Maeve seemed a little more at ease, Deirdre a little less so now.
‘And he will be worthy of his father, and of his grandfather, and of all the generations that came before, and gloried in the name of O’Neill.’
‘No!’ Deirdre had stood up. ‘You will not do it to him! You will not steal his life as you did those of my father and my brother, to fuel your own fantasy! Those days are gone, Grandmother. Please, I beg of you, let Sean’s child be.’
Maeve afforded her a look of ice. ‘Look you to your own life, that you do not end it as his mother did.’ This indicating me. ‘And go down on your knees to pray God for widow-hood, pray that your husband might soon join his dead brother, that He would give you another chance. Now get to your bedchamber and make yourself decent. It cannot be long before Cormac O’Neill rides into this town at his father’s side, and you will not refuse him in my house.’
I tried to go after my cousin, but was stopped by my grandmother.
‘You have done all you will do in this house. Do not think to set your foot over its door again.’
‘Grandmother, will you not believe me? I did not kill Sean.’ I looked in appeal to Eachan, but he was already guiding Macha to what had been Sean’s chamber and would now be hers: he had no further interest in me. Maeve made to follow them, pausing only for a moment to answer me.
‘If Sean were not dead, what you have done now would have killed him anyway.’
I could have torn my hair in frustration. ‘Woman, I do not know what you mean! Tell me, what have I done?’
‘You have betrayed our cause. Tell me why, if you were with Stephen Mac Cuarta, are you not with his people yet? Do not tell me that he did not ask you to join with them. Why have you brought Deirdre back here, away from Cormac, from Murchadh, whose protection she was in? Why do you come here, with this Scot from Ballygally, when I know, and all the town knows, that messengers rode yesterday from Ballygally to the governor of the castle here, to warn the English of the planned uprising?’
I began to stammer. ‘I told no one, I…’
‘If not you, who? You have betrayed everything your cousin lived for, and I pray God that you may soon drown in your own blood.’ And with these words, my mother’s mother sent me from her house.
All the short way from the FitzGarrett tower house to the castle, I asked myself the same question, ‘If not you, who?’ but there could be only one answer, and I knew that already. It had been Andrew. Andrew, who had listened in the night to my talk with Father Stephen while I had thought he slept; Andrew, whom I had found deep in conversation with Sir James soon after our arrival at Ballygally. I felt I had been betrayed. Yet why should I feel that? He had done no more than any honest citizen of the town of Carrickfergus would have done; he had done the duty of any honest subject of the king. And yet … And yet … He had betrayed Stephen, and Michael, and Sean, and Cormac, and me. He had not told me what he was going to do; he did not trust me. But I could not feel betrayed in that. He was right not to trust me. While I had refused to fight for them, I could not have gone against them. I could not have said, even now, that I would not have tried to get a warning to Cormac, somehow. Alexander Seaton: a man of no principles, of no commitment. Such a man cannot be betrayed, and yet I felt abandoned by Andrew, cast adrift and left behind.
TWENTY-FIVE
Carrickfergus Castle
As we approached the gatehouse of the castle I was gripped by a cold apprehension, for it was in this massive, terrible foothold of the English Crown on foreign soil that I would see my name cleared or damned.
Archers and musketmen patrolled the parapet and the overhang beyond it. The occasional glint of a weapon could also be seen through arrow slits set in the walls. Unarmed, my head protected only by a hood, and dressed in the clothing of one of Sir James’s servants, I felt exposed and certain that for every three weapons I saw edge through the walls, one was trained on me. But on Sir James making himself known, the bridge was let down and first one portcullis and then the other lifted. At the gateway I glanced upwards with some trepidation, mindful of Sean’s tales of the gruesome fates of many who’d passed beneath the murder hole above my head, but there were no bowmen there, no soldiers readying boiling oil to pour over me. A moment later I was within the outer ward of Carrickfergus Castle; I should have felt safe there, but I did not.
A soldier escorted us to an upper room in the western tower of the gatehouse, where the constable was greeted by Sir James as an old friend.
‘Ronald, I see you are much busied.’
‘Busied? I have not slept since we received your letters, and neither has half the garrison. I have sent troops of men to hunt down O’Neill, and have had to make the castle ready for attack should we fail to find him. And this,’ he said, looking beyond Sir James to where I stood, slightly stooped beneath the doorway, ‘this, I am assuming, is Richard FitzGarrett’s other grandson.’
It was the first time since my arrival in Ulster that anyone had identified me by the name FitzGarrett – it was always O’Neill: Sean’s cousin, Grainne’s son, above all Maeve’s grandson, but to the constable, I was FitzGarrett, and that could only have been because Sir James had announced me as such. It was, I suspected, a shrewd move, and it gave me some hope.
‘Well, James, there has been a stir and a half here about this one, and Boyd also since the Blackstones thundered down from Coleraine. You know Matthew Blackstone’s younger son is dead, and Seaton here and Boyd said to be the cause?’
Sir James chose his words carefully. ‘I had heard something of it, but have not had the time to get to the bottom of it.’
‘And no more do I, my friend. What do you say, Mr Seaton? Did you and Boyd leave Coleraine with the shouts of murderers in your ears?’
‘We did, but we murdered no one. We …’
He held up a hand. ‘I have not the time. James, do you vouch for him or not?’
My countryman looked at me carefully. ‘I vouch for Andrew Boyd, and he for Seaton here.’
‘Then that will have to do. I leave him under your guard until I can attend to the matter. See you don’t let him out of your sight. Now, your wife has been spirited away by my own dear lady. You will find them in our quarters somewhere, gossiping even now, no doubt.’
As we were about to leave his room, the constable called us back. ‘James. Where is Andrew Boyd?’
‘I do not know. He came safe to the town, but then went into hiding from the Blackstones.’
‘Then we must pray we find him before they do. Matthew Blackstone is as a bull enraged. If he finds him or Seaton here, he has sworn to tear them limb from limb.’
Our escort took us to the inner ward, and finally the castle keep itself, having first checked with his constable that he was sure I was not to be warded in the sea tower prison instead. He made little attempt to mask his disappointment when told I was not to be, and led us away mumbling that I had ‘the very face of a rebel’.
It was evident that my company was not looked for in the great hall of the keep, and I went gladly to the small chamber next to the basement kitchen, where Sir James’s men were quartered and where I could be watched. Margaret brought me some food and drink. As had become her way, she avoided my eye, and spoke little to me.
In another place, in another circumstance, I would have left her to her silences. I had little interest in pursuing the society of those who did not wish mine. But we were bound by deaths, this girl and I, and bound by friendship with another.
‘Margaret, I wish you would look at me.’
She lifted her eyes but lowered them again. ‘Why?’
As was often the case when speaking to women, I found the words that came to my mouth inadequate. ‘Because I am Andrew’s friend, or have been, and I know that you care for him. There is no cause for hostility between us; I wish you would trust me.’
‘You do not know what you are talking about.’
‘Margaret, I killed no one. I never lifted a hand to my cousin, a
nd I killed no one at Coleraine.’
‘I care nothing for Coleraine or what you did there.’
‘You cannot think I had a hand in the murder of Sean? I swear to you, I loved him as a brother.’ As a brother. I breathed deep. ‘Margaret, he was my brother.’
She looked at me now. She did not flinch, or turn away, but looked at me as if I were at last other than she had thought me to be. ‘Your brother?’
‘He never knew it; I never got to call him so, but he was my brother, for we shared a mother. Sean O’Neill FitzGarrett was my brother, and you who have also lost a brother must know what I feel.’
She stared at me a few moments longer. ‘Do not think to tell me what I know, or feel.’ She left and I knew, however well I might wish her, that she would never accept friendship from me.
I was disturbed only by the cooks coming in and out of the room for stores. What passed for my bed was an arrangement of sacks on the floor, but it was better than what I had laid myself down upon on several nights just past, and I slept with some ease. At some hour well before dawn I became aware of a stirring of activity, and anxious voices in the kitchens. The door of the storeroom was opened and light brought in.
‘He’s still here,’ said a harsh voice, whose owner I could not see.
‘Then see that you keep him there. He is not to be allowed near the other one. Who knows what plots they have on hand.’
‘The constable thinks the other had himself caught simply to get to where this one is.’
‘They are sly, every one of them, and it may be so.’
I struggled to my feet as the man closed the door again and the storeroom became dark once more. I tried to open the door, but it had been locked on the outside. I banged on it, provoking curses from my guard and shrieks of terror from the women in the kitchens.
‘Who have you taken? Who is it? Tell me who you have brought here!’
The door was wrenched open, and an angry face leered at me out of the darkness. ‘Hold your tongue and your noise while you still can: you’ll get to sing your song soon enough.’ He shoved me backwards into the storeroom and I heard the bolt brought to again.
And so I waited through the night, as the castle settled in on itself again, and it waited too. The servants in the kitchens, the dogs in the hall, returned to their sleep, but like the guards that walked the parapets above us and the curtain wall around us, I did not sleep. There was no attack, or sound of attack; no noise of skirmishing or fighting, no sounds of fire or panic from the town. Who had they brought in?
Perhaps two hours later I heard Sir James’s voice in the kitchen, and soon my door was opened again and the light brought in. Sir James took the candle, but ushered the guard away. He sat down on a flour sack and, with little ceremony, got to his point.
‘What do you know of Cormac O’Neill?’
Cormac? I had not thought it would be Cormac.
‘Cormac O’Neill … I … he is the son of Murchadh O’Neill.’
‘Murchadh, yes, who held you against your will, and pursued you to my home, which he then set alight.’
‘Yes.’
‘And Cormac, his eldest son, pursued your cousin Deirdre to my home, and begged that we should turn her over to him.’
‘Yes.’
‘This same Cormac who, I am informed, given the death of your cousin Sean, is designated leader of the planned rising.’
I did not ask him how he knew. Andrew: Andrew had told him everything.
‘If you know it all, there can be no need to ask me.’
‘Can there not? Then there is no need to ask why Cormac O’Neill should take pains to exonerate you from any wrong-doing in the death of Henry Blackstone?’
I was dumbfounded. There was nothing sensible I could say. The words that came to my mind were ‘Cormac wasn’t there,’ but some sense of self-preservation stopped me.
‘Well, have you no answer?’
I shook my head. ‘I have none. I do not know why Cormac would do that.’
‘But he has. He has sworn this night before the constable and myself and the governor’s deputy that you and Andrew Boyd played no part in the murder of Henry Blackstone; that when they reached Coleraine with your grandmother’s false accusations, you left the town to come back here and clear your name, that you fell in with a Franciscan priest, a consort of the rebel Stephen Mac Cuarta, who caused Blackstone’s death and brought you to Murchadh O’Neill. Is this the truth?’
Almost, it was almost the truth. But why should Cormac have chosen to tell it? Why should he offer to myself and Andrew a way out of our predicament where before there had been none? ‘Yes,’ I said, ‘it is the truth. Can I see him?’
‘The governor thought you might make such a request. You can see him, for ten minutes, and not alone. Come, we will do it now, before the dawn of a new day brings its own troubles upon us.’
The embers in the kitchen hearths still glowed. A kitchen boy, curled up with a hound before the hearth, stirred as we passed, but everyone else slept on. Out in the courtyard, guards were waiting for us and torches lit our way to the middle ward and then out towards the sea tower, jutting from the walls to the north and west, musket men guarding it. We entered by the guardroom at the basement, and a ladder was put up to the cell above. I heaved myself through the hatch and into a dank, foul-smelling room with little light or furnishing save a few sodden rushes on the floor. The place stank of seaweed and rot.
Cormac was in the corner, hunched, his feet shackled, his wrists bound. He did not look up, and I watched him a moment, feeling no triumph in the reversal of our roles.
‘Cormac.’
His handsome face broke into a momentary smile, then faded. ‘Have they taken you, too?’
‘I am not a prisoner, at least … I do not think so.’
‘Then I am glad of it.’
‘What happened?’
‘They took me last night, after I entered the town.’
‘Alone?’
‘My father and brothers have gone to Dun-a-Mallaght. Others of our men have gone to Tullahogue; we cannot wait any longer for Stephen’s help from abroad.’
‘Stephen is dead,’ I said.
‘I know. We found his grave.’
‘His great fear was that your father would be precipitate.’
‘My father has waited twenty years. Those who talked of helping us have had long enough.’
‘And you think Murchadh will come for you?’
Cormac laughed, a low laugh with little humour in it. ‘They will hang me before my father is halfway to his horse. I won’t see the sun reach its height in the sky today, nor go down in the sea again.’ It was a statement of fact, and I did not attempt to argue with him.
‘But why did you come into the town on your own?’
‘I was coming for her.’
For Deirdre. Of course.
‘Did you get as far as my grandmother’s house?’
‘I was in sight of it, almost within the shelter of the door, when the mob of Coleraine, with her husband and his father at its head, came on me. To be caught by such as these. It will be a wonder if the hangman gets his rope around my neck before I die of shame.’
‘Cormac, she will not go back to her husband.’
‘I knew that already. But who is there to protect her now? Your grandfather, Sean, both gone. You will leave this place as soon as you are able, I know that, and even the servant Boyd is dead.’
The words reached me from a nightmare. Andrew was dead. He could not be found, because he was dead. The knowledge sank like a stone on my stomach. ‘Was it you or the Blackstones?’
He looked at me strangely. ‘Was what?’
‘Was it you or the Blackstones that killed him?’
‘What are you talking about? He died at Bonamargy. We saw his gr—’ And then his face broke into a broad, unaccustomed smile. ‘By God. Well, by God! Were we taken in by that? You have Sean’s guile, Seaton.’
‘It was not I, but the fria
rs who thought of it. They had the grave dug before I ever got there.’
‘And where did you hide him? We searched every inch of that place, apart from the old nun’s cell.’
I said nothing.
‘He was in there?’ Again he laughed. ‘My father said he would rather pass through the gates of Hell than cross that threshold. Well! The old woman has nerve. But I know it was Mac Cuarta we found at Ardclinnis. It is for the best. He would not have liked what he might have lived to see.’
I remembered Stephen telling me of the debacle of the planned rising of 1615, ended before it was begun by the drunkenness and swagger of its leaders. It had taken him and others thirteen years to persuade powers abroad that the Irish could be trusted again. With Sean, with Cormac, he might have been right, but with Murchadh? Cormac was right – it was as well Stephen had not lived to see what was going to happen now. But it was not Murchadh’s swagger that had ended it for them this time: this time the English had learned of their plans through Sir James Shaw. Through Andrew Boyd. Through me.
It was as if Cormac could read my thoughts. ‘And Boyd lives, you tell me?’
‘I do not know. I have not seen him since Ballygally. He came into Carrickfergus a few hours before me, but has not been seen since.’
‘He is not at your grandmother’s?’
‘Not when I was last there. But I cannot go back. She knows now I did not murder Sean, but I do not think she can forgive me that I live while he is dead.’
‘And you did not murder him? I am a dead man: you can tell the truth to me.’
‘It is the truth. Why should I have wanted Sean dead? That I might take his place? That I might have what is his? I have a life.’ My voice was rising and I could hear the guard at the ladder. ‘I had a life, and I do not want his.’
He tried to reach a hand towards me, but the bindings stopped him. ‘It is all right. I believe you, for what such credence is worth. And you do not know who murdered Sean?’
I was losing patience. ‘Cormac, who else could it have been but your father? Who else had cause to want him dead?’
A Game of Sorrows Page 31