‘I would give much to know that, and I suspect my father would also.’
‘Our father will know well enough the minute he sees him,’ said Padraig, the younger brother. ‘Another Franciscan.’
‘I am not.’
‘Of course not. None of you ever are. But I see the hand of Stephen Mac Cuarta in this.’ He had evidently heard enough. ‘Come on, we are wasting our time here. The clouds are gathering. We should get out of these woods.’
‘You are right,’ said Ciaran, turning also from me. ‘But first we must find O’Rahilly. Donal, bind him.’ And within seconds, before I fully knew what was happening, my arms had been pulled behind my back and my hands bound together with rope. A shove in the back sent me in the direction of the waiting horses, but the shock of it made me stumble, and I caught the side of my face on the centre stone as I fell to the ground. There was nothing I could do but struggle to my feet again and go where they bade me, and I was soon heaved up on to the back of Padraig’s mount.
After a short debate they urged their horses not southwards, back to where they had come from, but eastwards, to the part of the wood that I had come through myself a few hours earlier. We had not travelled far on the moonlit paths before the lead horse, under Ciaran, brought us to a halt. It whinnied and tried to turn back, refusing to continue. He dismounted, and proceeded cautiously on foot.
‘Damn him to every torment.’
‘By God, he did our job for us.’
‘Do you think? He will never tell his mysteries now.’
And then I saw it: a few yards ahead of us, arrayed in the magnificent robes of white and gold given to him by my grandmother, hanging by its neck from an ancient hawthorn tree, was the dead body of Finn O’Rahilly. The three men crossed themselves.
‘Will we cut him down?’
Ciaran shook his head. ‘Let the crows have him. He was a traitor to his race, and his words an outrage to ours. Let his rotting corpse serve as warning to others who might think to do the same.’
He turned to me. ‘Think not to pray over him, priest. Save your prayers for us and yourself when we bring you and not O’Rahilly to our father.’
‘I have told you, I am no priest.’
They merely laughed in scorn. ‘Well, you had better find some God to appeal to before you find yourself before Murchadh.’
‘At Carrickfergus?’
‘Carrickfergus?’ Ciaran smiled grimly. ‘No, my friend, he is not at Carrickfergus; we are taking you to Dun-a-Mallaght.’
Within an hour we were out of the woods and riding hard towards the coast once more, trying to outrun the storm which had broken over the hills and was pursuing us down towards the sea. As we approached I saw, encompassed by unbreachable headlands at either end, the broad sweep of a bay, where the sea came in increasingly powerful waves to the shore. I chanced to look back once, when I thought I could keep my balance, and saw a huge bolt of lightning strike right where I imagined Kilcrue to be. In my mind’s eye I saw it strike to the heart of the stone – the priest’s stone, O’Rahilly had called it – before the storm moved on to seek out the poet himself.
On the headland to my left, watching over the bay, rose a castle. Below, nearer to the shore, was a small town, huddled in darkness from the advancing storm. Further along the bay was another settlement, structured, more formal, but ruined in part. My heart lifted a little when I saw it, and the lights burning in some of its windows. It was a religious house, a church. ‘What is that place?’ I called in Padraig’s ear.
‘You know it well enough.’
‘Bonamargy?’ I said.
‘Aye, Bonamargy. Do not excite yourself unduly. This is as close as you’ll be getting to it.’ He pulled his horse to the left, as his brother had done, and spurred the beast on towards the western edge of the bay, and a strange mound that rose grim and threatening from the earth.
‘What is that?’ I shouted.
‘You are not superstitious, priest?’
‘I am not … superstitious.’
‘That is Dun-a-Mallaght. The Fort of the Curse.’
‘I give no credence to your curses.’
He slowed his horse.
‘On any other night of the year, neither do I. But it is said that on All Hallows Eve – tonight – the ghosts of the dead walk forth from Dun-a-Mallaght into the world. I would be here on any night other than tonight.’
We forded a narrow river and dismounted. Six yards from the entrance to the fort Ciaran let up a strange cry, a call, in Irish, that seemed to come from the depths of himself. The cry was returned from inside and bolts pulled back. Doors swung inwards and I found myself walking, just as lightning struck the ground three feet from where I stood, into the lair of Murchadh O’Neill, the Fort of the Curse.
EIGHTEEN
Dun-a-Mallaght
I had a sensation of walking into the depths of the earth. Orpheus entering the Underworld, but I knew not with what purpose. Certainly there was no Eurydice waiting here for me. The passageway was narrow – only room enough for one man to pass at a time. The heavy smell of damp earth suffused the air, but was gradually overpowered by the aroma coming from a peat fire some way ahead. The passageway was lighted every few yards by torches in the wall, and was smooth and dry underfoot. My arms were still tied behind my back and ached as I had never known my limbs to ache before, and it was with great anticipation of relief that I at last saw a pool of light ahead of Ciaran, and soon afterwards found myself stepping into an open space once more.
We had come into a large vaulted chamber, with arched wooden beams supporting the earthen roof. The floor was beaten earth, with rushes spread all around. At the centre was a peat fire, sending blue smoke up through a small hole in the roof, although the rest of the place was filled with smoke also. At the far end of the chamber was a dais, on which I could just make out the forms of a man and a woman sitting. Flickering torches gave intermittent illumination to shapes of men, occasionally women, sitting on the floor.
Ciaran strode towards the dais while the others remained on either side of me, Padraig confiding under his breath that one wrong move would see my throat cut and me at the gates of Hell before dawn.
‘Is my father not returned then?’
‘We expect him soon. There has been some cause of delay with the old woman at Carrickfergus.’
I lifted my eyes and peered through the gilded gloom; it was Cormac, the oldest of Murchadh’s sons, and beside him, like a queen under some enchantment, was Deirdre. She was dressed in a gown of red velvet, the bodice laced tight over a mantle of the purest white linen, sleeves hanging long at the wrists and edged with lace. At her neck hung a crucifix studded with jet, and at her waist a girdle embroidered with gold. On her head was a linen headdress, and beneath it fell locks of burnished copper. The sombre wife of the English burgher was gone: distilled to her essence, every inch the consort of the man beside her, she was magnificent.
Cormac’s gaze went beyond his brother’s shoulder to where I stood, my cowl still up as it had been against the storm. ‘What is this? Is it the poet or a priest you have brought us?’
‘Neither, he would have us believe.’ I was pushed forward and my hood pulled down. I could feel the shock that echoed round the chamber, the collective drawing-in of breath. Nobody moved for a moment and then, slowly, men started to reach for their weapons as their wives and daughters regarded me in terror. Cormac himself had flinched when he had seen me, and stood up slowly. ‘What trickery is this?’
‘No trickery, brother, but what the …’
He got no further, for Deirdre too had risen from her seat. Her face was suffused with love, and for a moment, forgetful of the reason, the wonder and delight of it caused me to smile back at her. She began to walk, and then to run, towards me, and I realised with a sickening certainty that she had mistaken me. Cormac put out an ineffectual arm to stop her, but she pushed it away. In a moment she was on me, her arms around my neck, tears of joy flowing down her cheeks. The words in Irish c
ame tumbling, one after the other in a torrent of love and thanks to saints I had never heard of.
‘Oh my darling, my brother, sent back to me this night. My brother, my darling one.’
I let her hold me, and weep, and gently I put my arms around her and held her, no one trying to stop me. Dun-a-Mallaght held its breath, for a moment, on All Hallows Eve, as a young Irishwoman welcomed her murdered brother back from the dead. Gradually, the heaving of her chest, her sobs, subsided and Cormac stepped forward to lift her hands from my neck; I let my arms fall to my sides, and he drew her tenderly from my embrace.
She looked from one to another of us, her heart willing her mind to believe something she knew was not true.
‘What … why … you would not …?’ She turned from Cormac to me. ‘Sean?’
Slowly, I shook my head, my lips parted to speak but no words came from them.
‘Not Sean, but the murdering Scot, Alexander Seaton.’
It was Murchadh O’Neill; and there beside him, at the entrance passageway and looking at me in mute terror, was Roisin, behind them a gathering of his men. He strode forward and took Deirdre firmly by the arm.
‘Take her out of here.’
Donal began to lead her towards a side passage away from the main chamber. ‘Come, Deirdre, it is not him. You know it is not him.’
She didn’t seem to hear him, and looked desperately over her shoulder as he pulled her away. ‘Sean,’ she called. ‘Sean!’ The sight of her tore the heart out of me and I closed my eyes until her cries became distant and dim.
Murchadh had taken Cormac’s place on the dais. ‘Chain him,’ he said, casting the briefest of glances at me. And then, ‘O’Rahilly? You found him?’
‘We found him all right, hanging from a tree. He has spoken his last curse.’
Murchadh damned the poet to the depths of Hell. He got up and began to stride around the dais, pausing only to fire out questions at his sons.
‘Where did you come upon him?’
‘Kilcrue.’
‘You searched his lair? You found nothing?’
Padraig jabbed a thumb in my direction. ‘Only this one.’
‘Aye, this one.’ Murchadh regarded me a long moment with a look in his eyes that might have been hatred, might have been fear. He stepped down from his platform and began to walk slowly over to where I had been chained to a post at the far end of the chamber, his eyes never leaving my face for a minute. ‘Alexander Seaton. The son of Grainne FitzGarrett, cowering in the dirt like a beast.’
I tried to stand up, but found myself pulled back down by my fetters. I lifted my head though, determined that I should look him in the eye.
‘I have no fear of you,’ I said.
‘Do you not now?’ He looked around the chamber, his arms outstretched in appeal to his followers. ‘The heretic schoolman has no fear of Murchadh O’Neill. He killed his own cousin in cold blood in a deserted Protestant church, so why should he fear me?’ He laughed into the uneasy silence and his followers, hesitant at first, did likewise.
He brought his face down close to mine, so close I could smell the heavy sweat of his night’s ride and the stale sourness of wine on his breath. ‘You should fear me, schoolman, because I can kill very slowly.’
There was a general murmur of agreement and approval from around the room. ‘Do it, Murchadh!’ called out one voice.
‘Give us some sport!’ shouted another, and soon my ears were filled with calls in Irish for many kinds of torturing and a slow death.
Murchadh stood up straight and wiped his hand on his thigh, as if near contact with me was a contamination in itself. ‘Calm yourselves, you shall have your sport. The whore’s offspring will cross the Irish Sea no more.’
‘My mother was no whore!’ I had tried to stand up, but was again thwarted by my chains.
Murchadh pushed me by the shoulder back to the ground. ‘Your mother had much the same taste as your cousin that’s through that door.’ Behind him I saw something in Cormac’s face, some small flicker in the stone. He turned again to his followers. ‘You will have your sport, in good time, but first there are some things I would have of our guest before he loses his tongue.’ More laughter from around the chamber, more assured this time.
The laughter was brought to a halt by a shout travelling down the entrance passageway from the watchmen at the door. It was echoed by the watchman to the chamber. ‘Strangers coming. Wait – holy men.’
Murchadh’s eyes went quickly from the door back to me. ‘Take him to the pit. Be quick.’ Padraig again took hold of me while Donal loosed my chains. I tried to struggle free from his grip but was rewarded by a tremendous strike into the side of my face by Murchadh’s gloved fist. The glove was not quite thick enough to cushion me from the sharp contours of the garnet-studded gold ring he wore on his right hand, and as I staggered to my feet once more I felt a soft trickle of blood begin to make its way down my cheek. Padraig pulled my arm up so tightly behind my back I felt my shoulder burn.
The pit was a small dug-out room set still further into the bowels of the earth. I had to stoop to enter it, almost gagging on the foul human odours that reached my nose and my throat. There was barely enough room in the place to accommodate both Padraig and myself. There was no furnishing or floor covering of any sort, and the only light came from a small grille near the roof, the length and width of the span of my hand, that looked on to the floor level of the main chamber.
‘Do not think of trying to get out. And do nothing to attract any attention to yourself; you may not like the attentions we have to offer.’ And to my great relief, he left.
As soon as he was gone, I crept to the grille. By craning my neck I could see the floor of the main chamber and feet and the hems of cloaks brushing over it. But I had evidently not been the first unfortunate to find myself here, for on bending down I could see that there was a foothold in the wall, and by pulling myself up to the grille from it I could see much further around the chamber. I could hear too, but the general hubbub was too great for me to be able to distinguish one voice and what it said from another. Then there was a standing to readiness, and all movement in the room stopped. Silence. I could hear my own heart beating, so loud in the silence that I almost feared it would draw someone’s attention to me, but I did not dare move from where I was. At last the voice of the watchman echoed through the chamber again, breaking the tension. ‘Father Stephen Mac Cuarta of the order of St Francis at Bonamargy seeks audience with Murchadh O’Neill.’
Murchadh was silent, but only for a moment. ‘Then let the father enter, and be welcome.’
I shifted position enough that I could see the end of the passageway and, a moment later, Stephen and Michael entered. Stephen gave a blessing in Gaelic to his ‘brothers’. There followed murmuring and nodding and general sounds of welcome, before Murchadh spoke again.
‘Be welcome, Father. May you bring God’s blessing to this place.’
‘Amen,’ said Michael.
‘Indeed,’ followed Stephen, ‘and on a night such as this it is in need of it. The powers of darkness are at their height in this land tonight.’
‘And have been rising some time,’ said Murchadh. ‘But let us not forget the hospitality due a guest, even on such a night.’ His welcome was too quick in coming, his smile too easy. ‘Roisin, have the women bring food and drink.’
Stephen watched the girl as she went to the fire at the centre of the chamber, where a hog was being slowly turned and roasted. ‘Your daughter has grown up a credit to her mother, God rest her.’
‘Amen to that. She will be a credit to Ireland also.’
‘I do not doubt it. But,’ said Stephen carefully, sitting down on the floor as Murchadh had indicated he should do, ‘she will mourn the loss of her betrothed.’
‘As do we all,’ responded Murchadh, just as carefully.
‘It will be a great blow to you also, who had such hopes for the union of your family with that of Maeve O’Neill.’
‘Sean was not Maeve’s only grandchild, nor Roisin my only child.’
‘But Deirdre is already married.’
‘There are divorcements, are there not? Besides, that is not the only possibility.’
‘Oh?’ said Stephen, as casually as if all that concerned him was the comfort of his robes, which he was taking some trouble over rearranging beneath him. ‘What other possibilities might there be?’
‘Who knows what God will provide? Or has provided?’
‘Indeed,’ said the priest, setting to now to the steaming platter Roisin had brought him. ‘Who knows?’
‘Father, should we not thank the Lord?’
Stephen smiled apologetically at Michael. ‘Indeed, my friend. You must forgive me: the habits of an old campaigner die hard.’ He said the grace and the pair gave their attention to the food and drink they had been brought, chewing slowly and drinking deep. The silence all around them began to weigh heavy on their host, until finally he called on the harper to earn his keep. As the soft music plucked from the strings gradually filled the air, there was the slightest relaxation in the tension around the chamber, but not in Murchadh O’Neill, nor, I noticed as I studied him more closely, in Stephen Mac Cuarta.
Eventually, when the friars had finished and Roisin had brought them a bowl of water in which to wash their hands, Murchadh told the harper to stop. The time had come.
‘We have not met in many years, Father.’
‘Indeed we have not. Nearly thirty years. Kinsale.’
There was an audible drawing in of breath at the mention of the word, a marked rising in tension. I scrambled through my memory a while until I had it: Kinsale, the last great hope of O’Neill’s rebellion against the English, when he and his men had marched the length of Ireland in winter to meet with their Spanish allies, sent by Philip III to help them hound the Virgin Queen from Ireland. But the allies had been relentlessly besieged, and in open battle on Christmas Eve the expedition had ended in ignominy and disaster. As for Murchadh, he had been the last to join in the southern march and the first to abandon his kinsmen and their Spanish brethren to their fates. No one mentioned Kinsale in front of Murchadh O’Neill.
A Game of Sorrows Page 21