Half of the cloisters were in shadow now. Shafts of sunlight sent bands of brilliant light across the black of the seminarians. The bricks were glowing pink or almost white. Powerscourt watched in astonishment as the pilgrims began to join the rear of the procession. Brother White, Christy Delaney, Charlie Flanagan and Jack O’Driscoll formed themselves into a line of four and joined the seminarians at the end of their column.
‘Our father which art in heaven, hallowed be thy name . . .’
Now the rest of the pilgrims fell into line and progressed round the cloisters with the men in black, with only Maggie Delaney left on the sidelines.
‘Thy kingdom come, thy will be done . . .’
Lady Lucy was whispering to Powerscourt. ‘Should we join in too, Francis? What do you think?’
Powerscourt shook his head. ‘I think not, my love. Not our cloisters, not our religion, not even our pilgrimage.’
‘On earth as it is in heaven . . .’
The sound rose above the cloisters and into the blue skies above. Christy Delaney was crying now. So was Wee Jimmy Delaney, his huge frame racked by sobs.
‘Give us each day our daily bread . . .’
Lady Lucy was holding her husband’s hand very tightly. Inspector Leger in the corner was now flanked by a man with a bag who might be a doctor and a couple of orderlies with a makeshift stretcher.
‘And forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive them who trespass against us . . .’
Beads of sweat were forming on the Monsignor’s upper lip as he processed round the cloisters for the last time. Behind him the young men kept their places, eyes down, hands still.
‘And deliver us from evil, for thine is the kingdom, the power and the glory, for ever and ever, amen.’
Monsignor Michelack led his men right out of the cloisters, still keeping their ranks of four apiece, and into the square to wait for their transport. Inspector Leger marched the remaining pilgrims out too, pausing for a quick word with Powerscourt.
‘I’m sorry,’ he began, ‘I meant to ask you before but I forgot. I have lost my interpreter. I would be very grateful if you could accompany me on the train. I’ve ordered a couple of extra carriages. Maybe these pilgrims will talk to you more easily than they would to me, my lord. We won’t be asking you to spend the night in the cells with them, mind you.’
Powerscourt said they would be delighted. The doctor and his assistants, the melancholy apparatus of death, hurried off to the upper chamber to remove the body. Lady Lucy went to see if she could offer comfort to the pilgrims. Silence returned to the cloisters of Moissac.
Powerscourt watched as two burly French policemen carried Girvan Connolly’s body down the steps at the northeast corner of the cloisters. At the bottom they placed the corpse on a makeshift stretcher and carried it away to the cathedral square where a Moissac ambulance would take it to the Moissac morgue and into the care of the doctors. Beyond the wall he could still hear sounds of weeping and lament as the remaining pilgrims mourned the loss of yet another of their number.
Powerscourt was now completely alone. Eternal silence had returned. And he had seen this afternoon something approaching a miracle. No monks had walked round these four galleries since the revolutionary upheavals of 1793. But today, he had seen with his own eyes a great column of religious, processing round as their predecessors would have done eight hundred years before, saying the prayers for the dead. The cloisters, Powerscourt thought, were unmoved by murder and violent death. Built in their original form about 1100, they had survived the Black Death, the Crusades against the Cathars, the Hundred Years War, the Wars of Religion, the Revolution and the Terror. One more death would not affect them. As he looked at the four great arcades flanking the central garth – the grass space in the middle where a fountain or a spring had been centuries before – he tried to remember what the fussy little local historian had struggled to tell his party earlier that day. Twenty pillars each in the east and west sides and eighteen on the north and south. So the cloisters were nearly square. The pillars alternating between single and double columns. The great cedar towards the north arcade that would have given shade in the summer. And up here – the chubby Frenchman had grown quite animated at this point – ‘gentlemen, the glory of Moissac! What makes it most unique! The capitals at the top of the pillars! In these middle times, they had the sculptures on the top of the pillars, seventy and six of them, no, showing leaves and foliage and all the different scenes from the Old and New Testaments. For the monks this would have been like a book to read as they went about their work, a book to inspire them and keep them to their callings. And the pilgrims, my friends, the pilgrims would have read them as we read newspapers today!’
The rattle of wheels and the clap of horses’ hooves told him that the body must now be on its way to another resting place. The sun was advancing slowly but relentlessly along the south arcade, highlighting the pillars and the capitals in red and gold. Powerscourt wondered if the stones had a message. Perhaps they were as remote as the broken statue of some long dead Egyptian potentate, buried in the sands in the Valley of the Kings . Modernity, he thought, would probably want to sweep them all away and build something new, something relevant to the times. The cloister, indeed, had only just survived an early encounter with modernity when the engineers of the new Bordeaux to Sete railway had wanted to knock the whole complex down and replace it with gleaming modern railway tracks. It had taken a great campaign to deflect them and even now, as Powerscourt heard the rumble of an approaching express behind him, modernity shook parts of the building every time a train shot past. Powerscourt walked slowly round the cloisters, a voyage out of light into shadow and back into light again and thought about the monks and the abbots who had spent their lives here centuries before. The men who walked here then didn’t think about the future, they thought about eternity.
The dull browns burnished into light pink, the weathered red brick wrapped around the cloisters, the great tree reaching up into a deep blue sky, they spoke to Powerscourt of a profound peace. He would always remember these cloisters, the deep stillness they conveyed even when the arcades were full of chattering pilgrims, the all-pervading calm, their austere and timeless beauty. He heard footsteps advancing towards him from the south gallery. Lady Lucy was coming to join her husband in his deliberations. As she walked along the row of pillars, the sunlight was dancing in her hair.
There were two telegrams waiting for Powerscourt when he and Lady Lucy returned to the hotel. The first was from Johnny Fitzgerald and was unusually delphic for Johnny. ‘Am coming in person to join you on holiday in south of France. Bringing one of Knightsbridge’s finest lost and found. Shall expect detailed report on best local vintages for immediate consumption. Fitzgerald.’
‘My love, what on earth is one of Knightsbridge’s finest lost and found?’ Lady Lucy had been reading the message over her husband’s shoulder.
Powerscourt laughed. ‘It’s a primitive sort of code, Lucy. Look at the first letters of the words after “bringing” and you’ll see it says “book”. Johnny must have got hold of a copy of that old book about Delaney, the one that was pulped all those years ago. And he’s bringing it himself. Maybe he didn’t like to trust it to the post. Anyway, he should be here soon. I think that’s tremendous news.’
Lady Lucy was more thrilled than she let on. She had always been very fond of Johnny Fitzgerald. He had been best man at their wedding, scarcely recovered from a bullet wound in the chest. But when he was there, she felt Francis was safe. Johnny looked after him as he had looked after Johnny for years now. It was as if a blanket of security was about to be thrown over her husband.