A Game of Sorrows

by Shona MacLean

  ‘No, I did not. I was brought up on the Moray Coast, and teach now in the Marischal College in Aberdeen.’

  ‘A dangerous work for you. And do you win minds for the faith? How does our Church fare in those parts? There are great hopes of your bishop and your university doctors. And the Jesuits are busy out in the country.’

  I realised with a growing sense of apprehension that he did not understand. I glanced again at the knife: it was closer to me than it was to him – I could reach it first. ‘You have misunderstood,’ I said, edging my hand very slightly closer to the hilt. ‘I am an adherent of the Kirk of Scotland. I was never a Romanist in my life.’

  He sat back, visibly deflated. ‘But your mother …’

  ‘My mother gave up her faith when she came to Scotland. I have never been brought up to anything other than the Kirk.’

  He closed his eyes and, crossing himself, uttered a prayer in the Gaelic, my mother’s name passing his lips several times. The only phrase I could properly make out was the last one he said: ‘Dear God have mercy on her tortured soul.’

  There was an uneasy silence between us for a moment. ‘It is late,’ said the priest eventually, getting heavily to his feet, ‘and you will need your rest and your wits about you for the days to come. Come to me in the morning for your breakfast; take your companion with you – you may tell him as much about me as you wish.’ And then he was gone, and his light with him, and I lay in the dark many long hours until the first stirrings of the dawn.

  NINE

  A Thing Foretold

  Maeve wanted to retire to her room, she was tired now, oh so tired. But she could not, for she was Maeve O’Neill, and she had played that part well seventy years now. A little longer yet, just a little longer and she could rest. She did not know half the people in the house and cared for fewer of them. How many people did she care for? Not many. On this side of the grave, there was only one, only one who mattered, and within him he held everything.

  She watched her grandson as he danced, talked, made a friend at every turn. Half the girls were in love with him – a few who were no longer girls, also. But they would not have him. She recalled the hour, twenty years ago, when she had witnessed the birth of the girl who she had chosen to be Sean’s wife. Murchadh had fathered many fine sons, but it was a daughter Maeve had waited so eagerly upon, and when that daughter had drawn her first breath, it had been Maeve who soothed the laboured mother’s brow, whispered sweet comforts in her ear and handed her her child. And she had chosen well, for Roisin was everything that she should have been. A pale beauty, but healthy: she would be as good a breeder as her mother had been. And she was compliant, she knew her place, knew her duty, would serve it without murmur or complaint. What could she have had to complain of, with a man like Sean handed to her?

  Not like Deirdre. Maeve shivered. How the gods of her forefathers had punished her in her daughter and granddaughter. She had sullied the purity of her line with the taint of English blood, and they had made her pay, first in Grainne and now in Deirdre. Oh, but Richard FitzGarrett had been a fine man, and they had known passion. And in their grandson her debt would be paid, her line redeemed.

  The young people were enjoying themselves: they had paid her husband due honour, as was right, but now the night was theirs. She allowed herself a smile, gracious, if one of them should catch her eye. Murchadh’s sons were fine men, all of them, like their father, but stronger. He had been foolish in his youth, weak. His resolve had not been strong enough, but he had learned, and surely he had paid for it now? But it was only the weak that had survived that killing time, those days of exile. The heroes, like Phelim, were dead. Cormac would have been such a hero. That Deirdre had rejected him was beyond her comprehension. There was a madness in the girl that went beyond dishonour, ingratitude, spite: it was the taint.

  The taint. Grainne. Grainne had been the warning. An aberration she should have been, but she was not; she had continued into the next generation. And now God had gifted her Grainne’s heretic son, and he had come to play his part, pay his due to his race and his name. But he did not matter: only Sean mattered.

  A servant filled her glass again. She had had a lifetime with her glass full, but the wine often bitter. No more. A boy came from the lower floor, a note in his hand. Pray God not the poet; she could not withstand him a third time. The lad searched the room and found Sean soon enough. He took the note from the boy and read it in a moment. His countenance changed, the mask slipped. The mask that faced the world, day and night. But she knew that other face. She had seen it sometimes in the boy he had once been. Grainne had known it in his two-year-old face. Deirdre had seen it all her life. He had hidden it from Maeve, but that did not hurt. Not so much. She would accomplish in him what must be accomplished, and if her grandson’s love be the cost to her, then so be it.

  She watched as Sean left Roisin’s side, murmuring some politeness to her and seeking out Eachan. He had not long to look, for the man from Tyrone was never far from his master’s shadow. Again, in that, she had chosen well. Eachan was not well pleased at the content of the note, but Sean laughed, slapped him on the shoulder, sought to reassure him, and then downed his drink and descended the stairs, calling for his mantle. Not the poet, then, but a woman. Some town whore, no doubt. It would do no harm, it was natural, after all, and Roisin knew the way of the world of men. Even so, he should not go out in the night alone, not when the threat to him had been made so clear, and public. But she need not have concerned herself about that, for as she had known he would, Eachan had gone out after his master, a minute or two behind.

  She could sleep safe now. She was in truth very tired. Deirdre had already gone to her bed, long before she should have done, feigning grief for her grandfather. What did she know of love? Maeve’s bile rose to think of it. She should bid goodnight to Murchadh, but she had had enough for the day, and did not want the whole company called together to watch her retire. She would slip away unnoticed. She was an old woman and it was her right. But she took the longer way to her chamber, seeking out the serving boy. He trembled to see her coming, and it reminded her weary bones to straight – themselves.

  ‘The note for my grandson – who brought it?’

  ‘A girl. She covered her face.’

  ‘A whore?’

  The boy stammered. ‘No, Mistress, I do not think it. Just a girl. I could not see her right.’

  ‘Very well. Now see to my guests’ glasses. This is a house of hospitality, not a Protestant church.’

  The boy ran to do her bidding. It pleased her. She was Maeve O’Neill.

  It cannot have been two hours later that she was woken by a hammering, a kicking at the door, a howling that was not of human born. Half the house had not yet been abed, and yet the noise overpowered all their laughter, their singing and their music. It pierced the doors, the walls, and found its way through stairways and along corridors to meet every terror in her heart. By the time she had reached the balcony, the whole house was up. Deirdre, in her nightclothes, was running down to the hall. From below, Cormac had bounded up to meet her and sought to hold her back. She pulled against him but he smothered her head in his shoulders and would not let her look on the horror.

  But Maeve saw. As the household parted like the sea in front of Eachan, she saw. Sean’s servant, whence the howling came, had dropped to his knees at the entrance to the hall and lifted his hands in tormented appeal to a relentless God. Before him, on the floor already staining dark, was the body of her grandson.

  The world had stopped. There was no sound or movement save the animal cry of the man from Tyrone, echoing through the house, reaching to the other world. No one put a hand out to her, sought to stop her as slowly, she descended the stairs.

  Eachan had laid him like a child, carefully, on the ground, as if fearful of hurting his head. He had closed the eyes that had lighted every thing they had ever looked on. He might have been sleeping as a child sleeps, a day’s labours done and with no f
ears for the morrow. But his face was white, the white of death, and already the blood was drying at the cut in his throat. For a moment, she feared she might not find her voice. ‘Take him to my chamber,’ she said at last.

  There were six of them in the room: herself, Eachan, Cormac, Murchadh, Deirdre and the priest. Eachan had laid him on the bed – he had carried him up alone, allowing no other to touch him. Maeve had ordered more coals to be brought, as if the warmth of the fire could ever reach him now. The priest was at his offices, and the servant was prostrate at his dead master’s feet, but none of the others were on their knees. Murchadh was breathing heavy, his fingers clenching and unclenching over the hilt of his sword, and Cormac was as white as a winding-sheet, beads of perspiration on his brow. Deirdre was staring at her grandmother, all insolence, all defiance gone: nothing left but a sheer and complete hatred.

  ‘You have killed him,’ she said.

  Cormac laid a hand on her shoulder but she shrugged it off.

  Maeve kept her voice steady. ‘Not I.’

  ‘You would not leave it. You would never leave it, and now he is dead. You have murdered my brother.’

  Maeve spoke slowly, for the certainty had only now come to her. ‘Deirdre,’ she said, ‘you know who murdered your brother.’

  TEN

  Revelations

  ‘You should have woken me.’

  ‘I couldn’t; I tried: you were dead to the world.’

  ‘You should have tried harder.’ Andrew’s good humour after his sound sleep had disappeared entirely when I’d told him the cause of it. ‘You think I am here to take the country air? You are as bad as your cousin. As bad as them both. The O’Neills always know better. They can manage on their own. Who would lay a hand on an O’Neill?’

  ‘But I am not …’

  ‘And he was a crony of Phelim’s? Well, there can be little better to recommend him than that.’ He was striding resolutely towards the bakehouse and I struggled behind, still trying to get on my boots. ‘I was to return to Carrickfergus with your corpse on my back, was I?’ He raged on, then brought himself to a halt, spun round and looked very close in my face. ‘Have you any idea who this man is? What he is doing here? I should never have brought you here.’

  ‘Andrew, what do you know?’

  He looked at me a moment, still seething, his nostrils widened and his chest heaving as he tried to master himself. ‘Nothing,’ he said eventually. ‘I know nothing. But I will have answers.’

  We had by now attracted the attention of one of the young wives out seeing to her hens. I gave her a cheery wave and bade her good morning, propelling Andrew towards the bake-house as I did so. ‘This is hardly the place to discuss it. You can find your answers once we are inside.’

  ‘Oh, I will, never fear for that. I will.’ He strode through the door ahead of me, and it was only as he disappeared inside that I realised he had taken his dagger from its sheath.

  Father Stephen was going cheerily about his business, and clearly had been for some time. He showed no sign of fatigue after his night ventures, and greeted us heartily.

  ‘Well, Alexander Seaton! And Andrew Boyd, is it not? Well rested, I’ll wager.’

  ‘Too well,’ said Andrew, with little heartiness and no attempt to hide his anger.

  ‘Ah, now, you must forgive me, my young friend. For I thought I knew this fellow, or something of him, but of you, or why he was with you, I knew nothing. We live in dangerous times for the O’Neills and their friends. And those of my order must take special care who they make themselves known to.’

  ‘For the O’Neills who will keep the law, these are no more dangerous times than any other, and as to your order – you are out of Bonamargy, I take it?’

  The priest nodded, watching Andrew carefully, watching too the hand on his dagger.

  ‘Then you have the protection of Randal MacDonnell, although I doubt whether even the Earl of Antrim could explain what you were doing in a Scots bawn, disguised as a baker.’

  Mac Cuarta looked at him carefully but said nothing, only closing and bolting the door, before he brought us fresh bread and milk.

  Andrew inspected his bread carefully and sniffed at the milk. Father Stephen laughed. ‘Eat your breakfast, boy. There’s nothing in it the cow didn’t put there. I will trust you now, and you will trust me. You know too much about me already for it to be any other way.’

  He sat down beside us, and all the humour had gone from his face.

  ‘Have you brought any message from Sean?’

  Andrew bridled. ‘Do I look like a message boy?’

  The priest appraised him carefully. ‘Not much.’

  ‘Our commission is to Coleraine, and to Finn O’Rahilly, nothing more. Sean was to send a message to Bushmills, that someone might guide us to O’Rahilly, but he mentioned no name.’

  ‘It will be waiting for me at Bushmills, and then we will see what is to be done.’

  ‘There is nothing to be done but that you should take us to the poet.’

  ‘That remains to be seen,’ said the priest, looking at me. ‘But how is it to be done? Where do you fit into things?’

  ‘In a philosopher’s robes in the Marischal College of Aberdeen,’ I said, ‘for after this nonsense of the poet is done with, I have no place in any scheme here.’

  He shook his head. ‘The matter of the poet cannot be dismissed. That his words have been spoken, and so publicly, matters greatly. Our leaders have often rested their reputation on what the poets say of them, their name honoured or damned by generations according to the pronouncement of the bard. This common law of the English might be blown away soon enough in this country, like a weed on the wind, and what will be left, and how will a man like Murchadh legitimise himself and his claims then, if not by the word of genealogists and the poets? No, the curse cannot be dismissed. Perhaps it would be better that you had no place in the scheme. God grant that it might be so.’

  Andrew was in no humour to listen to a mass priest speculate on what God might grant. ‘If you have some intelligence of Sean’s “business”, or this curse, I would thank you to share it with us. We have little time to squander.’

  Father Stephen’s face hardened. ‘No more do I. I am fifty-seven years old. I have worn the robes of my order over forty years. I have seen our houses in Ireland dishonoured and destroyed, the succour we gave to the people taken from them. I have said mass in a morning and stained my sword on the blood of Ireland’s enemies in the afternoon. I have seen our great leaders degraded and die far from home, the glory and hope of our people gone. I have travelled and studied in Spain, France, Italy and the Low Countries and I am on my last mission. The man before me is the image of one whose last confession I heard in a filthy alley in Madrid. I do not take his presence here at this time lightly, and neither should you.’

  Andrew drained his beaker and stood up abruptly. ‘I don’t. Come, Alexander, we must lose no more time.’

  The priest took hold of my wrist as I got up, and held it in a firm grip. ‘Give me ten minutes. Your friend can play the servant he is supposed to be and see to the horses.’

  Andrew very pointedly handed me his knife, before going out once more into the courtyard and letting the bakehouse door bang shut behind him.

  Stephen Mac Cuarta’s face was deadly serious, his eyes searching mine. ‘Tell me again what the poet said. Tell me what he said of Roisin, and of Macha.’

  ‘He made no mention of Roisin, and of Murchadh he said …’

  ‘Not of Murchadh, of Macha.’ He gave emphasis to the last word.

  I shook my head. ‘I know no Macha; he spoke of no Macha.’

  ‘He spoke did he not, of the union with the Rose—’

  ‘The union with the Rose’ – Roisin. ‘Poisoned by a bastard child.’ I looked up. ‘Who is this Macha – is it Sean’s child?’

  He hesitated a long moment, then spoke. ‘No, she is not Sean’s child, she is his wife; I married them myself, when he was on his way to Cole
raine for Deirdre’s wedding. She is almost nine months gone with child and under my protection.’

  ‘He would have told me.’

  ‘There are things that …’

  He had placed a kind hand on my arm but I brushed it away. ‘He would have told me. He is my cousin: we talked of such things.’ A heavy emptiness was dragging itself down to my stomach. ‘He is like my brother.’

  ‘He could tell no one. You know of your grandmother’s plans for him. She looks to join these two branches of the O’Neills, and with them your grandfather’s money and lands to Murchadh’s, and to see her family a force to be reckoned with once more. If Sean has a bastard child, Roisin might not like it – although, in truth, most of the Irish of his rank will have – but it would make little difference to her and any child she might have by him in wedlock in English law. But if Sean is already married, and has a child of that marriage, that child, and not any from a bigamous marriage to Roisin, would inherit all he has.’

  ‘So why would O’Rahilly have talked of a bastard child?’

  ‘Because he does not know. He does not know Sean is married.’

  ‘But if, as you say, such things are common, can he have really hoped to put Murchadh off the marriage by talking of a bastard child? Under the law, Murchadh has nothing to lose by that.’

  ‘Under the English law, perhaps, but under our old ways, our old laws, the brehon laws, a bastard child has as much right to his father’s property as a son born in wedlock, and as much call on the loyalty of his father’s followers.’

  The significance of this was beyond me. ‘But Murchadh has woven himself into the fabric of the English occupation, he has danced to the English tune over twenty years now, has he not, in spite of what his sons might do? Why should the old Irish laws bother him now?’

  The priest got up and began to tidy up the breakfasting beakers and bowls. ‘Aye, you are right. Think no more on it. Now go you to Coleraine. When you are finished there, I will meet you at Bushmills, and take you to Finn O’Rahilly; I know his lair. But if you meet with any difficulties or dangers on the way, make straight for Bonamargy Friary. Whether I am there or not, you will be given sanctuary.’