‘Please, Deirdre,’ I said.
She continued to smile, at me now. ‘No, Alexander, it is too late. It was always too late.’
Andrew took a step towards her as she spoke, but she shrank back, drawing the child closer to herself.
‘It is too late,’ she repeated.
‘But we will go, as we planned. We will go with Alexander, make a new life for ourselves, and take the child. You will allow that, will you not, Maeve? We can take Macha with us even.’
My grandmother nodded in desperate acquiescence but still Deirdre shook her head. ‘No, you are lying to me too, Andrew. I heard you both last night. You will not let me take him. But I have to. No one else will protect him from her. I am taking him to his father.’
She moved closer to the edge of the balcony and what happened next was done so quickly I hardly knew where it began. She lifted the baby high in the air, Maeve screamed and Eachan, come to himself, started to run. But Andrew was closest and lunged for the child, only wrenching it from her arms as she hurled herself backwards over the balcony rail.
She seemed to fall for ever, her arms outstretched, her hair flowing behind her, a look of supreme peace on her face. Falling into the arms of those who had gone before her, she broke her neck on the hard stone floor below. There was silence, utter silence for a moment, and then the child started to cry. Andrew held him tight and tried to soothe him, but as his grip strengthened, his teeth gritted and his eyes became a film of tears, I feared he would crush the breath out of the tiny bundle in his arms. I made my way over to him and gently took it from him, handing him to my grandmother who, ashen-faced, went quietly with him towards Macha’s bedroom. And then I held Andrew as he succumbed to his overwhelming grief.
TWENTY-NINE
Parting
I had all but pleaded with him, but he would not come with me. We had parted at Ayr. I think he took something of me with him, and I something of him with me, and yet it was a lack I felt, an absence.
‘You could make the new life we talked of. You could have that new beginning.’
‘It was a dream, Alexander, of another time. It is gone now.’
‘I know it cannot be how it was to have been…’
‘No, she is dead.’
‘Yes, she is dead. And she can no more be in Dumfriesshire than she could in Aberdeen. There is nothing for you to the south that you would not find in the north.’
‘I have family there, in the borders. My father’s family.’
‘Whom you never knew and who will scarce remember him even.’
He looked sharply at me, a fragment of an old antagonism in his face. ‘Do you think it only for you that kin matters?’
‘No, Andrew, but I know you. And I know what I would be bringing you to if you came with me. You have my friendship, and will have it always, wherever we might be. But you will also have it of those who are my friends, for my sake and in a very little time for your own. I know the life you could make there.’
‘I am going, Alexander, where I will not see one story play itself out in my mind while I am forced to live another. If I came with you, every day I would be haunted by the life she and I might have had there, together. Everywhere I turned, there would be signs of what could have been. I will go where she never was, in her dreams or mine, and I might keep my mind that way.’
‘But Andrew …’
‘No, Alexander! Good God, man, do you not see it? Every time I look at your face I can see them all again, all the O’Neills and what they made her, what they took from me. I never had a friend in my life before, and I love you dearly, but for the love of God and for your own sake and mine, understand this: I cannot bear to look upon your face.’
And so we had struck out, one for the south, the other for the north. And I do not think he looked back once, as I did, at the dark blue shape across the water, the island of Ireland, receding with every step I took, into its own sky, its own sea, to its own world where we would play our parts no longer, Eirinn cloaking herself in memory once more, from the eyes of unworthy men. I did not know if I would ever look on her again.
And as I walked on, I left also my grandmother and her great-grandson, my two living blood relatives in this world. Macha was there too, and Eachan of course, and would be until his last breath left him. But it was in the old woman and the newborn child that the fate of those I had left behind in Ulster, and the names that had gone before them, would rest: I knew that.
Maeve was free, still free, saved from certain trial and execution for treachery by Murchadh O’Neill, in one final act of pride. When at last taken with his two younger sons; when, after much bloodshed and courage, Dun-a-Mallaght had finally fallen, Murchadh had scorned the idea that a woman, even such a woman as Maeve O’Neill, had intrigued with the English to bring arms into Ireland for a rebellion against those Englishmen’s own king. He, Murchadh, and no other, had led and directed all. And by that his name had salvaged some honour, at the point of death, that he had never managed to attain to through his life. But no poets were left now to sing the praises of Murchadh, to glorify his family and his deeds. And as our boat had left Ulster for Scotland and passed beneath the walls of Carrickfergus, the severed head of Murchadh O’Neill, along with those of his three sons, looked out from the stakes on which they had been impaled, over me and across the sea that might have brought them aid. Already, the gulls had begun to peck at their eyes, and in a few days, or weeks perhaps, they would be eaten or rotted, and only their skulls, and some story of a rising that had never been, left to remember them.
And Roisin, for Roisin had not been found, she had not been taken. Eachan said she would have gone to Bonamargy; that Julia MacQuillan would have taken her; that she would be got away to the continent like so many others of her standing before her, that she would become a nun. My grandmother thought the Earl of Antrim would have found her and got her away to safety with his MacDonnell kin in Scotland. Macha prayed that the girl who had also loved Sean and should have been his wife might find welcome and rest somewhere in the west, with some of her own people.
It was a respite that Deirdre had never found, for she had not known who or what her own people were. But she was at rest now, Deirdre of the Sorrows. She lay with her brother in a grave on the Knocagh Hill, high over Carrickfergus, looking out over Belfast Lough to a Scotland she would now never see. We had gone there and buried her two days after her death. No feasting, no great gathering of mourning guests. Just a small and quiet procession of those who had known her best and loved her. My grandmother, showing her age, and something else, perhaps, at last, had allowed herself to rest on my arm as we had mounted to the place where Sean already lay. The priest had intoned his words, and I did not try to shut them out as I might have done before. Andrew had taken a ring that had been his mother’s and placed it in the grave with her. At a small movement of Maeve’s hand, Macha had begun to sing a beautiful lament, words that lifted and filled the breeze and were carried like fallen leaves on the air and away from us.
The lions of the hill are gone,
And I am left alone – alone –
Dig the grave both wide and deep,
For I am sick and fain would sleep!
The falcons of the wood are flown,
And I am left alone – alone –
Dig the grave both deep and wide,
And let us slumber side by side.
And as the words went on, verse by verse, I realised that the lament was not only for Deirdre, or not even just for Sean, but for Murchadh’s sons, all three, for Father Stephen, for all those who had died in their dream of Ireland and what they might have been.
At last the song came to its end, and we men covered my cousin in the earth of her country, returned to it, part of it at last, the girl who had so feared it that she had laid a curse on her own family, on herself. Deirdre had thought to use the words of a poet she did not believe in to drive a fissure in the union of her brother and grandmother with Murchadh O’Neill
and his plans. She had thought to spare her family the destruction and disgrace that she had known would follow. She had thought, with her grandfather’s inheritance safe in her hands, to guide them to a place in a new Ireland that she had not understood they could never accept. The understanding, at last, that she herself had no place in that new Ireland, and the knowledge of the curse she had unleashed, had driven her to madness. As I dropped the last sod of turf over my cousin’s body, I prayed, in the manner of my forefathers, that God might grant mercy, rest and peace unto her eternal soul.
She had asked them to leave her a few minutes, to give her a few moments alone, and they had done so. Alexander hung back behind the others, a little way off; it was solitude enough for her. The sight of him was like a knife through her heart, every time she looked at him, for there was Phelim, there was Sean, there was Grainne’s second son. Grainne: her place of pain. Her son had come to them at last, across the water, but he had come too late.
As the wind whipped over the bleak hillside, she reached her hand out to the stone, Sean’s stone, and traced with her fingers the words of the epitaph freshly carved out beneath an engraved sword:
I am in blood and power better than the best of them …
My ancestors were Kings of Ulster, Ulster was theirs,
And shall be mine … with this sword I won them,
With this sword I will keep them. This is my answer.
And Maeve O’Neill swore to her God that she would take her great-grandson here often, and that she would not rest until her work at last was done.
Epilogue
Aberdeen, late November 1628
The guards at the quayside were hesitant about letting me pass into the town, and I could scarcely blame them: the man who had disembarked from the Nathaniel and called himself Alexander Seaton bore little resemblance to the teacher of philosophy last seen in the burgh over two months ago. Sean’s beaten hide travelling jacket and trousers, the heavy new mantle trimmed with beaver, gifted me by my grandmother, and the fine leather boots, did not speak of a man from this town. My cropped hair and my beard aged a face and features hardened by their fresh scars.
‘I tell you again, I am who I claim to be,’ I said. ‘I have a testimonial, here, in my pocket, from the constable of Carrickfergus Castle, in Ireland, for the eyes of Principal Dun; it will confirm my identity and explain my absence.’ I held it out to them and they looked a moment at the seal and then again at me.
A merchant taking delivery of his goods called over, ‘That is Mr Seaton, you dolts. Can a man not grow a beard?’
The guards grumbled that it was difficult to see in the darkness, and they had to do their duty. I waved my thanks at the merchant.
‘Do you go to the college, Mr Seaton? I am headed that way – you might ride up with me that far in the cart once these goods are loaded. You look wearied from your travels.’
I thanked him, but declined his offer. ‘No, there is somewhere else I must go first. A thing that will not keep till the morning.’
He smiled, and turned back to the loading of his sacks, and I went on my way. The town was like a spectre, a cathedral of the dead, rising out of a hard frost that looked not to have lifted for days. Nothing moved, no cats, dogs, scarce any humans, on streets and paths silent with tiny crystals of ice sparkling into the night. I could see my breath in front of me as I walked.
All was quiet at William’s house, everything shut up and in darkness, the last smoke having curled its way from the chimney hours since. I went up the pend at the side to the backland. Nothing stirred. I thought to wash my hands and face at the well, but the water in it was frozen hard. They would have to see me as I was.
I lifted my hand and knocked, lightly at first, on the door. Bracken began to bark inside. I heard no other movement and knocked louder. This time there were sounds on the stairs, and from beyond the kitchen. Soon I was banging hard on the door.
‘Who is it?’ came Davy’s voice, a little tremulousness in the old man’s tone.
Then there was William. ‘Get back, Davy, I’ll see to this.’
‘But Mr Cargill …’
‘You go and see to your mistress … Elizabeth! For the love of God, woman, will you get back up those stairs.’
I started to shout. ‘William. Will you let me in? William! You must let me in.’
A moment later the bolt was drawn back and my friend stood before me in his nightclothes, his sword in his hand, and the whole household behind him. The dog rushed past him and was over me with joy in a moment.
‘Alexander.’ William’s face was ashen. ‘We had thought you dead.’
I could say nothing. The dog calmed itself eventually and William’s sword hung loose in his hand. I went past him, and past Davy, who had the two children gripped firmly under his hands, past Elizabeth, to where Sarah stood, motionless, at the foot of the stairs. She was staring at me as at a risen ghost, and began slowly to shake her head. ‘No,’ she said. ‘No.’
‘Sarah,’ I said, putting a hand out to her.
She stepped back. ‘No. It is not you. It is not you.’
‘Sarah.’ I put my hands on her shoulders. She struggled to get free and said once more, ‘No!’ And then her fists were raining blows down on my chest as her voice rose. ‘No, No.’ She was crying, bringing her fists down in turn with each repeated word. I let it go on until the strength started to go out of her, and then I pulled her in close to me and held her until the sobs died down. I closed my eyes and murmured into her hair that I would never leave her again.
Extracts and quotations
Epigraph – Fynes Moryson, quoted in Caesar Litton Falkiner, Illustrations of Irish History and Topography: mainly of the seventeenth century (London, 1904), Part II, contemporary accounts of Ireland in the seventeenth century, 247–8.
Chapter 16 – ‘The Downfall of the Gael’, by Fearflatha O’Gnive (fl. 1562), translation by Samuel Ferguson in Kathleen Hoagland (ed.), 1000Years of Irish Poetry: the Gaelic and Anglo-Irish Poets from Pagan Times to the Present (Connecticut, 1947).
Chapter 18 – ‘Roisin Dubh’, Anonymous (attr. 16th century), translation by James Clarence Mangan in Hoagland (ed.), 1000 years of Irish Poetry.
Chapter 25 – Excerpt from Chichester’s epitaph transcribed from the Chichester Memorial, Donegall Aisle, St Nicholas church, Carrickfergus.
Chapter 28 – ‘Deirdre’s Lament for the Sons of Usnagh’, from the Red Branch Cycle, 12th century, translation by Samuel Ferguson in Hoagland (ed.), 1000 Years of Irish Poetry.
Chapter 28 – Sean’s epitaph, taken from letter of Shane O’Neill, ‘The Proud’, to Sir Henry Sidney, 1565. Quoted in Jonathon Bardon, A History of Ulster (Belfast, 2001), 79.
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank Judith Murray of Greene and Heaton for her friendship and encouragement, and Jane Wood at Quercus for her perceptive and tactful editing. In researching this book I was fortunate to be able to consult the libraries of Queen’s University, Belfast, and the University of Aberdeen. The Custodians of St Nicholas’ Church, Carrickfergus kindly let me see round their beautiful church and explained many of its features to me – the events I have portrayed as taking place there are purely fictional. I would especially like to thank my husband’s family in Northern Ireland for all their hospitality, babysitting, ferrying around and sharing of local knowledge during my research trips for this book. Most of all I would like to say thank you to James, for taking me there in the first place.
Table of Contents
Historical background
Prologue
ONE The Taste of Tomorrow
TWO The Man in the Mirror
THREE A House of Tapestries
FOUR Deirdre
FIVE The Funeral Feast
SIX Conferences in the Night
SEVEN Tales of the Dispossessed
EIGHT The Franciscan
NINE A Thing Foretold
TEN Revelations
ELEVEN Coleraine
&
nbsp; TWELVE Cargoes
THIRTEEN The Flight of the Players
FOURTEEN The Dogs
FIFTEEN A Council of Priests
SIXTEEN A Woman Grieving
SEVENTEEN The Cursing Circle
EIGHTEEN Dun-a-Mallaght
NINETEEN The Dawning
TWENTY The Brothers of Bonamargy
TWENTY-ONE Defiled Sanctuary
TWENTY-TWO Ardclinnis
TWENTY-THREE Ballygally Castle
TWENTY-FOUR A Homecoming
TWENTY-FIVE Carrickfergus Castle
TWENTY-SIX Chichester’s Tomb
TWENTY-SEVEN ‘Now these are the judgements’
TWENTY-EIGHT The Curse’s Circle
TWENTY-NINE Parting
Epilogue
Extracts and quotations
Acknowledgements
A Game of Sorrows Page 36