A Game of Sorrows (16 page)

‘I couldn’t; I tried: you were dead to the world.’

‘You should have tried harder.’ Andrew’s good humour after his sound sleep had disappeared entirely when I’d told him the cause of it. ‘You think I am here to take the country air? You are as bad as your cousin. As bad as them both. The O’Neills always know better. They can manage on their own. Who would lay a hand on an O’Neill?’

‘But I am not …’

‘And he was a crony of Phelim’s? Well, there can be little better to recommend him than that.’ He was striding resolutely towards the bakehouse and I struggled behind, still trying to get on my boots. ‘I was to return to Carrickfergus with your corpse on my back, was I?’ He raged on, then brought himself to a halt, spun round and looked very close in my face. ‘Have you any idea who this man is? What he is doing here? I should never have brought you here.’

‘Andrew, what do you know?’

He looked at me a moment, still seething, his nostrils widened and his chest heaving as he tried to master himself. ‘Nothing,’ he said eventually. ‘I know nothing. But I will have answers.’

We had by now attracted the attention of one of the young wives out seeing to her hens. I gave her a cheery wave and bade her good morning, propelling Andrew towards the bake-house as I did so. ‘This is hardly the place to discuss it. You can find your answers once we are inside.’

‘Oh, I will, never fear for that. I will.’ He strode through the door ahead of me, and it was only as he disappeared inside that I realised he had taken his dagger from its sheath.

Father Stephen was going cheerily about his business, and clearly had been for some time. He showed no sign of fatigue after his night ventures, and greeted us heartily.

‘Well, Alexander Seaton! And Andrew Boyd, is it not? Well rested, I’ll wager.’

‘Too well,’ said Andrew, with little heartiness and no attempt to hide his anger.

‘Ah, now, you must forgive me, my young friend. For I thought I knew this fellow, or something of him, but of you, or why he was with you, I knew nothing. We live in dangerous times for the O’Neills and their friends. And those of my order must take special care who they make themselves known to.’

‘For the O’Neills who will keep the law, these are no more dangerous times than any other, and as to your order – you are out of Bonamargy, I take it?’

The priest nodded, watching Andrew carefully, watching too the hand on his dagger.

‘Then you have the protection of Randal MacDonnell, although I doubt whether even the Earl of Antrim could explain what you were doing in a Scots bawn, disguised as a baker.’

Mac Cuarta looked at him carefully but said nothing, only closing and bolting the door, before he brought us fresh bread and milk.

Andrew inspected his bread carefully and sniffed at the milk. Father Stephen laughed. ‘Eat your breakfast, boy. There’s nothing in it the cow didn’t put there. I will trust you now, and you will trust me. You know too much about me already for it to be any other way.’

He sat down beside us, and all the humour had gone from his face.

‘Have you brought any message from Sean?’

Andrew bridled. ‘Do I look like a message boy?’

The priest appraised him carefully. ‘Not much.’

‘Our commission is to Coleraine, and to Finn O’Rahilly, nothing more. Sean was to send a message to Bushmills, that someone might guide us to O’Rahilly, but he mentioned no name.’

‘It will be waiting for me at Bushmills, and then we will see what is to be done.’

‘There is nothing to be done but that you should take us to the poet.’

‘That remains to be seen,’ said the priest, looking at me. ‘But how is it to be done? Where do you fit into things?’

‘In a philosopher’s robes in the Marischal College of Aberdeen,’ I said, ‘for after this nonsense of the poet is done with, I have no place in any scheme here.’

He shook his head. ‘The matter of the poet cannot be dismissed. That his words have been spoken, and so publicly, matters greatly. Our leaders have often rested their reputation on what the poets say of them, their name honoured or damned by generations according to the pronouncement of the bard. This common law of the English might be blown away soon enough in this country, like a weed on the wind, and what will be left, and how will a man like Murchadh legitimise himself and his claims then, if not by the word of genealogists and the poets? No, the curse cannot be dismissed. Perhaps it would be better that you had no place in the scheme. God grant that it might be so.’

Andrew was in no humour to listen to a mass priest speculate on what God might grant. ‘If you have some intelligence of Sean’s “business”, or this curse, I would thank you to share it with us. We have little time to squander.’

Father Stephen’s face hardened. ‘No more do I. I am fifty-seven years old. I have worn the robes of my order over forty years. I have seen our houses in Ireland dishonoured and destroyed, the succour we gave to the people taken from them. I have said mass in a morning and stained my sword on the blood of Ireland’s enemies in the afternoon. I have seen our great leaders degraded and die far from home, the glory and hope of our people gone. I have travelled and studied in Spain, France, Italy and the Low Countries and I am on my last mission. The man before me is the image of one whose last confession I heard in a filthy alley in Madrid. I do not take his presence here at this time lightly, and neither should you.’

Andrew drained his beaker and stood up abruptly. ‘I don’t. Come, Alexander, we must lose no more time.’

The priest took hold of my wrist as I got up, and held it in a firm grip. ‘Give me ten minutes. Your friend can play the servant he is supposed to be and see to the horses.’

Andrew very pointedly handed me his knife, before going out once more into the courtyard and letting the bakehouse door bang shut behind him.

Stephen Mac Cuarta’s face was deadly serious, his eyes searching mine. ‘Tell me again what the poet said. Tell me what he said of Roisin, and of Macha.’

‘He made no mention of Roisin, and of Murchadh he said …’

‘Not of Murchadh, of Macha.’ He gave emphasis to the last word.

I shook my head. ‘I know no Macha; he spoke of no Macha.’

‘He spoke did he not, of the union with the Rose—’

‘The union with the Rose’ – Roisin. ‘Poisoned by a bastard child.’ I looked up. ‘Who is this Macha – is it Sean’s child?’

He hesitated a long moment, then spoke. ‘No, she is not Sean’s child, she is his wife; I married them myself, when he was on his way to Coleraine for Deirdre’s wedding. She is almost nine months gone with child and under my protection.’

‘He would have told me.’

‘There are things that …’

He had placed a kind hand on my arm but I brushed it away. ‘He would have told me. He is my cousin: we talked of such things.’ A heavy emptiness was dragging itself down to my stomach. ‘He is like my brother.’

‘He could tell no one. You know of your grandmother’s plans for him. She looks to join these two branches of the O’Neills, and with them your grandfather’s money and lands to Murchadh’s, and to see her family a force to be reckoned with once more. If Sean has a bastard child, Roisin might not like it – although, in truth, most of the Irish of his rank will have – but it would make little difference to her and any child she might have by him in wedlock in English law. But if Sean is already married, and has a child of that marriage, that child, and not any from a bigamous marriage to Roisin, would inherit all he has.’

‘So why would O’Rahilly have talked of a bastard child?’

‘Because he does not know. He does not know Sean is married.’

‘But if, as you say, such things are common, can he have really hoped to put Murchadh off the marriage by talking of a bastard child? Under the law, Murchadh has nothing to lose by that.’

‘Under the English law, perhaps, but under our old ways, our old laws, the brehon laws, a bastard child has as much right to his father’s property as a son born in wedlock, and as much call on the loyalty of his father’s followers.’

The significance of this was beyond me. ‘But Murchadh has woven himself into the fabric of the English occupation, he has danced to the English tune over twenty years now, has he not, in spite of what his sons might do? Why should the old Irish laws bother him now?’

The priest got up and began to tidy up the breakfasting beakers and bowls. ‘Aye, you are right. Think no more on it. Now go you to Coleraine. When you are finished there, I will meet you at Bushmills, and take you to Finn O’Rahilly; I know his lair. But if you meet with any difficulties or dangers on the way, make straight for Bonamargy Friary. Whether I am there or not, you will be given sanctuary.’

I was about to leave but Andrew’s voice, repeating itself in my head, stopped me. ‘Tell me,’ I said, ‘since we are to trust one another. What are you doing here, in this bawn, and under this guise?’

‘My master’s bidding,’ he replied, in a manner that invited no further conversation. He blessed me, and trying not to flinch I emerged into the welcoming sunlight of the waking morning, where Andrew was waiting with my horse.

He brooded quietly a good two hours or more until some time before mid-morning we stopped by a stream at the edge of a birch wood that had struggled up the hillside as high as it could before it surrendered the ground to heather, moss and stone. Andrew filled his flask and then let the beasts drink. I leant against a lump of granite, higher than myself, that jutted from the earth like something left over from the Creation. Towards the east, at the edges of the great plateau beneath us, I thought I could discern the sea.

‘Well?’ he said at last.

‘Well what?’

‘Your priest. What did he want of you that I was not to know?’

I felt a trickle of amusement to see him so riled, but I judged best not to take it further. ‘What do you know of Macha?’ I said.

‘Macha?’

‘Yes. What do you know of her?’

He frowned, wrinkling his nose in a beginning of disgust. ‘There is a legend of a woman, many centuries ago … Has the priest been telling you stories?’

‘Not that kind of story. Did you know Sean has a wife?’

‘I’d sooner believe the Pope has a wife.’

‘The priest says he has a wife whose name is Macha. He married her two months ago, and she is at this moment under the protection of the priests at Bonamargy Friary. He says she will very soon give birth to my cousin’s child.’

All humour went from his face. ‘My God – if Murchadh should find out … But Sean cannot hide them for ever.’

‘I do not think he intends to hide them for ever.’

‘Then may God help them when he brings them before the world. Come on, let us get on.’ But it was not long before he resumed our conversation. ‘What did he have to say of Deirdre?’

‘Deirdre? I … he said nothing of Deirdre.’

‘He must have said something.’ There was an edge to his voice, an effort at self-control he could not mask.

I scrambled through my mind. ‘He told me he promised Phelim he would keep an eye on both his children. I should have thought to ask him more, for there is something far wrong in Deirdre’s marriage. I would hardly have thought a few weeks of marriage enough time for the breeding of such resentments.’

‘Resentments here can be roused in seconds and last for centuries.’

‘I am coming to see that; and with the sons of Murchadh stoking the fires of those resentments, they will burn a long time after the passion between Deirdre and Edward Blackstone has cooled.’

I saw him swallow, look straight ahead of him as he spoke. ‘There never was any passion between them.’

I looked at him. ‘Andrew,’ I began.

‘Do not ask me, Alexander. Do not ask.’ He dug his heels into his horse’s flanks and rode hard for the northwest. I thought again of the night of the wake, of the trouble between Deirdre and her husband. And I wondered how many, when Edward Blackstone’s brother had shouted that Deirdre’s lover was flaunted in her husband’s face, had thought as I at first had thought, that he meant Cormac O’Neill. I wondered also how much of the truth Cormac O’Neill knew, and what it would mean for Andrew should he ever find out.

By the time I caught Andrew he had reached a forest, where woodcutters felled and sawed relentlessly. I tried to talk to him, but he made it clear he would not hear what I had to say, as if our conversation of earlier had not taken place at all. ‘The planters are stripping these woods to the bone to build their towns at Derry and Coleraine, and making a nice profit on the side with illegal exports.’

I looked around me. ‘There is enough wood in these forests to build ten towns.’

‘But not to satisfy the greed of those who live in them. They can hardly find the time to build their houses, so busy are they sending this wood to France and Spain for making barrels and building ships.’

‘But the king is at war with…’

‘I know that and they know that. But the king is in London – he’d be as well on the moon, for all the heed his Irish Society’s agents here pay to the good of their nation.’

We came to the river Bann at last, and kept close to its banks from then on. The light was beginning to fade and the day had grown much colder, a wind from the north bringing with it the smell of the sea. A mile or so after we had left the salmon leap behind us, I began to discern a large mass, like a stunted hill leaching out from the riverside up ahead in the gloom.

Andrew stayed his mount for a moment, and held out his hand towards the mass. ‘There it is: the city of dreams; the Promised Land.’

As we approached closer to the gates of Coleraine, any optimism I had felt seeped out of me. I had expected stone walls, towers, magnificent gatehouses: a shining citadel of this new-made civilisation. What was before me, across the broad, water-filled ditch that served as a moat for the enclosure, was a fortification of earthworks, perhaps fifteen feet high, jutting out at angles into the ditch and towards the surrounding countryside, for the walls and flankers of the London Companies’ new town at Coleraine were, like an ancient compound of savages, made entirely of earth. To our right they reached massively northeastwards. To our left they came to an abrupt end at the Bann, with only a flimsy wooden palisade stretching down into the fast-flowing waters.