A Game of Sorrows (37 page)

Deirdre and Macha were in a small room almost at the top of the castle. Lady Isabella welcomed me. ‘Your cousin will be pleased to see you.’

‘And I her,’ I said, smiling at Deirdre, who was looking up at me from a stool by the fire, registering the relief of a child who has been left amongst strangers, and whose parent has finally come.

‘You look better already,’ I said.

‘Lady Isabella is kind, and I feel safe here. How long are we to stay?’

‘We leave for Carrickfergus tomorrow.’ The disappointment registered in her face.

‘And Macha?’ She looked at her sister-in-law, who was asleep on the bed.

‘We must take her with us.’

‘Must it be so? Could not they stay here, anonymous? What good could it do to place Sean’s child in my grandmother’s hands? She can only destroy.’ She looked away and into the fire. ‘She can only destroy.’

I knelt down in front of her, taking both her hands in my own.

‘There will be no more destruction in this family. This child is a chance to end it. Trust me, Deirdre, and believe in this chance.’

‘Do you believe God gives us second chances?’

‘I believe in His grace. I have known His grace.’

‘And what about love? Have you ever loved?’

‘I have loved twice.’

She drew a pattern in the ashes. ‘It is a sad thing to love twice. What happened to your first love?’

‘I had no courage, and was eaten up with selfishness. By the time I realised what I had lost it was too late; she had married another.’

She nodded, as if this came as no surprise to her. ‘This family does not know how to love properly.’ Then she laughed. ‘Apart from Maeve. Maeve truly loved. She loved our grandfather, and poisoned us all because of it. But I think you lie when you talk of a second love. You cannot love a second time.’

‘I do, Deirdre, and if I ever manage to leave this country, and if God forgives me my transgressions, I will not lose her.’

‘God will not forgive me mine.’

I brushed the hair back from her face; the colour had returned a little to her cheeks, and her eyes were as alive as any I had ever known. ‘What transgressions could you have to your account?’

‘I have dishonoured myself. I have dishonoured my family.’

‘Because you married a man and found you did not love him?’

‘I knew at the start I did not love him.’

‘And now? Do you plan to go with Cormac?’

She looked up at me as if I had said something that had never occurred to her. ‘I do not love Cormac. And anyhow, he will die in the same cause as my father did. He is less free even than Sean was. You know who I love.’

‘Yes, I think I do.’

She was silent for a few moments and then spoke to me again. ‘Was Grainne happy?’

‘My mother?’

‘Yes.’

‘No. She was not happy.’

‘Then there isn’t much left to me, is there?’

‘There is your brother’s child. He will need you.’

A determination I had seldom seen on any human face came into her eyes. ‘And I will not fail him. Before God and all who will judge me, I will not fail him.’

I held her to me, feeling her life, her breathing against me, my cousin, my dead brother’s sister, my trust.

Darkness was drawing in on the castle as I descended the stairs. What little blue there had been in the afternoon sky retreated in the face of the advancing dark clouds sent from Scotland, a Presbyterian anger at this unsettled land. The tide, pale silver at its eastern edge, was at a low ebb, and quiet, as if it too was waiting, and little stirred across the broad bay of Ballygally.

I found Andrew in the kitchens, talking with Margaret. Again the light in her eyes, the smile on her lips, died at the sight of me. I wondered when I had become the object of such fear and mistrust. She went to attend to a sauce bubbling in a pot. Andrew saw her discomfort, and the cause of it, and affected a brightness all three of us knew him not to possess.

‘We are to have fine fare tonight, Alexander. Sir James’s table rivals that of your grandmother’s house.’

‘I hope we can stomach it, after so many days of existing in such simplicity.’

I had not meant my words to come out so harsh, and yet I had had enough of being mistaken in what I was. If I made the girl uncomfortable, it was no fault or concern of mine. Andrew read my mood and gave up on his attempt to lighten it.

He changed his tack. ‘How is Macha?’

‘She sleeps. Lady Isabella is very attentive to her.’

‘And Deirdre?’

I watched Margaret for some reaction, but there was none. So she did not know of Andrew’s feelings for my cousin. Perhaps it was better that way. Women did not always forget these things, and if she and Andrew were ever to be happy, it was a thing she would have to forget.

‘Deirdre is … calm. She is weary, still, but a little stronger in body.’

We ate late – Sir James did not intend to sleep that night and there was nothing, he insisted, better at keeping a man from sleep than a good dinner eaten late. We had eels in a pickle of vegetables, mopped up with fresh baked bread, and slabs of venison that would have fed twice our number for three days. ‘There is nothing like a fine piece of venison, and yet the Irish do not prize it. They reckon nothing worth the praise and eating unless it be slathered in that infernal cheese. I am settled here twenty years and more now, and I have never yet got a taste for it.’ He lifted another slab on to his own plate, and to mine, before dousing it in the sauce Margaret had been busy at in the kitchens. ‘But this,’ he said, inhaling at the ladle with evident pleasure, ‘this they do better than any. Do not be mistaken in thinking this sauce to be the muck of the French – a man would need a stomach of iron to survive a month in that country. Smell it.’ He proffered me the ladle and I breathed deep. It was as I had thought.

‘Whisky?’

‘I have it brought down from Bushmills. If something from your own glens can be got now and again, well and good, but there is little that will surpass this.’

James Shaw was a genial host, and free and blunt with his opinions – too free, perhaps, as his wife often cautioned him.

‘James! Your tongue will lose you your head one of these days.’

‘Ach, hush, woman. Only if I waggle it at someone with a mind to carry its tales to the wrong ears. And those are not our guests tonight, or I am no judge of my own table.’

And so we talked late into the night, of the state of Ireland, of Ulster, of the state of religion in Scotland and the perils it faced.

‘Mark me, the king will have cause to regret his dabblings with prayer books and kneelings. Why does he meddle in something that needs no meddling with? It is that wife of his, no doubt. The French.’ And he poured himself another glass of wine to swallow his disgust. ‘But I’ll tell you, he’ll never find a nation more loyal than Scotland, as long as he will leave to us our religion.’

And in such a vein it went on, and I began to understand why Lady Isabella feared for her husband’s head.

At intervals, Sir James sent for reports from the walls, and always the answer came back the same: nothing. There was nothing to be seen, from sea or land; nothing coming to the castle. A little after eleven the lady of the house excused herself, and an hour later, when the castle bell tolled midnight, he told us to go to our beds also. And we did, leaving this Scottish soldier, this Presbyterian adventurer, watching the sea, thinking to hold it back alone.

I saw that Andrew did not sleep easy. I would have asked him what troubled him, but I did not think he would tell me. Since we had left Ardclinnis, something between us had been broken. His bible had given him little comfort from the agitation of his mind. I myself had little trouble in surrendering my body and mind to a few hours of respite; I was too tired even to dream.

It had been better that I had dreamt, for I awoke to a chorus of shouts from the walls and through the castle; the O’Neills had come. Not by sea – they must have returned to Dun-a-Mallaght when they could not find us at Ardclinnis, and now, mounted, they had come overland. They were lined up to the west, torches in their hands, perhaps fifty of them. Swordsmen, musketmen, archers, whose arrow dipped in a flame could, well-landed, turn the castle and its yards to an inferno. Every man around the walls of Ballygally, at the windows and loopholes of the house itself, had his weapon trained on the party which had drawn itself up perhaps a hundred yards away, little more. Murchadh rode forward, his three sons at his side.

‘What do you want, O’Neill, that you disturb a Christian’s rest?’ called Sir James.

‘I have come here in peace, for Deirdre FitzGarrett, who is held against her will by Alexander Seaton, her cousin and treacherous murderer of her brother.’

Shaw laughed, a hearty bellow that corralled the place round and must have reached Murchadh with as much power as it had left his throat. ‘Against her will? She was released from imprisonment in your bestial lair only three days ago, and her cousin her greatest support. You will prise neither of them from my gates. You had better go tend to your cattle than disturb my sleep or theirs.’

‘Seaton is an accused murderer!’

‘Seaton is wickedly maligned by an old woman whose mind is so badly mangled by superstition and treachery that she hardly knows what she says.’

‘She knows what she says, and he will answer to it.’

‘As will he, but to the proper authorities, and in the proper place. Go back to your bogs; you have no business here.’

Cormac detached himself from his father and brothers, and rode closer in beneath the walls of Ballygally than any sane man should have done. Ten muskets now, that I could see, were trained on him.

‘Give me Deirdre, and do what you will with the Scotsman; I have no quarrel with him.’

‘And I no duty to you. An inch closer, and I’ll have your head blown from your body.’ Shaw meant it. He was standing now on his own walls, and had raised a musket himself.

Cormac ignored the threat. ‘Seaton,’ he shouted. ‘Seaton, can you hear me? You know I will do her no harm. You know she has need of me. Seaton!’

I took a step closer to the edge of the wall from which Andrew and I watched, but I felt his arm pull me back.

‘Don’t do this, Alexander. You cannot give her to them.’

‘What will become of her in my grandmother’s house?’

‘A chance, for life.’

‘He would give her that chance. At least she would have a position and respect.’

He looked me straight in the eye. ‘Alexander, if you let her go with Cormac she will be hanging by the neck from Carrickfergus Castle before a month is out.’

‘You cannot know that.’

‘I know it.’

He looked into my eyes, hard, a moment longer, and I stepped back from the edge of the wall, trying to ignore the shouts of my name until the crack of a gun startled Cormac’s horse and sent its rider back to join his father. We watched as they conversed a few moments, before wheeling their horses round and retreating to the woods. But they did not leave. Torches glowed amongst the branches of the trees, and then swiftly moving shapes began to emerge from the glen behind us – shapes that were men, unencumbered by munitions or mounts, almost silently jumping burns, scaling rocks, flitting through trees. They had no guns, these men, but swords, or bows on their backs. And for every ten of them, one carried a flaming torch. Within a very little time, the castle was surrounded on three sides, the sea alone offering some chance of escape. And then, as I tried in a desperate way to understand how we might make use of that, a line of boats appeared, snaking down the still water from the west, a dozen men and a burning brazier in each one.

‘Oh, dear God!’

James Shaw turned to his wife. ‘Get back to the women, Isabella; this is no place for you.’

‘We will burn in our beds.’

‘Did you hear me, woman?’

He turned to Andrew and myself. ‘You, too, should go back. There is nothing you can do here, but these Irish dogs are cunning, and thrive on the ways of the night. If one should find his way undetected into the castle … Go inside. Bring the women down to the great hall: you can guard them closely there, and there will be greater chance of egress than from my wife’s chamber should the place take light.’

We did not need to be told twice. The noise had woken both Deirdre and Macha, and they were glad to see us. In Macha’s eyes was a truly hunted look. She held her hands across her belly, the last defence of her unborn child.

I went to her, put a blanket around her shoulders. ‘It is all right. They still do not know about you. I will see that no harm comes to you.’

I had spoken to her in English, but she answered me in Gaelic. ‘You can have no knowledge of the brutality of these men, what they can do. For Sean’s sake, save his child.’ I remembered Michael, lying beaten and blinded by the altar at Bonamargy, and I prayed to God for His mercy on these innocents.

Lady Isabella refused to lie down, but took up a seat by the window in the great hall, watching through the night at the deadly show of light in the woods beyond the castle. A servant had brought rugs and blankets, which we put in front of the hearth. Deirdre and Macha both, in the ways of the Irish that I had come to know, were used enough to sleeping on the ground, with little to cover them, and exhaustion soon won out over anxiety and took them to their sleep. Andrew and I sat on the carved oak chairs at either side of the fire; he watched me intently.

‘You have to make your choice, Alexander. The time is coming when we must all make our choice and trust to God.’

‘I am here, am I not?’

‘But your heart is not entirely.’

‘I learned long ago to bridle my heart.’

Nothing more was said between us as the hours of the night advanced, and the candles burned down in their sconces. Margaret tried to persuade her mistress to rest. The older woman shook her head kindly and continued to gaze out of the window, from where salvation or eternity might come.

It was about an hour before dawn that the first of the arrows was launched from the edges of the woods and into the castle yard. It formed a perfect blazing arc in the sky before dipping, assuredly, into the thatched roof of one of the byres. A rush of men and buckets was running for the byre when the second arrow hit – this time landing close to the pond. Ducks and geese screeched horribly and took flight, flapping in the faces of those who sought to douse the arrow in the water. A third arrow came, taking the shoulder of a guard on the inner wall. The man’s screams were quickly muffled by the comrade who launched himself at him, flattening him to the ground and putting out the fire. The flames on the roof of the byre had taken hold now, and the whole was ablaze. A chain of men and women passed bucket after bucket from the stream to the flames, while others released and sought to calm the terrified and bellowing beasts. Another arrow came, and found the brewhouse.