A Game of Sorrows

by Shona MacLean

  ‘The nonsense of the curse …’

  He shook his head, impatient. ‘Sean no more believed that than you do. But Deirdre does, and more importantly Maeve. When the curse was laid and Maeve told him he had a cousin …’

  ‘He never knew we were brothers?’

  ‘Perhaps he suspected, who knows? But I don’t think he ever asked. I have heard from your grandmother’s priest that when Maeve sent him to fetch you to lift this curse, he took it as a message from God that our prayers had been answered, that a help had been found to us in our fight. One of Murchadh’s men, acting out of a misplaced enthusiasm and a misunderstanding of his master’s mind, made an attempt on Sean’s life not long ago. The attempt, as you know, failed, and the man paid for it with his own, but Sean knew he might never live to see the rising’s beginning, still less its end, and he knew what would happen to it and all our hopes should he die, without an appointed successor …’

  I backed away. ‘I am a Scot, a teacher, and no follower of Rome. You were as well to get a dog to lead your rising as me.’

  ‘Do you tell me you cannot handle a sword?’

  ‘Of course I can handle a sword.’

  ‘That you are not the grandson of Maeve O’Neill?’

  ‘You have told me I am.’

  ‘And do you tell me I have not seen you finger that cross at your neck for comfort? Do you tell me I have not seen you on your knees, praying at our altars?’

  The shock of his words stopped me where I stood. A denial was ready in my mouth, but I could not deny what he had said; I knew it myself. How had it come to this, that I had so easily lost sight of my own faith when surrounded by the snares of idolatry? I forced the words through gritted teeth at last. ‘I am no follower of Rome.’

  ‘Alexander, you were born to this. You have Irish blood enough for those who would ask it, if you have a heart to do what it is that they ask of you.’

  His breathing was coming short and fast now. I put out a hand to calm him. ‘Do not agitate yourself over this. God’s will will be done. There is no more you can do.’

  He did not calm himself, but by a supreme effort hauled himself up so that his eyes were almost level with mine. In the thin golden light that found its way to us from the altar, they were red, and shining. ‘Alexander, I beg of you. Take up Sean’s mantle. Do not leave them to Murchadh, all will be lost. MacDonnell will support you. They have my letter at Dunluce already, naming you your cousin’s successor …’ A pain seized him and he fell back down, clutching at his heart.

  ‘Alexander, I beg you,’ he gasped.

  I ran for Macha and she was there in a moment, cradling his head in her lap. A smile of immense peace passed over his face. ‘I can hear the child’s heart beating,’ he murmured.

  ‘Hush, do not talk,’ said the girl, a tear falling from her cheek and splashing onto his face. ‘Do not leave me.’

  He brought a hand up to cover hers. ‘Do not weep, my child. The stars in God’s heaven wait for me, it is my time, for as the Preacher says: “To everything there is a season …”’

  But he hadn’t the strength to go on. I took up the words for him:

  ‘And a time to every purpose under the heaven;

  A time to be born, and a time to die;

  A time to kill, and a time to heal;

  A time to weep, and a time to laugh;

  A time to mourn, and a time to dance;

  A time to love, and a time to hate;

  A time of war, and a time of peace.’

  I let the words die in the room, and then his voice came, in a hoarse whisper. ‘I have loved and I have laughed; I have wept and I have danced; I have waged war and have craved peace. Do not mourn for me: it is my time.’

  At that moment, the light in the church changed, and the darkness gradually receded in the face of a glory of reds and yellows and greens, as the sun rose and sent its magnificent rays through the east window of Ardclinnis, to light for the last time on the face of Father Stephen Mac Cuarta.

  I dug the grave, while Andrew kept watch at the shore, for the sea was calm and would not have detained Cormac and Murchadh long at Rathlin.

  I had chosen a place close to the church, by the hawthorn, the fairy tree, and we buried him there with some words from me and prayers from the women. Andrew intoned the forty-sixth psalm. There was no time for a headstone, or even to carve out a wooden cross, but Macha had taken a slip of a wild rose and planted it at the head of the grave to mark the place. ‘It will grow, and I will bring my son here,’ she said.

  ‘Where do we run to now?’ asked Deirdre.

  ‘Carrickfergus,’ I said warily, for I knew she would not like it.

  ‘You cannot go to Carrickfergus. You know what my grandmother in her delusions accuses you of.’

  Andrew took up my argument. ‘We will plead our innocence and clear our names, but we can do it in no other place, although we must call first at Ballygally.’ I shot him a quizzical glance, but he chose not to notice it. As we walked to the boat he stopped me.

  ‘You are sure you wish to go south?’

  His question surprised me. ‘Where else would I go? There is no other safe way for me to reach home to Scotland, and I certainly cannot go north.’

  ‘Not even to Dunluce?’ He was watching me carefully.

  ‘Andrew, what are you asking me?’

  He looked away, to the sea. ‘I heard you speaking with the priest, in the night. I had long suspected something of what Sean’s business was, although I would not have thought him honourable, and now I believe he was. But now I know also what brought you here…’

  ‘I had no knowledge of it. It was the talk of the curse.’

  ‘The curse. And where is the curse now?’

  ‘With its maker, who hangs from a tree in the hills above Ballycastle.’

  ‘Is it? We neither of us know that.’

  ‘I thought you did not believe in it.’

  ‘And neither do I, but I believe in the evil intent in whoever paid Finn O’Rahilly to lay it, and so should you.’

  I looked back at Ardclinnis, a slow mist rising from the ground beginning to envelop it, to take it back upon itself, away from the eyes of mortal men. ‘There is evil everywhere in this land, Andrew. I cannot concern myself with that I do not know, only with present danger. And that danger lies in Murchadh, and Cormac, to say nothing of the Blackstones, who may even now be in Carrickfergus ahead of us, adding their accusations to my grandmother’s.’ In my mind I heard the sound of Michael’s pistol shot, and saw again the horse that crashed down on its rider within sight of the walls of Coleraine.

  ‘Then you were not persuaded by the priest? You will not take Sean’s place at the head of their rising?’

  ‘I am not the man they seek. I am not the man he was.’

  ‘I think perhaps he was a better man than I knew.’

  ‘He was a better man than I am,’ I said at last. ‘I will not fill his place, have no fears on that. Come, we have little time to lose.’ And within minutes we were pulling away from the shore, from Ardclinnis, and from the last earthly resting place of the man who had so mistaken what I was. I cast a glance behind me as we rounded the headland. A boat, long and dark, bearing a standard I knew to be Murchadh’s, was powering down the coast from the north. I committed our party to God and rowed for all I was worth.

  TWENTY-THREE

  Ballygally Castle

  It was the mist that saved us, and they could not see us. Or their need to search Ardclinnis, that bought us time. Or God in His Providence, who had not finished with us yet. Whatever the cause, we got away from the search party of Murchadh O’Neill and before midday had won to the safety of Ballygally.

  ‘Sir James Shaw is a Scot, well affected to the king and the Protestant cause. We will find sanctuary there, and a place of rest for the women.’

  The latter was becoming a pressing concern: Macha was in a deal of discomfort, and the constant movement and exposure to the elements were playing
hard on Deirdre’s weakened state of health. Her sleep last night had been restless, and full of terrors she could not name on waking. She had murmured of Sean, of the poet, and of Maeve MacQuillan, and I wondered if she was seeing again in her mind’s eye that vision of a death foretold.

  She insisted on sitting up in the boat, on keeping watch, although we had told her there was no need to. ‘You will not watch properly,’ she said. ‘You will not see what I see.’ Her hair blew wild in the wind, and her eyes looked far into something that I knew in truth I could not see. She might have been a daughter of the legends of another age, fleeing from powers that had come to call her back to them.

  Andrew watched her. ‘She loved me, Alexander. Like fire. Like a storm.’

  ‘She loves you still.’

  ‘I have lost her once already, to the English, to her own pride. But she can no longer hide from her roots: the Irish blood is too strong in her. Cormac knows this, and I think he knows her. He has bided his time, and waited, and I will lose her now to him.’

  ‘I have watched her with you, Andrew, and I have seen her with Cormac: she still loves you.’

  ‘I could only keep her while she is broken, and I will not do that.’ I did not argue with him, for he knew my cousin better than I did, and I knew him: he would not see atrophy that which he loved. And if Cormac’s rising did not fail then perhaps Deirdre would find her place in Ireland after all, the place that Andrew knew he could never give her.

  We had kept close to the shore most of the way, but when the mist lifted, and Andrew pointed landwards, I thought we must have drifted across the narrows to the southern tip of Scotland. Only yards from the shore was a castle, a Scots castle, like so many I had spent time in as the friend of Archibald Hay.

  It rose perhaps five storeys, looking directly across the sea to the land where it had its roots. The roof was steep, and turreted windows at the corners gave views to the west and the east, from where trouble or assistance might be expected to come. A high outer wall reached almost to the sea, where a small river met the shore. Loopholes in the walls allowed for musketry. Everything was clean and new, and it took me home, to the castles of Mar, like a miniature, a fragment of Castle Fraser, or Craigievar.

  Before we had pulled the boat up on to the sand, a musket was sticking through a loophole in the castle wall, and a voice challenging us to state our business.

  ‘Tell Sir James it is Andrew Boyd. Tell him I bring news of Madeira, and seek shelter from rebels against the king.’

  That was it, no explanation of who ‘Andrew Boyd’ might be, a direct appeal, with some shadow of a familiarity, to the master himself. Before I could ask what nonsense he spoke of ‘Madeira’, the musket had been lowered, and the huge oak gate in the outer wall was opening in before us. Andrew called for assistance for the women, and soon four men were hastening down the sand and helping them from the boat, as I was thrust by my companion towards the castle and told to get myself within its walls. A carving in the stone over the entrance portal showed its master’s initials and crest, along with those of his wife, Isabella Brisbane, with a date of 1625, the legend proclaiming God’s Providence to be his inheritance. ‘And mine also,’ I thought.

  An attempt had been made, when we entered, to take Macha down to the kitchens with the servants, but Deirdre’s eyes had flashed fire: ‘She is my brother’s wife.’ And from that moment, there was no further suggestion that Macha should be handled as a servant.

  It was evident, from the manner of their greeting, that Andrew Boyd and Sir James Shaw were not strangers. ‘I am sorry to see you injured, Boyd, but glad that you have gained safe to my house. You do credit to your master, and,’ his eyes drifted to me, ‘to his grandson. But perhaps you, sir,’ and now he was addressing me, ‘would be more comfortable in some fresh clothing.’

  The fine garments I had been provided with for my night with Roisin at Dun-a-Mallaght had not fared well since I had left that cursed place. I opened my mouth to protest that Andrew was in greater need of attention than I was, but was silenced by a look from my companion that brooked no argument, so I went reluctantly with the two guards whom Shaw deemed it necessary to attend to my dressing. Only then did it occur to me that my host believed me to be Sean.

  Less than an hour later, after some vigorous scrubbing in a tub set out by the stream that ran through the inner courtyard, and arrayed in the serviceable clothing of a Scots servant, I was brought once more to the great hall, where a welcome fire burned. Shaw and Andrew had been deep in conference as I’d entered, but lifted their heads from some papers as soon as they heard me. A momentary hesitation in Andrew’s eyes was quickly replaced by relief, and Shaw, distrust now gone, strode towards me, his hand outstretched.

  ‘Mr Seaton. You must forgive the coolness in my manner earlier. You are so much like your cousin that although I had heard him reported dead, the sight of you made me think the reports mistaken. Be welcome to my house as a fellow countryman and one of my own faith.’

  I took his hand gladly as Andrew took up the explanation. ‘Sir James was an associate of your grandfather’s. He is a staunch supporter of the king, and of the Protestant faith. I have apprised him of your true identity, and of what has brought you to Ireland.’

  ‘Damnable superstition,’ the older Scot interceded, ‘but you do honour to your family in coming to their aid. It is the tragedy of some that they will not be helped.’ I did not ask him what he meant, but visions of my grandmother passed through my mind. ‘And you have garnered little thanks and much hardship for your troubles, I hear. But no matter, that will be put to rights. First though, you will rest and sup here, now, before we come to business.’ He banged a great gong by the fireplace and within moments, a light quick step was on the stairs. Glad of the fire, I attended only to it until the girl’s voice made me turn around and look towards the doorway where she stood.

  ‘You wish something from the kitchens, sir?’

  ‘I wish my wife. Where the Devil is she? Our visitors are half-starved.’

  ‘She is with the ladies yet. I will go and fetch her.’ I looked to Andrew in astonishment; I knew beyond a doubt that it was Margaret, the girl from the poor roadside inn, daughter to a widowed mother and sister to a murdered brother.

  Andrew registered the cause of my surprise and his face broke into a broad smile. ‘Yes, it is Margaret. You recall when we last saw her, she asked if I could do anything to help her find some position of service, that she might be a charge on her mother no longer, and might perhaps earn something to help her with? I wrote a testimonial for her and she took herself to Carrickfergus to find work. That very day.’

  ‘And indeed, it was our good fortune that she did. My wife had gone in despair to the town, thinking a trustworthy girl was not to be had in the country. Young Margaret is quick, and careful, and minds her tongue. My wife is much easier in her own house to have such a girl by her.’

  In a country where I had known only bad news, and worse, this was something truly to be welcomed, and for the first time in many days I felt a gladness in my heart.

  Margaret soon returned, begging Sir James’s pardon, but Lady Isabella was much preoccupied with seeing to the comfort of the ladies, and might she be of service instead?

  He ordered her to have sent up whatever food the kitchens might have ready. In no time, a hearty quantity of food had made its way from the kitchens to the hall. I could see Andrew took genuine pleasure to see Margaret in her new situation, and I hoped something might come of it, when the time was right. That time, I knew, would be a while off yet, because he would never abandon Deirdre or thoughts of her until she was ready to abandon him. Margaret mastered her emotions well, and I doubt her new employers could have guessed at any feeling between the pair, but she could not mask them so well that I, who knew already, could not see what her feelings for him still were.

  Margaret bent to attend to the fire and Sir James moved from one side of the hearth to the other. ‘And so to business,’ he sa
id. ‘You are accused of your cousin’s murder. I am blunt of necessity, for time presses and the niceties are not to our purpose here.’

  Margaret could not help but look up at me, her face a study in shock. Andrew put a hand on her shoulder. ‘Don’t be afraid,’ he said. ‘Whoever murdered Sean, it was not Alexander. He was nowhere near Carrickfergus at the time: he was with me, and we have the witnesses to prove it.’ She regained a little of her usual composure, and attempted a smile in my direction, but she still looked far from assured on the matter.

  Sir James continued. ‘The accusation, as you know, has come from your grandmother. There are few who believe her, however loud she proclaims it, but it must be addressed all the same. Now, Boyd here tells me you were together, taking shelter in Armstrong’s Bawn, on the road to Ballymena, on the night of your cousin’s murder. Is that correct?’

  ‘They tell me my cousin was murdered on the night of my grandfather’s funeral?’

  He gave a curt nod, watching me carefully.

  ‘Then that is correct,’ I said.

  ‘Good, then there will be little difficulty in proving your innocence, as not only Andrew but others can vouch for your presence there. We must get you to Carrickfergus, to the safety of the garrison, and state your case to the governor.’

  ‘We need to get the women back too, as soon as possible, to the safety of my grandmother’s house.’

  ‘Murchadh O’Neill is after you, and his son also?’

  ‘Yes. Murchadh would like to get his hands on me, I think, one way or the other, but Cormac’s only interest is in Deirdre.’

  ‘And yet, from what Boyd has told me, it will go ill for your cousin’s wife should they come upon her.’

  I did not want to think about what they would do to Macha and her unborn child should they realise who she was. ‘I think we must leave here soon.’

  ‘We cannot all go together. Murchadh will know our party, and once we have left the protection of the castle we will be at risk of capture, at least until we reach Olderfleet.’