A Game of Sorrows (44 page)

‘Liberty? I will have no liberty; your man Boyd has seen to that with his creeping about, setting spies amongst my own men, when the greatest culprit, the greatest traitor to the king, was reared within these walls by that bog-nurtured old bitch you take your coin from.’ He turned to his men. ‘Break it down.’ And the rabble set to with a pole they had brought with them, which they began to ram with increasing force against the door.

I left my position at the window and made my way to the stairway down to the balcony above my grandmother’s great hall. I reached the bottom just as two doors burst open – the one on the ground floor, having finally succumbed with a sickening crack and splintering of wood to the Englishmen’s blows; and the other, the small door that I knew led to my cousin Deirdre’s chamber. She appeared, pale and insubstantial, like a ghost of herself, in the doorway. I held up a hand to stop her, and taking advantage of the noise and confusion below, crossed the balcony as quickly as I could to where she stood. I did not know if she had thoughts of going down to her husband, but I could not see – in her father-in-law’s frame of mind – that any good would come of that. I took her by the arm, and began to lead her back towards the safe hiding place of Andrew Boyd’s chamber.

We had not covered half the distance, at my halting pace, before the intruders had made their way into the house and up to the hall where my grandmother, attended only by her steward, was waiting for them. There was no sign of Eachan; he would be with Macha, protecting Sean’s unborn child. I pulled Deirdre with me behind the pillar from where I had watched my grandfather’s wake. Gone were the groaning tables, the musicians, the servants and mourners. Gone too were Sean, Cormac – Murchadh also by now, perhaps. There was only a defiant old woman, with her steward, standing in her empty hall, the glories of the past hung in faded colours all around her.

She was the first to speak, her voice careful, soft. ‘So, Englishman, you come uninvited to my house. You must forgive my want of hospitality: I had not looked for visitors at this hour.’

‘Your hospitality be damned. I will have what I am owed.’

‘You are owed nothing. Murchadh O’Neill and his son paid you every penny that was agreed for what arms you supplied to them. And you will see not a penny more from my husband’s coffers.’

‘I do not talk of money, woman.’

She raised an eyebrow, mocking even now. ‘But I have heard you speak of little else. I had not known you to concern yourself with other matters.’

This was too much for him, and the rage he had been trying to master exploded out of him. ‘My son, you murderous bitch. My son!’

Although the steward had moved forward a little, to stand in front of my grandmother, she herself had not so much as blinked.

‘I see your son beside you there,’ she said. ‘Will one lumbering oaf not do you as well as another?’

Edward Blackstone restrained his father. ‘My brother Henry was murdered by Andrew Boyd and by your own grandson, the Scot, who masqueraded in our house in the guise of your other and took my mother’s hospitality.’

This time a look of astonishment. ‘Your mother’s hospitality? I congratulate him most heartily on finding it; I had not thought him so resourceful. As to the question of your brother’s dispatch, I am sorry to say that neither my grandson nor Andrew Boyd can claim the credit in that. Another more honourable has cleared their names of that deed.’

Matthew Blackstone had again to be restrained, while all courage and intent seemed to be draining from his son. The younger man’s shoulders sank, and his voice dropped.

‘Where is Deirdre? Where is my wife?’

This time the old woman actually laughed. ‘A fine specimen of a man, who does not even know where his wife is. Little wonder she went so easily to a servant’s bed.’

I glanced at my cousin, but she seemed to be observing the exchange as a conversation between strangers.

‘I want you to tell me where my wife is. I must know she is safe.’

‘Oh, she is safe enough,’ said my grandmother, unconcernedly. ‘I have little use for her now, and she has turned her back on those she should have served. You may take her as you wish.’

The steward glanced swiftly up to our watching place, and then towards the door to the machicolation. I put my arm more firmly around my cousin and began to move her away from the balustrade and towards the door. I heard Blackstone order his people to search the house, and the steward protest to no avail. I had only just pulled the door shut behind us when I heard the footsteps of two or three men, having taken the stairs, start to clatter on to the balcony. I tried to hurry Deirdre, but she was in little haste herself and my weakness made our progress slow. I turned halfway up the steps and saw, to my horror, the doorknob turn. I thought it was over for us both, but at that very moment a furious shouting came from out in the yard and the lower floors of the house as the castle guard stormed through the already broken door and demanded the submission of Matthew Blackstone and all who were with him. I recovered my wits quickly, and almost dragged Deirdre up the remaining steps and along the corridor to the tiny room where I thought we might be safe awhile.

Once I had her inside, I bolted the door and pulled Andrew’s heavy chest across it before slumping down on the floor to try to catch my breath. Deirdre said nothing for a moment, looking in some astonishment at me.

‘Where is he, Alexander?’

‘He went to alert the men at the castle. I think he will be here soon; he is probably already in the house.’

‘My father-in-law wants to kill him.’

‘I know that.’

‘My husband too, for other reasons. But they will not. Andrew is a better man than either of them.’

‘Yes.’

She sat down on the bed, smoothing out the linen with her hand.

‘He is a better man than my grandmother would ever acknowledge.’

‘Yes, he is.’

‘Will he have me now, do you think?’

‘I cannot answer for him, Deirdre, but I know he loves you.’

‘Oh, he always loved me,’ she said. ‘I knew that. I always knew it. And I him, but other things mattered more, then.’

I waited, but she appeared to think no further explanation necessary. After a while, she became aware of my silence.

‘I often thought of your mother, you know, when I was growing up.’ Her face brightened. ‘They tell me I look like her.’

I smiled. ‘You do.’

‘I used to think of her, picture her, lying with her dead love at the bottom of the sea, her hair entangled in seaweeds and a smile of perfect peace on her face. I envied her her freedom.’

‘Her life was not as you thought,’ I said.

She stood by the small table at the end of Andrew’s bed, and started to examine the pieces on the chessboard there. She fingered the white queen awhile, picked her up, looked at her and set her down again somewhere else on the board, without giving much consideration to where she had positioned her. She turned her attention then to the black pieces, picked up a knight, put him down in his place again, and then moved the other. She carried on in this way, touching the pieces, considering them as objects, and then moving them in a way that had some logic in it that was clear to her, but unfathomable to me.

‘Did Sean ever try to get you to play Fidchell?’ she said, after some time, when it looked impossible that the white queen should survive a move longer.

‘No, I have never heard of it.’

‘A pity,’ she said, ‘but perhaps not. It was a game of the ancients. No one really knows how to play it now. But Sean wanted to know and Maeve had a board and set made for him, from as much information as could be gleaned from the old stories. It was beautiful, the board a pale wood inlaid with markings of gold, the pieces a white stone carved by the finest craftsmen. We knew very little of the rules, only some idea that the king should claim and keep his throne, and that to win at Fidchell, you had to play very well. Sean studied all the stories, and made up his own rules. He tried to teach them to me, but I could never understand it, and I always lost.’

The white queen was now impossibly compromised and had nowhere to go. Deirdre had entirely abandoned any attempt at protecting either king. She studied the board a moment and then knocked the pieces over, one by one. ‘I was never any good at games. I should have remembered that.’ She held up one of the white knights. ‘I should have married Cormac, as she wanted me to – God knows, many a woman would dream of such a man, but I would not enmesh myself further with the O’Neills. And then he was too good for me and he would not see it. And now I have brought death to him years before it should have come.’

‘Cormac’s death is not your fault, Deirdre. You cannot blame yourself for all that has happened.’

‘Can I not? I have made many mistakes, believed that many things could be that I have learned could never have been. I didn’t even understand my own brother.’

‘He loved you dearly.’

‘And I him, but I did not understand him. I could scarcely believe it when I realised that he would fall in with Maeve’s plans, with Murchadh’s, that he would marry Roisin and throw it all at my grandmother’s feet; everything my grandfather had worked for, his wealth and our name, to be squandered in a cause that was long lost.’ She looked away. ‘I could not believe he would not listen to me. So I determined to set myself at the furthest extreme from their world that I knew. I had tried to get away from Maeve before; I went once, you know, to our grandfather’s people in the Pale, but they would not have me. So I married the son of a wealthy English planter.’ She laughed. ‘What an insult to Cormac, to Andrew too, to have married such a man. I would have done anything to stop Maeve, but it made no difference, and still Sean would not listen to me. And now my grandfather is dead, and Sean is dead, and Cormac is dead. The poet, too, is dead.’ Her voice trailed off. ‘I was never any good at games. And you have been brought here, where I know you do not wish to be, because of me.’

‘I came here because Sean asked me to come. I came to help lift the curse.’

‘The curse cannot be lifted. He tried to tell me that, and I only laughed at him. But now I know it and it is too late.’

‘Who told you, Deirdre?’ I reached out to take her hands in my own. ‘Who told you?’

‘He told me himself, of course,’ she said, her eyes shining with a strange brilliance.

At that moment there was a thud against the door and an oath that surprised me, for I had rarely known Andrew lose control of his tongue.

‘Alexander? Alexander!’ he shouted. ‘Alexander, are you there? Where is Deirdre? Let me in before I break the door down.’

I got up and put all my strength against the side of the chest, which had moved more easily in one direction than it would in the other. Another thud threatened injury only to the attacker. ‘Andrew, for the love of God!’

Eventually, I had the thing shifted and managed to unbolt the door. He almost fell through it.

‘Why did you not answer me?’

‘I did,’ I croaked, pointing at my own neck. ‘You were making too much noise yourself to hear me.’

He saw past me then to Deirdre, and that she was safe, and without ceremony took her tight into his arms.

‘You came back for me.’

‘I will not leave you, Deirdre. You will stay with me now, and I will not leave you.’

To my astonishment, Sir James Shaw was through the door behind him.

‘The men from Coleraine have all been taken to the castle. Their hired thugs will be released before long, I am sure – the constable has not the room nor the inclination to hold them – but Matthew Blackstone and his son will be in the Tower before the month is out. They will be shown no mercy for their treachery in selling arms to rebels against the king.’

‘What about his wife and daughters?’ I asked.

‘He is no fool – he would not have told them what he was about, and they will fare the better for it. Unless it be found that they colluded in his business, they will be left in peace.’

‘To fend for themselves,’ I said. ‘And what about Deirdre?’

He looked from me to Andrew and and back to me. ‘Your cousin cannot be assured of safety here. She has too many ties to too many people who have been involved in plotting against the king. Your grandmother will not lift a finger to help her.’ He spoke now to Deirdre herself. ‘I think you must leave Ireland, and as soon as possible.’

A shout from one of his men below called him away, and a moment later only his words remained where he had been.

‘Leave Ireland?’ she said, as if the thought had never before occurred to her. ‘But where could I go?’

The words were out of my mouth before I knew I had thought them. ‘To Scotland, with me.’

She shook her head. ‘I will not leave Andrew again. He is all there is left, he and my brother’s child.’

‘I am coming too,’ he said. ‘There is a boat leaving for Ayr tomorrow, at five o’clock in the evening. I have this afternoon purchased passage for all three of us. Alexander can return home and you and I, Deirdre – we can begin life anew, away from here.’

She smiled. ‘Is it possible? Is it really possible?’

‘It is possible. There is nothing for us here any more. I am sickened of this country. I have money for land and for trade. We can buy our way into some town…’

‘I have friends in Aberdeen who can help you,’ I said, picturing already the friendship that I knew would form between Andrew and William Cargill, the bond of sisterhood between Deirdre and Sarah, the healing there would be.

‘Truly, you can help us?’ said Andrew.

‘I have a friend who is a lawyer, well thought of in Aberdeen. The town and the countryside around are full of those looking for someone with money to invest. Even a small amount of capital is welcomed. And your experience in my grandfather’s business would help you to similar work soon enough, if you needed it. I am sure of it.’

‘It is so far away,’ said Deirdre.

‘A world away,’ I said. ‘From rebellions, and kindreds, and feuding, and poets and curses. A world away from our grandmother and from here.’

‘Where we might start again, where we might live our lives as others live them.’