The Blood Dimmed Tide (24 page)

The documents appeared genuine, and I began to believe that they weren’t part of a devious interrogation tactic. I felt their reassuring heft in my hands.

Marley smiled thinly. ‘Part of me wanted to keep the documents and use them in a more tactical way, as and when required, but you forced my hand.’

‘You were planning on using them for blackmail?’

‘You see through me so easily.’

Horses stamped on the road before us, their riders calling out to each other in Irish. One of the beasts reared close to the side of the car, its mouth lathered in foam.

‘If you think anything of Ireland and England, and the value of justice, you will ensure that these fall into the right hands,’ said Marley.

A thundering roar from behind warned us that Grimes’ lorry had caught up with us. A swarm of thickset policemen jumped from the back of the vehicle and approached the horsewomen with guns and black truncheons drawn.

Marley opened the door and shoved me outside. ‘I’m going to count to five and then I’m going to shoot my gun in your direction.’

The advance of the policemen panicked the horses with many of them rearing into the air. I reached up and a female hand grabbed mine and helped haul me onto a horse’s back. I ducked down beside her, and squeezed my heels into the animal’s hot sides. My last view of Marley was of him withdrawing a gun and aiming it into the air.

27

Queen of Pentacles

THE DAUGHTERS of Erin provided me with a labourer’s cap and a jacket for disguise. As they hurried me through Sligo’s side streets, I realised why I wasn’t afraid: I possessed the lethal calm of a man who knows he’s drowning, swept up by events far beyond his control. I had lost my grip on the runaway world of Irish politics and revolution. In every direction, I came up against my own gullibility and ignorance. Much easier to allow myself to be carried along by these wayward currents. I had come to the painful realisation that the complete collapse of the spiritual side of my investigation was of secondary importance. All that mattered now was to secure Clarissa’s release and let the authorities know the truth about Grimes.

Several hundred yards from the courthouse, I came to an abrupt halt. The area around the building was crowded with protesters demanding Clarissa’s release. My female guides slowed, bumped into people, were swallowed up by the crowd, and then reappeared again at my side. By the time we reached the cobbled square in front of the courthouse, we were one with a pressing throng, swept along by the determined thrust of Clarissa’s supporters. At one point, I turned and through the sea of faces caught a glimpse of Grimes’ cold blue eyes and haggard moustache, as he scanned the faces of the protesters.

A column of policemen snaked through the crowd and began interrogating the female activists, pulling at their headscarves, arresting some of the young men who had joined in the demonstration. They were hunting me down, I realised. I pulled my cap tighter and sank my head between my collars.

The policemen shifted their scrutiny when a ripple of excitement broke out in the square. A makeshift platform had been erected right in front of the courthouse, and a tall woman, majestic in flowing black robes, took centre stage. Even though her face was obscured by a black shawl, I could tell it was Maud Gonne. Her appearance had a mesmerising effect on the crowd. I expected a public rant, but instead she spoke with the quiet dignity of a mourner attending a deathbed.

‘Daughters of Erin, we are here this afternoon to protest for the honour of Ireland. We do so at risk of suffering, for it is not easy for us women, some of us old and feeble, to come out like this. Roughly handled and bruised, our clothes torn, we will fight to save Sligo from the disgrace of convicting an innocent woman, a true Republican, while the real murderers triumphantly flaunt their crimes before a cowed people.’

At this point, a swarm of police pushed their way through to the platform, and a roar of protest rose from the onlookers as Grimes’ men began to dismantle the stage from under the speaker’s feet. Gonne tried to rally the crowd once more before the police overwhelmed the remnants of the platform.

A shrill whistle pierced the roars of the protesters as a policeman pushed through the crowd and grabbed me by the jacket. In the distance, I saw Grimes pointing in my direction, his face furious. He ran at full tilt, cutting a path through the throng. As I struggled to get away, one of the Daughters of Erin jumped on my captor’s back and knocked off his cap. His face was morose and beefy, grimacing stubbornly as he clung onto my coat. The girl grabbed hold of his big jowls and shook them violently. He wheeled round and round, trying to shake her loose, his face growing redder and redder. She flung her hands round his throat and gripped tightly, until, finally, he fell and released me from his grip. Another RIC man appeared out of the crowd and attacked the girl with the butt of his revolver. She fell from the policeman’s back, her head bleeding, and staggered against a wall.

‘This is no time for fainting,’ urged Maud from her disintegrating platform, whereupon the woman shook herself back to life, and threw herself once more onto the capless policeman. Several more women joined in, raining blows upon his red face.

Grimes pushed open the valve of a fire hydrant and directed a skin-blistering jet of water onto his officer and the attackers, skittering them across the cobbled stones, blasting them away from their victim. Even when they tried to clamber onto their feet, the water kept gushing against them, sweeping them to the ground once again, pummelling their drenched bodies with the force of countless fists. The policemen gathered in a circle to watch, stirred to excited laughter by the sight of the soaked women writhing beneath the iridescent spray, their long wet dresses moulded against their bodies, their scarves and shawls floating down the gutters.

Grimes redirected the spray at the rest of the crowd, cutting a swathe through the square. He was intent on flushing me out. I kept my head low and moved to the thickest part of the crowd, which pressed around Maud Gonne as she evaded the clutches of the policemen. Holding herself erect, she jumped onto the back of a cart, which was hurriedly hauled through the crowd by a group of her supporters. Somehow she kept speaking, addressing her people as they followed her to the top of the square, and then down a side street.

‘A great transformation is taking place in our beloved country,’ she shouted at the top of her voice. ‘Our suffering people will know justice and peace, and their children will understand the great meaning of the blood sacrifice, of struggle and hope. I ask you not to fear what lies ahead.’

As usual, there was more than an element of theatricality about her delivery and her disregard for the threats of violence and chaos breaking out around her. She kept proclaiming to the crowds as though the seething town were a battlement on which she toured triumphant.

In the minutes after she disappeared from sight, she still ruled the square, and her voice continued to echo against the buildings. Then the sound of gunfire broke out followed by the sound of someone feverishly blowing a whistle. In the panic, I ran up the steps to the courthouse and took shelter within, just as a pair of court guards pulled the doors across and barred them tightly.

The trial had already opened, although there was no sign of Clarissa in the dock. I took a seat at the back of the public gallery and prayed fervently that the judge would adjourn the case soon so that I might get a chance of grabbing his attention without committing contempt of court.

The judge began the slow process of empanelling the jury. Among the twelve selected were three landlords’ agents, a solicitor, a vicar and three retired Army officers. The judge went on to warn that the court would not give way to the moral pressure of the defendant’s hunger strike or the protests of her supporters in the square. Nor was it possible to consider the defendant an ordinary female. Consequently, her sex should not affect the merit of the question of detention or release. The defendant was being tried for the aggravated and premeditated murders of two innocent victims, he told the court. Although she was purported to be a lieutenant in a Republican female militia, there was little indication that either crime was a political act.

Flanked by prison guards, Clarissa entered the court wearing a dark cape. From the evidence of her sharpened features, she had lost weight. Her eyes were so shadowed they appeared bruised, yet when she cast them over the public gallery, they flashed with feeling. She drew her hood more closely about her face and made her way to the dock. One of the guards stopped her in her tracks and ordered her to remove the cape. Her face blazed and she glared at him. He tried to forcibly seize her by her shoulders, but she skilfully eluded him and threw off the cape herself. The packed gallery gasped. Her head had been completely shorn by the prison wardens. The scabs where the razor had nicked her scalp were still visible. Her bald head gave her face a glowering expression.

At this point, a commotion broke out in the hallway beyond the court. The doors flew open and Grimes pushed his way past the guards. He paused briefly to remove his cap in front of the judge. A livid red band stretched across his sweating brow.

‘Your Worship, I call on you to allow me to arrest that man,’ he said pointing an accusing finger at me.

Clarissa stared at me; Grimes stared at me; the entire public gallery turned to regard me with astonishment. The judge frowned and also stared in my direction. He raised his gavel but then lowered it when the room appeared to settle. ‘The court does not approve of disruptions, or such lawlessness,’ he said, staring heavily at Grimes. The Inspector’s mouth slackened. He tried to think of something to say but then thought better of it.

The rest of the court kept watching Grimes, expecting another outburst from the clearly angry Inspector, whose eyes were very much on me, his mouth twisted in a sneer.

‘Your police work, no matter how pressing, must wait until the end of this hearing,’ the judge admonished Grimes.

Ignoring the tension within the courtroom, the judge spent the next half an hour berating the Daughters of Erin for bringing scandal and social turmoil to Sligo.

‘You are even more of an abomination to Ireland than we had dared to suppose,’ he said. ‘Not only are you traitors to your country and your class but also to the fairer sex, and a disgrace in the eyes of polite society generally.’

A hiss of indignation rippled through Clarissa’s supporters. The judge then lectured the jury on their role and warned them not to read certain newspapers, which were intent on covering the trial in the most sensationalist manner possible.

Time seemed to stretch as the judge spoke on about some obscure points of law. I began to sweat and cough, while Grimes’ face appeared to cool and grow at ease; across the crammed room his features were utterly calm. I was trapped within the very heart of Sligo’s judicial system, next door to his gaol, with his police officers likely filling the hall outside the courtroom. He stared at me like a man who knows his quarry has reached the end of its running.

The judge adjourned the trial until after lunch and the court rose as one. As soon as the judge disappeared through a side-door, I produced the folder of documents and made a beeline for the defence counsel, a young man whose side profile looked oddly familiar. From behind, I could hear the thud of heavy feet as Grimes pounded towards me. However, I was confident he was too far away to reach me in time. I was within touching distance of the solicitor when a pair of court guards blocked my path. I tried to push them aside, but they promptly grabbed me by the arms and threw me against a wall.

The solicitor turned and eyed me with surprise. Recognition dawned on both of us. He was one of the freed Republican prisoners I had talked to in the hold of the mail boat.

‘Let him through, officers,’ he said. ‘I know this man. He is an Englishman charged with an investigation in connection with this trial.’

I hurriedly explained the importance of the folder to Clarissa’s defence. His young face creased in puzzlement as he flicked through the papers. Grimes spotted the documents and for a moment staggered as if he’d been struck a physical blow. He almost fell to the floor but then he pulled himself together. His voice rose to an hysterical pitch.

‘Whatever he has handed you, I swear it is a lie, on my honour as a gentleman and an officer.’

‘If you are not aware of what is in the folder then how can you be sure it is a lie?’ said the solicitor. He turned and examined me. ‘I shall be making an application to have this man made a witness of the court. He will come under its protection and be exempt from any harassment. If you try to arrest him, I will have you charged for contempt of court.’

Grimes face showed the strain of a man making fresh calculations, working out the odds, trying to determine if there was another way of levelling the playing field.

‘This is a British Court in the British Empire,’ he declared. ‘You don’t have proof of anything.’

But the solicitor ignored him. My sense of time returned as I was led into an antechamber and asked to recount my tale in front of the judge. Even though there were discrepancies, mixed-up dates, shadows lingering around some of the events in my account, for the first time since landing on Irish soil, I felt a sure sense of knowledge and control in what I was saying. I no longer had the sensation that I was floating through a plot created by others, chasing invented ghosts, half-waking dreams and dead silences. Ireland itself grew less dark and secret.

As I spoke, I could hear the protesters outside the courthouse. The square rang to the sound of their voices; they were in victorious mode, singing low heroic chants, confident that their country’s destiny now lay firmly in their hands. For too long Ireland had been a ghost-country, appearing and disappearing in the great cycles of time, hovering in between remaining a loyal colony and being born as a glorious Celtic nation. It had haunted the minds of its people with its tragic mythology for long enough. The Easter Rising had been the revolution to end all that. Everything was changing utterly, because the country had finally encountered blood and reality, and now the modern forces of democracy and the social conscience of political leaders would help a new nation be born. Ireland’s exile from the land of faeries and enchanted dreams was just beginning.