A Game of Sorrows (29 page)

Cormac nodded his head slowly. ‘I know the place. Why did Boyd take you there?’

‘Because we needed food and our horses rest. And to give the woman some trade.’ I looked him straight in the eye. ‘They are not far from destitute: armed bands roam the country there and passing travellers keep on their way for fear of their lives; her oldest son and best support was slain by lawless thugs when he would not pay their blackmail.’

‘I know all of this,’ said Cormac, ‘and do not think I take any pride in it. Those responsible were punished. I am sorry for the woman’s troubles.’

‘Your sorrow does not make her sleep any the easier at night,’ I said.

‘It should. It has been seen to. The woman has been reassured and recompense made.’

‘Such recompense as can be, for the loss of a son.’

‘Many women in this land have lost husbands, sons, brothers, seen their children die at their breast for want of nourishment. They have been forced from their homes and the lands of their people to poor and wild places with little hope of sustenance. What recompense can be made has been made, and more if they need it. I have said it, and my word is not doubted.’

I believed him, and, in spite of all the circumstances of our meeting, I began to warm a little to Cormac O’Neill.

‘What happened when you were at this woman’s place?’

I shrugged. ‘She and her daughter served us some broth, the young boy saw to the horses, she and Andrew talked a little of family, we paid her and left. Our stop was brief, for Andrew was anxious to get on.’

Interest flickered in his eyes. ‘Get on for where? Did you aim at Coleraine in the one day?’

I shook my head. ‘We stopped the night at a bawn beyond Ballymena.’

‘Armstrong’s Bawn,’ he said, quietly, almost to himself. ‘And who did you meet with at Armstrong’s Bawn?’

‘No one.’ I hoped the meagre light might cover the lie on my face. I was to be disappointed.

‘You simply rested and took meat and drink. All you sought was bed and bread. Is this what I am to believe?’

‘Yes,’ I said, with some defiance.

‘And your bread, tell me, was it well baked? Good bread blessed by the baker?’

I said nothing.

‘You met with Stephen Mac Cuarta of the Franciscan order at Bonamargy, did you not?’

‘What of it? It was by chance.’ I was not sure now that I believed that myself.

‘I think not.’

So I told Cormac about the priest’s drugging of Andrew and Andrew’s distrust of him in return, about how the priest had come to me in the night because he had known nothing of me before he had set eyes on me that day, and this seemed to make him more inclined to believe my pleas of ignorance on our part.

‘And what did the priest tell you?’

I kept my recollections to Stephen’s reminiscences about Phelim, and my mother, and left out anything he had had to say about Sean or his secret marriage with Macha. I could not tell how far Cormac believed me. ‘While Boyd was drugged, and before he knew you were awake, did the priest search your belongings, take anything?’

‘No.’

‘And you had been given nothing, no note, to pass on to him?’

Again I said no.

‘Perhaps, then, you were the message yourself.’

‘What do you mean?’ I asked.

‘I suspect we will find out before another night has passed. But tell me, where have you left Boyd?’

He read the cause of my hesitation.

‘I mean him no harm,’ he said. ‘I have no cause to love him, and some to fear him, but I give you my solemn word that I mean him no harm. I must – I must have some talk with him though. And I must have him brought here. I ask you again, where is he?’

I could not entirely believe that he meant Andrew no harm, or that Cormac O’Neill, anointed leader of a planned Irish rebellion in Ulster, feared the taciturn Scot who had been the companion of my troubles. ‘I cannot tell you that,’ I said, already bracing myself for another blow. None came, only words, low and earnest.

‘I ask you for the sake of your cousin Deirdre, although I would I did not have to. You have seen she suffers already, you know what she has suffered. The strands of her mind and her reason threaten to unravel, as your grandmother’s already have done. Grant her this one thing.’ He turned his face slightly away from me. ‘Grant it to me also.’ And then I understood what it was that Cormac O’Neill had to fear from Andrew Boyd.

I made my decision. ‘On our flight from Coleraine, we were met and aided by Brother Michael, Father Stephen’s young acolyte. Andrew was injured in a fall near Dunluce, and mauled by a hound from the Coleraine wolf-hunt. In the morning he was taken to Bonamargy to have his wounds attended to there.’

‘Will he live?’ he asked hesitantly.

‘If it is God’s will. I pray that it may be. He knew not where he was or who he was when last I saw him.’

‘Better he is in God’s hands than the friars’. And how did you find your way to Kilcrue?’

‘Stephen Mac Cuarta brought me there.’

He nodded. ‘Father Stephen. He has a habit of appearing, has he not? And the poet told you nothing?’

‘Nothing I could make any sense of,’ I said.

‘Perhaps that will be for the best.’ He was pensive a few moments and then strode towards the door. ‘Have no fear for your friend on my account, you have my word on that.’ He looked towards the grille and the signs of life beginning to stir in the main chamber after the night’s debauches. ‘Now I must go.’

I halted him at the door. ‘I want to see Deirdre’

He took care over his response. ‘It would do no good. I think the sight of you again would prove too much for her. She has been in a fever of dreams and hallucinations all through the night, and nothing the women can do will calm her.’

‘This since she saw me?’

He shook his head. ‘Since the night Sean died. She is almost catatonic when she wakes and like a woman possessed when she sleeps. The friars are with her now: they will be leaving soon for Bonamargy, to seek some compounds from their apothecary that might afford some relief to her mind and spirit.’ He glanced towards the grille again. ‘I will have food and drink brought to you.’

I was indeed hungry, and parched with thirst; nevertheless, my stomach revolted at the thought of food, for the place I was in was filthy, and the smells reaching me through the bars of the grille were noxious in the extreme: smoke, congealed fat, stale wine and human sweat, blood and, I suspected, other excretions, that had found little outlet save than to my miserable dungeon. I looked down at my hands, cracked and caked in grime, and wondered what I had come to. I sat down again in the corner furthest from the grille and any sharp eyes in the hall, and pulled the old priest’s robe as tightly as I could around myself, in a desperate yet futile attempt to stave off the cold that now permeated every part of me.

Some time later the bolt to my prison was again drawn up, and a curt ‘On your feet, Seaton,’ growled by Padraig.

I did as I was bid, smarting a little at the extra light that now flooded into the room. Padraig had stood back to make room for the woman carrying a tray of food and drink into my cell. She had to stoop a little as she came through the door, but when she lifted her head again I saw that it was Roisin. Some surprise, or recognition, must have shown on my face, for she coloured a little when she noticed it. I mumbled some apology for the condition she found me in.

She kept her eyes lowered and spoke in softly lilting but perfect English. ‘Your condition is not of your own making, and necessitates no apology. A visitor should be better treated in our country.’

Her brother responded to her, low and clear, in the Gaelic, and I understood that his every word was intended for me. ‘If that visitor has come to our home only to betray us, he is deserving of no hospitality. Your heart is too soft, Roisin, and you no judge of men. Sean…’

But he got no further; his sister had spun round, her eyes blazing. ‘Do not presume to talk to me of Sean. Never!’

He spread his hands out in supplication towards her. ‘Roisin, I…’

‘I know it, Padraig; I know it. But just leave me now.’

Before doing so, he took the time to address me. ‘Do not think to try anything, Seaton: you would be dead before you could ever lay a finger on her.’

I was left alone with Roisin and more conscious now than ever of the disarray of my appearance. She had laid down the food and drink on the floor, and it took all my strength not to drop to my knees in front of her and tear at the food with my filthy hands, but she had also brought a bowl of cold stream water and a cleaning cloth. I plunged my hands instead into the icy water with the intention of washing them. She drew in a slight breath and said, ‘No!’ I stopped and looked at her, no idea what the matter was.

‘Not your hands, not yet,’ she said.

I was still dumbfounded as she took a cloth and dipped it into the water. She came closer to me and slowly lifted the rag towards my face. She was tall, taller than I had realised, and her eyes as she looked up into my face came near to the level of my own. Her mouth parted slightly, and she said, ‘It is for your wound; first we must clean your wound.’

I stood still, afraid to move, but struggling to control my breathing as she slowly brought the cold wet cloth to my cheek and gently began to dab at the wound her father and brother had made there. I flinched as the movement of the cloth under her fingers caught the edge of the tear and stung me deep. She paused a moment and then returned, more gently and more closely, to her work.

When at last she had finished, I found my voice. ‘I am sorry that …’

I stopped, not knowing how to continue.

She looked at me directly. ‘That what?’

‘That I am not Sean.’

Again her lips parted slightly, and then she closed her mouth and her eyes. When she opened them I could see tears hovering on her lashes. ‘Sean did not want me anyway.’ And then she was gone, leaving me wishing I had never spoken at all.

My ears had accustomed themselves to the rhythms of movement of Dun-a-Mallaght, and I realised it must be evening time when Stephen and Michael finally returned from the friary.

‘So, Murchadh, we have brought the medicine for the girl.’

‘You were long enough about it. She could have been to the Devil in this time.’

‘The preparation had to be made up. The simples were ready, but the decoctions take time; there is little room for error in their preparation.’

Stephen was permitted to go, with Cormac and Padraig in attendance, to administer the medicines to my cousin. Roisin, I assumed, was already with her. As they left, I saw the priest glance towards my grille and Michael, following his eyes, do the same.

When at length they returned, Cormac’s face was ashen, and even in the dim and flickering yellow light, I could see the darkened circles beneath his eyes.

‘How fares the girl?’ asked our host and jailer.

‘She is a little more settled, but she is still fevered, and easily frightened. It is not good having too many in the room with her,’ answered Stephen

‘She cannot be left alone.’

‘No, but Roisin is all that is needed – she has knowledge enough already, and as for the rest, I have shown her what to do. Have your men stand guard outside her door by all means, but it is not seemly that they should be in her chamber, and they disturb the balance of her mind.’

Murchadh looked to Cormac, who readily assented, and went to clear the guards out of Deirdre’s room. The glance between Michael and Stephen made me uneasy.

‘And now,’ said Stephen, ‘that goodly business attended to, my young friend and I should no longer trespass on your hospitality, and indeed the offices at the friary require our attention …’ His face was breaking into a grin, his eyes dancing.

‘But surely you would not think to leave us so soon,’ said his host.

‘Well,’ said Stephen, rubbing his hands and inclining his head in the direction of the spit, where a hog had been several hours turning, ‘it is a cold night for all that, and Michael and I haven’t had a morsel since the morning; we will have long missed our poor supper at the friary by now.’

Michael attempted a jovial smile in agreement, but he was not so practised in deception as was the older brother, and the nervous grin of a boy was all he could offer. This seemed to please Murchadh even more.

‘Then indeed you will stay. Let it never be said that Murchadh O’Neill sent servants of our Holy Mother Church out into a cold night, with dry throats and empty bellies.’

Music had started up again, and all around, men were bringing out dice and dealing cards. The pig on the spit surrendered at last to the appetites of Murchadh’s followers, and the noise of people forgetting their troubles and their coming trials grew to such a pitch that I wondered that Deirdre or any human creature could sleep through it.

I watched the priests eat and drink, Michael initially with some hesitation and then with less caution; Stephen heartily. Michael was very soon drunk, and found himself assailed by the charms of a pretty young serving girl. The harper had been called for, and a poet also – no Finn O’Rahilly this, but an aged and revered fellow who had known better days for his patrons and caste – who having lamented the passing of the great days of the O’Neills, and looked forward to their resurrection under Cormac, was applauded and dismissed. A pipe was taken up, and then another. They were joined by a flute, the sound strange and discordant at first to my ears, and then the bodhran came, soon followed by the bones. If ever there was heathen music, music of another age, I was hearing it now. The speed of the playing increased, the dexterity of the players incredible. It was not possible that a man should be clear in his mind with such music. I felt my foot beat on the hard earth, my body move in time to the building rhythm and power of the sound that filled every part of my cell and seeped into my every sinew. I poured the last draught of wine from the jug Roisin had left me, but that did nothing to clear my thoughts or form in me any good resolve. I should have known that it couldn’t.

If I was set on a dangerous path, few in the chamber were far behind me. Those who were not at dice or cards flew in pairs and sixes and eights around those who were. Murchadh himself made the lustiest dancer of all, young girls throughout the hall trying to hide their terror in affectation of delight. Only one person in the place seemed cut off from the exhilaration, the incipient danger, the sense of approaching abandon: Cormac sat alone on his dais, brooding, with the look of one who watches but does not see what he watches. As his father caught a young girl and buried his face in her torn bodice, Cormac drained his cup and, his face set in resolve, left his place and strode towards a doorway at the other side of the chamber, and a corridor I could not see.