A Game of Sorrows

by Shona MacLean

  I was about to leave but Andrew’s voice, repeating itself in my head, stopped me. ‘Tell me,’ I said, ‘since we are to trust one another. What are you doing here, in this bawn, and under this guise?’

  ‘My master’s bidding,’ he replied, in a manner that invited no further conversation. He blessed me, and trying not to flinch I emerged into the welcoming sunlight of the waking morning, where Andrew was waiting with my horse.

  He brooded quietly a good two hours or more until some time before mid-morning we stopped by a stream at the edge of a birch wood that had struggled up the hillside as high as it could before it surrendered the ground to heather, moss and stone. Andrew filled his flask and then let the beasts drink. I leant against a lump of granite, higher than myself, that jutted from the earth like something left over from the Creation. Towards the east, at the edges of the great plateau beneath us, I thought I could discern the sea.

  ‘Well?’ he said at last.

  ‘Well what?’

  ‘Your priest. What did he want of you that I was not to know?’

  I felt a trickle of amusement to see him so riled, but I judged best not to take it further. ‘What do you know of Macha?’ I said.

  ‘Macha?’

  ‘Yes. What do you know of her?’

  He frowned, wrinkling his nose in a beginning of disgust. ‘There is a legend of a woman, many centuries ago … Has the priest been telling you stories?’

  ‘Not that kind of story. Did you know Sean has a wife?’

  ‘I’d sooner believe the Pope has a wife.’

  ‘The priest says he has a wife whose name is Macha. He married her two months ago, and she is at this moment under the protection of the priests at Bonamargy Friary. He says she will very soon give birth to my cousin’s child.’

  All humour went from his face. ‘My God – if Murchadh should find out … But Sean cannot hide them for ever.’

  ‘I do not think he intends to hide them for ever.’

  ‘Then may God help them when he brings them before the world. Come on, let us get on.’ But it was not long before he resumed our conversation. ‘What did he have to say of Deirdre?’

  ‘Deirdre? I … he said nothing of Deirdre.’

  ‘He must have said something.’ There was an edge to his voice, an effort at self-control he could not mask.

  I scrambled through my mind. ‘He told me he promised Phelim he would keep an eye on both his children. I should have thought to ask him more, for there is something far wrong in Deirdre’s marriage. I would hardly have thought a few weeks of marriage enough time for the breeding of such resentments.’

  ‘Resentments here can be roused in seconds and last for centuries.’

  ‘I am coming to see that; and with the sons of Murchadh stoking the fires of those resentments, they will burn a long time after the passion between Deirdre and Edward Blackstone has cooled.’

  I saw him swallow, look straight ahead of him as he spoke. ‘There never was any passion between them.’

  I looked at him. ‘Andrew,’ I began.

  ‘Do not ask me, Alexander. Do not ask.’ He dug his heels into his horse’s flanks and rode hard for the northwest. I thought again of the night of the wake, of the trouble between Deirdre and her husband. And I wondered how many, when Edward Blackstone’s brother had shouted that Deirdre’s lover was flaunted in her husband’s face, had thought as I at first had thought, that he meant Cormac O’Neill. I wondered also how much of the truth Cormac O’Neill knew, and what it would mean for Andrew should he ever find out.

  ELEVEN

  Coleraine

  By the time I caught Andrew he had reached a forest, where woodcutters felled and sawed relentlessly. I tried to talk to him, but he made it clear he would not hear what I had to say, as if our conversation of earlier had not taken place at all. ‘The planters are stripping these woods to the bone to build their towns at Derry and Coleraine, and making a nice profit on the side with illegal exports.’

  I looked around me. ‘There is enough wood in these forests to build ten towns.’

  ‘But not to satisfy the greed of those who live in them. They can hardly find the time to build their houses, so busy are they sending this wood to France and Spain for making barrels and building ships.’

  ‘But the king is at war with…’

  ‘I know that and they know that. But the king is in London – he’d be as well on the moon, for all the heed his Irish Society’s agents here pay to the good of their nation.’

  We came to the river Bann at last, and kept close to its banks from then on. The light was beginning to fade and the day had grown much colder, a wind from the north bringing with it the smell of the sea. A mile or so after we had left the salmon leap behind us, I began to discern a large mass, like a stunted hill leaching out from the riverside up ahead in the gloom.

  Andrew stayed his mount for a moment, and held out his hand towards the mass. ‘There it is: the city of dreams; the Promised Land.’

  As we approached closer to the gates of Coleraine, any optimism I had felt seeped out of me. I had expected stone walls, towers, magnificent gatehouses: a shining citadel of this new-made civilisation. What was before me, across the broad, water-filled ditch that served as a moat for the enclosure, was a fortification of earthworks, perhaps fifteen feet high, jutting out at angles into the ditch and towards the surrounding countryside, for the walls and flankers of the London Companies’ new town at Coleraine were, like an ancient compound of savages, made entirely of earth. To our right they reached massively northeastwards. To our left they came to an abrupt end at the Bann, with only a flimsy wooden palisade stretching down into the fast-flowing waters.

  Andrew had come to a halt across the moat from a timber gatehouse. He shouted our names and our business, and I heard myself for the first time announced as Sean FitzGarrett. I did not need to ask Andrew why in this place, this great enterprise of the new English occupiers of Old Irish land, he had omitted the ‘O’Neill’ from my cousin’s name. Now the time had come to play my part, and for every moment until we left this place I must think myself Sean FitzGarrett, Catholic gentleman, grandson of a wealthy Anglo-Irish merchant and of his noble native Irish wife. The bearing of a Calvinist scholar, the son of a poor Scottish craftsman, must be left at the gates. The watchman let down the timber drawbridge and we crossed, the sound of the horses’ hoofs jarring hard and clear on the wood after their two days travelling overland.

  Andrew asked the gatekeeper for directions to Matthew Blackstone’s house. The man laughed and said we knew little enough about the town if we could not find it for ourselves. ‘There are two decent houses in Coleraine: there is Sir Thomas Philips’ house, within the walls of the old abbey, down towards the river; Matthew Blackstone’s is the other.’

  ‘And in which street is that to be found?’ Andrew had no patience for the gatekeeper’s humour.

  The man smiled, a row of rotten and missing teeth coming into view behind his grey lips. ‘The only street with a decent house on it.’ He turned to his companion, and both roared with laughter as they went to pull up the drawbridge behind us.

  It was almost dark, and Andrew had asked the watchmen for a torch, but they had laughed again and replied scornfully that they’d as well set fire to the town themselves as give a lighted torch to a stranger with an Irishman in tow, however grand he might carry himself. When we were far enough out of earshot of the gatekeepers, I asked Andrew what he was smirking about, for that was the only way to describe the look on his face when the watchman had thrown his last insult.

  ‘Do I smirk? Indeed I might.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because he took you for an Irishman without question. You are as much Sean FitzGarrett to look at as I am Andrew Boyd. You sit your horse with the same look of entitlement on your face, the same arrogance in your bearing. Pride. A good pride, I think. But how our kirk ministers in Aberdeen have tolerated it in you, I do not know.’

  It was my turn to
smile now. ‘Often they have not,’ I said. The street leading into the town from the southern gate was straight and broad, and utterly deserted down one side. On the other, a mixed row of squat, shoddily built houses, mainly timber-framed and plastered, with thatched roofs, faced out onto the emptiness of the untenanted plots across from them. At the end of the row of about a dozen such houses, the street was bisected by another, just as broad and straight, but this one utterly devoid of habitation. There were some rigs of land on either side, some showing signs of cultivation, of pig- and hen-keeping, others dead and sterile. In time, the street came to its end in a broad open square that must have served as the marketplace. There were no signs of any activity whatsoever. Of the houses on the square, none could remotely have been imagined to belong to the family of Deirdre’s husband.

  A smell of smoke wafted up to us from brick kilns near the river, and as we drew closer mingled with that of fresh-sawn wood and baking clay. A group of thatched cottages had been fenced off within a large wooden enclosure, the builders’ yard forming its own village within the town. An exhausted-looking man, his face red with brick dust, came to the gate when Andrew hammered on it. A look of momentary curiosity crossed his face at the sight of us, but passed when Andrew spoke. Oh, yes, he knew Matthew Blackstone. It was clear from his tone that the overseer of the brickworks had no great opinion of the master mason, but he was civil enough in pointing us in the direction of Blackstone’s house.

  As we went back through the market square, a small herd of black Irish cattle was being driven to a pen in the northwest corner of the marketplace, a herd of sheep bleating and calling to each other close behind them.

  ‘It is not safe for them to leave the beasts out in the fields at night,’ Andrew told me, ‘nor anyone to guard them, so they bring them in here.’

  I looked around me wondering what kind of place was this I had come to, what desolate half-built, half-empty world where too-familiar dangers lay a few yards across crumbling earthen ramparts.

  The Blackstones’ house, we had been told, lay off the other side of the marketplace, towards St Patrick’s church. In common with some of the better houses in the market square, many on this street had pent walkways, like little wooden cloisters, along their front.

  ‘Piazze, they call them,’ said Andrew, his face showing his distaste at what he saw as a Romish affectation.

  ‘I suppose it must be pleasant enough, in the summer evenings, to walk there, or for the women to sit out with their work.’

  ‘And look out on the dust and the mud and the empty streets and wish they were somewhere else?’

  ‘Well, we will find out soon enough I think.’

  He followed my line of vision to what was, by far, the grandest house we had yet seen in Coleraine.

  ‘This is it, sure enough. Are you ready?’

  I took a deep breath and lied. ‘Yes, I am ready.’

  He lifted the brass knocker on the door and banged loudly, three times.

  Footsteps came hurrying along a corridor and as they did so, Andrew took two paces backwards and stood deferentially behind me, an amused smile on his lips. A girl’s voice called out, tremulously, ‘Who is there?’

  I looked to Andrew and he kept his mouth resolutely shut. ‘Sean O’Neill FitzGarrett, brother of Deirdre FitzGarrett, wife to the son of this house. Also my…’ I stopped short at ‘servant’, ‘… my steward, Andrew Boyd.’

  One door slowly opened, followed by the other. In the meagre light of the candle she held in her hand I could see warm hazel eyes in the face of a young woman of about twenty.

  Her dress was of a coarser brown stuff, the apron less assiduously bleached and pressed, but for a moment my heart misgave me and I thought I saw Sarah standing there. All words stopped themselves in my mouth as my heart pounded.

  ‘Sir?’ she said, and the spell was broken.

  I recovered myself quickly enough. ‘Is your master at home? There is business I would discuss with him.’

  ‘He is not yet returned from his day’s business. He is expected back in the next hour.’ She stepped forward a little and made to close the door. I turned helplessly to Andrew, who pushed past me to stand right in front of her.

  ‘Fetch your mistress, girl. We have not travelled all the way from Carrickfergus to stand like hawkers in the street.’

  Little more than five minutes later we were seated on an uncomfortable carved oak bench in front of a not very welcoming fire, and the still less welcoming lady of the house with her two daughters. ‘You will understand, sir,’ the matron was saying, ‘that with my husband and sons away from home, we must take the greatest of care in allowing strangers across our threshold. This country is not … that is, not all of your countrymen are … that is to say …’ The woman was becoming ever more flustered, her round cheeks growing redder, her fingers twisting a linen handkerchief in her lap. I found myself, unaccountably, enjoying her discomfort, as if Sean’s very spirit had inhabited my being and was sitting in the room, laughing.

  ‘As the brother of your son’s wife, I am hardly a stranger, Mistress. It is scarcely two months since I sought to dance with your two lovely daughters here at my sister’s wedding.’ I inclined my head towards the two rather plain, pale-eyed girls sitting across from their mother; one looked at the floor, the other directly at me with something like contempt in her eye.

  ‘Of course, of course. But your servant …’

  ‘He is my steward,’ I said.

  ‘And a more fitting companion, I might say, than he who accompanied you the last time you travelled here.’ I pictured Eachan in the company of this humourless dame and her daughters and stifled a smile. ‘Nevertheless, there are proclamations out against Scots hawkers. Your “steward”,’ and here she favoured Andrew with a look of some distaste, which was not, I noted, echoed by her daughters, ‘might well have been one such lawless vagabond.’

  I resisted the urge to laugh. Although he did not open his mouth, I could see Andrew’s entire body bridle with rage; to be compared to a shiftless vagabond was an affront almost beyond endurance to him. Had the insult issued from a man, the offender would now be flat on his back, nursing a broken jaw.

  Although uninvited to do so, I removed my cloak. The heat from the fire was now reaching to every corner of the parlour that evidently served also for dining. Across the narrow entrance hall was the kitchen, whence aromas of roasting meat and boiling vegetables snaked their way to my nostrils. I was ravenous: it had been a hard enough day’s riding, but we had not been offered as much as a beaker of water since we had entered Deirdre’s husband’s home. It was evident that the mistress had no intention that we should be encouraged to linger. Her daughters, by the glances they cast in Andrew’s direction from time to time, were of a different opinion. Inhabited by Sean’s mischief, I gave them my most becoming smile. They avoided my eye entirely.

  A fine clock ticked on the mantelshelf. The matron looked periodically and with increasing agitation at this clock. ‘My husband should be home soon. Mary, should not your father be home soon?’

  ‘Very soon, Mother,’ said the older and paler of the two girls. ‘Do not agitate yourself. The Merchant Taylors’ proportion is vast, and it may be that he has had to wait on the other side for the ferry.’

  Her sister, of the more direct look, now opened her mouth for the first time since our arrival. ‘You told the girl you had business to discuss with my father. What nature of business is that?’

  ‘It is …’ I stopped, looking to Andrew.

  ‘It is business between men,’ he said.

  She appeared to be little chastened by the rebuke, for a retort was ready at her lips. ‘My sister-in-law does not scruple to talk of the business of men.’ Turning from Andrew to me, her every word dripping contempt, she added, ‘I thought it was the way of you Irish.’

  I let Sean choose my words. ‘Women whose place it is to know of business know of business; the others keep to the hearth.’

  As t
he clock ticked resolutely over the crackling of the fire, it came as a relief to all in the now overheated parlour to hear the front door thrown open, and a hearty voice announce his homecoming. I stood up, as did Andrew, and Matthew Blackstone’s wife went quickly out to the hall. I heard urgent female whispers and then a loud laugh as hands clapped together. In a moment the master of the house strode into the room. Edward Blackstone’s father was as tall as his sons, but broader in shoulder and neck. He was sandy-haired and ruddy of face. Nodding to Andrew, he came directly over to me.

  ‘I offer you my hand and my prayers on the death of your grandfather, FitzGarrett. He was a fine man, and knew his business. A great loss to you all, but a long life well lived is not to be mourned. And how fares your sister? And my sons? She was much affected by her grandfather’s death, I think.’

  ‘They all arrived safe. My sister has been a great comfort to my grandmother.’

  ‘Aye? Good girl. Though the old woman has never struck me as much affected by sentiment.’

  ‘Matthew!’ interjected his wife.

  ‘I give that as a compliment, woman. Your sex is too much prone to weeping and wailing at the merest thing. Although I think I am right in saying that the women of the Irish do their mourning loud?’

  I remembered the hellish noises I had heard in Carrick-fergus on the night of my grandfather’s death, and again on the night before his funeral. ‘Yes, they honour the dead in venting their grief.’ I almost thought I saw Andrew smirk again as I said this.

  ‘Well, well, so your grandfather is buried, and you come away so soon on business?’

  Andrew had coached me on the road, and I knew what to say. ‘With no disrespect to yourself, we know there are merchants in Coleraine who would not scruple to wrest my grandfather’s trade from his dead hands, and with the pirates constantly operating along the north coast it seemed as well to re-establish my family’s name and control as soon as was possible.’