shopkeepers boarded up their windows, the farmers locked their barns, the women ordered their broods of children in from the streets. Before the day was done the vengeance squads would be scouring the roads for random victims. But in one corner of Fermanagh, that strangest of counties, the news that Schnozzle had set the cat among the pigeons was greeted not with foreboding, but with unalloyed joy.

For the villagers of Derrygonnelly, any opportunity for mayhem was a God-sent opportunity not to be missed.

The people of Derrygonelly were the last remnant of the Summer of Love, that brief season a decade before, when Canon Tom had unwittingly opened the floodgates of unorthodoxy. The Canon had been searching for the elusive gnomic formula that would reconcile the modernist aspirations of his flock with the traditional teaching of the Church. For a fleeting moment he thought he had found it, the philosopher’s stone that would square the circle. But the movement that Canon Tom had unleashed in his folie de grandeur on Adam and Eve’s, the top people’s parish nestling in the hills above Dublin, was to spread rapidly out of control. Sects and heresies had mushroomed. Charismatics and New Age followers, Moonies, Loonies, Hippies and Screamers, Revisionists and Freethinkers, babbling in a thousand strange tongues, demanding the freedom to be themselves, to judge for themselves, interpret the world for themselves, threatening with their antics the very authority of the hierarchy. And of all the sects that had flourished at that time, none was more esoteric than the Derrygonnelly Donatists.

The Summer of Love was a thing of the past, a fading folk memory of headier times. There were very few now who dared mention it openly, for the walls had ears and in Ireland you never know who you can trust. Its brief promise had been strangled at birth. The Sisters had girded their loins and waded into battle to rescue the country for the True Church. Canon Tom was long in exile, a non-person, banished beyond the mountains where he could do no further harm. The Charismatics had been crushed. Adam and Eve’s was under permanent occupation. The unswerving attention of Schnozzle had seen to it that things never got out of hand again. And yet … ! Despite the most stringent efforts to maintain orthodoxy, there were still outbreaks of strange behaviour from time to time that caused the Guards to intervene. And in Fermanagh, a wild and watery fastness where even Immaculata thought twice about venturing, one stubborn pocket remained.

The Donatists of Derrygonnelly were a self-destructive but self-perpetuating cult that not even the combined efforts of the Sisters and the Christian Brothers could totally eradicate. They enjoyed widespread popularity on the remoter islands and round the lakeshore village from which they took their name. Not for them the agapes and lovefeasts of the early church once favoured by Canon Tom; their road back to the catacombs took a different direction. They modelled themselves on a fundamentalist sect of the first century whose sole aim was to reach their eternal reward as quickly as possible. With a determination that characterizes the people of the lakeland, they set about things in the most direct fashion. The founder of the group had been a wizened little man called Donat Maguire, famed in the area as a dancer, raconteur and wit. For sixty and more years Donat’s peculiar name had never bothered him; all his contemporaries had odd names of one sort or another, as was the local custom, to distinguish one Maguire from another. Donat Maguire believed himself to be called after a baseball player in the States, for his grandfather had once been Stateside, in the days after the famine, and returned with talcs of oddly dressed men with odd names playing a strange ballgame. Quite what unhinged Donat’s mind during the Summer of Love was never clear; sceptics in the townland put it down to years of soft shoe shuffle finally affecting the cerebral cortex. But his followers told a more edifying tale. Retiring to his bed one night after a particularly hectic session, Donat was visited by his eponymous patron saint who ordered him to stop farting around and expeditiously claim his eternal reward. He awoke a new man.

There was a snag with the new philosophy. Though convinced of their own righteousness, convinced enough to put it to the test, it was hardly de rigueur to top yourself and turn up at the Judgement Seat as bold as brass, demanding special status. While accidental death might do at a pinch, the only sure-fire method was slaughter at the hands of an unbeliever. Luckily Fermanagh offered considerable scope in both areas.

Donat was still struggling with this conundrum when his grateful followers decided to surprise him. He hadn’t been long in gathering round him a group of disciples, for even in less troubled times Fermanagh didn’t lack for eejits. A treat was arranged. The top room above Maguire’s Licensed Premises was packed to the doors for a session. At the fear a’ tí’s command the floor was cleared and Donat had the lino to himself. As he shuffled round and round, dancing in his inimitable fashion the ancient slithering two-step peculiar to the region, they accompanied him with seannós keening, the gentle, nasal music much esteemed in those parts. He was on his third round when, with an apocalyptic groan, the floorboards gave way. Donat Maguire dropped through the rubble to the bar below, impaling himself on the porter pump. Ecstatic at the success of their handiwork his acolytes prayed with him as he stoically expired.

Yet even in the moment of their triumph, doubts set in. Had they gone too far, pre-empting the Almighty’s prerogative? Had they sinned against the commandment forbidding killing, maybe robbing themselves of their rightful reward? Henceforth, it was agreed, a different route to Paradise would have to be found.

Natural causes, farmyard accidents and the attentions of the Little Sisters saw off a few of their members over the next six months, but the rest remained firmly rooted to terra firma. There was only one thing for it. They would have to provoke their Protestant neighbours. Under normal circumstances this would have presented no problem. The Protestant neighbours would have been happy to rise to the occasion. But the times were not normal. Those Protestants who had not been burned out were suspicious. There is no such thing as a free lunch, they told themselves. A few old scores were paid off, of course, but on the whole they remained distinctly lukewarm about the whole project. Having run up against this unexpected obduracy, the Donatists had taken to wandering the countryside, far and wide, especially at weekends, seeking natural hazards or man-made ambushes that would provide them with the release they so desperately craved.

Hardly surprising then that when news reached them of events in the city, and when they read in the paper of McCoy’s wrath, they should set out at the double for the Shambles hoping for a share of the action.

Dawn was breaking by the time Frank reached the hill above the house. There was no smoke from the chimney and the hens were running in the yard unfed. He slithered down through the gorse bushes, fearing the worst. His mother was in the kitchen, talking to herself at the top of her voice. He rapped on the window; she turned to him with vacant eyes, turned away and continued her lonely obsession. He pushed open the back door and ran to her, trying to embrace her, but she remained unaware of his presence. He pulled her round to face him, forcing her to look at him, a cold stab of fear twisting in his heart with every unintelligible word she uttered. His eyes were filled with tears. ‘Don’t you recognize me!’ he pleaded. But he found only vacancy in her face and foolishness in her words.

‘Let me light a fire,’ he said, fighting back the tears. ‘You’re blue with the cold.’ She slumped into the rocking chair while he struggled with the range. He tried to clean up the kitchen, throwing the blue-moulded bread to the chickens at the door and searching for what would make a cup of tea. Anything to stop the full reality of his mother’s craziness sinking in.

He was shocked at the change in her. Only a few years earlier she had been a hard and determined woman. But the death of his father had upended her world, left her with nowhere to turn for comfort. A madwoman going the roads was nothing new in Ulster. The troubles had unhinged the minds of many. Frank knew every Mad Meg between here and Armagh. And he knew too how they were treated. Shunned for fear of the evil eye and tricked by the gombeen man out of what little they had.

He made her drink the tea and she calmed down a bit, sighing to herself from time to time. He sat with her, speaking soothing words, waiting anxiously for the first flicker of recognition in her empty eyes. The old dog had appeared at his return, drawn into the kitchen by the warmth of the fire. It lay farting at their feet. Suddenly it pricked its ears and uttered a low growl. Frank strained his ears. The dog growled again. Frank could hear nothing but the moaning of the wind in the trees. But his mother had heard what the dog had heard. She flung the teacup across the room, jumped to her feet and began to shout.

She ran to the half door. The dog was barking now. ‘It’s only the wind you’re hearing,’ he pleaded. There’s no one on the road below!’ But she pushed him away from her roughly and ran to the mantelpiece above the range where the pledge to the Sacred Heart had hung since her wedding day. It was her personal pledge, her guarantee of a place in heaven. She reached up and tore it roughly from the nail. Then clutching it in one hand, and Frank in the other, and with the mongrel at their heels, she dragged him out through the door, leaving the house open to the four winds.

Magee and his henchmen were cold, wet, hungry and lost. He had gathered them up at short notice, half a dozen members of the Temperance Lodge Band, and led them into the mountains above Armagh. It was an act of desperation, but Magee didn’t intend to be caught hanging round the town when the boys in the back room opened a post mortem into the débâcle. With each passing hour his frustration increased. Ignorant of the wild and treacherous terrain, they had clambered above the tree line round Slicve Gullion. The land was deserted, as lonely and alien as the back side of the moon. The very sheep seemed threatening. A mist had come down and they had lost their bearings; they had squelched through moorland, slithered among the crags, wandered deeper and deeper into the wilderness with each step. The trombone player had caught the side of his face on a rock and his cheek sagged bloodily open. He muttered mutiny and when Magee rested he kept the Stanley knife to hand. They had run out of food and whiskey, and the cigarettes were long since finished. Had they stumbled on a homestead they could have plundered it for victuals and drink and sat it out till the cloud lifted, when they could risk the descent. But there were no farms here, only the ruins of long-abandoned settlements. All night long they tramped in circles, Magee watching his companions growing gaunt and murderous. They would all die if they didn’t get back among their own people soon.

A forced march over the jagged rocks of a dried river bed finally brought them below the clouds. They headed for the valley below, stumbling all night among the boulders, afraid to sleep lest the cloud come down again. As dawn broke they came upon some tracks, and an hour later, dispirited, empty-handed, but at least alive, they found themselves on the crag overlooking the Feely house.

They saw that it had been hastily abandoned; its doors stood open, but a fire still smouldered in the hearth. The bass drummer kicked open the press in search of food; it yielded little but a few ends of hard bread and a scrape of margarine. Magee found a packet of Gold Leaf on the floor with half a cigarette still inside. He straightened it out and lit it from the fire. He had never set foot in a papist house before. He looked round the kitchen with fascination. A line of popish icons stood on a crude shelf, statues of the Virgin, the Child of Prague and John Bosco. There was a lithograph of the Holy Family with a prayer for peace in the home. But riveted as he was by these manifestations of idolatry, it was the framed photograph that caught his attention, a photograph of Frank’s first communion. Magee recognized the man in the picture, even with the hat pulled down over his eyes. The late Joe Feely! With one swipe he scattered the lot on the floor. The red nightlight before the Sacred Heart still glowed. He ripped it from the wall, unbuttoned his flies and pissed on the lot.

His activities were interrupted by a sound in the distance. It was the sound of a crowd, a great crowd on the move. The sound of wailing and praying, and discordant music, and laughter and chanting. They were far away as yet, over the next hills, but they were approaching fast. His colleagues heard it too. All their bravado had been left behind on the mountains. They stood in the kitchen transfixed. They were in dangerous, unknown, unpredictable territory and the sooner they found their way out of it the better. The noise was growing louder by the minute. And then above the wails and entreaties of the Donatists they heard the bagpipes of a Hibernian band.

It had been many a long year since the Hibs had dared put their snouts out in decent company, but with the birth of this strange new sect a handful of old survivors from the lakeshore had emerged blinking into the sunlight to don their green regalia, dust off their banners and take to the roads. To a true blue Loyal Son of William like Magee, the raucous sound of a Hib band was like a red rag to a bull. He crept to the door and looked up the road. And as the main body of the march came into view his heart started to pound with anticipation. He was beginning to appreciate the meaning of their incessant demand. What was more he was in a position and in the mood to do something about it.

The serious Donatists were recognizable from their garb – an attempt at the sackcloth and ashes of the desert hermits of the early church – and from the weals on their bodies caused by the lashes of purification they rained down on their flesh. Their eyes were raised in supplication to heaven; there was no doubting their desire to join their heavenly master as soon as it could be arranged. Their lips moved constantly, pleading with the Almighty to grant them an early release from this vale of tears and a glimpse of the treasures in store for them. Their numbers had been swollen by a great crowd of hangers-on, the sort of character any diversion in a country district will attract. At the prospect of a bit of crack, especially at the expense of others, the lower elements of a dozen parishes were egging the pilgrims on. Some of the young lads had cut switches from the hedges, and ran up and down the column of penitents whacking at their legs and backs to mortify the flesh. Others had grown weary of this sport and trudged dourly alongside, swigging from bottles. A few older women hobbled behind the crowd, carrying picnic bags and folding chairs. Bringing up the rear, an ad hoc colour party had raised a tricolour, on the grounds that any outing could be an occasion for showing the national flag.

Magee saw his opportunity. There was a narrow bridge on the road about a mile below the house. He directed the bandsmen into the fields on either side of the road beyond the river, ordering them to lie low till he gave the signal. His heart began to pound. Years ago himself and McCoy had employed a similar tactic at the ambush at Burntollet, when they had weighed into a crowd of students marching for civil rights. They still sang songs of that famous rout. With God’s help today would see an even bloodier victory.

He kept to the lee of the hedgerows till he had reached the bridge and crouched below the parapet till the head of the march was nearly level with him. Then sure at last that he had not got the wrong end of the stick and was not making a ghastly mistake, he stepped into the road in front of them and held up his hand. In the other he clutched a meat cleaver. The pleas of the Donatists would fall on deaf ears no longer.

At the sight of the Portadown men the hangers-on took to the fields, scattering their flasks and sandwiches on the road. Some of them were not quick enough for the Loyal Defenders of William; their appeals for special status went unheeded. It began to rain and the road and the river ran red with the blood of the grateful dead. For an hour they stuck to their task. This was the sort of battle that coursed through the blood of Portadown men. It was another Dolly’s Brae, another rebel rout. Then at last, the business taken care of, the sons of William shouldered their cudgels and pocketed their knives. They helped themselves to cold tea and sausage rolls which had been discarded round the killing ground. Their good spirits and sense of camaraderie restored, they set out on the road for home. They would have to keep moving, for not all the natives would be as obliging as those they had just dealt with. They would keep to the fields and ditches till they were sure they were out of hostile terrain. But once home there would be some serious drinking to be done. The whole business had given them a terrible thirst.

Magee got to the Shambles and dismissed his companions. The square was littered with cobblestones. The door to the Martyrs Chapel gaped open. He didn’t need to be told where he’d find McCoy.

‘You didn’t find her then?’ shouted the preacher when he saw Magee, still bloody from the battle, in the doorway of the bar. ‘She gave you the slip!’

‘What the fuck is going on?’ asked Magee, ignoring the taunt. ‘Where did all this money come from?’

‘It’s the price of a Protestant soul!’ McCoy said, turning away.

‘Murphy the so-called Christian Brother paid in full for your flags,’ Billy said. ‘Sent it over with a simpleton to give to McGuffin. Rubbing salt in the wound.’

‘And he’s been drinking it ever since? That’s money’s that’s owed!’

‘Seventy-six trombones led the big parade,’ McCoy shouted, ‘but not one of them could rescue my wee girl from the clutches of the mother of all harlots.’ Magee felt the blood drain from his face. It was bad enough to be mixed up with McCoy at a time like this, but to watch him squandering the bunting money might be more than his life was worth. Magee lifted a porter bottle and broke it with one gentle blow on the edge of the counter. It brought him the attention he required. There was no need for him to raise his voice now, for the bar had fallen quiet, each drinker lapsing into uneasy anticipation of what was coming. ‘I asked what the fuck was going on?’ he repeated. The money for the bunting, what was left of it, lay like thirty pieces of silver on the counter.

‘You’re a bollocks! It was you who scared her away in the first place!’

‘Call me a bollocks one more time …’ Magee said softly.

‘I’ll call you a bollocks for that’s all you are. A useless, good-for-nothing bollocks. Supposed to be a hard man.’

‘I’ve been tramping through fucking mountains all night,’ Magee replied. ‘I get back to find you and your cronies drinking the last of my money. So I’m asking for the last time, what the fuck is going on?’

‘“What the fuck is going on? What the fuck is going on?” Put on another record. Isn’t it obvious what the fuck is going on? We’re washed up! Finished! Over and out!’ He turned his back on Magee and called for whiskey.

Billy the barman didn’t move, sensing the approaching denouement. The rest of the drinkers hung on every word, every syllable. Normally they enjoyed a good saloon bar brawl, all the niceties duly observed, all the formalities adhered to. They appreciated the slow build-up, the measured tones of sweet reason, the petulant hint of outraged complaint in Magee’s persistent questioning and the way he could build on the one motif. But even as they watched developments they looked cautiously round for the best escape route for when the fur began to fly in earnest.

‘The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away,’ said the man of God. ‘Blessed be the name of the Lord.’ He climbed off the stool and, swaying slightly, came over to his partner and put one arm round his shoulder. Magee let it lie there. ‘A drink for my buddy, here, barman,’ ordered McCoy. ‘Mister Magee is a decent man. He’ll have a drink with me before we discuss our little business arrangement. In fact we’ll have a drink all around, Billy boy, and have one yourself, to welcome home the prodigal son from the far hills.’

He lurched towards the bar, scattering some of the coins lying there on to the floor. No one moved. Billy quietly locked the till and pocketed the key without moving from where he stood, Magee turned to the rest of the company. ‘How long has he been like this?’ he demanded. ‘How long have youse been drinking my money?’

They looked away uneasily. This was a turn of events they had not bargained for, typical of a Portadown man.

‘He’s been like this all day, Mister Magee. He’s wild upset. You’ll get no sense out of him.’ The voice from the doorway was that of Patrick Pearse McGuffin. He had crept silently into the bar during the altercation to scour the ashtrays for dogends and the glasses for dregs of stout. His appearance was more than Magee could take. ‘Get out of here you renegade! This is no place for you!’ He lifted a chair and threw it at the turncoat. McGuffin snatched up the copy of the Irish News lying incongruously on the bar, ripped out the back page with its news of Easter Week dogs running at Celtic Park, and made good his escape before the butcher’s boot connected with his backside.

But when Magee turned again to face McCoy, the menace had gone from his voice. The presence of the turncoat in a loyalist domain had unnerved him, taken the wind from his sails. A few of the men sitting closest to the door risked an unobtrusive sip of their pints, sensing with relief tinged with disappointment that the entertainment was over.

‘You’re nothing but a fucking liability,’ Magee said. He dropped the broken bottle on the floor and grabbed McCoy by the lapels.

‘As vinegar to the teeth and as smoke to the eyes, so is a sluggard to them that send him,’ McCoy said. He located the stub of a roll-up and tried to bring a match into contact with it.

‘If you ever cross my path again, so help me Jesus I’ll personally brain you,’ Magee said softly. He lifted McCoy off his feet and brought him close, so close that their faces were nearly touching. Then he head-butted him, suddenly and savagely between the eyes. The crunch of bone on bone could be heard across the room. McCoy fell against the counter, the blood already spurting from his nose. Magee turned defiantly to the rest of the company, inviting by gesture anyone who wanted trouble to step forward. There were no takers. He surveyed the silent tableau for a moment, spat on the floor, turned on his heel and walked out. Through the frosted glass of the window they could see his silhouette swinging a last kick at the battered chassis of the Salvation Wagon before heading off up English Street.

Though careful not to get too involved, the drinkers in the bar sensed that McCoy would want to restore his dignity by standing a few more rounds. As long as the hard man had really gone there would be no harm in humouring him. It wasn’t every day that the Reverend was in the chair. They winked their approval of the way he had handled himself and allowed Billy to refill their glasses.

‘Sing me a wee song about Portadown,’ shouted McCoy. ‘Does anyone know a Portadown song, for if they do they’re a better man than myself!’ His voice was nasal, for the blood had congealed beneath his swollen nose.

‘That’s a good one all right,’ said Billy the barman, helping himself to a double scotch and most of the change.

‘Portadown!’ shouted McCoy above them in his best pulpit voice. He spat blood across the floor. Already he was feeling a lot better. ‘Do you know what the trouble with Portadown boys is? They’re always trying to be more Protestant than the rest of us. The meanest crowd of shites on the face of the earth …’ he was warming to his topic now as the crowd quietly urged him on ‘… I’ve seen me and the wee girl reduced to begging round the doors, but do you think the hoors would give you as much as a cup of water? They wouldn’t give you the smell of their fart if they could help it! But I’ve turned my back on Portadown, I’ll tell you straight. I shall wipe Jerusalem as a man wipeth a dish, wiping it and turning it upside down …’

But at the memory of his daughter the tears sprang into his eyes. His hand had begun to tremble, and the whiskey he was clutching spilled over the bar. He turned grey. A glazed look came stealing over his face. Billy leaped across the counter, cursing, but he was too late to stop McCoy collapsing on the floor. He writhed in the sawdust in the throes of a fit, turning up the whites of his eyes and gasping for breath. Billy hauled him roughly to his feet and dragged him towards the door. McCoy put up no resistance, allowing himself to be thrown without further ceremony into the alley outside. A few of the drinkers peered out after him, staying well back in case Billy took umbrage and began barring wholesale. They saw his convulsions in the gutter, and saw that the turncoat McGuffin had crept out from under the van and was coming to his aid. Leave well enough alone, they thought, stealing back from the window to finish their pints.

But the evening’s entertainment was over. Billy was in truculent mood. Any day now the GPs would reappear, taking over his back room, doling out their unique form of justice. He didn’t want to be too closely associated with McCoy when questions were asked. He swept what was left of the bunting money off the bar and into his pocket, and began roaring at the company to finish their glasses and go home to fuck.

The groans of the dying faded as the day wore on. One by one their souls shuffled off their withered bodies and, free at last, sped upwards to the throne of mercy. Frank lay silent at his mother’s side as her life blood trickled away. His temple gaped open and his legs were twisted grotesquely beneath him. Night came slowly and the cold settled over the dead. A slow dawn broke. Night fell again. For three days he lay among the dead, drifting occasionally into fitful consciousness before lapsing into coma. Once he woke and the moon was out; he thought there was someone moving silently among the corpses. He wanted to call out to whoever or whatever it was but he drifted away again into troubled sleep. On the morning of the third day he cried out for water. Again he thought he heard someone nearby, someone hovering above him. He heard voices. He forced himself into awareness. He opened his eyes and raised himself up on one elbow, calling for help. A face bent down towards him, blotting out the light. He tried to speak but no words would come. He concentrated again on the grotesque yet familiar face that hung above him. Slowly his head began to clear, he began to focus, to remember, to recognize. He found himself staring into the cold grey eyes of his employer, Schnozzle O’Shea.

The Sisters had dug a shallow grave by the side of the road and were burying the dead. Though a Special Operations Unit, the elite of the Order under the command of Sister Concepta, they were edgy and nervous, eager to be on their way, fearful that a renewed attack might happen at any moment. Two of them crouched in the ditch beside the jeeps, their faces blackened, their rifles pointing up the road. Another had taken up position on the roof of the nearest farmhouse, her eyes anxiously scanning the misty hills above. Schnozzle pulled Frank clear of the corpses and beckoned one of the Sisters over. ‘There’s one more here,’ he shouted, ‘half dead, but with God’s help he’ll make it.’ Frank could see his stole of authority under the flak jacket and saluted automatically. The Archbishop turned to Frank and studied him for a few seconds. Then the penny dropped. ‘My God! It’s Master Feely! Francis Xavier Pacelli Feely.’

‘Yes, Your Grace.’

‘I must say you have an uncanny knack of finding trouble. I hardly recognized you in that state. Is your poor mother among this crowd?’

‘Yes, Your Grace.’

‘God have mercy on her soul. You have no brothers or sisters?’

‘No, Your Grace.’

Schnozzle reached into an inner pocket and produced a large handkerchief, stained with the evidence of repeated and copious use. ‘Wrap that round the boy’s head,’ he ordered his aide de camp. ‘Can’t you see he’s been bleeding like a stuck pig?’

As the tourniquet tightened on his temple, his brain began to clear. He remembered now the horror of the crossroads, the men with the knives and clubs, doggedly passing through the crowd; the screams of one half of them for their services, the screams of the others for mercy. ‘No!’ he wailed. ‘No! No! No!’ He was chanting the word, over and over, trying to fend off the memories that were crowding in on him. ‘It’s not true!’ he started to tell them, denying the evidence that lay all round. ‘Show me it’s not true! It can’t have happened,’ he pleaded with them, softly at first, then louder as the terrible truth of the massacre sank home, then screaming it till it reverberated from the surrounding hills. ‘It’s not true! Tell me it never happened!’ he pleaded, clutching at the unyielding figure by his side. Sister Concepta pushed him roughly away from her. He felt himself fainting, falling again on to the corpse of his mother. In his head he could hear the screaming of the multitude of victims. He saw the face of Chastity. He saw her face, the way he had glimpsed it in the cathedral, under the white veil. But they were leading her to an altar on top of a pyramid of stone where a priest with a butcher’s knife awaited her. Suddenly she was Chastity no more, but it was the face of the Madonna herself, and he started to laugh, for he knew it would be all right; and then in his delirium the features changed again and it was the face of an Aztec virgin, screaming in terror as they led her to her sacrifice before the God of the Sun.

Sister Concepta slapped him hard and he stopped screaming. His mother’s corpse was stiff; he saw them lift it and hurriedly throw it into the common grave. He wanted to go to her one last time, but Concepta held him firmly by the shoulder. ‘Get into the bus, boy,’ she ordered. ‘Don’t stand there. Move!’ A battered charabanc had been drawn up across the road, loud with the wailings of orphans. Their confused, tear-stained faces crowded every window and as the engine revved they began to scream. ‘That’s the lot, Your Grace!’ shouted the Sister with the shovel. ‘We’re sitting ducks here. Could I suggest with respect that we get our skates on!’ Concepta gave a signal to the lookout and she scrambled down from the roof and climbed on top of the coach, automatic rifle at the ready. Schnozzle looked icily at the scene for a moment, then raised his hand in perfunctory blessing over the mass grave. ‘Eternal rest grant unto them O Lord, and may perpetual light shine upon them.’

‘May their souls and the souls of all the faithful departed, through the mercy of God, rest in peace.’

‘Amen,’ he said.

Sister Concepta was reaching the end of her tether. ‘Get in the bus, boy, like I told you to,’ she yelled from across the bridge. But Schnozzle had other plans. He took Frank by the collar and led him across to one of the jeeps. ‘I’ll take care of this lad myself, Sister, if it’s all the same to you,’ he told her. He pulled open the door and pushed Frank inside. They settled themselves on the hard seats and he gave the order to move out. ‘I think we may safely assume that that’s the last we’ll hear from the Donatists,’ he said.

‘Until the next crowd of head-the-balls get some similar idea into their heads,’ Concepta added bitterly.

‘At least their prayers were answered,’ scolded Schnozzle gendy. ‘And perhaps something good has come out of it after all. I don’t blame you not recognizing this young man and the state he’s in. But look closer and you’ll see that under all the grime is Master Francis Feely. Master Frank works in the scullery, under the eye of the major-domo, and has done since the death of his father.’

‘So he’s an orphan now?’

‘I’m afraid so. Alone in the cruel world.’

Concepta gave him a caustic look but said nothing.

‘Maybe not quite alone, however. Master Frank,’ Schnozzle whispered by way of explanation, ‘is one of the children of the Dancing Madonna. One of the privileged few to whom Our Lady has spoken personally, if we are to believe what we’ve been told. It’ll take more than a rabble of Portadown louts to kill Master Frank. That’s why he has been spared the slaughter in which all the others have perished. Our Blessed Lady is saving Master Frank for something greater.’ He took another handkerchief from his pocket, spat on it and wiped the caked blood from Frank’s face. ‘His father was a decent enough man in his way, but he failed in his mission. Somehow I don’t think Master Frank is going to fail us! Are you, Master Frank?’

‘No, sir.’

‘I think the time has come for this lad to move out of the kitchen and on to something better. Mr MacBride has done all he can for him.’

Sister Concepta grunted. ‘What had you in mind?’

‘Something tells me that this poor lad here might have the makings of a great wee priest. He’s got the perfect pedigree for it.’

‘A few real priests are sorely needed at the moment, that’s for sure,’ Concepta muttered with ill-concealed distaste.

‘Never doubt the wisdom of God. He never closes one door but He opens another.’ He settled the travelling rug round his knees and produced his rosary beads. ‘He’ll make a great priest, mark my words. One that will lead the Irish people out of the dark ages and back to the true church. I feel it in my bones. A year or two under the unique services of the good men in Derry, in their bracing northern climate, will make a man of him.’

‘You might be right.’ She sounded doubtful.

‘Of course I’m right,’ he snapped, closing the conversation. ‘I’ve never been wrong yet.’

The outriders hung on grimly as the charabanc swung round in the road, righted itself and the convoy moved off through the lanes. Frank was wedged between Schnozzle and Concepta, unable to move a muscle. A lethargy beyond tiredness, beyond hunger, was stealing over him. The conversation of the Archbishop and his bodyguard seemed to be coming to him from across an echoing chasm. Their words reverberated in his head, fighting for his attention with other noises that he was powerless to control. He could feel the enormity of what had happened welling up inside his brain. He fought the images away, forcing himself to stare at the scenery, to concentrate on the words of the rosary he was chanting automatically.