Helter Skelter Read online

  Robert had not expected the Deacon to go straight to the Resurrection! And it was implicit in what Malachy said that he had met Christ! That was decidedly out of Robert’s comfort zone so he decided not to go there. He seized instead on Malachy’s final words.

  ‘Surely it is not that simple, Malachy. Take Tara’s Bishop. Either he is objectively real or he is not.’

  ‘No, rubbish! That is saying that reality is either black or white. It isn’t. Have you heard of Quantum Theory?’

  ‘A little. The early twentieth century theory that light is made up of waves?’

  ‘Yes, that’s it. Well, it actually states that light exists in two complementary forms, particles and waves. Both exist, both are true. But the latest research indicates that intermediary states exist as well. A whole range of them. Quantum shades, if you like. It largely depends on the observer and what the observer is looking for. If you seek particles, they appear. If you seek waves, they are there too. And - most weirdly of all - the gamut in between, too. And that applies to all matter, not just light. So going back to Tara’s Bishop, there is no black and white.’

  Robert caught his breath. Malachy was doing it again. Informing and explaining, and doing it very well. It seemed the Deacon was an expert on sub-atomic physics to boot. Robert decided to let the conversation rest. He had observed the Deacon closely the last few days. Malachy really was remarkably easy to get on with. But mousey? No, that was to be deceived by appearances and would lead him to underestimate his companion. Robert realised that the Deacon deserved respect.

  They walked on in silence. Malachy was right about the new college. Beyond the tranquil seminary area, the modern college of the National University of Ireland provided a bustling contrast. Spanking new buildings were interspersed with attractive student residential blocks. The new build was tasteful, with trees and lawns incorporated as green space, a nice place to live and study. The town was busy too with a fine broad old main street. Robert found it refreshing to be part of the bustle of the real world once again after the inward-looking intensity of Rosnaree.

  Had the situation not been so serious, Robert might have appreciated the elements of farce that accompanied their departure from Rosnaree. They had been smuggled out in a van to ensure they were not followed and Mac had provided them with a hire car at Mullingar for their journey. He had insisted that they hand over their current mobile phones and had kitted them out with the latest smart phones, and strict instructions on their use. They must use aliases at all times and avoid using specific names or places in their mobile conversations. E-mail should only be used in an emergency unless directed via a secure website.

  Brian had been mightily relieved that Tara was leaving Rosnaree for a while, realising that she would be safer elsewhere. Pulling Robert aside he asked him to provide professional security for Tara, in other words to act as her bodyguard. Robert promised that he would, recognising a father’s anxiety for a daughter who was vulnerable in more ways than one. But he declined an offer of payment. He added that, if he felt unable to continue in that role, he would let Brian know so that alternative arrangements could be made. Brian had grasped his hand firmly and warmly.

  Malachy’s voice interrupted Robert’s reverie.

  ‘Will here do?’

  Malachy was pointing at a coffee shop and Robert nodded. Over lunch Malachy briefed him as best he could on the sport of handball, although he was not a player himself. His most interesting comment was the fact that the only known close parallel was the Basque sport of Pelota.

  ‘And of course the Basque country is next door to Galicia, the purported home of the Celts,’ said Malachy tapping his nose knowingly.

  ‘So did it come from the Basques or the other way round?’

  Malachy shrugged his shoulders and grinned.

  ‘Who knows?’

  Somehow Robert got the impression that Malachy did know. The man had an in-depth knowledge of so many things. Maybe he was simply not saying to avoid sounding like a know-it-all. And maybe he is teasing me, Robert realised, wryly disconcerted.

  Chapter 25

  Fermanagh, Ireland, February 1658

  Abraham sat across the wooden table from William in the homestead at Drumnooran. Both men were tucking into fresh home-made bread and a warming bowl of winter root-vegetable soup that Bram’s wife Alice had prepared, welcome fare on this bitterly cold February day. Alice, a kitchen maid and Bram’s steward stood alongside and watched in respectful silence, their backs to the roaring wood fire in the grate.

  Eating provided an excuse for silence and Bram was grateful for it. He had brought William, under his new alias of William Appleyard, back home to the Fermanagh homestead less than an hour ago. His retinue of farm workers and servants had turned out to greet the newcomer, whom he presented as his new factor for the estate freshly arrived from England. They were not to know that their Master had collected him not from Larne, as he boldly claimed, but rather from Letterbreen only ten miles distant from where they now sat. And there had been lots of questions for the new arrival. Too many in fact for Bram’s liking, each one offering a fresh opportunity to respond in error and unstitch the subterfuge he and William were exercising on the entire household.

  Bram’s eyes rested on the solid wooden surface, a fine piece of oak, tempered, grooved and polished by years of use. The top was four inches thick and the unevenly rounded legs were of similar girth. He had bought it at an auction following the eviction of a Catholic family from their town house in Enniskillen and a fine bargain it had been. Looking up, his glance rested less certainly on his latest acquisition. William cut quite a dash, clean- shaven and rigged out in smart attire, a transformation from the bearded woodsman that Bram had first made acquaintance with. But Bram had no idea whether his latest purchase would prove to be a silk purse or a sow’s ear.

  Lifting the spoon to his lips, Bram blew carefully across the hot liquid to avoid scalding his tongue and reflected on how this moment had come to pass. He had bought the land in Fermanagh two years back from his former army captain. The man’s father had been canny and invested money in the Long Parliament’s Adventurers Act of 1642. It had raised loans secured on the Irish rebels’ lands that were to be confiscated once the war between Parliament and the Crown was settled. The Act of Settlement of 1652 had made possible the settling of accounts in this matter but the process on the ground in Ireland had proved chaotic. Some eleven million acres of land changed hands and, in addition to the original Adventurers, over twelve thousand veterans of the New Model Army stood in queue to get their hands on land in lieu of arrears of pay. The captain was not happy to discover he was getting less than a half the debenture he had expected and that the land was in the wilds of north Fermanagh and not in Westmeath as promised. After eight miserable months he sold it at a knockdown price to Bram, who was keen to make a new start with his wife Alice who would be joining him in Ireland from Kent.

  But things had not gone as planned. Bram found it hard to fit socially into the area. Those of the local Irish who had not been transplanted, or worse sent as slaves to the Tobacco Islands of the West Indies, greeted the settlers with ill-disguised loathing. Many had taken to the hills, wood, bogs and caves to live as bandits and this made even routine travel risky. The local Protestant landowners were mainly Presbyterians of an earlier generation of settlers and resented him as a puritan incomer. The Scottish Covenanters, who had settled nearby, viewed him with disdain by virtue of his being English. He might have endured if Alice was happy but she had not settled. The place was too foreign, lawless and uncivil for his Kentish lass and the final straw came when she lost their first baby. She went into melancholic decline and Bram reached a decision. They had to get out of this hellhole.

  But wanting something and getting it is not the same thing. Bram’s neighbours had responded to his feelers about selling them his land by making derisory offers. He was beginning to lose hope when a nugget of gossip, overheard one day at market, drew his attent
ion. It spoke of several dispossessed Irish gentry buying back land in nearby County Monaghan and that they had paid a good price for it. Such sell-backs were not strictly legal but where the commissioners wanted to avoid more disorder or to pocket a quick profit, they were prepared to turn a blind eye. Two days later Bram made his first fishing foray in the wild woods.

  On the far side of the table he could see that William Howard too was lost in thought, no doubt pondering the dramatic change in his luck. From what he had told Bram his last few years had been chaotic. As the Confederate rebels fell back to the west of the Shannon, William was lucky to escape death on two occasions as disorder accompanied their rout. As the Cromwellian onslaught closed in on Galway he had fled north hoping to reach one of the northern ports. Finally, exhausted and running short of funds, he had taken the advice of a passing stranger and found refuge with the raparees in the woods of north Fermanagh. For a time, he had recounted to Bram, it was bliss, the simple relief of not having to run and dissemble anymore. The secret to his acceptance by the woodsmen was straightforward. He was a priest and promised to minister to their needs as pastor. But after eighteen months in the woods, during which he had acquired a passable command of the Irish Language, William had realised that time was running out. As peace settled on the land his position would become precarious. Civil authority would inevitably close in on the rebels and capture them. He needed a way out and when the well-dressed fisherman appeared in the woods he recognised in him a fellow traveller - another man who needed to do business sub rosa.

  Each of them had something the other wanted, Bram had realised at the time. William could find him a buyer for his land, while in return he could help William escape Ireland. So their association had grown and an elaborate stratagem to bring William out of the woods had taken shape. Welcoming the new arrival to his hearth Bram wondered at the risk he was taking. He was not given readily to unsteadiness of nerve but today the dampness in his armpits spoke for itself. There was a bounty of five pounds for the head of a priest, the same tariff as for a wolf, and death for anyone who harboured one. Half the workers on the farm wouldn’t hesitate to report him if they suspected the truth. If he and William weren’t butchered on the spot they would be hanged before the mob in the square at Enniskillen. As for Alice, if she was spared, which he doubted, she would most likely be raped. Bram asked himself, for the thousandth time, if he was mad but he already knew the answer. Desperation makes men gamble for high stakes. Of one thing he was certain. If William proved a wolf in sheep’s clothing Bram swore he would slit his throat as readily as that of one of his sows.

  Chapter 26

  Bunder Alps, Switzerland, 6 October 2014

  The Whitetracks Eurocopter 135 was flying low over Morteratsch Station and Johann, a glaciologist who today was acting as tour guide, assessed his six passengers. His aim was to show them the stark truth of glacial retreat in the eastern Alps at first hand. They were mainly middle-aged or elderly men and he couldn’t imagine them on the piste but they were dressed in expensive outdoor gear to protect them from the cold. The exception was a much younger man, with distinctive blond strands running through his hair. On impulse Johann pushed open the window and cold air and deafening noise engulfed the cabin. Like an old trooper in a circus, Johann knew both added greatly to the immediacy of the experience. It certainly caught their attention. He shouted over the din.

  ‘OK, this station is part of the Rhaetian Railway that serves the main tourist centres. When it was built in 1908 it was at the snout of the Morteratsch glacier – today, if you look up valley, you cannot even see the front of the glacier.’

  As five heads swivelled to look, he continued.

  ‘That’s because the glacier has retreated nearly 2km in the hundred years since then.’

  The chopper banked and headed up valley. A few minutes later Johann pointed downwards,

  ‘Look, see that line of rocky material? It is a frontal moraine deposited in the early 1930s, so that’s where the ice front was then. Now listen up for the really interesting stuff. Up to the 1980s the average rate of retreat was seventeen metres per year but since then it has doubled and is now over thirty metres a year. You can imagine how that has started alarm bells ringing. Look over there! That’s where the ice front was only six years ago. Things have accelerated as average temperatures rise. At our next stop I will show you what happens to the ice itself.’

  He lowered himself back into his seat. The chopper accelerated fast and the snout of the glacier raced towards them as the pilot approached it low, rising upwards only at the last moment. A chorus of gasps told him that he was making an impact. They were now flying low over the vast white, dazzling expanse of the surface of the glacier. Johann pointed out its distinctive features to them – the lateral and medial moraines, the caves and crevasses. Turning, he spoke to the pilot who brought the helicopter back down valley to land it close to the front face of the glacier, on a broad flat area of glaciofluvial outwash sands in front of the snout. The snout itself was a greyish, dirty-looking ice wall twenty or so foot high. Water was seeping out of every crack and crevice and in places streams breached the bottom of the wall of ice.

  They climbed out of the helicopter and Johann led them a short distance to where a cave was cut by a melt water stream as it emerged from under the ice. The cavity offered a beautiful, brilliantly blue opening into the sub-glacial world. The stream was a trickle at present, so he took them right up to the mouth of the cave, and pointed out a series of large parallel brown shear planes slashing their way across the ice profile above it.

  ‘Now look at these beauties! These mean danger. They are collapse lines developing, evidence of a disintegrating ice body. Once the ice shifts along these, it causes roof collapse. Look down there!’

  He pointed to masses of ice debris lower down in the mouth of the cave.

  ‘We have to be really careful. New falls happen all the time. So we will stay here no more than three minutes. Last week a school party saw part of the front of the glacier collapse, and a hole, thirty metres across, opened up right before their very eyes. That’s about as wide as eight of our helicopters lined up in a row! They were lucky it didn’t happen under them. Now do you see that rock material, under the block?’

  He indicated down into the ice cave with his walking pole,

  ‘That is the basal moraine beneath the glacier, telling us that the glacier here is about ten metres thick. Ten years back it was forty metres hereabouts. This demonstrates that the glacier retreats both up the valley and by thinning downwards from the top surface. Follow me and I will show you.’

  He walked them a small distance to a crag of rounded rock that jutted up through the ice. Taking a folder from his rucksack he unfolded a set of panoramic photos of the valley under Piz Palu, an enormous triple-peaked massif, which was facing them to the right of the glacier. The photos, taken in 1998 and 2006 graphically illustrated the large-scale retreat and shrinking of the glacier so Johann split his guests into pairs to figure out for themselves the story the photos told. They became animated as they worked and the buzz of conversation told Johann that the point was being taken. He noticed that the younger man in the party was acting as a group leader, ensuring that everyone understood what they were looking at and helping them interpret the scenery and photos. There was lots of chatter and laughter. A born leader, Johann thought.

  Chapter 27

  Maynooth, Ireland, 3 October 2014

  The priest was waiting for Robert at the entrance to the Sports Hall. He was more talkative than before, explaining the game as they got ready in the dressing room. He kitted out Robert with shorts and a top from a locker for abandoned clothing and found him a pair of battered but serviceable shoes. The priest briefly explained the origins of the game.

  ‘Handball was codified by the GAA in the eighteen-eighties. Before that each area had its own rules so games could be a bit chaotic, often ending up in a fine scrap! The GAA sorted out one set of rules.’r />
  ‘These will do fine,’ said Robert, referring to the trainers and tying up the laces.

  ‘Good. Follow me.’

  The Irishman walked fast along narrow corridors, talking nineteen to the dozen, with Robert in his tow.

  ‘The earliest written record of handball comes from Galway in the early fifteen hundreds. Your bishop, Cornelius, was a Galway man so he would have played it as a lad. Maybe it will help you understand him. That’s why I suggested the game.’

  That and the opportunity to humiliate me, thought Robert. The priest stopped suddenly at a window on the right and Robert careered into him. Down below he could see what looked like a squash court.

  ‘We are going to play what is called ‘one wall’ handball. Another form of the game uses the four walls and the roof but you need to be an adept to tackle that.’ He looked doubtfully at Robert, ‘Have you played squash?’

  ‘Yes, and I still do,’ replied Robert.

  ‘Excellent,’ said the priest, as he rattled down the staircase to the court. ‘Then you will find it easy to get the hang of. Like squash it is all about hand-eye co-ordination and footwork. Just remember that instead of a racquet you use your hand, either open-palmed or with a balled fist, as you prefer. And you can use either hand.’

  ‘Can you explain the court markings?’ requested Robert, trying to make sense of the plethora of criss-cross markings on the walls and deck.

  ‘It is not a court, it is an alley.’ The supercilious manner surfaced again. ‘But the principles are the same. This is the service area,’ he pointed out the lines. ‘And that area is the front wall, and the black lines mark out our play floor. Got that? Good, ignore the rest. Now let’s get going. Watch me and learn.’