That night there was to be a great feasting before my grandfather’s burial the next day. Each night since his death there had been a wailing and keening of women such as I thought could not have issued from anything human. ‘It is their way,’ Andrew Boyd had said. ‘Their excess in grief is matched only by the gluttony and drunkenness of their funeral feasts. You will never know anything more pagan given a Christian name. Their enjoyment of it would shame Lucifer himself.’ On this final evening there was a constant rumble of feet back and forth from the kitchens to where the mourners were to gather for the last night of waking over my grandfather.
I had returned to my chamber at around five, to begin my nightly letter to Sarah, as if putting my feelings into words now could somehow reclaim for us all the time that had been wasted. I hardly noticed the footsteps on the stairs, so many comings and goings had there been in the house that day, and I didn’t lift my head when the door opened, thinking it was only Andrew. Only when I heard the sharp intake of a woman’s breath, a surprised ‘Oh!’, did I look round and see, standing in the doorway, in front of Sean, a vision from my own dreams. She was like a spirit, a princess, a myth from the whispered bedtime tales I had gone to sleep to. She was like a story in herself, a fable. The hair that hung down her back in waves of red and gold was not the black of myself, or Sean, or our grandmother, but the face illumined by the arc of light thrown by Sean’s lantern was the face of my own mother. My heart was thumping and my breathing came hard to me. I looked down at my hands and realised they were clenched in determined fists. At last I stood up and went towards her; I felt barriers begin to break and crumble: the barriers erected by the cold heart of my grandmother; by the priests and the beads and the incense and the oils; by the Irish tongue I tripped and stumbled over; by the sea separating me from all I had ever cared about. For here was my family, the only blood relations who remained to me in this world, and I knew in that moment that what they wanted me to do for them, that would I do.
‘Did I not tell you then?’ Sean’s voice was warm and happy.
The girl continued to gaze at me, as if she could not believe what was in front of her eyes. ‘I could not have … I would not have …’ And then she smiled, a smile that reached out and held me, and sent warmth to every part of me. She took my face in her hands and was gazing up into my eyes with love that lighted the room. ‘Alexander. I could not have believed it. Alexander.’
I could find no words, and stood there as one struck dumb, until a mighty slap on the shoulder from Sean brought me to my senses.
‘Do not tell me you don’t know your cousin, man. All I have heard since the day she was born is how like your mother she is.’
‘Yes,’ I said, stuttering a little, ‘yes … she is.’
‘Then I am glad,’ the girl said, ‘for you will have to love me now.’
‘You must never doubt that,’ I said. And I knew it was the truth.
She searched my face as if seeking out the differences between myself and her brother. Each feature was studied, memorised.
‘It will take some of the pressure off me, I don’t mind telling you,’ said Sean. ‘He is not so handsome, of course, and his manners are utterly beyond redemption, but no doubt the ladies of Carrickfergus will not be altogether disappointed when they eventually lay eyes on him.’
Deirdre gave her brother a withering look. ‘Are there ladies left in Carrickfergus? I am glad to hear it. You have surely been occupied elsewhere this last while, Sean. What ladies there are will not be allowed within a hundred yards of you, Alexander, if their fathers have any say in it. He ruins the family name nigh on every week.’
Sean laughed. ‘Did I not tell you she was a shrew, Alexander?’
‘You said nothing of the kind, and I would not have believed you in any case. Deirdre, I am glad to see you at last.’
‘And I you. You cannot know the blessing it is to us that our grandfather lived to see you.’
‘I would have liked to have longer.’
‘You must not grieve over what has passed and cannot be changed. The sight of you will have healed a wound he carried with him thirty years.’
We were all three silent a moment, before Sean spoke. ‘And yet we should not be sad, we three. He would not wish us sad. We are his legacy, and let it not be one of sadness; this is a joyful moment.’ He looked around him. ‘I suppose it would be too much to hope that Boyd keeps a drink in this room?’
‘I have never seen it if he does.’
‘All that Protestant discipline of his. It cannot be good for a man.’
‘You think your Catholic indiscipline keeps you in better health?’ Deirdre’s tone was severe, but her eyes were laughing.
‘I will go to my grave having known what it was to live.’
It was as if a cold breeze had travelled through the room.
‘Please do not speak of it, Sean. You must take greater care.’
His face became tender. ‘I take care where I must, little sister. You should not give so much credence to poets and their curses.’
‘And what of men and their muskets?’ she asked.
‘You know about that?’
‘The whole of the North knows about that, Sean. By the time the rumours of it reached Coleraine the tale was of twenty men with muskets, and that only some bewitchment, some pact with the fairy folk, kept you and your horse from death at the foot of the cliff.’
‘And do not tell me you believed any of this, you who laughed in the face of tales that sent me to my childhood bed in terror?’
‘Sean, I could sit here a month and still not have told Alexander of every escapade you have been in. There is no tale of you I could hear that I could discount at first hearing, other than that you had settled to a life of business and piety. But I took the precaution of speaking to our grandfather’s agent. He is the only man in Coleraine whose word I trust. He told me the truth of it. You must be careful. Murchadh …’
He glanced at me. ‘Not now, Deirdre. Let us talk of pleasanter things. It will not be long until the wake begins. Time enough for sombre thoughts.’
‘But the curse …’
‘Ach, the curse. Do not trouble your head about that. After the funeral, I am to take Alexander to O’Rahilly and …’
Her face paled at the mention of O’Rahilly’s name. ‘You cannot be thinking of that. You cannot place Alexander in that danger.’ She gripped my hand again. ‘You must not go. Please, you must not go.’
Before I could answer, the door to the room opened and Andrew Boyd walked in. He stopped short when he saw that I was not alone. Sean stepped back and Deirdre stood up. Boyd muttered something that sounded like, ‘I am sorry,’ and left as suddenly as he had come.
Sean looked to Deirdre. ‘Come on, your husband will be wondering where you are.’
‘I am his wife, not his lapdog.’
Her brother grinned. ‘I do not think Blackstone knew what he was about when he married himself an Irishwoman. But it is time for us to get ready, all the same. Alexander, Maeve has some plan for you for this evening. We will talk later.’
Deirdre kissed me on the cheek. ‘And you and I also will talk, and talk, for there is a lifetime of you that I must get to know.’ And then they were gone, and something of the light inside went with them.
It was not long afterwards that my grandmother entered the room. We had not spoken since the night of the strange, aborted baptism. There were no preliminaries.
‘Your grandfather will be buried tomorrow.’
‘I know that,’ I said.
‘No doubt. You should be there, by Sean’s side, at his funeral. It is your place, but it is not yet the time to make you known.’
‘I will do him honour here, in prayer, in scripture reading. I would like to have known him better, but I will pray to take example from what I have learned about him in life.’
Maeve’s mouth contorted slightly. ‘How Grainne must have suffered with such people,’ she said. ‘But you are in
my house tonight, and there are none of your ministers here. It is my desire, and he would have expected it also, that you watch over your grandfather’s body tonight.’
‘You wish me to sit in the chapel with his remains?’ I asked.
She looked at me as if I were lacking in something. ‘His remains rest in this house. I wish you to be at the wake.’
‘How can that be if I am not to be made known? Is the house not full of people?’
‘There is a place in the gallery that you can watch from. Andrew Boyd will show you where. You must take great care not to be seen.’ Her voice was low and soft, as my mother’s had been, but there was no warmth in it for me. I still gave little credence to her worries, but I assured her I would be cautious. Her business finished, she made to leave, but paused a moment when I spoke again.
‘Tell me, who is Roisin O’Neill?’
She appraised me, interested.
‘Roisin O’Neill is the only daughter of my cousin Murchadh. Through the duplicity of others, Murchadh fell out of favour with the Earl of Tyrone in his youth, and had made his peace with the Crown before the end of Tyrone’s rebellion. The earl never forgave him, and Murchadh was not with him when he and the others, my own son Phelim amongst them, left for Spain, to seek help for our plundered land. But there was a blessing in it, for the English trust Murchadh, and he has managed to hold to some of his lands where others have had them wrenched from them.’ My grandmother seemed pleased with this, what must have been a well-rehearsed justification of her cousin’s prosperity where so many others had been driven to poverty and dishonour.
‘And Roisin?’
She looked at me, surprised that I had more to ask. ‘Unlike Deirdre, she knows her duty, and her worth. She is a true Irish-woman. Roisin will be Sean’s wife. After a decent period of mourning for my husband has passed, they will be married, and Sean will at last begin to take his place amongst our people.’
I thought of the scene I had witnessed outside the house earlier that same day, and my heart sank for my cousin and the beautiful woman who would be his unloved and unhappy wife. I thought my grandmother was finished with me, and I prepared to take up my pen again. But she was not finished.
‘And you?’ she said.
‘Me?’
‘Yes. Are you yet married?’
‘No,’ I said flatly, ‘I am not married.’
The trace of a smile appeared for a moment on her lips.
‘Good,’ she said, turning to make her way back down the corridor. ‘That is good.’
FIVE
The Funeral Feast
Andrew came to fetch me just as I had consigned my letter to Sarah to the flame. I had struggled in the candlelight and failed to write on paper words I had never been able to say to her when she was standing before me. I did not have the words to tell her of the emptiness, the ache within me the lack of her caused. All I had, night after night, were ashes. He looked from the ashes to me as if he would say something, but thought better of it, not yet ready to breach that barrier.
The place he led me to was a broad stone pillar at the far side of the gallery. All along the rest of the gallery, torches burned in the sconces on the wall, but there was no sconce here.
‘All of these houses have such a place,’ he said, ‘where people may watch, listen, unseen. None of these people trust one another.’
‘In the mix of all the races?’
‘It is the Irish themselves I am talking about. They live to fight. There is not an insult or an intrigue they will let pass for an excuse to go to feud. They would spend all they had on hospitality for a man one night and slit his throat the next if they thought themselves slighted.’
‘I will take care to watch my tongue, then,’ I said, laughing.
He turned his startling green eyes on me, and his face was deadly serious. ‘Watch everything. Always. Do not let up your guard for a moment. With anyone.’
He left me, and I edged forward to peer through the wooden balustrade down onto the hall below. It had been transformed since last I had seen it. The comfortable settles and chairs had either been removed or pushed back against the walls. In their place was an array of long trestle tables, arranged with benches for the seating of over sixty people. The top table was backed by seven carved, high-backed oak dining chairs upholstered in red velvet. Three more tables ran down the room from this one, set out with good pewter whilst the ware on the top table was of fine silver. Candelabra blazed at each table, casting a burning sheen of light upon already unimaginable quantities of food. Baskets of oat bread and towers of fresh autumn fruits contended for space with platters of salmon, majestic-looking still, gutted and poached in their entirety. Tureens of shellfish simmered on each table, sending up aromas that brought to me memories of the best of student feasts. Dishes of nuts and dried fruits were set on the side tables. Pungent rounds of cheese, bowls of bonnyclabber and mounds of butter, already beginning to glisten in the heat of the extravagant candlelight, were set at intervals from one end of the tables to the other. Every manner of fowl and game bird was represented, roasted and stuffed, on the boards. And then, just as the guests were about to enter the hall from the top of the main stairway, huge salvers of hot roasted meats began to appear from the kitchens below.
The musicians had assembled themselves at the far side of the gallery and had begun tuning their instruments. A piper set up his drone, but it was as nothing to the monstrous dirge from the drones of the pipes of the Highlanders from my own country. Another player had a bag of flutes and whistles of varying sizes, playing a few notes on each one before trying the next. Two fiddlers scraped their bows across different tunes, before one set his instrument down to try his tabor. Below, in the hall, I noticed a huge harp had been set up in a corner, near the stair head. At a signal from the piper all noise stopped, and then he began, alone, in an assured, almost defiant, march. As he grew in confidence, and I realised my foot was tapping, almost of itself, against the floor, he was joined by a whistle and then the bodhran, beating out the pace.
Now the guests emerged from below and began to flow into the hall, where they waited, expectantly. At the top of the balcony stairs, on Sean’s arm, my grandmother finally appeared. For all her coldness, I could not help but admire the stately old woman my cousin led to her seat at the top table. She was clad in a gown of the deepest green velvet, her head still covered in the habitual linen headdress. At her neck was a heavy gold chain and cross, garnished with emeralds and pearls. She walked upright, without a stoop, and looked neither left nor right, betraying not the slightest trace of emotion or grief. She had all the bearing, not of a merchant’s wife but of a queen from the ancient tales, and the people assembled around the hall acknowledged her as such.
Andrew had appeared quietly beside me. ‘The old woman plays her part well, does she not?’
I murmured my agreement. Behind them came Deirdre on the arm of Murchadh O’Neill, Roisin’s father. In contrast to Maeve’s sparkling magnificence, Deirdre was dressed entirely in black, save for the simple white lace at her neck. In her hair and at her throat were beads of jet that shimmered in the light as her dark silk skirts moved through the hall. She also looked straight ahead of her as she went to take her place at the top table. Murchadh O’Neill, on the other hand, inclined his head,bestowed smiles, or uttered words of greeting to all who caught his eye. I wondered for a moment if he thought to take my grandfather’s place in this household, but only for a moment: he must have been almost twenty years younger than Maeve, and Deirdre’s hand was already given elsewhere. Next came Roisin herself, on the arm of one of her brothers. ‘That’s Cormac,’ said Andrew, as the oldest-looking of the three took up his seat to Deirdre’s left at the principal table. He was tall, like his father and brothers, but serious and watchful, like darkness to Sean’s light, with none of my cousin’s ready smiles or easy grace. His younger brothers disposed themselves happily among the upper reaches of the lower tables.
Amongst the lea
ding party, there was no sign of Deirdre’s husband. ‘Where is Edward Blackstone?’ I asked.
Andrew Boyd did not even bother to look at the top table, but instead scanned lower down the hall.
‘There,’ he said finally, indicating a place about midway down the table furthest from Deirdre herself.
My eyes followed the direction of his hand to the two young men dressed in sober black, their whole aspect proclaiming them Protestant.
‘Which one?’ I asked.
‘The older,’ replied Andrew, indicating a broad-built man with close-cropped brown hair and a wide, pockmarked face. ‘The younger is his brother, Henry.’
‘Why so far down the table?’
He looked at me, feigning incredulity, something approaching humour appearing for the first time in his eyes. ‘The woman in green is your grandmother.’
‘Surely, now that they are married, she would not slight Deirdre’s husband so publicly?’
Andrew merely raised his eyebrows. ‘Would she not?’
I looked again at Deirdre. She was deep in conversation with Cormac O’Neill. Murchadh’s oldest son had scarcely taken his eyes off her since they’d been seated. There was something in the intensity of his demeanour that held her. She gave never a glance to her husband, though he looked often at her.
My grandmother surveyed the scene before her, and her eyes glowed with satisfaction. She nodded to her steward, who filled her glass. And then she rose, and as one the conversation in the hall was hushed and the musicians fell silent.
‘Welcome, my friends. Be truly welcome. You do honour to this house in your coming, and honour to my husband who was its master and lies here one last night.’ At this many mourners crossed themselves, and there were murmured invocations of the saints. ‘Often, in more joyful times, you have known our hospitality; you have been welcomed in this place.’
A Game of Sorrows Page 7