A Game of Sorrows (34 page)

The wind dwindled and we had been going two hours or more before Andrew desisted from his attempts to take the oars from the old priest.

‘What, do you think me so shameless that I would sit back while a man half-eaten by dogs ferries me to my home? See to your woman.’

We passed the burnt-out MacDonnell castle at Red Bay, and could see ahead of us the promontory of Garron Point; it seemed impossible that Stephen could pull another stroke, when at last he said, ‘Praise be to God; take her to the shore – we are at Ardclinnis.’

As we brought the boat up to the small expanse of shingle shore, I could at first see little to distinguish this place from so many other inlets we had passed on our voyage – bog and moss and heather and clumps of trees banding together up the hillside. Massive stones, tumbled on the slopes as if dropped by a forgetful God. But then, from beyond a swathe of birch and willow, at the side of the burn a hundred yards or so from where it ran into the sea I saw a welcome breath of grey smoke curl into the sky. I looked more closely and saw that dotted around the trees were not only rocks and boulders, but head-stones, and behind them a squat and ancient church.

Stephen inhaled deeply as he stepped onto the shore, gratefully stretching his arms and his chest. ‘Smell that air, Alexander. Did you ever smell anything so clean and pure in all of God’s creation?’

And indeed, beyond the constant smell of brine that had attended us from Bonamargy, made more rank at the shore by the seaweeds abandoned by the tide, the rich verdant earth of Ardclinnis was something that spoke to me of the first days, before God’s earth had been sullied by man.

Stephen said, ‘I will go ahead and warn Macha of our arrival; you see to our invalids.’

Deirdre was fully awake now and Andrew was readying himself to carry her to the shore.

‘Let me,’ I said quietly, and he did not argue.

I lifted her from the boat and onto the shore.

‘Can you walk at all?’

‘Yes,’ she said, ‘but I will need some help.’ She looked directly at Andrew, who had been waiting a few yards ahead of us, scanning the horizon for signs of Murchadh.

‘You see to the boat,’ he said to me, any notion of master and servant between us long since forgotten. He put his arm carefully around Deirdre’s back, holding the hand at the other side. ‘Can you manage?’ he said, so quietly I could barely hear him.

She let her head rest on his shoulder. ‘Yes, I can manage,’ and there was a softening in his eyes, the suggestion of a smile on his lips as they made their way to the church, the one wounded in body, the other in heart and mind.

As I watched them go, and thought of Father Stephen in his church, preparing Macha for our arrival, for the hurt of the first sight of me, a desire began to crawl through me to turn about and get back in the boat, to take the oars once more and row for Scotland, for Sarah, and what was home, to be away from this place or to drown in the attempt. And if Murchadh and Cormac should apprehend me, that would be the will of God, and if my suffering would be great it would not be long.

I had half turned when Stephen’s voice stopped me. ‘Alexander, we have everything we need from the boat.’ He watched me with a strange curiosity, waiting, and with great reluctance I turned my back to the sea and followed him.

He took me first into the church, a ruin long before he or I had ever drawn breath. ‘Will you make your devotions with me here, Alexander? We might be of two faiths, but there is the one God and it is He who has delivered us. Will you pray with me?’

I looked around the tiny chapel, bare of all furnishing save the simple altar below what remained of the east window. ‘I will.’

He knelt, and I stood, and we prayed to our God in silence together, and then aloud, in the words our Saviour had taught us, he in Gaelic, I in Scots. To the one God. And in this place, where God had been so long before man, there was no place for dogma, for doctrine, for words or forms that might have claimed one of us as right and the other wrong. He blessed me at the end and led the way through a small doorway to what evidently served as his home.

As I was bending my head to pass through the low archway, a glint of something to my right, just below the west window, caught my eye and my breath. It was a crozier, a staff such as I had seen in stained-glass windows and stone effigies, in the hands of bishops and saints. The base of the shaft was of simple wood, cleanly carved, but at the neck it was bracketed in gold, and its curved head was covered entirely in gold, intricately engraved with symbols of the earliest Christian days, and set with precious stones of black, green, red and turquoise. I had never been so close to an object so beautiful. It was a piece for a cathedral, not a lonely and abandoned church of the Culdees.

Stephen stopped ahead of me and looked back. ‘Alexander?’

‘What is that?’

‘The crozier? It has been here many lifetimes, left in the care of the church by an early saint. It will be here long after I am gone. A truth that has been touched by the hands of a saint, and will not be defiled.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘It is believed that this staff is a repository of God’s judgement, a rod of truth. If any man, or woman, be accused of a crime and deny that crime, should he swear his innocence on this crozier, and yet be a liar, his mouth will twist and freeze in its deformity. If he be innocent, he will go on his way unmarked.’

‘A man must tell the truth before this staff?’

‘A man must tell the truth, always.’

‘Then will you come before this staff, and tell the truth to me?’

He spread his hands before me. ‘Alexander …’

‘You have put me off long enough, priest. Stand before your piece of wood, and tell me why I am here.’

His head dropped and his body sagged. ‘I will then, I will. Just let us have some rest and warmth, some sustenance for the body. I will tell you all, just let us have some rest.’

He was an old man now. A sick old man. Every step he had taken from Bonamargy, every pull on the oars, had been to bring him here, and now that he was home, Death would not be long in gathering him. I could not deny his request. ‘I will see you on your knees in front of that staff before nightfall.’

‘You have my very word on it.’ He coughed, and steadied himself in the doorway. ‘I am a man not far from my maker. My word is of greater worth than most.’

We found Andrew and Deirdre in a room so tiny it was little more than a cell. Deirdre was seated by a small fire beside which, tending a skillet with frying fish, crouched a heavily pregnant girl. She straightened herself when we came in, and I knew then why Sean could never have loved Roisin O’Neill. The girl into whose momentarily startled eyes I looked was every part the equal of my cousin. Long chestnut hair hung in loose ringlets about her face and down her back. Her brows formed perfect arches above eyes of the warmest brown and the hesitant smile lit up a face that was full of life and kindness. I felt I had always known her. I knew Stephen had forewarned her, but her shock at the sight of me registered a moment before she composed herself. She stepped forward and greeted me in Irish, extending both hands towards mine and kissing me on the cheek.

‘I am greatly sorrowed by your loss,’ I said. ‘If there is anything I can do for your help or comfort you must ask me as you would a brother.’

‘He told me it would be so when he went for you. He always knew it might end in this way, as did I. I have his child and he has taken care that his legacy might be fulfilled. No more can we ask.’

I looked to Stephen, but he avoided my eye, and I sat down with some discomfort beside Andrew.

‘And so, Deirdre,’ said Stephen, affecting some of his old heartiness, ‘you have met your sister-in-law.’

My cousin looked up at Macha, smiling. ‘God has blessed us where we thought he had forsaken us. That I will soon see the face of my brother’s child lightens the sorrow in my heart.’

‘As it will your grandmother’s too,’ said Stephen.

Her face clouded, the smile fell away. She looked to Andrew and to me. ‘Must my grandmother know?’

‘There is no need …’ began Andrew.

‘Surely she must know, it is the child’s birthright …’

Deirdre looked pleadingly at the priest. ‘But you know what will happen; you know what she will do: the child will have no life!’

Stephen began to speak, his voice raised, but his breath failed him and he swayed on his feet, only a wheeze escaping his throat. I steadied him and Macha brought forth a small stool for him to sit upon. Once recovered, he tried again. ‘Your grandmother knows what is the child’s birthright. She will teach him what he must know, as she did Sean.’

‘Who is dead now, murdered …’

Andrew put out an arm to calm her but she shook it off. ‘You condemn this child.’

‘There are those who will protect him. We will be better prepared, the time is soon …’

‘The time is gone. Will none of you see it? The time is gone!’

She pushed past him into the church, from where the sounds of her grief wrenched the heart of me. Andrew would have followed her, but Stephen held him back. ‘Give her this time for her anger. She has held it too long, and now she will give it up to our Holy Mother. Let her have this time.’

Macha brought us the food on simple wooden platters. Despite her bulk, she moved with grace, and there was little in her to suggest she had known a life of servitude. ‘She is of a family in Down,’ Stephen had told me. ‘They fell foul of your grandmother’s family many generations ago. The certainty of Maeve’s wrath added to the attraction for Sean, I think. In truth, though, I cannot see that he would have married any other woman. And her lineage was every bit the match of his own. She will hold her own with your grandmother, and the old woman will take to her in spite of herself.’ I watched the girl as I ate, and knew the priest was right.

The cooked fish were coated in oatmeal and in an instant took me home, the softness of the flesh melting on my tongue, the small hard balls of the oatmeal cracking like crisp hot nuts on my teeth. Could I have done, I would have willed myself back there now, to Mistress Youngson’s kitchen in Banff, the austerity of her countenance matched only by the warmth of her welcome, the safety of her home.

In the poor light of the room it was difficult to see whether Stephen improved with the rest and nourishment, but soon Macha was chiding him gently for not having eaten enough, and had warmed a bowl of goat’s milk to tempt him.

‘He seemed strong as an ox,’ said Andrew. ‘Invincible.’

‘I think the trials of the last few days have proved too much for him. And who knows how long he has been living and travelling on reserved strength? He must have used what little fortitude was left to him to reach this place.’

‘It was his home, the girl told me. When he was a young boy, he was servant to the priest here. It was believed he was his father. I think he has come back here to die.’

‘We cannot linger here long. Murchadh and Cormac will be after us soon, and we must get the women to safety some-where.’

‘We must get them to Carrickfergus.’

I nodded. ‘Rest now – I will need what strength you have tomorrow. We will make up a pallet for the priest in the boat and take him with us. Deirdre improves a little, thank God, but with Macha too it will be slow progress. We will start at dawn.’

Andrew looked over to the priest, who was sipping at the bowl of milk and smiling at Macha as if he were only doing it to indulge her. ‘I doubt he will make it to the dawn.’

Stephen finally nodded off to sleep and Andrew went to bring Deirdre back from the cold church. Macha knelt beside me, getting down to her knees with some difficulty.

‘He is much agitated and has made me promise I will waken him after he has slept an hour. I know he has business of some sort with you, but can it not wait until the morning, until he is better able for it?’

‘I do not think it can,’ I said.

‘Then I will make up a fire through there, for he insists he will speak to you only before the crozier.’

‘Let me do it,’ I said. ‘You cannot be long from your time.’

‘I do not think it will be many days now until my husband’s son cries his first upon this earth.’ I forced myself not to dwell on thoughts of what Sean would never hear, never see.

‘You are so sure it will be a son?’

‘I know it. It was promised and foretold.’

‘By whom?’

‘By Julia MacQuillan, at Bonamargy. She has the sight; she is never wrong. I shall bear my husband a son.’

In my homeland, such things would not have been spoken so freely, and I had trained myself for many years to pay no heed to them, but here, tonight, I knew that the old nun could not be doubted, that I would soon hold in my arms my brother’s son, and that Stephen Mac Cuarta would be dead by morning. I laid a fire of wood and peats before the crozier, beneath the west window of the church. Neither Andrew nor Deirdre questioned what I was doing, and I was glad to see the two women lie down soon after on clean straw in the priest’s cell, with rugs laid carefully over them. Andrew did not sleep for a long time, but watched them, as I had known he would. I waited until he, too, had finally dozed off and then quietly woke the priest. He seemed to come to with some relief, for his sleep had been a restless one, and once or twice he had muttered, as if struggling in a dream.

I supported him through to the church, for although it did not matter to me now where we spoke, it was he who insisted that we should do it there. The fire had lent what warmth it could to the crumbling building, and two large candles, mass candles, burned on the altar. Through a hole in the rafters where there was no thatch I could see the stars.

I eased Stephen down on to a pallet of straw covered in an old sheepskin, and waited. His breath came hard and heavy, but eased off at last when the exertion of walking from his cell passed. He bent his head towards the crozier and kissed it.

‘You do not need to do that,’ I said. ‘Your word is enough.’

‘For you, perhaps. But I have made many bargains with my God, and may He forgive me, I have not kept them all. He shall know by this that I tell the truth.’