A Game of Sorrows (35 page)

‘He knows anyway.’

‘Perhaps. But indulge the beliefs of an old man, and pray that He might also.’

‘I have spent much of the night in prayer for you.’

He inclined his head a little towards me. ‘Thank you. Now, tell me where you wish me to begin.’

‘At the beginning.’

He almost managed a laugh. ‘The beginning? There is no beginning to Ireland, save the day of creation when God filled her with his bounty and then said, “Come, fight it out.”’

I did not like the blasphemy, and we had no time for humour. ‘Tell me when you became involved in the treachery of Murchadh O’Neill, what my cousin’s place in his scheme was, and why he brought me here.’

‘There is no treachery …’

‘Do not lie to me; I heard you at Dun-a-Mallaght. You plan rebellion against the king. You boast of continental powers …’

‘There is no treachery and there is no boast. We fight for the Holy Roman Mother Church and her daughter, Ireland. We cannot be traitors to a king to whom we have never bent the knee. Our people are paupers in their own land. Men like Murchadh, heads of great families, revered through all Ulster, forced to till the land like beasts or peasants.’

‘But there is peace,’ I said. ‘And Murchadh has prospered in this peace. Many have told me so – he has made his bargains with the English and has done well of it.’

‘And is held in distrust and contempt by the Irish because of it, and do you think he does not know that? He wanted Roisin to marry Sean to gain some of the affection and esteem in which your grandmother’s family is held, as well as to build up his lands.’

‘But surely that could have been achieved without rebellion?’

‘He can only properly establish himself by wresting power from his English masters.’

‘But why did you join with him? You saw what he did to Michael; you know what he has done to others.’ My mind went back to the shabby Scots inn where Andrew and I had taken rest and sustenance, where a widow and her children lived in the shadow of a murdered son.

He breathed deep. ‘I made common cause with Murchadh for a greater purpose than his: a cause whose ends could not be achieved in opposition to his, so must needs join with them. But it was never Murchadh who was to lead the struggle, it was to have been Sean. Murchadh does what generations of his sort in Ireland, leaders of septs, have done through time – he fights for himself. He has used the English to further his own ends, and has no notion of leading a rising for the sake of the Irish. Throughout time, for centuries, our poets have called for a leader who would put an end to rivalries, unite Ireland, and protect her against the foreign invader. It was to have been Sean. Did you think for a minute your cousin was involved with Murchadh for personal gain? Sean was all that a leader should have been, and with access to Murchadh’s power base, much might have been achieved. And he was faithful, too. Faithful to the Church and to Rome.’

It made sense now, the talk of powerful friends, of Louvain, Madrid. ‘And this is why you came back from the continent? To put your Franciscan mission in the hands of the king of Spain, and wrench Ireland from King Charles’s hands in the name of Rome?’

‘You think I had done better to stay in my college in Louvain and simply pray for Ireland?’

‘Better than to have joined with a butcher like Murchadh.’

‘Butchery, is it? Let me tell you something of butchery, my young Scottish friend. When Chichester burned and destroyed the whole of Ulster, when you were a babe safe in your mother’s arms in Scotland, and Sean had been abandoned by her, starving children were found with their hands in the innards of their dead mother; old women enticed boys and girls away from their play, to murder and eat them. And you would disdain Murchadh for making his peace with the English whilst hoping to raise himself once more? Those whom the earls left behind in their flight – brothers, sons – were rounded up, imprisoned, for the very fact of their existing, and some rot in the Tower of London still, children once, now men, grown to manhood in their chains. They will never see the blue of an Irish sky nor drink the clear water of a mountain burn again. Others, who took ship for England to plead their case with their king, their Celtic king, son of a faithful daughter of Rome, never saw his face before they were shipped to Virginia, to be murdered by savages or die of disease in his colonies. Say what you will about Murchadh, but he remains an Irishman, holding his land on Irish soil, and as such gives hope to other, better men, who do not.’

The effort of this speech had cost him much, and he lay back a moment with his eyes closed. I offered him a little water and he took it gratefully.

‘But I will die in Ireland. Unlike your uncle, Tyrone, Tyrcon-nell, so many others that I left with, so many years ago. I have seen the sun rise and set once again on the land of my birth, and for that I give thanks to God.’

‘And that is why you came back now? Because you knew you were dying?’ There was little point in sentiment, or dissembling. He had seen the last sunset of which he spoke.

He raised the familiar grin, and the trace of a sparkle came into his eyes. ‘The timing of that is merely a stroke of good fortune. Many powerful men on the continent take an interest in the affairs of Ireland. Tales of Murchadh’s planned rising came to their ears – through MacDonnell, I am certain – at about the same time that Sean’s letters on the same subject came to me.’

‘Good news for you,’ I said.

His eyes were quick. ‘No: the worst. Murchadh is unmeasured, hot-headed. He lacks discretion. We all feared a repeat of the debacle of ’15.’

‘What happened then?’

‘I forget you have lived your life in such blissful ignorance. In 1615, plans were laid for a rising against the English, to free prisoners – Tyrone’s own son amongst them – and to drive the English, those who were not put to the sword, from Ulster.’

‘And it failed?’

‘Failed? It never even began. The leader, Rory O’Cahan, did little but drink and brag the country round for weeks what he was to do. The English heard of it, of course, and he was caught, tried and hanged, with six others, a Franciscan priest among them, before flame was lit or sword lifted. The Spanish stood ready then, as they do now, to help. But they will brook no more Rory O’Cahans, and Murchadh is such a one. I was sent here to assess the readiness of the English in their settlements – not just the towns like Coleraine, but the bawns too – to meet our attacks, and to gauge the level of supplies we might garner from them. But I was also sent to protect Sean, and to rein in Murchadh. I have failed in my second object, but God willing, will not do so in my third.’

‘I think Cormac has greater honour than his father ever did, but his determination upon Deirdre threatens to blind him to all other concerns. He is no Sean.’

‘No,’ he said, looking at me as if by the concentration of his mind alone he could pierce my heart, ‘he is no Sean.’

It was cold enough in the crumbling church, and what heat the fire had first offered could do little against the advancing frost of the night, but the shiver that passed down my spine under his gaze had little to do with the air around us. I looked away, pretending to make a start on gathering up the straw.

‘Look at me, Alexander.’

‘It is very late. We have an early start in the morning. We should go back to your …’

‘I will go nowhere in the morning, as you know, save to the place of atonement for my sins.’

‘You may go where you will, if you believe in such places. I have need of sleep.’

I bent down to lift him to his feet, but he shook his head. ‘I will see my last of this world here.’ He gazed up through the hole in the rafters. ‘The stars in their firmament were never more beautiful than they are here, tonight.’ Then he looked back at me. ‘You know now why you are here, don’t you?’

‘I am going to my bed,’ I said.

He reached up and gripped my arm, a terrifying grip from a man so close to death.

‘You know why Sean brought you here, don’t you?’

‘The nonsense of the curse …’

He shook his head, impatient. ‘Sean no more believed that than you do. But Deirdre does, and more importantly Maeve. When the curse was laid and Maeve told him he had a cousin …’

‘He never knew we were brothers?’

‘Perhaps he suspected, who knows? But I don’t think he ever asked. I have heard from your grandmother’s priest that when Maeve sent him to fetch you to lift this curse, he took it as a message from God that our prayers had been answered, that a help had been found to us in our fight. One of Murchadh’s men, acting out of a misplaced enthusiasm and a misunderstanding of his master’s mind, made an attempt on Sean’s life not long ago. The attempt, as you know, failed, and the man paid for it with his own, but Sean knew he might never live to see the rising’s beginning, still less its end, and he knew what would happen to it and all our hopes should he die, without an appointed successor …’

I backed away. ‘I am a Scot, a teacher, and no follower of Rome. You were as well to get a dog to lead your rising as me.’

‘Do you tell me you cannot handle a sword?’

‘Of course I can handle a sword.’

‘That you are not the grandson of Maeve O’Neill?’

‘You have told me I am.’

‘And do you tell me I have not seen you finger that cross at your neck for comfort? Do you tell me I have not seen you on your knees, praying at our altars?’

The shock of his words stopped me where I stood. A denial was ready in my mouth, but I could not deny what he had said; I knew it myself. How had it come to this, that I had so easily lost sight of my own faith when surrounded by the snares of idolatry? I forced the words through gritted teeth at last. ‘I am no follower of Rome.’

‘Alexander, you were born to this. You have Irish blood enough for those who would ask it, if you have a heart to do what it is that they ask of you.’

His breathing was coming short and fast now. I put out a hand to calm him. ‘Do not agitate yourself over this. God’s will will be done. There is no more you can do.’

He did not calm himself, but by a supreme effort hauled himself up so that his eyes were almost level with mine. In the thin golden light that found its way to us from the altar, they were red, and shining. ‘Alexander, I beg of you. Take up Sean’s mantle. Do not leave them to Murchadh, all will be lost. MacDonnell will support you. They have my letter at Dunluce already, naming you your cousin’s successor …’ A pain seized him and he fell back down, clutching at his heart.

‘Alexander, I beg you,’ he gasped.

I ran for Macha and she was there in a moment, cradling his head in her lap. A smile of immense peace passed over his face. ‘I can hear the child’s heart beating,’ he murmured.

‘Hush, do not talk,’ said the girl, a tear falling from her cheek and splashing onto his face. ‘Do not leave me.’

He brought a hand up to cover hers. ‘Do not weep, my child. The stars in God’s heaven wait for me, it is my time, for as the Preacher says: “To everything there is a season …”’

But he hadn’t the strength to go on. I took up the words for him:

‘And a time to every purpose under the heaven;

A time to be born, and a time to die;

A time to kill, and a time to heal;

A time to weep, and a time to laugh;

A time to mourn, and a time to dance;

A time to love, and a time to hate;

A time of war, and a time of peace.’

I let the words die in the room, and then his voice came, in a hoarse whisper. ‘I have loved and I have laughed; I have wept and I have danced; I have waged war and have craved peace. Do not mourn for me: it is my time.’

At that moment, the light in the church changed, and the darkness gradually receded in the face of a glory of reds and yellows and greens, as the sun rose and sent its magnificent rays through the east window of Ardclinnis, to light for the last time on the face of Father Stephen Mac Cuarta.

I dug the grave, while Andrew kept watch at the shore, for the sea was calm and would not have detained Cormac and Murchadh long at Rathlin.

I had chosen a place close to the church, by the hawthorn, the fairy tree, and we buried him there with some words from me and prayers from the women. Andrew intoned the forty-sixth psalm. There was no time for a headstone, or even to carve out a wooden cross, but Macha had taken a slip of a wild rose and planted it at the head of the grave to mark the place. ‘It will grow, and I will bring my son here,’ she said.

‘Where do we run to now?’ asked Deirdre.

‘Carrickfergus,’ I said warily, for I knew she would not like it.

‘You cannot go to Carrickfergus. You know what my grandmother in her delusions accuses you of.’

Andrew took up my argument. ‘We will plead our innocence and clear our names, but we can do it in no other place, although we must call first at Ballygally.’ I shot him a quizzical glance, but he chose not to notice it. As we walked to the boat he stopped me.

‘You are sure you wish to go south?’

His question surprised me. ‘Where else would I go? There is no other safe way for me to reach home to Scotland, and I certainly cannot go north.’

‘Not even to Dunluce?’ He was watching me carefully.

‘Andrew, what are you asking me?’

He looked away, to the sea. ‘I heard you speaking with the priest, in the night. I had long suspected something of what Sean’s business was, although I would not have thought him honourable, and now I believe he was. But now I know also what brought you here…’

‘I had no knowledge of it. It was the talk of the curse.’

‘The curse. And where is the curse now?’

‘With its maker, who hangs from a tree in the hills above Ballycastle.’

‘Is it? We neither of us know that.’

‘I thought you did not believe in it.’

‘And neither do I, but I believe in the evil intent in whoever paid Finn O’Rahilly to lay it, and so should you.’

I looked back at Ardclinnis, a slow mist rising from the ground beginning to envelop it, to take it back upon itself, away from the eyes of mortal men. ‘There is evil everywhere in this land, Andrew. I cannot concern myself with that I do not know, only with present danger. And that danger lies in Murchadh, and Cormac, to say nothing of the Blackstones, who may even now be in Carrickfergus ahead of us, adding their accusations to my grandmother’s.’ In my mind I heard the sound of Michael’s pistol shot, and saw again the horse that crashed down on its rider within sight of the walls of Coleraine.