A Game of Sorrows (30 page)

It was a few moments later that I saw Roisin: she was standing, hesitantly, with her back to the door Cormac had disappeared through. Her pallor and stillness called to me through the orgy of movement, of reddened faces and sweating bodies that separated us, and it seemed through the smoke and the movement, the daemonic bacchanal of the music, that she looked directly at me. I felt the heat of the place pass through me, and shut my eyes against the knowledge of what I wanted, of what I was. But I did not step back; I did not lay myself down on the cold, bare earth as I should have done. I opened my eyes and continued to look on her.

She was standing in a shaft of light. Her pale blonde hair fell loose down her back and over her deep blue velvet gown. At her neck she wore a single white pearl, pearls hung also in diamond-encrusted drops at her ears. Everything about her was clean, pure. A harper was called to the space by her; a certain Diarmuid was called for, and the hall fell silent as the harper began to pluck at his strings and the young man opened his mouth in a lament I knew well, for my mother had often sung it to me, a song of longing and promise for her homeland:
Roisin Dubh
, Dark Rosaleen. A lover promised help would come from across the sea to his abandoned virgin bride; help from the Pope, wine from Spain; that the woe and pain and sadness of the dark Rosaleen would soon be over, every step homewards of the unresting lover was taken that his love would be lifted again to her sovereign throne. The singer’s voice was fine, the object of his performance filled with grace, but she was no
Roisin Dubh
, no Dark Rosaleen, for that, I knew, was Ireland herself. The final verse had always frightened me:

O! the Erne shall run red

With redundance of blood,

The earth shall rock beneath our tread,

And flames wrap hill and wood,

And gun-peal, and slogan cry,

Wake many a glen serene.

Ere you shall fade, ere you shall die,

My Dark Rosaleen!

My own Rosaleen!

The Judgement Hour must first be nigh,

Ere you can fade, ere you can die,

My Dark Rosaleen!

The complete silence that followed the rendition spoke every hope and fear of the men who might soon be marching with their guns and their cries through those glens, whose blood might soon run into the rivers of Ulster. And then, slowly, Stephen began to clap, and Michael, and Murchadh himself, until the whole chamber shook with the noise of it, and I thought the reverberations would bring the earthen roof crashing down upon us. Murchadh threw coins of gold to the singer and the harper, and caught his daughter in a tight embrace, before turning her and showing her, with pride, to his men. ‘May the women of Ulster carry the hope of Ireland in their wombs!’

Released at last by her father, Roisin had begun to move away a little, but her father stopped her and said something for only her to hear. At first he had been laughing, and she affected a smile, but then she shook her head and his laughter stopped. He took her by the shoulders and held her firm and spoke to her insistently. She mouthed something to him, three or four times, slowly, with real distress in her eyes, but he just spoke at her all the harder. All around this dumb show, the fever and pace of music never let up, but they might have been in a glass box for all that reached them. I looked over to where Father Stephen stood, and saw he had dropped his mask of joviality and begun to move closer towards them, but the crowd got in his way. He assumed again the mantle of every man’s friend, but now and then he cast a glance of unease in the direction of Roisin and her father until the young woman nodded in submission to Murchadh and disappeared through the door from which she had emerged.

It was not very much later that the door of my cell opened, and two of Murchadh’s men came in. Only one of them spoke, and he in a gruff and thick Irish tongue, but I understood that I was to leave this place and go with them. Again my hands were tied. The corridor I was led down was just as dank and narrow as the place I had come from, but better lit. I counted three doorways as we passed, and then, at the end, we stopped outside a fourth. My leading captor opened it and I soon found myself in another hollowed-out earthen room, with wooden supports to the roof and a beaten floor, but this one had torches burning on the walls to either side, and a small fire in the middle. Towards the rear of the room were rushes laid on the floor, such as I knew the Irish preferred to sleep on. There was a pail of clean water by the door, and a clean robe hanging from a wooden peg beside it. A tray bearing oat bread, cheese and wine had been set down over by the rush bedding. I looked to my two guards for explanation but was given none. They untied my hands and left without a word to me, only pausing to indicate the water and the robe and taking care, though, to bolt the door behind them.

I stood alone in the silence, letting my eyes grow used to the greater light. Though the music reached even here, there was no grille in wall or door. I had found myself in a place of luxury in comparison with my late holding-place, but I felt a great loneliness, more cut off now than ever from any human contact. I was sickened of this place and these people. I longed for the cold, sharp certainties of my life – the grey stone college, my students, the sermon. I longed also for the warm promise of Sarah. I saw how these people took what they wanted, and I cursed the two years I had let waste. Two years when I had scarcely touched her. I longed for the clean cool sheets of my college bed, a world away from a pallet of straw upon the bare earth.

Slowly, I removed my priest’s robe, the coarse woollen garment that I had begun to become accustomed to. I took the rag that was there and began to wash myself, finding something purifying in the cold, clean water. The garment hanging by the door was of a much finer stuff than that I had discarded, a short blue tunic of the finest linen, bound at the waist by a cord of white silk. The trousers – for that was what those garments were, so favoured by the Irish rather than our hose, gave me a little greater difficulty, but soon I was fully attired again, arrayed fit to be a companion for Cormac O’Neill himself, and with my beard grown, and my hair long and lanky, none would have taken me for any other than the high-born Irishman I might have been. Of the low-born Scottish craftsman’s son who was a teacher of philosophy in a reformed northern university, there was not the least remnant.

I sat cross-legged on the ground by the fire and began to eat, and drink. The wine was good, warmed and spiced, and much better than the vinegar I had earlier been given. When I had had my fill I let warmth and calmness course through me, and the music pass over me. I did not sleep, but lay as in a dream. I tried to push away the image that part of me was reaching out for. I tried to picture Sarah in my mind, but Sarah would not come to me here. Her place was somewhere warm, comfortable, familiar, not somewhere dark, strange, cold. Not here. Struggle though I did to bring her face before my eyes, I could not find her here. Her hair was not the pale, almost white blonde that came into my vision. I tried to pray, but prayer would not come, so I took more of the deep red wine that had been set out for me and willed myself to sleep.

The fire had sunk to embers and the candles burned far down when I heard Roisin softly enter the room. She hesitated, seeing me, as she thought, sleeping, and knelt quietly down by the round hearth and laid another turf of peat upon it. She was watching me, I knew, and I opened my eyes fully, that she might not be deceived. She swallowed, looked away, then back again. I sat up and held my hand out towards her. She took it and let me draw her closer, and laid her head in my lap. As I stroked the silken hair away from her face I felt the slight moisture of the tears on her cheek. My hand moved over her brow, down the side of her face. There was an anger in me that I could scarcely master: anger at Sean, whom I had loved, and she had loved, and who had not loved her; anger at her father, who had sent her here to me, who saw only Maeve O’Neill’s grandson, and cared not which one it was, nor if his daughter did either; anger at myself for the weakness that was in me, the lack of constancy, the sin I knew I would succumb to.

‘Why have they sent you?’ I asked eventually.

She did not lift her head, ‘It is only my father; Cormac does not know that I am here.’

‘This is some policy of your father’s alone?’

She raised her head and I brought her up closer, in to my chest. ‘I think so, I think he is no readier to accept that Cormac should lead this rebellion than he was that Sean should.’

‘Do you think your father killed Sean? Had him killed?’

‘He would not have dared. Sean was his best hope of acceptance by the Irish outside our own kin. If I had married Sean, and produced a child, then my father could have taken the fosterage: he would have been untouchable.’

‘But now with Cormac …?’

‘Cormac is his own man. He has always been his own man. Since his youngest boyhood he has burned with shame at my father’s pandering to the English while others who would not succumb to their blandishments were abandoned to their fates. My father will never control Cormac; he will be as an old stallion put out to grass, not fit for the race or the hunt or the siring any more. My father will not accept living like that; there will be a reckoning between him and Cormac, whether before or after the rising, I do not know.’

‘But none of that explains why you are here.’

‘I am here because it is the time of my fertility. The women keep an eye on these matters, and they tell my father.’

‘And he has sent you here …’

She looked away. ‘Any child born of this night he would pass off as Sean’s: it would have a right to the patrimony. Or even as your own – by the brehon laws, it would be as if I had married Sean himself.’

‘Have you … were you ever with Sean?’

‘I have never been with any man.’

‘Will they know? If you have lain with me or not?’

She shook her head. ‘They will not force me to that indignity.’

‘Then before you leave – if you stay till morning – we could cut my wound once more – let some of the blood drop upon your dress …’

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘That is what we could do.’

I spread out the rushes on the floor a little more, and took down the priest’s robe again, to be a cover over us – it was coarse, but warm. She laid herself down, her head on my chest, as I held her close in the near-darkness, and wished her goodnight. Her breathing was even, but I knew she was not asleep. A tear ran down her cheek and I felt the wetness of it on my bare chest, where my robe had begun to come loose. I brushed her cheek and kissed her head again. She moved slightly and looked up at me. I lowered my head and kissed her again, gently, on the mouth. She responded and I did it again, less gently this time, pushing the crucifix at my neck to the side, desire taking over my senses. I knew it was wrong, and I knew it was not me that she wanted, but I had not been with a woman in three years, and in the darkness of that God-forsaken place, I submitted to her heartbroken passion and to my every carnal desire.

It was almost dawn when I woke, Roisin still entwined in my arms, the lingering scent of rose oil from her hair drifting into my senses. The fire had gone out and the room was cold. The dark mass of guilt had found me, as I had known it would. I felt it weigh me down like a rock on my stomach. I looked down at her as she moved slightly and murmured in her sleep. Oh God, that Sarah would never know of this. I lifted Fintan’s cloak from where it had slipped to the floor and covered the girl’s bare shoulders with it, and prayed for forgiveness. Suddenly the cell door crashed open. I sat up quickly, trying to shield Roisin with my back, and was only a little relieved when I saw Father Stephen Mac Cuarta stride into the room.

He took in the scene in less than a second. ‘So, it is like that then. Like the rest of the O’Neills: weak in the flesh.’

I struggled to say something, but he put up a hand to stay me. ‘Save it for your prayers. There is no time.’ He quickly gathered the clothes I had put on the night before that were now strewn around me. ‘Quick, put these on. Time is scarce.’

Roisin was stirring now, but he crouched down near her and laid a hand on her head. ‘Sshh, sleep on, child. When they come, tell them you woke and he was gone, that you know no more.’ Taking a moment to understand what he said, she looked from him to me, then nodded her head. She lay slowly back down on the pallet, pulling the robe to her, and watched quietly as I dressed. Stephen strode around the room impatiently as I fumbled with the belt to my tunic and the trousers.

‘Come on, come on, man! Did your mother always dress you?’

‘I am not used to this clothing,’ I said, eventually triumphing over my leg wear and casting around the room for my boots, which, I was thankful, they had not made me exchange for a pair of priest’s sandals.

‘Here they are,’ said Stephen, thrusting them towards me. ‘Now be quick!’

‘But where …?’ I began.

‘For the love of God, will you
move
?’

A moment later I was ready and Stephen made for the door. I looked at him and then at Roisin, and understanding, he relented a little. ‘One minute,’ he said, raising a finger, ‘and not one second more.’

I nodded and, muttering something under his breath, he went out.

I went over to Roisin, crouched down, took her hands. ‘I am sorry,’ I said, ‘that I am not of your world. May you find someone who is worthy of you.’

She smiled. ‘Perhaps I did. I will not forget you.’

I bent down and kissed her, one last time, then left, without looking back.

‘Thank the Lord for that,’ said Stephen, in some exasperation. ‘Now can we go?’