‘Is he?’
Rosh rolled her eyes. ‘Don’t pretend you’ve not noticed. I’d not mind if it was my bed he was in.’
‘I wish it was.’
Her compassion was for the body’s helplessness rather than its beauty, and compassion was something she wasn’t used to and would much rather be without. It worried her by day as she went about her duties at the house. By night it entered the uncomfortable sleep she took on a makeshift bed on the floor. One night Captain Mackworth climbed through the window to get at the body on the bed and she jerked awake to protect it. In the sweating, panting moment of realisation after the nightmare, she had to raise a rushlight to see that her patient was still there. There was no comfort in the fact that he was, remote and defenceless as ever. She’d never felt so lonely, so terrified for another human soul. Mothers of babies must feel like this. ‘But I’m not your bloody mother,’ she told the figure on the bed. She resented the unwanted commitment. ‘You’re nothing to me, you bald-rib.’
Neither was the hunted priest anything to her, but she grieved when Captain Mackworth caught him.
Her fear wasn’t helped by Edmund’s account of the priest’s execution at Mallow. Mackworth had broken the man’s legs and arms and kept him three days without water before allowing the law to administer what was by then almost the mercy of hanging, drawing and quartering.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said to Rosh when the Irishwoman slipped over, as she did every night, with food and fresh bog moss.
Rosh didn’t answer. ‘There’ll be a frost tonight,’ she said. ‘I’ve brought some kindling for the brazier. Himself will need to keep warm.’
Just before she went out, she turned. ‘Be sorry for the good captain,’ she said.
Barbary lit the brazier. The air coming through the arrow slit had a nip in it already. She had pushed the bed under the slit so that in leaning over it she was hidden from the window. Nup’s easterly window was on exactly the same level as her westerly one; she didn’t want him or his wife looking across the intervening space and wondering why she was spooning food into what should have been a bare pillow. Although all the windows, except the arrow slit, were glazed, the gatehouse had no shutters.
Only that morning Edmund had offered to rectify the omission and send up a workman to install them and she’d been hard put to find a reason that would satisfy him as to why he shouldn’t. In the end she’d said she wouldn’t use them anyway. ‘Don’t like being under hatches.’ It had been one in a relentless and wearing series of difficulties. ‘You don’t half give me trouble,’ she said to the body on the bed as she got into her night smock and brushed her hair. She warmed the liquid mess Rosh had prepared for the patient, raised his head and began feeding him. He was swallowing better.
She stopped. His eyes had opened and were staring up at her in puzzlement. She’d got so used to his being insensible it was a shock.
‘Hello,’ she said.
He frowned, and then relaxed. ‘Wine,’ he said, and went to sleep.
Next morning in the kitchen as she helped with the autumn salting, she whispered to Rosh: ‘He’s better. He asked for wine.’
Rosh was pleased. ‘And isn’t that typical of the nobility? Wine he says. How are we to get wine, I’d like to know.’ Edmund’s steward had the key to the cellar and ensured it was kept for special occasions.
‘I’ll steal some.’ The indication that her patient was recovering had energised Barbary; she could have stolen diamonds out of the royal crown.
‘Why not just ask for it?’
Barbary stared. ‘Ask for it?’ She played with the novel idea, exploring possibilities, and went to find Edmund. She bumped into him on his way to the kitchens. ‘I’ve been thinking, Edmund,’ she said, ‘that I should begin educating myself. Would you lend me a book I could read?’
He was delighted. ‘My dear cousin, I have just the thing to enlarge the enquiring mind.’
‘And Edmund, would it be possible for me to have a flask of wine? It would warm my blood while I tackle the words.’
Within minutes she was equipped with a book – she noticed it was one of Edmund’s own works – and permission to ask the steward for wine.
‘Now what was it I was doing?’ Edmund tapped his forehead. ‘Ah yes. Cousin, would you be good enough on your return to the kitchen to tell Abby that there will be a guest for dinner. Captain Mackworth honours us again.’
‘What for?’
The poet blinked. ‘He is engaged on another search. You may not remember, but in the hunt for the priest two of our soldiers were killed by a wood kern. The captain is not one to overlook the death of his men. He’s despatched the priest, he wants the kern. He believes him to be injured and still in the neighbourhood.’ As Barbary turned away, Edmund added: ‘There will be no need to feed the soldiers this time, cousin. Hospitality to the captain is quite enough; we cannot extend it to the whole army.’
Would they search the gatehouse? What excuse could she give for refusing her permission? Could she refuse? Would they search anyway? Get him away before they came?
She answered the last question as she asked it. She couldn’t. Remembering how hideous transferring him from the hen house had been, she dare not subject him to that again just as he was recovering.
She gave the message to Abby, and found that Rosh had gone out to the orchard to pick the last of the apples. She joined her under the trees and gabbled out her news. To her amazement, the Irishwoman remained calm. ‘There’s no need to go to the Sceiligs if you smile till next Shrove.’
Barbary shook her. ‘What the hell does that mean?’
‘It means wait and see. The captain may not come.’
‘Of course he’ll come. You can bet on the bastard.’
‘I wouldn’t. Beidh lá eile ag an baorach. He may not come.’
And he didn’t. The day took a year off Barbary’s life, but by the end of it Captain Mackworth had not arrived. Some of his soldiers called in just before dark; they didn’t search for the wood kern, being too busy searching the woods for the captain himself. He had entered them with a small patrol and disappeared.
As she took herself slowly to the gatehouse for the night, Barbary mulled over Rosh’s ‘Beidh lá eile ag an baorach’. It meant: ‘The underdog will have his day’, and she didn’t like the sound of it.
The body on the bed was still asleep, but the unconsciousness was not so comatose. He woke up as she fed him, swallowing obediently but wanting to go back to sleep. She wished she could, but she must stay awake in case Captain Mackworth turned up after all. She got out Edmund’s book and sat down close to the brazier with it. ‘The Shepheardes Calendar,’ she read, ‘by Edmund Spenser. January. Aegloga Prima (what the hell’s that?). “A shepheardes boy, no better do him call/When Winters wastful spight was almost spent,/All in a sunneshine day, as did befall,/Led forth his flock that had bene long spent…”’
‘Wine,’ said the body on the bed.
Barbary reached for the wine flask, but a movement of her patient’s head stopped her. ‘The colour of your hair,’ he said. ‘Been worrying me. Not just red. Wine in it.’ He was asleep again.
Barbary shook him. ‘Come back. There’s more to worry about than the colour of my bloody hair.’ Just for that moment, O’Hagan, and not an insensible figure, had been in the room, his voice familiar and her loneliness gone. ‘Come back, you.’ It was useless. Saying that much had used up what energy he had. She pulled the covers closer about his neck, and went to the mirror. It was true, her hair was darkening as she was getting older. Refracted now against the firelight, it still looked appallingly red, and it still made passers-by look at her twice, but perhaps there was some new shade… She preened at her reflection. ‘Wine,’ she said.
Chapter Thirteen
He was not an easy convalescent. He might have been brave fighting Mackworth’s soldiers, but on the first day of his recovery he showed he was a coward about having his wound dressed and taking the blood-humour
ing medicine Rosh compounded for him out of raw liver and herbs. On the second day he asked for his sword, his clothes and a horse to get him away from this damned place. By the time Rosh and Barbary had told him to hush, that his requests were impossible and that he couldn’t get away from this place, damned as it might be, he’d fallen asleep once more.
On the third day the fuss he made about Barbary having to carry his chamber pot out to the midden for emptying turned into a full-scale quarrel. ‘I’ll not be shamed in this manner. Let the woman do it.’
‘Her name,’ said Barbary, ‘is Rosh. And why’s it less shaming to have her do it, may I ask?’
‘She’s a servant. It’s a job for the lower orders.’
Barbary was infuriated. ‘She risked trining for you, Lord Muck and Muck. Lower orders, indeed. I was lower orders than she is, and even I reckon I’m a cut above an ungrateful Irish traitor.’
‘Traitor? You call me a traitor?’ He pulled himself up and swung his feet over the bed. ‘I’m out of this hole.’ She saw him wince as his bad ankle felt his weight, but on one foot he stood up and steadied himself by a hand on a rafter. He was very tall. She watched him sway and knew the room was circling round him. She poked a finger in his chest and he fell back on the bed.
‘See?’ she said, picked up the chamber pot and stumped out.
When she got back he was sulking with his face to the wall. ‘I should have let you freeze, you damned Saxon.’
‘You’re only here because you didn’t. For that matter, why are you here?’ But he was sleeping like a log. She studied his face. Where was that concern which had saved her life in the Wicklow hut? Not in this man, for sure, with his thin cheeks and peevish disposition. Rosh, whom he patronised, constantly made excuses for him: ‘Don’t blame the lad. It’s a terrible thing for a lord of the hills like him to be crippled in a tiny room at the mercy of women.’
And Barbary had answered: ‘He could have been cooped in Mallow Castle at the mercy of the executioner if it hadn’t been for women.’ He’d certainly shown courage, fighting to defend the priest. But with only inglorious women to display it to, his courage had gone. ‘You pull yourself together,’ she said to her sleeping patient.
She spent that night on the floor by his bed but made plans to move down to the room below next day for decency’s sake. It was bad enough if she was discovered to be harbouring a traitor; she needn’t have it thought she’d slept with one as well. Each flight of the gatehouse’s staircase had its own door which could be bolted, so no visitors could come on her unawares and wonder why she was now on the third storey rather than the fourth. She’d ask Edmund for some more furniture. Take that old settle out of the barn and at nights make up her bed on it. That’s what she’d do.
The next morning he was improved in health and somewhat improved in manners. ‘I am grateful,’ he said, stiffly. ‘Send the woman to me and I’ll thank her too.’
‘Her name,’ hissed Barbary, ‘is Rosh. And she’s got better things to do than run every time you lift a finger.’
‘Indeed she has. She could cook me some decent food for a start. I’m hungry.’
She cut through the arrogance. ‘What are you doing here, O’Hagan?’
He shuffled himself into a sitting position, wincing pitifully. ‘Being uncomfortable.’ Sighing, Barbary put another pillow behind his back. He settled himself and said: ‘Actually, in part I was looking for you. We were hoping to persuade you to procure us some guns.’
‘Who’s we?’
‘The O’Neill, the O’Donnell and myself.’
‘So you don’t think I’m an English spy any more?’
‘The O’Neill says you are not, that you are Barbary O’Flaherty who fell into Saxon hands as a child and managed to survive by trickery and theft. I fear we cannot convince Granuaile O’Malley of that, however. She still thinks you’re an imposter.’
‘And what does O’Donnell think?’
‘The O’Donnell never thinks. He acts. An impulsive man, the O’Donnell.’
‘And what do you think?’
‘In view of the fact that you are saving my life, I am forced to believe the O’Neill.’ He closed his eyes for a moment. He was getting tired again. ‘What about those guns?’
They had a cheek, coming here, demanding guns, putting her to unbelievable inconvenience, not to mention danger, them and their careless assumptions. ‘Well, damn your impudence. You and O’Neill and your O’Donnell. I’m married now. I’m a respectable married woman.’ It wasn’t much of a marriage, but no Irish Tom, Dick or Harry was going to get her to abandon it for the asking. ‘I love my husband. Dearly. He’s a hero of the Armada Battle. Knighted by Admiral Howard. Rewarded by the queen. Personally. Why the hell do you think I’d help his enemies? Even if I could. Which I can’t.’
‘Ach, I told the O’Neill it would be a waste of time.’ He looked as if finding that it was had grim satisfaction for him. ‘But he insisted I give you a message.’
‘What?’
O’Hagan closed his eyes again. ‘He said: “I told her once that she would make a wrong choice. It may be that she has made one. Now it may be that she would want to make another.”’
So they’d sat there, these Irishmen, and discussed her marriage. How dare they. How dare they. How did O’Neill know it had been a mistake? Cuckold Dick. He’d told him. Or perhaps Dick had just said that he’d been dismissed from Rob’s employment, and O’Neill had drawn the inference, like the damned inference-drawer he was.
She said slowly, with careful enunciation, ‘You can go back to your O’Neill and you can tell him he’s mistaken. And you can tell him I wouldn’t get guns for a quake-buttocked, rabbit-sucking bastard like him if I was told to by the Angel Gabriel. And you can tell him to stop his arse with that oyster.’
She slammed out.
O’Hagan regarded the ceiling. ‘O’Neill,’ he said to it, ‘it appears you are a quake-buttocked bastard.’ He smiled. ‘But you’re not as wrong as I thought you were.’ The door crashed open. A puce-faced red-head said: ‘And that goes for you and all.’ The door crashed to.
She stayed furious all morning, refusing to find an excuse to go back to the gatehouse with provisions. How dare they try and drag her in. She might be Irish-born, she might be miserable in her marriage, but that didn’t put her in their camp. She didn’t belong to them.
By afternoon her anger was fading and the old question came back: Where did she belong? With Rob and his pretensions? With Spensers, Mackworths and Raleighs? Could she return to being an unquestioning English patriot now that she’d viewed England from Ireland? No. From here the Irish Sea leached out glory and glitter and left England’s crown resting on the skull of a conqueror.
She thought bitterly that if she belonged anywhere it was in the universal sub-class of Rosh and Cuckold Dick and the Order, even with the dreadful MacSheehys, the bottom-of-the-heap people who had to squirm and steal and lie and kill to avoid complete obliteration. And she’d been torn away from even that to be put in a no man’s land all her own.
‘You don’t play with me any more,’ complained Catherine. ‘You’re not there all the time.’
‘I’m not, am I? All right, we’ll go nutting.’
‘When?’
‘Now. We’ll go and tell your ma.’
It was true she had been neglecting the children, though it wasn’t due only to the secret in her gatehouse. Autumn had brought so much to do with its gathering, slaughtering, preserving and pickling. Edmund had insisted on all the customs of an English harvest so that she had also been initiated into the mystery of corn-dolly making, while in the fields mystified Irish labourers had been taught by English labourers to sing: ‘Well a-cut. Well a-bound./Well a-zot upon the ground./We-ha-neck! We-ha-neck! Hurrah! Hurrah! Hurrah!’ to the last sheaf brought home.
The house was still full of workmen as Edmund readied it for the social occasions he would hold in it during the winter months. It was very much a provincial manor, but
linenfold panelling was being installed in the hall and a tapestry had been ordered from Flanders.
As luxury grew up around Maccabee, making a buffer between her and the namelesses in the woods, she grew more confident. With Barbary so busy she had been forced to take on more responsibility for Sylvestris and that it was doing her good showed in the way she was beginning to agitate. ‘If Edmund intends to hold a ball and the Norrises and the St Legers come, we must learn the new steps, though where we are to find a dancing master… Oh, my soul, you don’t dance at all? I shall begin to teach you this very evening.’
‘Tomorrow, Maccy.’
Catherine and Barbary strapped panniers onto pony Spenser and, hand in hand, ambled over the north stubbled fields where geese were feeding. As if to make up for the gales of spring and summer, the weather had become luxuriant, the nip at nights colouring leaves so that in the warmth of day the woods were peppered in saffrons and russets which enhanced the slanting light. Among the hazel trees the usual nut-gatherers’ obsession gripped the two of them. It was hypnotic to brush away the thin grass and find brown-shaded nuts in their frilled cases.
‘It’s like hunting for treasure, isn’t it?’
‘Better. You can’t eat treasure.’ The Order should hear her now.
They half filled the panniers. ‘Shall we try for some chestnuts?’
Barbary squinted at the sky; there was still an hour or more of good light left. ‘We won’t go too far in.’ They moved deeper to where the sweet-chestnut trees formed natural glades with their transparent, finger-spaced leaves high up on the tall trunks. A disturbed red squirrel flowed away through the branches. They were too early. There were hundreds of clusters on the ground but few of them had split open. They hadn’t brought gloves so they competed in kicking the hedgehog-spiked balls off their shoes into the baskets.
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