A Game of Sorrows (31 page)

‘Yes,’ I said, ‘but go where? What is happening? Where are the guards?’

‘The guards are all drunker than lords, and will have heads like balls of lead when they come to in the morning. The apothecary at Bonamargy has many talents.’

‘You drugged them?’ I said in disbelief.

He smiled grimly, and with a relish that almost disturbed me. ‘Every last one of the devils, from Murchadh himself down to the boy who empties his piss pot.’

‘But how? You were drunk yourselves.’

‘Were we indeed?’ He allowed himself a low laugh. ‘You think those fools strutting about the stage in Coleraine the other night are the only men in Ireland who can act? No, my young friend, we were not drunk. But I think you would do well to take a lesson from your friend Andrew Boyd, and inspect very carefully any drink handed to you by an Irishman.’

‘How so? I was not drugged to sleep.’

‘Not to sleep, no, indeed not to sleep, but there was more stuff in the goblet you had by you in yonder room than any vintner ever put there.’

‘What stuff?’

‘How should I know? A man of my calling has no need for such arts, and indeed does better to stay away from them, but there were the dregs of something that was not of the grape in that.’

So I had indeed been drugged, given some aphrodisiac, at the instance of Murchadh, no doubt. His daughter would not even have known about it. This should perhaps have assuaged in me something of my guilt, but it could not, for I had wanted her last night, as I knew I had the very first time I had laid eyes on her.

Passing the main chamber, a quick glance confirmed Stephen’s story: it was like some enchantment in a child’s fairytale, as men, women and boys lay in attitudes of satisfaction and great contentment in utterly drunken slumber. We stepped with caution over the guards at one end of the corridor and then, with more apprehension, over those at the entrance to Dun-a-Mallaght itself.

Day was breaking as I emerged at last from my earthen prison. I stretched out my arms and breathed deep the fresh air of early morning.

‘No time for that,’ said Stephen, turning eastwards, where the sun had just begun to rise over the sea.

‘What of Deirdre? I will not leave her.’

‘She is there already, and a damned sight less trouble than you she was, too, let me tell you.’

‘Where is she?’

‘For the love of all things holy! Bonamargy, where else? Now come on, or I’ll leave you to Murchadh’s dogs.’

I had had enough of dogs and took my warning, following him in a steady trot towards his friary, which I could already see emerging out of the morning grey.

In a matter of a few minutes we had left Murchadh’s subterranean fortress well behind us, and had come within the precincts of the small friary, near the mouth of the river. My own college, my own haven, the Marischal College in Aberdeen, had once been a place of friars, a cloistered ornament to a debased way of life, put to better use in the service of God following the reformation of religion in my country. Despite the darkness and depravities of the place I had just left, I was apprehensive at entering this place that declared itself dedicated, in its misguided way, to the service of God.

‘Don’t look so pious, Presbyterian,’ said Stephen, ‘it sits not well on the countenance of one who spent last night as you did.’

Bereft of anything to say in my defence, I cast my eyes to the ground and braced myself for yet more of the rituals of their superstitions. We were welcomed by an old friar at the gatehouse, who greeted Stephen with a blessing and a prayer of thanks for his safe return ‘from that evil place’, and cast a suspicious glance in my direction. He did not question Stephen, though. I was beginning to realise that few people questioned Stephen Mac Cuarta, and those who did rarely received answers it did not suit him to give.

‘How many are you here?’ I asked, as a means out of the silence.

‘Six. Only six of us friars. And a nun: Julia. You’ll not see her if she’s not in the humour for it, and she’s rarely in the humour.’

‘A very small community.’

‘Aye, and has been scarcely that sometimes.’

The church was long and low, with a cloister walk that continued down its east range, beside the domestic quarters we were headed towards. ‘The chapterhouse and refectory,’ explained Stephen. ‘The dormitory is above. Julia has her own cell, separate from us of course, and the kitchens are in there.’ He indicated a small limestone building with thatched roof, tacked on to the end of the eastern range. I had always imagined that friaries, or monasteries, must have been hives of activity, communities at work and prayer, every skill represented and followed behind their cloistered walls. But it was evidently not thus at Bonamargy. The authorities vacillated between banishment and toleration of the Catholic churchmen, and only the protection of the Earl of Antrim stood between this small knot of men with their spiritual sister and eviction. The place had a desolate air of emptiness and silence, as if its time was well past and it was just waiting for those within its walls to acknowledge that truth and die.

‘We have not been a constant community here,’ said Stephen, reading my face as I surveyed the place. ‘But it makes a base for us here, we who have returned from the continent, for our mission, our work.’

Their work. Stephen would have had me believe that he was returned to Ireland for the capture of souls, the solace and encouragement of the remaining faithful on his island. He did not know I had heard any of what had passed at Dun-a-Mallaght, that I knew what his work was. I knew from his own lips that Stephen Mac Cuarta was a man who would say mass at dawn and kill a man at noon, a soldier for Ireland and a soldier for God being all one in his eyes. I had not the opportunity to say anything, for we had entered the friary building by a door in the east range, and Michael was waiting there to meet us.

‘God be praised! You got away, then?’

‘Only just.’ Stephen afforded me a grudging sideways glance.

Michael raised his eyebrows in curiosity, but did not pursue the matter, as Stephen was bustling past him through a long vaulted room, evidently the refectory, to some place beyond.

I spoke to Michael as we followed after him. ‘Will they not think to follow us here?’

Michael’s face was set, grim. ‘Even Murchadh will not think you will have been stupid enough to come to so close and obvious a place.’

‘Then they will not come after us?’

‘Oh, they’ll come after you all right, eventually. And first we will deny all knowledge of you and your escape, and then, after Ciaran has tortured me a little, I will break and tell him Stephen organised a boat that took you across to Rathlin, from where you will flee back to Scotland, taking Deirdre with you.’

‘Torture?’ He spoke of it with such composure, such casual certainty.

He glanced at me sideways and smiled. ‘I have been trained to withstand it, to the necessary point.’

We could say nothing more, for we had now arrived in a small, vaulted chamber that I took to be a chapter room or sacristy. ‘The girl?’ Stephen had asked as soon as he was through the door.

‘Julia has her in her cell,’ said Michael. ‘Gerard is attending to her.’

‘And the Scotsman?’

I had seen no sign of Andrew since we had entered the precincts of the friary.

Michael pointed upwards. ‘In the dormitory.’

‘And the others?’

‘Out in the burial ground. Digging for all they are worth. Time presses on.’

I felt my heart drop within me, a nauseating hollow appear at the pit of my stomach. ‘For Andrew?’ I managed to say.

‘There is little enough time to do it before Murchadh and Cormac appear here. It must be done before then.’

I sank to the bench below me, desolate. He had been a man cheated by time, cheated by life, in life, and in his thirty-four years he had been a better man than all who had cheated him. I thought of what I had only started to glimpse through breaches in his defences he had allowed himself with me, and of the girl who was hovering at the edges of sanity in some small room above me. I put my head in my hands and let despair take me.

It was Stephen who noticed first. ‘What in the name …?’

An old friar who’d been sitting in the corner came over, knelt before me, took my hands from my face. ‘No, my child, you have it wrong. He is not dead. Your friend lives, and will live.’

‘Then why?’ I began.

‘Because we know Cormac seeks him, and knows he was brought here.’

Because I had told him. I cursed myself.

‘And when Cormac comes here and demands to know where Andrew Boyd is, he will be shown to that freshly dug ground, and asked to pray for a lost soul.’

I did not know whether to laugh at their ingenuity or recoil from their blasphemy, but relief swept over me like the tide over a rock.

‘Come on,’ said Stephen, less gruff now than he had been. ‘Let us go to your friend.’ He took me out into a passageway and up a stair to the dormitory above.

There were six beds, flimsy-looking wooden cots, set under six windows, three down each side of the room. The floor was completely bare, and the walls were without adornment, save for the wooden crucifix above each bed. Of Andrew there was no sign. Father Stephen was behind me, at the top of the stairs; I stepped back, fearing a trap.

‘What is the matter?’ he said, advancing towards me.

I stepped back again. ‘Where is Andrew?’

He looked to the one disturbed bed in the dormitory and saw that it was empty. ‘At the latrine, if nowhere else.’ He indicated a small door off to the left, at the end of the long chamber. ‘We are not altogether savages.’

I sat down on the bed he had declared to be Andrew’s, and watched the latrine door. I jumped when another door at the very end of the dormitory opened, and a black-clad figure moved through it.

‘Well, Stephen, so you are returned from your carousing.’

‘I am that, Julia,’ he said. ‘And not alone.’

She looked down upon me for the first time, and her face froze for a moment. She crossed herself. ‘Holy Mother of God.’

‘Be at ease, Julia: it is not Sean FitzGarrett.’

‘I know who it is and is not,’ she said. ‘I had not known Grainne had another child.’

I looked at her in incomprehension, and then to Stephen, awaiting his correction: it did not come. ‘Julia …’ he said, his voice full of warning.

‘I am not in the business of deceit, Stephen Mac Cuarta. And if you had not been either, this would be a different day and Sean FitzGarrett might yet walk among us.’ She looked then to me. ‘You may go in to Deirdre, but remember: she is not fit to be disturbed by the conversation of men.’ She gave Stephen a look that would have frozen iron, and swept through the dormitory and down the stairs.

‘What did she mean?’

‘Alexander,’ he began.

I rose to my feet and I could feel my voice rise in anger. ‘No more of your lies, your half-truths, your rationing of information, priest. What did she mean?’

‘You must understand,’ he said.

‘Understand?’ I shouted. ‘Understand? I have been hounded by dogs, dressed as a priest, bound in shackles and left in a stinking cell; my own grandmother noises it abroad that I have murdered my cousin; I have heard my mother called a whore by those who were not fit to look at her, and now there is talk of Grainne’s “other child”. And you tell me to understand? Well, tell me why, priest, for I want nothing more than to understand.’

Suddenly, before he could answer, the door to Julia MacQuillan’s cell opened again and Andrew came through it, leaning on a crutch for support. ‘Alexander,’ he said, his ravaged face breaking into a broad smile of relief. He came over and grasped my arm in affection, as of a long-remembered friend. ‘I thought never to see you again.’

‘Nor I you,’ I said, embracing him, then quickly releasing him as he winced at the pain of his bruised bones. ‘You were nearer death than life the last time I saw you.’

‘I rambled a great deal, they tell me.’

‘I could not make out a word of it.’

A look of relief passed over his face. ‘Then I am glad. The brothers have also told me I said nothing to offend. They have been mending me well.’ He grinned. ‘I will never be so pretty as I once was, but I believe my scars will lend me some distinction.’

‘A great deal,’ I said.

‘Truly, it is good to see you again, Alexander.’ Then he glanced at Stephen with less distrust than had been his wont. ‘But whatever the cause of dispute between you, you must have it out elsewhere. The Sister tolerates no disturbance. You will waken Deirdre with your rumpus.’

I felt the rage in me subside a little at the mention of my cousin. I turned to Stephen. ‘Later. We will have this out later, but I will be deceived no longer.’

The nun’s cell was tiny, and only a poor grey light seeped through its one small north-facing window. On a stool, dropping some liquid from a tiny phial into the barely parted lips of my cousin, was another friar, whom I took to be Gerard, the doctor-apothecary. The figure on the bed, covered by blankets pulled tight and a warm, clean, sheep’s fleece, was so thin and pale as to be like a wraith, almost without substance. I stood in the doorway a moment, unable to move, struck by a sudden terror that she was dead. I held my breath until at last I saw the cover at her chest rise and fall a little.

‘How long has she been here?’

‘Less than an hour. Michael brought her just before dawn. I thought I was dreaming. They brought her straight to the nun’s room, and Gerard has been attending to her ever since.’

‘How is she, Father?’ I asked in a low voice.

‘I cannot tell. She has no fever; there is no vomiting or effusion, and her blood beats slow in her veins. I think she has had a great shock, and her mind has closed her eyes and ears to the knowledge of it.’

‘You mean she does not want to wake up.’

‘Yes, I think that is exactly what it is: she does not want to wake up.’

We sat a long time watching her, Andrew and I, each of us bound to her as if she was the only link between us and everything around us. And if that link should break, we would each of us be set loose in a land where we had no place. I looked across the bed and saw in him anger, hurt, rage, tenderness. At one point he reached out a hand to touch her, just for a moment, and in that moment I saw the tale of a man who has loved too long. When at last she began to show some signs of stirring, he left the bedside and went to stand by the door.