A Game of Sorrows (2 page)

Maeve looked down towards the far end of the table – they should not have put him there; he should have had the place of honour – these people knew nothing. Finn O’Rahilly was resplendent in the saffron tunic and white mantle, bordered with golden thread, that she had gifted him for the occasion. He would be paid well enough too, although it was not seemly at such times to talk of money. Regardless of all that her granddaughter and her new husband’s English family had said, on this one point the old woman would not be moved. There had been a poet at every O’Neill wedding through all the ages and, despite all that had happened, there would be a poet at this one, to give his blessing on the union, to tell the glories – fallen, broken though they now were – of the great house of O’Neill. As Finn O’Rahilly rose and turned to face her, Maeve felt the pride of the generations coursing through her: her moment had come.

He spoke in the Irish tongue. Everything was still. All the guests, even the English, fell silent as the low, soft voice of the poet filled the room. Every face was turned towards the man with the startling blue eyes whose beard and long silver hair belied his youth. No hint of the chaos he was about to unleash escaped his countenance, and it was a moment before any but the most attentive auditors understood what was happening. But Maeve understood: she had understood from the shock of the very first words.

Woe unto you, Maeve O’Neill:

Your husband will soon lie amongst the worms and leave you a widow
,

You of the great race of the O’Neills
,

Woe unto you who lay with the English!

Your changeling offspring carried your sin
,

Your son that died, with the earls, of shame.

Your daughter, wanton, abandoned her race and her name and went with the Scot.

Woe unto you, Maeve O’Neill
,

Your grandchildren the rotten offspring of your treachery!

Your grandson will die the needless death of a betrayed Ulsterman
,

Your granddaughter has gone, like you before her, whoring after the English – no good will come of it, no fruit, only rotten seed.

Your line dies with them, Maeve O’Neill.

Your line will die and the grass of Ireland grow parched and rot over your treacherous bones.

And the O’Neill will be no more.

The poet turned and left, without further word, and all for a moment was silence, save the sound of Maeve O’Neill’s glass shattering on the stone floor.

Aberdeen, Scotland, 23 September 1628

I had waited for this moment without knowing what it was that I waited for. The college was quiet, so quiet that the sounds of the life of the town and the sea beyond permeated its passageways and lecture halls unopposed by scholarly debate or student chatter. The shutters on Dr Dun’s window, so often closed at this time of year against the early autumn blasts of the North Sea gales, were open today to let in the last, surprising, golden glows of the late summer sunshine. The rays lent an unaccustomed warmth to the old grey stones of the Principal’s room, less austere now than it had been in the days of the Greyfriars who had walked these cloisters before us, in the time of superstition. The Principal’s words were as welcome to my ears as was the gentle sunlight to my eyes.

‘It is in you, Alexander, that we have decided to place this trust. It is greatly at short notice, I know, but you will understand Turner’s letter only came into the hands of the council yesterday, and response, not only by letter but in the form of the appointed agent of the town and college – yourself – must be aboard the
Aurora
by the turn of the tide on Thursday. We met in the kirk last night to discuss it, and our choice was not long in the making.’ He named a dozen names, all that mattered for learning and the word of God in our society. There had been a time when knowing that I had been the subject of such a conference would have engendered apprehension in me, for there could only have been one result of such a council then – censure, condemnation, exile. But that had been a long time ago, and in another place, and these two years past I had lived quietly and worked hard at my post in the college. My students in the third class, where I taught arithmetic, geometry, ethics and physics, liked me, I knew. I passed myself well enough with my fellow regents, and from Dr Dun, from the beginning, I had known nothing but kindness. My friends were few, and I did not seek to add to their number. William Cargill and his wife, friends both since my own college days, George Jamesone the painter, Dr Forbes, my former teacher and my spiritual father, and Sarah, since the day I had first met her, there had been Sarah. I seldom travelled, and rarely returned to Banff, the town of my birth, where I had friends also who were truly dear to me, and all the family I had in the world. Yet I did not like to return to the stage of failures past, so I did not go there a tenth of the times I was asked. I had had no fear, then, on being summoned to the Principal’s presence. Neither had I had any inkling of the news, the great prospect that awaited me there.

‘You are well versed in the German tongue, are you not?’ enquired the Principal.

I asserted that I was. My old friend Dr Jaffray, in Banff, had insisted on teaching me the language. He had spent happy years of study on the continent in his youth, and having no one else to converse with in that tongue, he had decided he would converse with me. Despite the ravages of the war which now raged over so many of the lands he held dear, he never lost sight of the hope that one day I would follow where he had first walked. And now, at last, his hope was to be fulfilled, but not, perhaps, in a way he might have foreseen. I was to sail on Thursday for the Baltic, and Danzig. From there I was to travel to Breslau and then Rostock.

‘Our brethren in the Baltic lands, in northern Germany, in Poland and in Lithuania, suffer greatly under the depredations of Rome and the Habsburgs: the King of Sweden struggles almost alone in their cause. Our brethren thirst for the Word and for their own ministers. Turner has written here, as the town of his birth, asking that we might accept two Polish students to study divinity for the next three years, that they might be sound and strengthened in their doctrine, and when they return to their homeland to fulfil their calling and spread God’s word there, that they should be replaced by two more. He has mortified to that cause the sum of ten thousand pounds Scots.’ Dr Dun paused for a moment to allow me to contemplate the incredible vastness of this sum.

‘Praise be to God for such a man and for such a gift,’ I said.

‘Indeed,’ said the Principal.

‘You wish me to escort the two students to Scotland?’ I asked, for the Principal had still not made clear what was to be my role in this enterprise.

He shook his head. ‘No, Alexander, some returning merchant or travelling townsman of good report could have performed that task. I wish you to travel to Poland to meet with Turner, and with his assistance, to seek out and find the two most worthy young men you can to fill these two places. I wish you to travel to the universities, to question the young men you find there on their learning, their soundness in doctrine, their strength of heart in adversity, their love for the Lord. When you find the two young men you know in your heart to be fit and right for this ministry, then you are to bring them back here with you. The council and the college will give you four months for the fulfilling of this task. Will you take up this trust, Alexander?’

The sounds from outside the open window were shut out by the contending voices in my head, all my own. Here at last, after false trails and false dawns, was the chance I had never believed I would be given. Here was the moment where Dr Jaffray’s hopes for me could be fulfilled. I would at last travel beyond the narrow bounds of our northern society, and all in the work of God and for my fellow man. Here was a chance fully to justify the kindnesses and the faith in me of Dr John Forbes, my mentor, and of Dr Dun himself, who had plucked me from my self-imposed obscurity in Banff for something better. Here was the moment, and I was as an idiot, in a stupor.

Dr Dun smiled kindly at me. ‘Do not tell me you mislike the commission, Alexander, for I can think of no other better suited to it. The loss of your own calling to the ministry – and I know you suffer from it yet – will make you a better judge than any other of those who would aspire to it. Will you go, boy?’

At the age of twenty-eight, it was a long time since I had been called boy, and never before by Dr Dun. The warmth unlocked my seized tongue. ‘Aye, Sir, I will go.’

There was much to be done and less than two days to do it in. By midday on Thursday, I would be aboard a merchant ship and bound for the Baltic. Many had gone before me, to increase and pursue their learning, to better master their trade, to escape present drudgery in the hope of a new and better life. I was not to be embarking upon the journey of a new life, but I felt that what the next few months would bring would change the life I had to come. There were letters to write, bills to pay, and farewells to make. It would be another week before the students began to arrive back in the town after their long vacation, and Dr Dun already had the matter of my temporary replacement in hand. I almost flew to my own chamber on leaving the Principal’s study, taking the granite steps two at a time and nearly knocking over the old college porter as I did so.

‘You’re as bad as the lads, Mr Seaton. I swear before God this place will be the death of me yet.’

‘You’ll be here when the sky falls in, Rob,’ I said, and ran on. The bare little chamber at the top of the college, looking out over the Castle Hill to the North Sea that would soon transport me to unseen lands, was all my own: I was not, like some of the younger unmarried teachers, constrained to share, and the solitude and simplicity had suited me well these last two years. The stone walls were unadorned, as was the floor. The only colour in the room came from the subtly hued books along the shelf, and the brightly coloured bedding which every married woman of my acquaintance deemed herself obliged to furnish me with. My unmarried state was a matter of great concern to all save one of them, and that one, the wife of my good friend William Cargill, had, I believed, guessed my secret. I had resolved in these past few weeks that it should remain a secret no longer, and was determined that what business I had to transact before I left for the eastern sea would be done with by tonight, so that I might devote tomorrow to persuading Sarah Forbes, servant in William’s household, mother to the beautiful, illegitimate son of a rapacious brute, that I truly loved her and that she must become my wife.

The remainder of the afternoon was spent on the necessary preparations for my departure, but by six o’clock most had been done and, as was my habit on a Tuesday evening, I threw on my cloak and went down through the college and into town, to William’s house on the Upperkirkgate. I did not go in by the street door but went instead by the backland. As ever, I was greeted first by Bracken, William’s huge and untrained hound, bought in the mistaken belief that he might one day again hunt as he had in the days of his youth. As he had learned, a busy young lawyer with the demands of wife and family hunts only in his dreams. The huge dog pressed me against the wall with his paws, and administered a greeting more loving than hygienic. I pushed him off, laughing, to attend to the other urgent greetings taking place around my knees. Two little boys, one as fair as the other was dark, clamoured loudly and repeatedly for my attention. It was little effort to sweep both of them up in my arms.

‘Uncl’Ander, Uncl’Ander,’ insisted James, the white-haired, two-year-old joy of my friend’s life, ‘make dubs.’ And indeed, the hands which he pressed to my face were covered in the mud the children had been playing with.

‘And what would your mothers say if I was to come into the house covered in such dubs?’

‘No tea till washed,’ said the serious little Zander, shaking his dark head. I kissed the hair on it. How could it be that I felt such love for another man’s child? But I did. I had loved him from the moment his mother had held him out towards me and, without looking at me and almost with defiance, told me she was naming him Alexander, Zander, after me. The child of a rape, the son of a filthy, bullying brute of a stonemason. It had been she, and not he, who had been banished the burgh of Banff in shame when her condition could no longer be hidden; she who had been sent to a loveless home where she was not welcome. And alongside the stones and the abuse hurled at her as she had crossed the river had been me. I had not known it then, I am not sure when I did finally know it, but at some point on our silent, reluctant journey together that day, she had utterly captivated me. Bringing her to the home of William and Elizabeth had been the best thing I had ever accomplished in my life, for them, for her, for her child, and for myself. But two years had been long enough; too long, and I was determined that on my return from Poland Sarah and Zander would leave the house of the Cargills and make their home, for life, with me.

The boys were wriggling down and began tugging at my sleeves to pull me after them into the house for supper. I stopped them by the well and we all three of us washed, although in truth my hands were dirtier after cleaning the two boys than they had been to start with. I steered the children past the still bounding dog, through the back door, and right into the kitchen. Lying in a large drained kettle on the table was a huge salmon, freshly poached and cooling, its silvered scales dulled and darkened, its flesh a wondrous pink, full of promise. It must have been one of the last of the season. I would relish it, not knowing what manner of food I might have on my travels to come.