Chapter Fourteen

Strange Meeting

Some of what follows in this chapter is not for the faint-hearted.

The Irish Chauffeur


Lower Hall Farm, Little Enderby, Yorkshire, England, April 1937.

Armitage had been given all the information he needed: details of the flat overlooking the route of the Coronation procession, of the rifle and ammunition, dumdum bullets for maximum damage, and also, when and from where he was to be picked up by a U-boat waiting for him off the East Coast. As it so happened, the rendezvous was just south of Scarborough, quite close to the old fort.

Schmidt was returning to London by the midday train.

"And if they were to arrest you, what then?"

Schmidt grimaced.

"I have a cyanide pill".

"Would you use it?"

"Well, I..."

Schmidt got no further with whatever it was he had been about to say for, as far as Armitage was concerned, the other was now a liability. So, out of sight behind the barn, without further ado, Armitage stabbed Schmidt through the heart with his flick knife. Death was instantaneous. Armitage hid the body of the German under a pile of straw. Later, tonight, when Daisy was asleep, he would dump the corpse in Devil's Mire.


"He's gone". And, that was true enough.

"Oh, aye". Daisy did not seem unduly concerned as to what had become of the young hiker who had turned up here at the farm so unexpectedly. Nor that he had now left. After all, Ed had said that he would put him on the track which led across the moors to Ripon, and in this, Daisy had no reason to suspect that Armitage had not done as he had said he would.

The only thing that was a little odd was that Ed had been so against anyone coming here but, like he said, the hiker was not local; had come up here from London. Daisy shrugged; said the young man must have been addled to come such a long way, only to go for a walk.

"Now, lass, what about a brew?" Armitage asked and smiled.


Rosenberg, Lower Austria, April 1937.

Of course Edith knew it would be a while before she could expect any reply to reach Rosenberg from Palestine in response to her letters written to Friedrich and darling Max. Nonetheless, this evening found her once again seated at the desk in her Writing Room, penning letters to the two of them in her own firm hand. That to Max, long since finished, it and the envelope into which the letter had been placed and sealed, pressed to her lips several times, Edith had just set down her pen. She had been telling Friedrich, in some detail, of her latest encounter, arranged at the behest of Kitty Rothschild, with the Duke of Windsor; of the man's ridiculous views, of his obsession with having his own way, of his dependence upon her.

Tonight there was neither rain nor wind; indeed no sound of any kind, and here at Rosenberg, the great house slumbered. As Edith sat, staring momentarily into space, the ormolu clock on the mantle piece chimed and then began to strike the hour: one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve. Midnight. The Witching Hour. Good Lord! She hadn't realised it was so late. This, Edith put down to the fact that, during the last few nights, she had slept soundly, with no further reoccurrence of her unpleasant dream - for that was what she had concluded it must have been - and which had so disturbed her. All the same, there was no need to finish Friedrich's letter now; she would do so on the morrow.

Edith stood up; looked down fondly at the photographs of Friedrich, Max, and little Kurt which stood on her desk, switched off the lamp, and then walked towards the door. As she did so, she glanced over at the clock and the large, ornate mirror hanging above it, if for no other reason than it was something which she had done, time out of mind.

Then, it happened.


The Writing Room was lit only by a couple of electric wall sconces. As Edith passed the mirror, a gleam of light lit the surface of the pier glass. At the time, she assumed it to be nothing more than a sliver of silvery moonlight filtering through a narrow gap between the shutters and the curtains. Afterwards, she was not so sure. Edith paused and looked directly at the mirror in which she expected to see reflected her own likeness. But, there was nothing to be seen.

Maybe it was something to do with the age of the mirror or perhaps even the air - the day had been damp - because the surface of the glass appeared entirely opaque, as though it had misted over. Within the brume, Edith glimpsed a dark shadow; one which did not belong to her. Slowly, the film on the surface of the mirror evaporated, drew back, so that on either side of the glass there were now two bands of white. Between them the surface of the mirror was dark, akin to a tunnel. Gradually, out of the blackness, there appeared a tall object, towards which, or so it appeared to Edith, she was travelling at considerable speed. Then the white bands dissolved, swirling across the surface of the mirror, obscuring whatever it was that Edith had glimpsed there between them.

Then, just as suddenly, once more they drew back and there it was, right in front of her. A towering factory chimney. Seconds later, there came the same appalling sounds she had heard before: the grinding and rending of metal, and everything dissolved into an enormous fireball. So real did the experience seem, that Edith felt the searing heat of the flames: heard, too, the appalling screams.

A moment later, it was as if what she had seen and heard, had never been. An eerie silence now descended, with the glass of the ornate mirror once more reflecting not only the prosaic furnishings of the Writing Room but also, Edith's terrified face.


Idrone Terrace, Blackrock, Dublin, Irish Free State, April 1937.

Given his profession, as well as being Deputy Editor of The Irish Independent, Tom had all manner of contacts, and in the matter of Danny, one of these now stood him in good stead. He could have kicked himself for not having thought of Errol Hawkins before. There were numerous American journalists reporting on both sides of the civil war in Spain. With Hawkins being accredited to the Press Bureau of the American Embassy in London, he would know which of them were in the north covering things from the Republican side, and who might be able to make enquiries as to what had become of the Volunteers and, more specifically, Danny. Not that Tom would say anything to Sybil. At least not yet. After all, if Danny was still alive, and Tom prayed that he was, in wartime, especially in a civil war, anything could happen.


Rosenberg, Lower Austria, April 1937.

Edith knew this could not go on.

But what was she to do? With Friedrich out in Palestine, to whom could she turn to for help? As was so often the case, the answer, when it came to her, did so quite unexpectedly, the following afternoon, when she had taken Kurt for a walk down to the bridge over the stream, accompanied by Fritz trotting along beside the two of them on his leash.

In the bright spring sunshine, northwards the snow capped Alps looked especially magnificent; while far to the south, with the coming of the warmer weather, the spreading forest canopy of the Wienerwald was now once more turning all to green.

Watching Kurt playing with Fritz on the grass, the little dog rolling over on his back for his tummy to be tickled, Edith thought instantly of Max, and smiled. These days the little dog was unable to walk very far; in fact, this afternoon, Edith had in fact carried him for much of the way.

Seated on a bench, mulling over in her mind what her dream, if dream indeed it had been, and the more she thought about it the more she was convinced it had been no dream, let alone what she had glimpsed the previous night in the mirror in her Writing Room, portended, suddenly, Edith recalled who might be able to help her.

"Yes, of course. Isabel! Why on earth didn't I think of her before?" By Isabel, Edith did not mean Matthew's well-meaning, if meddling mother, Isobel Crawley, dead these several years since.

Instead, she meant Miss Isabel Henderson, an Englishwoman, a spinster, from the West Country, from Dartmouth in Devonshire, resident in Vienna and who, for the last few years, had rented a large apartment overlooking the Michaelerplatz. Apart from a sizeable inheritance, greater than she had expected because of the deaths of her two brothers, Isabel continued to earn her living by giving English lessons and also teaching the piano. Edith now remembered, with a smile, when because of Max's persistent questioning, she had told him of Isabel Henderson's over fondness for cognac, and hinted at the reason behind it. That had been... Good Lord! Almost seven years ago.


Christmas Eve, Vienna, Republic of Austria, December 1930.

Max looked down at his beloved dachshund, Fritz, seated beside him in the snow, and smiled. Seeing the eyes of his young master upon him, the little dog gave a short, playful bark; sniffed cautiously at the snowflake which had landed on his nose only, a moment later, to see it vanish before his startled eyes.

Despite being warmly wrapped against the winter chill, Max shivered. He wished with all his heart that darling Mama would cease chatting with Fräulein Henderson and do as she had promised earlier this afternoon, when they had been walking down the Graben, that once Mama had finished her Christmas shopping, she would take him to the Central Café and buy him a delicious cup of hot chocolate along with a mouth watering pastry. Then they would catch the early evening train from the Westbahnhof to St. Johann, where Weisman would be waiting with the motor to drive them back to Rosenberg.

But then, within sight of the Central Café, they had the misfortune, at least as far as Max was concerned, to run into one of Mama's English friends who lived here in Vienna: Fraulein Henderson. If Max had been asked what it was that he remembered most about her, he would have said that invariably Fräulein Henderson smelt overwhelmingly of jasmine. Mama wore perfume too but her own, Shalimar - Max had seen the delicately shaped bottle of amber liquid standing on her dressing table - was so much nicer. Had he known the words, Max would have said that Mama's scent had a beguiling, elusive quality about it; whereas with Fräulein Henderson it was as if she had been plunged head first into a tub of jasmine scented water.

A few months ago, when they had chanced to meet Fräulein Henderson, her perfume had been even stronger than usual. Afterwards, Max plucked up the courage to ask Mama why this was so. When his mother heard what was perplexing him, she had smiled, seated him on her lap, and drawn him forward into the comforting circle of her arms.

"My darling, what you have to understand, is that Fräulein Henderson is very lonely and rather fond of cognac".

While in all other respects he was a happy little boy, because of his haemophilia, Max had spent a very great deal of time in bed or else in hospital. So, even at eight years old, loneliness was something which he understood. He loved Papa and Mama very much indeed; knew that they loved him too, but as an only child, what Max wanted more than anything else were friends of his own age with whom to play. However, because of his illness, Mama was wary of permitting such encounters, knowing that for Max, an otherwise innocent game of rough and tumble, with boys of his own age, could spell disaster.

Max knew what that cognac was; after all, Papa drank it, even in preference to Schnapps. But that only made the matter of Fräulein Henderson even more mysterious. For despite Papa liking brandy, he never smelt of jasmine. Nor, for that matter, of cognac.

"But if Fräulein Henderson likes cognac, why does she always smell of jasmine?" Max asked innocently.

"Well, darling, it isn't considered at all proper for a lady to...

Having now at length had it explained to him just why it was that Fräulein Henderson was so liberal in the application of her perfume, Acaciosa, Max gravely nodded his head, promising faithfully that he would never breathe a word of what Mama had just told him.


Close to where they were standing, someone was playing a zither. Although Max did not recognise the tune, instinctively, he knew it must be a waltz. After all, here on the streets of Vienna, the birthplace of Johann Strauss, what else would someone be playing? And Max was right. For, not that he knew it, at least not then, had not the great Hector Berlioz said that Vienna without Strauss would be like Austria without the Danube?

Now, as the delicately plucked, tinkling notes continued to drift through the frost hung air, Max looked about, seeking to ascertain the whereabouts of the invisible musician but did so in vain; saw only another flurry of snowflakes, feather light, beginning to drift down out of the rapidly darkening sky. Heard too the doleful bells of the Stephansdom, muffled by the softly falling veil of snow, tolling out across the white shrouded streets of Vienna.


At last, Max dared to hope that Mama had finished chatting which indeed proved to be the case. Having wished each other the compliments of the season, the two women said their goodbyes. As Fräulein Henderson set off cautiously along the icy pavement, Edith looked down at Max and smiled. He really was a handsome, winning little boy.

"I know what you need," she said with a laugh.

"A glass of cognac?" Max suggested with an impish grin.

"Max! Now, what did I tell you?" Quickly turning her head, Edith saw that Fräulein Henderson was safely out of ear shot. Breathing a sigh of relief, a moment later, Max saw the corners of his mother's mouth twitch, drift upwards, broaden first into a smile, and then into a grin wide enough to match his own. Laughing, with her gloved hand Edith now indicated the front door of the Central Café.


Somewhere Between Tulkarem and Nablus, Northern District, British Mandated Palestine, late March 1937.

Then, for no immediate apparent reason, the firing from the hillside abruptly ceased, with the Arab attackers hastily abandoning their positions. In the lull that followed, the ensuing silence was broken by the heavy rumble of several vehicles approaching at speed from the direction of Tulkarem. And from out of a clear blue sky, much to Max's delight, a military bi-plane swooped low overhead. It seemed that for the beleaguered defenders of the truck, help was now at hand, in the guise of the British Army.

A few moments later, and in a cloud of dust, two military lorries, each containing a detachment of British soldiers pulled sharply to a stand. While the soldiers scrambled out and immediately took up defensive positions in order to make the area secure, the officer in command clambered down from out of the cab of the first vehicle and strode briskly towards where Friedrich and the others were now rising to their feet. Seeing who the officer was, and before he reached them, Tibor went forward to meet him. Smiling broadly, he held out his hand which the other grasped firmly.

"I'm very glad to see that rumours of your untimely death have been much exaggerated".

"So am I!" Eccles laughed. "But it took a deuce in the arranging! And then of course, I had to stay well out of sight, until the coast was clear, so as to convince the other side that what you told me in Jerusalem had died with me. I have to say, Crawley played his part in it to perfection". Eccles nodded at Harriet. "It seems we meet again".

"Indeed. I'm equally glad to see you looking so well".

Eccles smiled.

"Thank you. Now, just who are all these people?" Tibor swung about.

"Permit me to introduce Herr Friedrich von Schönborn, the Austrian archaeologist and brother-in-law to the earl of Grantham". Eccles touched the brim of his cap with the tip of his swagger stick.

"Yes, I've heard of you".

"And this is his assistant, Herr Horst".

Eccles nodded. Touched his cap as before.

"Eccles, 1st Battalion, The Loyals".

Having noted the officer's rank, Friedrich smiled.

"I must congratulate you, captain, on your most timely arrival".

Eccles was modestly dismissive.

"Think nothing of it. We'd had word, a day or two ago, that there might be trouble hereabouts. It seems we were right to act on the intelligence we'd received". Eccles eyed the boys. "And these are..."

"My son, Max, and his cousin Robert, Lord Grantham's eldest boy".

Eccles smiled at the two boys; addressed himself to Robert.

"Your father's a very brave man. And you may tell him exactly what I said, word for word, when next you see him".

"Thank you, sir. I will". Robert grinned.

"Now, I suggest we don't linger. If you're ready to depart, we'll see you safely to your camp at Samaria".

Friedrich nodded. He had made no mention of where they were bound, yet the British captain clearly knew their destination.

"Thank you". That the arrival here, first of Captain Csáky and now the British was fortuitous was undeniable. But Friedrich did not believe in coincidences. There was something else afoot. Quite what, he didn't know but he would make it his business to find out. However, now was not the time for that.

A few moments later, the four of them were seated back in the cab of the truck. Then, with Tibor and Harriet having caught and re-mounted their camels, now with a British military escort bringing up the rear, they were rattling down the road, bound for the excavation at Samaria.


Rosenberg, Lower Austria, April 1937.

After their encounter on the Herrengasse on Christmas Eve of 1930, Edith and Isabel Henderson did not meet again for several years. With Friedrich often away out in the Near East, the birth of little Kurt in 1933, Max's health continuing to be so precarious, witness his near fatal fall in the garden in 1934, as well as overseeing the running of Rosenberg, Edith travelled into Vienna but rarely. So, it had been a matter of sheer chance that, late last year, one wet autumn day, when, on one of her all too rare visits into the capital, Edith happened to encounter Miss Henderson, close to St. Peter's Catholic Church. While Edith had little time to spare, nonetheless she agreed with alacrity to Isabel's suggestion that they take coffee in the Café Frauenhuber and catch up on each other's news.

What Edith knew of Isabel's past was little enough: a teacher of English and a competent pianist whom she had met at a concert held in the Musikverein in Vienna. Isabel's late father had been a clergyman and her mother, also now deceased, had likewise come of a clerical family. Of her three brothers, Alfred had been killed at Galipolli in 1916, and Basil on the Western Front a year later. Her third brother, Harold, had been too young to fight and had survived The Great War; having married, he and his family had emigrated to Canada during the early 1920s.

Tragedy had again struck Isabel in the closing stages of the war when her fiancé, Maurice Durham,a captain with the Staffordshires, having made it through to October 1918 without a scratch, had been killed, needlessly so, near Cambrai, shortly after the British had breached the Hindenburg Line.

In peacetime, Captain Durham had been devoted to stag hunting, riding to hounds during the season whenever the opportunity presented itself. And it was his love of this sport which proved his undoing. For, in the closing stages of the Second Battle of Cambrai, on venturing down into an abandoned German dugout Durham had see hanging on the wall, a German hunting dagger; a beautiful thing, with a staghorn handle, swept cross-guard, and silver mounts, complemented by a brass adorned leather scabbard. A fitting souvenir to take home.

As he reached for it, too late he saw the wire; the dagger was booby-trapped. There came a deafening roar and Durham's now bloodied, mud-spattered, and lifeless body was flung, unceremoniously, against the far side of the rapidly disintegrating dugout. In the ensuing chaos of the dying days of the war, Isabel did not receive the dreaded telegram until 11th November 1918, just as the victory bells were pealing out in unison across the country.

Thereafter, with but a handful of distant relatives, an elderly aunt and a couple of cousins, left alive in England, Isabel no longer had any real ties to the country of her birth and, having come out to Vienna in the aftermath of the war, she had remained here ever since, living in her apartment overlooking the Michaelerplatz, teaching English and giving piano lessons.

Now, in the light of so much personal loss, it was perhaps not unsurprising that Isabel had embraced wholeheartedly the craze for Spiritualism which had swept across both America and western Europe in the aftermath of the Great War. Here, in post war Vienna, Isabel was well placed to do so as here in what had until very recently been the capital of the sprawling Austro-Hungarian Empire there were, reportedly, many individuals claiming to possess the Gift, sensitives, or as they were called in both English and German, mediums.


Entrance Hall, Downton Abbey, Yorkshire, England, April 1937.

Matthew and Mary exchanged knowing glances.

"So, now, thanks, at least in part, to Mrs. Hughes' sausages, I think, we know where Armitage is likely to be".

"What do you intend doing?"

"Nothing that will give the game away; that we are on to him. But, first, I need to make several telephone calls".

"Then what?"

Matthew tapped the side of his nose.

"Softly, softly, catchee monkey!"

Mary laughed.

"Very well. But you will keep me informed, won't you?"
"Of course".

"I suppose I'd better go and change". Mary walked towards the foot of the Main Staircase.

"And, darling, not a word to anyone".

"No, of course not".

Matthew and Mary now went their separate ways; he down to the Estate Office, she upstairs, as she had said, to change out of her riding clothes.

A moment or two later, satisfied that the coast was now clear, Barrow walked briskly into the Entrance Hall. Having been standing on the other side of the green baize door, something which he often did, in the matter of Armitage, he had overheard everything that had just been said.


Rosenberg, Lower Austria, April 1937.

As for Edith, she had no truck at all with Spiritualism; did not believe in the manifestation of ectoplasm, table rapping, or in the well-nigh illegible scribbles emanating from the use of a planchette. So, understandably, she had no time either for mediums, virtually all of whom had been proven to be fakes or frauds, including here in Austria, Rudi Schneider who had been comprehensively exposed as a charlatan of the first order.

Yet, for all this, Edith did believe in precognition; had even read Dunne's book on the subject, An Experiment with Time; there was a copy here at Rosenberg standing on one of the bookshelves in her Writing Room. Even though what Dunne proposed flew in the face of what was accepted, namely that an effect cannot occur before its cause, Edith was certain of the reality of what she had experienced. Isabel had an eclectic circle of friends; hopefully she would be able to suggest someone in whom Edith could confide.


Somewhere east of Bilbao, Basque Country, Northern Spain, late April 1937.

For Danny, for Jimmy, for Liam, and for Dev, and no doubt for many of the others too, on both sides of the conflict, the grim reality of the civil war in Spain, along with all of its attendant horrors, had turned out to be a very different experience from what they had imagined it would be. But then, expectation is nearly always different to reality.

Yet, there are, and no doubt always will be, young men who, for whatever reason, out of a sense of duty, of loyalty, out of patriotism, or perhaps just because of their own naivety, never for once doubting in the idiotic belief that somehow they bear a charmed life, willingly answer a call to arms. Conviction, that a cause is just, plays its part, every bit as much as misplaced idealism.

So too do the photographs which duly appear in the newspapers; of soldiers standing smartly to attention or else marching past the camera in serried ranks, some even ghosting a smile, all of them inviolate and uncorrupted, young gods in uniform, believing supremely in their own invincibility, their faces as yet unblemished and still possessing all their limbs; marching off to war while a military band plays a succession of stirring tunes, and ecstatic, cheering, flag waving crowds line the streets to speed them on their way to war.


Out here in the warm spring sunshine, with cooking smoke from several camp fires spiralling languidly up into the still morning air, someone called out a greeting, while another relieved himself against a tree. Sitting on a grassy bank, Danny Branson rested his back against the sun-warmed wall of the ruined farmhouse. Wearing a steel helmet and a but recently acquired second-hand uniform which, despite having been washed several times, was still stained with the blood of its previous owner as well as now marked by a neatly darned bullet hole in the breast, bearing witness to how a man had died, Danny was ruminating on the stupidity of war.

It had been while he and Da had been sharing that last pint in Delaney's Bar in distant Dublin, that Da had told him about a chap called Wilfred Owen; a British Army officer, who had written poetry about the terrible cost of war while he himself was serving on the Western Front. Quite how he had found the time to do so, Da hadn't said. Had time not been so pressing, Danny would have liked to ask Da to explain but, not wishing to interrupt, he hadn't done so; wished that he had. Owen, Da said, had been killed shortly before that terrible war, the one fought to end all others, had itself ended. Remembering what Da had then told him, given what Danny himself had now seen, he was firmly in agreement with what Wilfred Owen had written about what he had chosen to call The Old Lie:

Dulce et decorum est

Pro Patria mori

Danny sighed.

And this wasn't even his own country but rather, to make use of the words of another poet, some corner of a foreign field; to be precise, a flower strewn meadow, where amid a profusion of scarlet poppies, purple mallow and white headed daisies, a handful of cattle were placidly grazing the pale green shoots of new grass.

War, reflected Danny grimly, was everything which his beloved Da, with a prescience that turned out to have been quite uncanny, had predicted it would be. An insane world, one of blood and fire, with Death biding His time, lying in wait in the smoky, flame shot, bullet ridden shadows.

Maybe, when all was said and done, the Dead were the lucky ones. For, believe it or not, in these last few weeks, Danny had come to realise that there were worse things than dying; given the appalling injuries modern weapons could and did inflict upon the human body. Danny had seen enough of them to last a lifetime: men left crippled and maimed, those who had lost an arm or a leg, sometimes both, others who had been blinded, and a handful who had gone insane. Yet, amidst this stupid, bloody carnage, there had been brief truces during which, under white flags, each side sought to recover and bury their own dead - before the killing resumed again. It made no earthly sense. None of it did.

Yet, he couldn't stop the civil war single-handed and, after all, he and the rest of the Volunteers had come out here to Spain of their own free will, to fight against Fascism and in so doing help protect democracy. But from what he had both heard and seen recently, it seemed that they had come too late. Though no-one would admit it, the Republic stood in the gravest peril and it was only a matter of time before the game was up.

So, what, Danny wondered, should he do? Try and make his way home to Ireland? Apart from the no small matter of leaving his mates to fend for themselves, which he felt would be a betrayal of a different kind, if he simply refused to fight, did what all soldiers long to do, and walked away from the fighting, he would doubtless be caught and shot as a deserter.

Danny hadn't a clue where they were, save for the fact that the Pyrenees, and therefore France, lay somewhere to the northeast. But he was hardly clad or shod for climbing over the rocky, snowbound peaks of the mountains. This apart, between the Pyrenees and safety there lay a swathe of Spain now occupied by the Fascists. There was a chance that, if his luck held, he might somehow make it over the mountains and into France but, what was far more likely, was that somewhere along the way he would be caught by the Fascists. As a foreigner, he might find himself interned but then again, he might not. And the chances of surviving what everyone knew to be the appalling conditions inside the Fascist concentration camps were slim indeed.

While only yesterday, Danny had seen with his own eyes what the Republicans on occasions did to prisoners of war. There had been three of them, the enemy undoubtedly, but the young men had surrendered and been disarmed, only to be lined up against a wall, and then summarily shot. When they realised what was about to happen, sinking to their knees, pleading for their lives to be spared, the three had pissed and shit their cacks. But it had made no difference; a burst of machine gun fire swiftly followed and it was all over. On seeing the bloodied, bullet ridden corpses, which moments before had been three living men, along with the stench of urine and excrement, Danny had been violently sick.


A moment later, and Santiago, their hard-bitten sergeant, a gruff Communist who hailed from Madrid, ordered all of them to their feet. It seemed they were to move off again. As lambs to the slaughter.


American Embassy, Grosvenor Square, Mayfair, London, April 1937.

When he understood the reason for Tom's telephone call, Hawkins had been very helpful. Said that if anyone could help in this, then the best man for the job was not an American, but a South-African born, British journalist called Steer; George Steer. He'd covered the Italian invasion of Abyssinia back in '35 and was now in the north of Spain, in Bilbao.


Michaelerplatz, First District of Vienna, Federal State of Austria, April 1937.

Beside one of the windows of Isabel's third floor apartment, Edith stood looking down on the scene below. The Michaelerplatz was undoubtedly one of the finest squares in all of Vienna and from her vantage point, Edith could see the elegant Michaelekirche and its tall, slender spire, as well as the Michaelertor, which led through the Michaelertrakt, to the inner courtyard of the Hofburg. On hearing footsteps behind her, Edith now turned.

"This," said Isabel, brightly, "is Monsieur Alphonse".


Somewhere east of Bilbao, Basque Country, Northern Spain, late April 1937.

Here, on the very threshold of battle, the overwhelming feeling was one of fear. No-one, irrespective of their age, creed, nationality or rank was immune from it: the fear of pain, the fear of being wounded, the fear of being killed.

Just over the ridge there lay a dark belt of fir, where the Fascists were said to be dug in strongly among the trees. In the thin, cold rain, lying prone on his belly, stretched out on the stony ground, Danny watched in silence as, ordered by el teniente, the lieutenant, a group of his comrades, among them both Jimmy and Dev, quickly crested the ridge. Keeping low, they now ran as fast as they could towards the trees. A few minutes later, Miguel nodded, picked up the heavy machine gun and, accompanied by Danny and Liam, all three likewise crouching down, followed as quickly as they could in the footsteps of their compatriots.


Having caught up with the rest of the group, here among the crowding, silent trees, suddenly, there came a burst of firing as a handful of Fascist soldiers - there were in fact only a dozen or so of them, far fewer than the Republicans had thought - made a bolt from their shallow foxholes; the roots of the trees having prevented them from being able to dig themselves in any deeper, so as to try and escape their position before it was overwhelmed.


Circling round one of the foxholes, unobserved by its defenders until it was too late, Jimmy and Sol, a perky little Cockney from the East End of London, came at the Fascists unexpectedly from the side, and shot two of them in the back as they tried to escape. Just to make sure, the lieutenant then shot each of the fallen soldiers in the head with his pistol. Further on, they came across another foxhole. Two carefully lobbed grenades blew its defenders to pieces in a cloud of smoke and debris; leaves, twigs and gobbets of bloodied, torn, mangled flesh, powdering down to earth among the trees.


The patrol moved forward, on through the trees, and up a slight hill, atop which, unexpectedly, several of the Fascists now sought to make a stand, turning to face their attackers. One bayoneted Harry Smith in the chest, while two more of the Volunteers were cut down in a sudden hail of bullets. Develin found himself pinned to the ground by another of the bastards who, having run out of ammunition, tried to throttle the young Irishman to death with the barrel of his rifle, pressing it hard against Dev's windpipe, until a bullet in the back, fired at close quarters by Jimmy, put paid to that. Develin didn't move; instead he continued to lie where he was, trying desperately to regain his breath.

After the skirmish was over, the surviving Fascists made good their escape, although here among the crowding trees, one could not be certain that there was not still danger lurking in the brush and undergrowth. As if to confirm this, the Republicans now came under sniper fire, causing all of them to take cover.


The firing had stopped more than a quarter of an hour since. Believing themselves now safe, slowly, Santiago rose to his feet, signalling to the rest of them to do likewise. It was fortunate that some were slow in obeying his command as a moment later they heard a whistle and a mortar shell exploded among them. Santiago was blown to pieces and several of the others badly wounded, among them Jimmy.


In the ensuing confusion that followed the mortar strike, Danny found himself separated from the rest. Found too that the fingers of his left hand were sticky with blood; saw that he had been nicked in the arm by a large, jagged splinter of wood, which he now pulled out, staunching the resulting flow of blood with an improvised bandage made from cloth, already bloody, ripped from the torn sleeve of his own uniform. While not serious, the wound in his arm hurt like hell. Dis-orientated, Danny staggered forward.


Sometime later, on the edge of the wood, Danny stumbled into a clearing. As he did so, he saw there was a man already there, sitting on a log. A Fascist soldier who, like himself a short while earlier, was engaged in dressing a wound to his arm, blood from which had trickled down and coated the fingers of his right hand. The other looked up. His rifle lay a short distance away but, as Danny fumbled with his own, his grip on it made slippery and uncertain by the injury to his arm, the other made no attempt to try and retrieve his weapon. Instead, he simply shook his head and turned his attention once more to his injured arm.

"Do what the feck ya want!"

Danny could not believe the evidence of his own ears. Then, he remembered the Irish Brigade, those of his own countrymen who had come out here to Spain to fight for Franco and the Fascists.

"Irish?" he asked, hesitantly.

"Ach, no, I'm feckin' Swiss. What d'ya t'ink, ya maggot!"

Feeling slightly light-headed, Danny first swayed, then dropped his rifle, before at last sinking to his knees.

"Where ya from?"

"Sligo".

"Dublin".

"Conor Walsh".

"Danny Branson".


Leaving his rifle where it had fallen, Danny scrabbled himself slowly along the ground before coming to a stop and sinking wearily back against the trunk of a tree, barely six feet from where Conor had now finished doing the best he could to bandage up his arm.

And there they sat, chatting of this and that. Two young Irishmen, far from home, who had come out to Spain, to fight on opposite sides, in what, after all, was someone else's bloody war.

Conor had with him a leather flask filled with some fiery local liquid. Danny didn't catch what Conor said it was. Not that it really mattered, but it was stronger than anything he had come across before, and in return, Danny gave Conor several of his cigarettes.


Both of them were sick of the war. Agreed that it didn't make any sense, if indeed it ever had, but then neither did this encounter. Men were being killed in Spain in their thousands and here they were, on opposing sides, each sparing the life of the other. It was then that Danny heard Da's voice, as plainly as if he had been sitting on the ground beside him.

Compassion always makes sense.

A short while later, Conor said he must be off; rose slowly, indeed slightly unsteadily, to his feet, bent down and picked up his rifle. On the very edge of the trees, he paused; looked back at Danny and smiled before raising his hand in farewell. Then he was gone.


Danny retrieved his own rifle and stumbled back into the wood, where he was found a while later, weak from the loss of blood, by a Republican stretcher party, searching among the trees for both wounded and dead, and carried to safety.


Liam and Dev stood watching dispassionately while Danny's arm was both cleaned and properly dressed.

"Ach, what became of ya?" Liam asked.

"I went for a talk with a Fascist".

"Stop acting the maggot!"
"I did!"
"Catch yaself on! For sure ya did!" Dev peered briefly at Danny's arm. "Ya'll live!" he pronounced.

"Go to Trinity, did ya?"

Dev grinned.

"For sure!"

"So, what happened to ya?"

"Like I said, I met this Fascist, one of O'Duffy's lot..."

"Away on! Yeah, course ya did! Went for a feckin' crap in the woods more like!"

"Grand!" Danny grimaced. Nodded his thanks to the orderly who had now finished dressing his injured arm.

"Does it hurt much?"

"A bit. But not like it did. And?"

"And what?" Dev asked.

"Where's Jimmy?" Danny saw Dev and Liam exchange glances.

"Jimmy's dead," said Liam and turned his face away.


Guernica, Basque Country, Northern Spain, late afternoon, Monday 26th April 1937.

Here in the small, crowded bar, close to the church of Santa María, with glasses of rioja in hand, Danny, Liam, and Dev were gathered around an old piano, watching as Padraig belted out a succession of ragtime tunes, among them Easy Winners, and Maple Leaf Rag. Nonetheless, as good a pianist as Padraig undoubtedly was, Danny thought there was something rather surreal - Da had explained the meaning of the word to him a while ago - of Paddy sitting at the piano playing ragtime, given that they were not that far from the front. Where exactly that was now, no-one really knew; the location seemed to alter every day. But, wherever the front was, it was time they were on their way, and not long afterwards, so they were. Then, out in the bustling, narrow street, for Danny, memory suddenly stirred.

What brought that about, was something quite inconsequential. Something which, doubtless, had gone completely un-remarked by the others, which was hardly surprising, given what it had been: a tiny patch of hair, missing from off the back of a little calf. But, as they made their way slowly along the narrow, noisy, lively, thronging, shuttered, balconied stone fronted street of the centuries old Basque town nestled here between the low pine clad hills and lying not that far from the sea, Danny found himself reminded, of all places, of Bantry in the far south west of Ireland.

Jaysus!

Why on earth think of Bantry?

After all, he had been there only once, and that, years ago, when he was a little boy, aged about five, certainly no older, Saiorse a year or so younger, while darling Bobby and little Dermot had not yet even been born. As Da would have said: No more than a twinkle in your Ma's eye.

And then Danny remembered.

It had been market day in Bantry then, just as it was here, with cattle and sheep lowing and bleating their way through the narrow streets. It was as the Bransons had made their way up from the railway station, much as the three young men had done earlier this morning, that Danny had seen the little calf, with the tuft of hair missing from off its back, lowing plaintively, and trotting along beside its mother.


Bantry, County Cork, Irish Free State, July 1924.

"Da, why's that little cow got that mark on his back?"
"That's just to show he's been sold. Shall I do that with your hair when I sell ya?"

"Ya'd never sell me, for sure, Da! Would ya?" Danny asked.

"Never!" Da laughed. "But I might just sell your Ma!"

Ma laughed.

"Not if I sell you first!"


Guernica, Basque Country, Northern Spain, late afternoon, Monday 26th April 1937.

Here in Guernica, the weekly market was almost over. While most of the stalls had now closed, some were still open, several of them heaving under a weight of beans, leeks, squashes, chorizo, and cheeses, while others were selling ironmongery, pottery, and bolts of cloth.

It was now that, quite unexpectedly, the Santa María church bells began to ring, something which, in Catholic Spain, would be quite commonplace. However, this was Republican held territory. A moment later, and the air raid sirens began to wail.

Whether they were citizens of the little town, locals in from the surrounding countryside for the weekly market, children playing games in the streets, adults strolling nonchalantly along the cobbled pavements, those who had paused to make purchases from shops or off the market stalls, chatting with friends, or else eating and drinking at one of the several bars; whatever they had been doing, all stopped to look up at the sky.

Then came the first explosion, the ground shook, an avalanche of roofing tiles fell into the street and shattered, at which point everyone began to run for the shelters. For Guernica was now under attack from the air; by German and Italian aeroplanes, acting in support of the Fascist forces of General Francisco Franco.

Author's Note:

The title of this chapter is that of a poem written by Wilfred Owen (1893-1918) one of the leading poets of the Great War. Having reached this point in the chapter, the reason for its choice will be obvious.

Addled - Yorkshire dialect for stupid.

Brew - the same for a cup of tea.

Curtains - what the Americans call drapes.

Founded in 1824, the Café Frauenhuber is one of the oldest coffee houses in Vienna.

The Hindenburg Line - a complex defensive system constructed by the Germans on the Western Front in the winter of 1916-17.

Rudi Schneider (1908-1957) an Austrian Spiritualist and medium whose so-called psychic powers were comprehensively debunked in the late 1920s and early '30s. Schneider gave up being a medium and ended his days as a motor mechanic. Whether he proved any better in divining what was wrong with motors does not appear to be recorded!

J. W. Dunne (1875-1949) British soldier, aeronautical engineer, and philosopher. He achieved some prominence and recognition through his views on the nature of time and consciousness set out in his book An Experiment With Time.

George Lowther Steer (1909-1944) was the journalist who broke the news to the world of what had happened in Guernica. At the time of the story, the Embassy of the United States in London was situated on Grosvenor Square.

Dulce et decorum est Pro Patria mori which, in translation, means "It is sweet and fitting to die for one's country". Most of Wilfred Owen's poetry was written when he was in Craiglockhart War Hospital in Edinburgh recovering from shellshock.

Go to Trinity - Founded in the early eighteenth century, the School of Medicine at Trinity College, Dublin is the oldest medical school in Ireland.

The air attack on Guernica which took place on Monday 26th April 1937, during the Spanish Civil War, is well known. While debate still continues as to how many died in both the bombing and the firestorm which followed it, what is not disputed is that this was an attack on a small, undefended town and its civilian population. A prelude to the horrors of many similar atrocities committed during WWII.