A Game of Sorrows (39 page)

‘Madam, I knew your husband well these last twenty years. He trusted me and I him. I ask you to trust me now also, when I tell you that your grandson here, Alexander Seaton, did not murder his …’ he hesitated, looking from Maeve to myself. Neither of us said anything. ‘His cousin. He cannot have murdered his cousin in Carrickfergus as you have claimed, for I have it on good authority, that will stand in any court of law, that he spent the whole of that night, from dusk to the next dawn, at Armstrong’s Bawn on the road from Ballymena to Coleraine. He was there in the company of Andrew Boyd, a young man of your household whom I know well, and whose word I would trust before almost any other.’

Maeve stared bleakly at her hands.

‘And where is Andrew Boyd now?’

Her voice hung heavy with accusation.

I spoke reluctantly. ‘I don’t know. We know he reached Carrickfergus in safety, but that a party from Coleraine has been searching the town for him and for me. He went into hiding when he heard of it.’

An odd little smile appeared upon her lips. ‘From Coleraine. Those English that you entangled us with, Deirdre. Your husband’s brother, you know, is dead.’ They were the first words she had uttered to her granddaughter since we had entered the house. ‘They tell me he did not even have the sense to get out from under his own horse.’ And then she laughed, a horrible laugh, quiet, to herself.

Deirdre broke the dreadful silence that followed.

‘Can I sit down, Grandmother?’

‘You can please yourself; you always did,’ said the old woman, her poise gone, but her venom intact.

Sir James, at a loss for anything else, brought Macha forward from where she had been obscuring herself behind him.

‘And what trollop is this?’ said my grandmother, but before she could say more, Eachan had let out a sound of joy, and gone to Macha, and taken her into his strong, hardy arms. He held her close and wept, a torrent of thanks falling from his lips.

‘Blessed be the Holy Virgin, the Holy Mother of God that has brought you here. Mistress,’ he said, talking to Maeve, ‘this is Sean’s wife.’

‘Sean had no wife.’

I spoke again. ‘Sean was married to this girl by Father Stephen Mac Cuarta of Bonamargy, on the way to Deirdre’s wedding. Eachan was there and witnessed. This is your grandson’s wife and she is carrying his child.’

Deirdre let out a low groan and crumpled in her chair. Maeve ignored her and looked instead to me, the light that had gone coming back into her eyes. ‘How do you know this?’

‘Stephen Mac Cuarta himself told me.’

‘Mac Cuarta.’ Her voice was a mixture of bitterness and sadness. ‘He lived while my son died. His robes protected him, I suppose. But he wishes our family well, that cannot be denied. Where is he now? Why is he not here?’

‘Because he died two nights ago. He is buried at Ardclinnis.’

‘May the Lord have mercy upon his immortal soul,’ she murmured. ‘He will be a long time in Purgatory.’ Then she addressed herself to Macha. ‘Come forward, girl, that I might see what my son rejected Roisin O’Neill for.’ Macha went towards her, not hesitantly, but surely. She had been told all there was to tell of Maeve by Sean, by Deirdre, yet she had no fear of her, and the old woman liked that. ‘What is your family?’

‘The Magennises of Down.’

‘It cannot be helped, I suppose.’ Maeve walked around her slowly, looking in her eyes, feeling her arm, the width of her hips. ‘You are strong. He always knew how to pick a good mare.’ And then she came to her belly, and placed her hand on the swell beneath Macha’s woollen dress. ‘The child will come soon. You have eaten well?’

Macha nodded.

‘You have prayed for a safe delivery?’

Again the girl affirmed that she had.

‘And for a son?’

‘I know the child will be a boy.’

‘How do you know it?’

‘Julia MacQuillan told me. And it was confirmed by Finn O’Rahilly.’

At the mention of the poet’s name, Maeve recoiled from the girl, her hand dropping to her side.

‘When did you see him?’ I asked.

‘After Sean left for Scotland, when I was with the brothers at Bonamargy. I feared for Sean, and I wanted O’Rahilly to bless my child, so I went to see him one afternoon. But he said he could not. He only told me it would be a boy, and worthy of his father. I went on my way. I did not tell Stephen, for he did not trust the poet.’

Maeve seemed a little more at ease, Deirdre a little less so now.

‘And he will be worthy of his father, and of his grandfather, and of all the generations that came before, and gloried in the name of O’Neill.’

‘No!’ Deirdre had stood up. ‘You will not do it to him! You will not steal his life as you did those of my father and my brother, to fuel your own fantasy! Those days are gone, Grandmother. Please, I beg of you, let Sean’s child be.’

Maeve afforded her a look of ice. ‘Look you to your own life, that you do not end it as his mother did.’ This indicating me. ‘And go down on your knees to pray God for widow-hood, pray that your husband might soon join his dead brother, that He would give you another chance. Now get to your bedchamber and make yourself decent. It cannot be long before Cormac O’Neill rides into this town at his father’s side, and you will not refuse him in my house.’

I tried to go after my cousin, but was stopped by my grandmother.

‘You have done all you will do in this house. Do not think to set your foot over its door again.’

‘Grandmother, will you not believe me? I did not kill Sean.’ I looked in appeal to Eachan, but he was already guiding Macha to what had been Sean’s chamber and would now be hers: he had no further interest in me. Maeve made to follow them, pausing only for a moment to answer me.

‘If Sean were not dead, what you have done now would have killed him anyway.’

I could have torn my hair in frustration. ‘Woman, I do not know what you mean! Tell me, what have I done?’

‘You have betrayed our cause. Tell me why, if you were with Stephen Mac Cuarta, are you not with his people yet? Do not tell me that he did not ask you to join with them. Why have you brought Deirdre back here, away from Cormac, from Murchadh, whose protection she was in? Why do you come here, with this Scot from Ballygally, when I know, and all the town knows, that messengers rode yesterday from Ballygally to the governor of the castle here, to warn the English of the planned uprising?’

I began to stammer. ‘I told no one, I…’

‘If not you, who? You have betrayed everything your cousin lived for, and I pray God that you may soon drown in your own blood.’ And with these words, my mother’s mother sent me from her house.

All the short way from the FitzGarrett tower house to the castle, I asked myself the same question, ‘If not you, who?’ but there could be only one answer, and I knew that already. It had been Andrew. Andrew, who had listened in the night to my talk with Father Stephen while I had thought he slept; Andrew, whom I had found deep in conversation with Sir James soon after our arrival at Ballygally. I felt I had been betrayed. Yet why should I feel that? He had done no more than any honest citizen of the town of Carrickfergus would have done; he had done the duty of any honest subject of the king. And yet … And yet … He had betrayed Stephen, and Michael, and Sean, and Cormac, and me. He had not told me what he was going to do; he did not trust me. But I could not feel betrayed in that. He was right not to trust me. While I had refused to fight for them, I could not have gone against them. I could not have said, even now, that I would not have tried to get a warning to Cormac, somehow. Alexander Seaton: a man of no principles, of no commitment. Such a man cannot be betrayed, and yet I felt abandoned by Andrew, cast adrift and left behind.

As we approached the gatehouse of the castle I was gripped by a cold apprehension, for it was in this massive, terrible foothold of the English Crown on foreign soil that I would see my name cleared or damned.

Archers and musketmen patrolled the parapet and the overhang beyond it. The occasional glint of a weapon could also be seen through arrow slits set in the walls. Unarmed, my head protected only by a hood, and dressed in the clothing of one of Sir James’s servants, I felt exposed and certain that for every three weapons I saw edge through the walls, one was trained on me. But on Sir James making himself known, the bridge was let down and first one portcullis and then the other lifted. At the gateway I glanced upwards with some trepidation, mindful of Sean’s tales of the gruesome fates of many who’d passed beneath the murder hole above my head, but there were no bowmen there, no soldiers readying boiling oil to pour over me. A moment later I was within the outer ward of Carrickfergus Castle; I should have felt safe there, but I did not.

A soldier escorted us to an upper room in the western tower of the gatehouse, where the constable was greeted by Sir James as an old friend.

‘Ronald, I see you are much busied.’

‘Busied? I have not slept since we received your letters, and neither has half the garrison. I have sent troops of men to hunt down O’Neill, and have had to make the castle ready for attack should we fail to find him. And this,’ he said, looking beyond Sir James to where I stood, slightly stooped beneath the doorway, ‘this, I am assuming, is Richard FitzGarrett’s other grandson.’

It was the first time since my arrival in Ulster that anyone had identified me by the name FitzGarrett – it was always O’Neill: Sean’s cousin, Grainne’s son, above all Maeve’s grandson, but to the constable, I was FitzGarrett, and that could only have been because Sir James had announced me as such. It was, I suspected, a shrewd move, and it gave me some hope.

‘Well, James, there has been a stir and a half here about this one, and Boyd also since the Blackstones thundered down from Coleraine. You know Matthew Blackstone’s younger son is dead, and Seaton here and Boyd said to be the cause?’

Sir James chose his words carefully. ‘I had heard something of it, but have not had the time to get to the bottom of it.’

‘And no more do I, my friend. What do you say, Mr Seaton? Did you and Boyd leave Coleraine with the shouts of murderers in your ears?’

‘We did, but we murdered no one. We …’

He held up a hand. ‘I have not the time. James, do you vouch for him or not?’

My countryman looked at me carefully. ‘I vouch for Andrew Boyd, and he for Seaton here.’

‘Then that will have to do. I leave him under your guard until I can attend to the matter. See you don’t let him out of your sight. Now, your wife has been spirited away by my own dear lady. You will find them in our quarters somewhere, gossiping even now, no doubt.’

As we were about to leave his room, the constable called us back. ‘James. Where is Andrew Boyd?’

‘I do not know. He came safe to the town, but then went into hiding from the Blackstones.’

‘Then we must pray we find him before they do. Matthew Blackstone is as a bull enraged. If he finds him or Seaton here, he has sworn to tear them limb from limb.’

Our escort took us to the inner ward, and finally the castle keep itself, having first checked with his constable that he was sure I was not to be warded in the sea tower prison instead. He made little attempt to mask his disappointment when told I was not to be, and led us away mumbling that I had ‘the very face of a rebel’.

It was evident that my company was not looked for in the great hall of the keep, and I went gladly to the small chamber next to the basement kitchen, where Sir James’s men were quartered and where I could be watched. Margaret brought me some food and drink. As had become her way, she avoided my eye, and spoke little to me.

In another place, in another circumstance, I would have left her to her silences. I had little interest in pursuing the society of those who did not wish mine. But we were bound by deaths, this girl and I, and bound by friendship with another.

‘Margaret, I wish you would look at me.’

She lifted her eyes but lowered them again. ‘Why?’

As was often the case when speaking to women, I found the words that came to my mouth inadequate. ‘Because I am Andrew’s friend, or have been, and I know that you care for him. There is no cause for hostility between us; I wish you would trust me.’

‘You do not know what you are talking about.’

‘Margaret, I killed no one. I never lifted a hand to my cousin, and I killed no one at Coleraine.’

‘I care nothing for Coleraine or what you did there.’

‘You cannot think I had a hand in the murder of Sean? I swear to you, I loved him as a brother.’ As a brother. I breathed deep. ‘Margaret, he was my brother.’

She looked at me now. She did not flinch, or turn away, but looked at me as if I were at last other than she had thought me to be. ‘Your brother?’

‘He never knew it; I never got to call him so, but he was my brother, for we shared a mother. Sean O’Neill FitzGarrett was my brother, and you who have also lost a brother must know what I feel.’

She stared at me a few moments longer. ‘Do not think to tell me what I know, or feel.’ She left and I knew, however well I might wish her, that she would never accept friendship from me.

I was disturbed only by the cooks coming in and out of the room for stores. What passed for my bed was an arrangement of sacks on the floor, but it was better than what I had laid myself down upon on several nights just past, and I slept with some ease. At some hour well before dawn I became aware of a stirring of activity, and anxious voices in the kitchens. The door of the storeroom was opened and light brought in.

‘He’s still here,’ said a harsh voice, whose owner I could not see.

‘Then see that you keep him there. He is not to be allowed near the other one. Who knows what plots they have on hand.’

‘The constable thinks the other had himself caught simply to get to where this one is.’

‘They are sly, every one of them, and it may be so.’

I struggled to my feet as the man closed the door again and the storeroom became dark once more. I tried to open the door, but it had been locked on the outside. I banged on it, provoking curses from my guard and shrieks of terror from the women in the kitchens.