A Game of Sorrows
Page 26
There was a pause, and I was in a terror that the altar cloth would be lifted the next moment, for the feet of the incur-sors were very near me. Then Ciaran spoke again; his very voice was smiling, and something in it sickened me. ‘That one; we will take that one.’
There was a flurry of movement, the scuffing of feet on the floor, the sound of flight, pursuit, capture, and ultimately, of Michael crying, ‘No, please no.’ But they took him anyway, as he and his brothers had known they would. ‘Take me instead,’ shouted one I had heard called Brian, but they didn’t even answer him.
‘He is just a boy,’ said Stephen, ‘just a young boy.’ And I knew there was no dissembling or pretence in the sorrow in his voice.
Two sets of booted feet had dragged Michael back up the aisle and out of a south door in the church. But Murchadh and others, Cormac with them, remained. ‘So,’ he continued, ‘five of you here and one out there – no one missing then, save for that withered old bitch Julia Mac Quillan up the stairs there. I see her temper is no better now than it was fifty years ago. A poisonous child who grew up into a poisonous old woman, which her robes and her rosary can do little to mask.’
‘She was not greatly pleased to see you then?’ There was amusement in Stephen’s voice, in spite of the circumstances.
‘You would have thought we were there to rape her. God forbid. I would rather spend a night in St Patrick’s Purgatory than enter that chamber of hers.’
Relief coursed through me, and thanks for the redoubtable old nun: they had not got past her to Deirdre. But what of Andrew?
Others had the same question in mind. ‘Where is Boyd, the Scot who travelled with Seaton? You, apothecary, you were treating him. Where is he?’
‘He is not here.’
The sound of a hard slap. And Brian again coming angrily to his feet.
‘Sit down, priest. You will have your turn, when I have finished with your brother here. Now, apothecary, I ask you again: where is Andrew Boyd?’
‘You will find him there, in the earth, near MacDonnell’s chapel. My poor skills were too little, and came too late to keep him longer from his Creator. He passed from this world yesterday, a little before dusk.’
‘There is a fresh-dug grave out there,’ said one of the men.
‘You are not lying to me, old man, in this your house of God, before His altar?’ and a fist smashed down on the place above my head.
The apothecary’s voice was low but clear. ‘I am not lying to you.’
And then Cormac breathed a great sigh, as if some burden had been taken from him, and I realised that all he had wanted to know was that Andrew was dead.
‘Well, enough of such trifles,’ said Murchadh. ‘Would you not spare your boy, Mac Cuarta, for he has a pretty face, and I know how in these cold dark cloisters you churchmen value a pretty face.’
‘You disgust me.’
‘And you me, for it is but two nights ago that we pledged in the unity of our cause to support my son, and now you have taken from my care the two living grandchildren of Maeve O’Neill.’
‘I have taken nothing from your care, and I am as true to the cause I was sent on as the day I left Louvain. I rejoice, though, that the grandchildren of Maeve O’Neill are “in your care” no longer, for I doubt that they would be living much longer if they were.’
‘They have no cause to fear me.’
‘You beat and bound one of them, and took the other from the keeping of her family.’
Cormac spoke. ‘It was necessary. It was not safe for Deirdre to remain where she was.’
‘And her cousin? The Scot?’
‘He might have met the same fate as Sean.’
‘And it was necessary to bind and beat him to prevent it?’
‘He had been in commune with Finn O’Rahilly.’
‘You know as well as I do that Alexander Seaton never set foot on this island before that curse was laid.’
‘Aye,’ said Cormac, ‘and very convenient that was, too.’
Stephen had started to make some response, but his words fell away as a horrible, animal, cry came through the oak doors, the stones, the cracks in the stones of the church, searching in desperation for some relief from its pain.
‘Oh, God, dear God …’
‘Michael!’ cried Brian. I heard a scuffle as he was forced back down into his stall.
The cry came again, scarcely human. I was not worth this; whatever Stephen thought, or might want me for, I was not worth this. I turned from my side and began to push myself from the floor. Deirdre was safe, for even if they found her, Cormac would let no one lay a finger on her, and it was me they wanted. My hand was on the overhanging altar cloth, ready to pull it away, when Stephen shouted, ‘Stop! I will tell you.’
‘Say that again,’ said Murchadh.
There was a sound of some sort of whimpering now, very close to the south door.
‘I will tell you,’ repeated Stephen, utterly defeated. ‘They took ship two hours ago, the pair of them, for Rathlin. Seaton had left money with Boyd and came here to get it. It was still among the fellow’s belongings. He prayed at his companion’s grave a few minutes, and then hired some fishermen to row himself and Deirdre out to Rathlin. They were to wait there for a boat to Scotland, a small merchant vessel returning from Coleraine. I pleaded with him to leave the girl here, with us, but he would not listen, and she wandered so much in her mind she thought she was with her brother. I wish to God I had never set eyes on him.’
‘You may wish such a thing indeed,’ said Murchadh. He called to his torturers to bring Michael in. The door was opened and there was the sound of a heavy weight being dragged across the floor. They left it lying before the altar, inches from my face. I looked upon the thing, and suppressed a retch; I shut my eyes and turned my head away for fear I would vomit. Michael had told them he had seen nothing; they had taken out his eyes.
They did not hold back the friars this time as they left their stalls and went to their stricken brother. They had had what they wanted from here and would move on. I heard Murchadh’s men tramp out of the desecrated church, but he could not resist one last cruelty before he left. ‘Learn to tell the truth, boy, or next time it will be your tongue.’
Stephen went after them while Brian and another friar cradled Michael gently and the old apothecary bent over him, murmuring to himself about what he would need, what he was to do. Cormac had been the last to leave. I heard his voice as he hesitated at the door.
‘Stephen, believe me, that should not have happened.’
‘You will have to rein in your father, boy, or the shambles of ’15 will be as nothing to the disaster he will preside over.’
‘I will do it; have no fear, I will win over him. But first I must find Deirdre.’
‘Cormac, leave Deirdre. If it is meant to be, it will be. Leave her for now: you have greater things to attend to.’
‘I cannot. I am sorry about the boy, Stephen. I will send messengers to you soon.’
The door swung shut, and they were gone.
I waited until the brothers had lifted their young companion and carried him out of the church to the chapterhouse, where the apothecary would seek to do what he could for him. I was too ashamed to look at them, to present myself as the cause for which that vibrant, good young man had been so mutilated. When I was sure they had gone, I dragged myself out from beneath the altar, but could not bring myself to stand up. I sat there, wretched, on the floor, and watched, uncaring, as the rays of light sent their colours to play about my feet. A wooden crucifix, the body of Christ carved out upon it in ivory, had been knocked from the altar during some of what had just passed. I took it in my hand and examined it. Our saviour, in his agonies, brutalised and tormented by those so unfit to look upon him. Some of Michael’s blood was smeared on it. The cruelty of man to his fellow man. I pressed the cold ivory to my forehead and prayed, hopelessly, like a child: O Lord, let this not be; dear God, I will do anything, just let this not be.
He breathed deep. ‘They have struck out for Rathlin, and will be back before dusk when they discover I have lied to them.’
‘And what will they do here then?’
‘Nothing if they have yet any of the sense they were born with. This friary is under the protection of Randall MacDon-nell, Earl of Antrim. Murchadh has gone too far already, in the sacrilege he has perpetrated here today; anything further would be more than MacDonnell could tolerate, and Cormac would lose the one great support he must have if his rising is to succeed. It is not necessary that MacDonnell openly joins with his cause, just that he does not openly condemn it.’
‘And when is this rebellion to be?’
‘It was not to have been been until the spring, when the worst of the winter storms would have passed and help could have been sent from abroad. The death of Sean has changed things.’ He said this last to himself as much as to me. ‘But sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof. We have more pressing concerns today than the Irish rising. I must get you and Deirdre away from here before Murchadh and Cormac return.’
‘And Andrew Boyd also.’
He smiled. ‘I had forgotten. I have never in my life before known Gerard to lie: when he told Murchadh that Andrew was buried yonder in the churchyard, I think I believed him myself.’
TWENTY-TWO
Ardclinnis
It was not long before we were on the move again. The fishermen at the shore would have nothing to do with us, for they had seen Murchadh’s party leave for Rathlin, and had a good idea as to who they were after, and so we had to take the small boat belonging to the friary itself.
I was greatly relieved to see Andrew.
‘The old nun had hidden me under her bed. She was a thing to behold when the raiding party came to the door of her chamber. I have rarely seen such vitriol. She has no liking for Murchadh.’
‘Then she judges well, for the man is a vessel of evil.’ I told him what had happened to Michael.
‘Dear God,’ he said slowly, ‘this curse spreads, it contaminates everything.’
I did not question his superstition, I did not argue with him, for I knew it; I felt the contamination in every part of me, in everything I touched. No matter how far or how fast we ran from it, it came with us.
The friar, Brian, had helped me carry Deirdre in a litter from Julia’s cell down to the shore. He did not look at me, addressed not a word to me, and I knew the anger in his mind – for this, Michael was blinded. Deirdre was sleeping still, but not at peace. What her reaction to Andrew had signalled, I did not know. She must know of Cormac’s feelings for her, of Murchadh’s plans for her, and in their schemes there was but one place for Andrew Boyd, and that was the place they thought they had left him – under six feet of earth in an unmarked grave at Bonamargy. He had been insistent that he would take his turn in carrying the litter, but Stephen had been equally insistent that he should not. ‘You have more need of it yourself.’
The old nun had told Andrew, in a manner that brooked no argument, to forget such foolishness, but she had warned Stephen too that he had only the strength of a man. ‘A mortal man, and even you are mortal, Stephen Mac Cuarta. Your time is coming, but there are tasks required of you first.’
Stephen did not laugh off her words and her tone as I had expected him to, but looked at her suddenly, as if caught in a lie that even he had begun to believe. ‘That is the way of it, is it, Julia?’
‘For all men, eventually.’ She blessed him, and dismissed him with a kiss on either cheek. It was a parting of people who knew they would not meet again.
I looked at my companion at the other end of the litter.
‘They say she has the sight,’ he said. It was the only conversation that passed between us, and it discomfited me.
As I positioned myself at the oars, Stephen tried to assist me, but I began to think it was as if those who had taken Michael’s eyes had taken his strength, for a light had gone out of him, and his body was hunched. Yet his will was great, and the force of it overpowered the complaints of his limbs and drove him on. He raised a sail, the wind caught it from the west and began to blow us along the coast.
‘Where are we going?’
‘Ardclinnis.’
I had never heard the name. ‘Is it another gathering place for those in your rising?’
‘It is a refuge.’ We were a good few miles down the coast before it came to me who would be waiting for us at this new refuge; it was the one I had forgotten in all that had happened: Macha. If Murchadh had even begun to work out Finn O’Rahilly’s allusion to ‘the bastard child’, there would be no safety for Sean’s wife even within the walls of Bonamargy.
As we rowed, I cast many anxious glances behind me at the slowly receding Rathlin Island, looking for the boat carrying Cormac and Murchadh in their duped rage, a boat that I knew must surely come. We rounded Tor Head, and I remembered this was where Sean had been riding, alone, when the shot had been fired that nearly sent him over the cliffs. I remembered too the odd way he had said it: ‘I was riding home … I had been visiting – friends.’ This had been his call to me, this how he had brought me in, when his tale of the curse had left me unaffected, this reality of an assault, a threat made manifest on my mother’s family. And I knew now who those friends were – Murchadh and his crew – and what business Sean had been on. And if there had been such a shot, there can have been little doubt that it was one amongst Murchadh’s followers who had fired it.
The wind dwindled and we had been going two hours or more before Andrew desisted from his attempts to take the oars from the old priest.
‘What, do you think me so shameless that I would sit back while a man half-eaten by dogs ferries me to my home? See to your woman.’
We passed the burnt-out MacDonnell castle at Red Bay, and could see ahead of us the promontory of Garron Point; it seemed impossible that Stephen could pull another stroke, when at last he said, ‘Praise be to God; take her to the shore – we are at Ardclinnis.’
As we brought the boat up to the small expanse of shingle shore, I could at first see little to distinguish this place from so many other inlets we had passed on our voyage – bog and moss and heather and clumps of trees banding together up the hillside. Massive stones, tumbled on the slopes as if dropped by a forgetful God. But then, from beyond a swathe of birch and willow, at the side of the burn a hundred yards or so from where it ran into the sea I saw a welcome breath of grey smoke curl into the sky. I looked more closely and saw that dotted around the trees were not only rocks and boulders, but head-stones, and behind them a squat and ancient church.
Stephen inhaled deeply as he stepped onto the shore, gratefully stretching his arms and his chest. ‘Smell that air, Alexander. Did you ever smell anything so clean and pure in all of God’s creation?’
And indeed, beyond the constant smell of brine that had attended us from Bonamargy, made more rank at the shore by the seaweeds abandoned by the tide, the rich verdant earth of Ardclinnis was something that spoke to me of the first days, before God’s earth had been sullied by man.
Stephen said, ‘I will go ahead and warn Macha of our arrival; you see to our invalids.’
Deirdre was fully awake now and Andrew was readying himself to carry her to the shore.
‘Let me,’ I said quietly, and he did not argue.
I lifted her from the boat and onto the shore.
‘Can you walk at all?’
‘Yes,’ she said, ‘but I will need some help.’ She looked directly at Andrew, who had been waiting a few yards ahead of us, scanning the horizon for signs of Murchadh.
‘You see to the boat,’ he said to me, a
ny notion of master and servant between us long since forgotten. He put his arm carefully around Deirdre’s back, holding the hand at the other side. ‘Can you manage?’ he said, so quietly I could barely hear him.
She let her head rest on his shoulder. ‘Yes, I can manage,’ and there was a softening in his eyes, the suggestion of a smile on his lips as they made their way to the church, the one wounded in body, the other in heart and mind.
As I watched them go, and thought of Father Stephen in his church, preparing Macha for our arrival, for the hurt of the first sight of me, a desire began to crawl through me to turn about and get back in the boat, to take the oars once more and row for Scotland, for Sarah, and what was home, to be away from this place or to drown in the attempt. And if Murchadh and Cormac should apprehend me, that would be the will of God, and if my suffering would be great it would not be long.
I had half turned when Stephen’s voice stopped me. ‘Alexander, we have everything we need from the boat.’ He watched me with a strange curiosity, waiting, and with great reluctance I turned my back to the sea and followed him.
He took me first into the church, a ruin long before he or I had ever drawn breath. ‘Will you make your devotions with me here, Alexander? We might be of two faiths, but there is the one God and it is He who has delivered us. Will you pray with me?’
I looked around the tiny chapel, bare of all furnishing save the simple altar below what remained of the east window. ‘I will.’
He knelt, and I stood, and we prayed to our God in silence together, and then aloud, in the words our Saviour had taught us, he in Gaelic, I in Scots. To the one God. And in this place, where God had been so long before man, there was no place for dogma, for doctrine, for words or forms that might have claimed one of us as right and the other wrong. He blessed me at the end and led the way through a small doorway to what evidently served as his home.
As I was bending my head to pass through the low archway, a glint of something to my right, just below the west window, caught my eye and my breath. It was a crozier, a staff such as I had seen in stained-glass windows and stone effigies, in the hands of bishops and saints. The base of the shaft was of simple wood, cleanly carved, but at the neck it was bracketed in gold, and its curved head was covered entirely in gold, intricately engraved with symbols of the earliest Christian days, and set with precious stones of black, green, red and turquoise. I had never been so close to an object so beautiful. It was a piece for a cathedral, not a lonely and abandoned church of the Culdees.