A Game of Sorrows

EIGHTEEN Dun-a-Mallaght

I had a sensation of walking into the depths of the earth. Orpheus entering the Underworld, but I knew not with what purpose. Certainly there was no Eurydice waiting here for me. The passageway was narrow – only room enough for one man to pass at a time. The heavy smell of damp earth suffused the air, but was gradually overpowered by the aroma coming from a peat fire some way ahead. The passageway was lighted every few yards by torches in the wall, and was smooth and dry underfoot. My arms were still tied behind my back and ached as I had never known my limbs to ache before, and it was with great anticipation of relief that I at last saw a pool of light ahead of Ciaran, and soon afterwards found myself stepping into an open space once more.

We had come into a large vaulted chamber, with arched wooden beams supporting the earthen roof. The floor was beaten earth, with rushes spread all around. At the centre was a peat fire, sending blue smoke up through a small hole in the roof, although the rest of the place was filled with smoke also. At the far end of the chamber was a dais, on which I could just make out the forms of a man and a woman sitting. Flickering torches gave intermittent illumination to shapes of men, occasionally women, sitting on the floor.

Ciaran strode towards the dais while the others remained on either side of me, Padraig confiding under his breath that one wrong move would see my throat cut and me at the gates of Hell before dawn.

‘Is my father not returned then?’

‘We expect him soon. There has been some cause of delay with the old woman at Carrickfergus.’

I lifted my eyes and peered through the gilded gloom; it was Cormac, the oldest of Murchadh’s sons, and beside him, like a queen under some enchantment, was Deirdre. She was dressed in a gown of red velvet, the bodice laced tight over a mantle of the purest white linen, sleeves hanging long at the wrists and edged with lace. At her neck hung a crucifix studded with jet, and at her waist a girdle embroidered with gold. On her head was a linen headdress, and beneath it fell locks of burnished copper. The sombre wife of the English burgher was gone: distilled to her essence, every inch the consort of the man beside her, she was magnificent.

Cormac’s gaze went beyond his brother’s shoulder to where I stood, my cowl still up as it had been against the storm. ‘What is this? Is it the poet or a priest you have brought us?’

‘Neither, he would have us believe.’ I was pushed forward and my hood pulled down. I could feel the shock that echoed round the chamber, the collective drawing-in of breath. Nobody moved for a moment and then, slowly, men started to reach for their weapons as their wives and daughters regarded me in terror. Cormac himself had flinched when he had seen me, and stood up slowly. ‘What trickery is this?’

‘No trickery, brother, but what the …’

He got no further, for Deirdre too had risen from her seat. Her face was suffused with love, and for a moment, forgetful of the reason, the wonder and delight of it caused me to smile back at her. She began to walk, and then to run, towards me, and I realised with a sickening certainty that she had mistaken me. Cormac put out an ineffectual arm to stop her, but she pushed it away. In a moment she was on me, her arms around my neck, tears of joy flowing down her cheeks. The words in Irish came tumbling, one after the other in a torrent of love and thanks to saints I had never heard of.

‘Oh my darling, my brother, sent back to me this night. My brother, my darling one.’

I let her hold me, and weep, and gently I put my arms around her and held her, no one trying to stop me. Dun-a-Mallaght held its breath, for a moment, on All Hallows Eve, as a young Irishwoman welcomed her murdered brother back from the dead. Gradually, the heaving of her chest, her sobs, subsided and Cormac stepped forward to lift her hands from my neck; I let my arms fall to my sides, and he drew her tenderly from my embrace.

She looked from one to another of us, her heart willing her mind to believe something she knew was not true.

‘What … why … you would not …?’ She turned from Cormac to me. ‘Sean?’

Slowly, I shook my head, my lips parted to speak but no words came from them.

‘Not Sean, but the murdering Scot, Alexander Seaton.’

It was Murchadh O’Neill; and there beside him, at the entrance passageway and looking at me in mute terror, was Roisin, behind them a gathering of his men. He strode forward and took Deirdre firmly by the arm.

‘Take her out of here.’

Donal began to lead her towards a side passage away from the main chamber. ‘Come, Deirdre, it is not him. You know it is not him.’

She didn’t seem to hear him, and looked desperately over her shoulder as he pulled her away. ‘Sean,’ she called. ‘Sean!’ The sight of her tore the heart out of me and I closed my eyes until her cries became distant and dim.

Murchadh had taken Cormac’s place on the dais. ‘Chain him,’ he said, casting the briefest of glances at me. And then, ‘O’Rahilly? You found him?’

‘We found him all right, hanging from a tree. He has spoken his last curse.’

Murchadh damned the poet to the depths of Hell. He got up and began to stride around the dais, pausing only to fire out questions at his sons.

‘Where did you come upon him?’

‘Kilcrue.’

‘You searched his lair? You found nothing?’

Padraig jabbed a thumb in my direction. ‘Only this one.’

‘Aye, this one.’ Murchadh regarded me a long moment with a look in his eyes that might have been hatred, might have been fear. He stepped down from his platform and began to walk slowly over to where I had been chained to a post at the far end of the chamber, his eyes never leaving my face for a minute. ‘Alexander Seaton. The son of Grainne FitzGarrett, cowering in the dirt like a beast.’

I tried to stand up, but found myself pulled back down by my fetters. I lifted my head though, determined that I should look him in the eye.

‘I have no fear of you,’ I said.

‘Do you not now?’ He looked around the chamber, his arms outstretched in appeal to his followers. ‘The heretic schoolman has no fear of Murchadh O’Neill. He killed his own cousin in cold blood in a deserted Protestant church, so why should he fear me?’ He laughed into the uneasy silence and his followers, hesitant at first, did likewise.

He brought his face down close to mine, so close I could smell the heavy sweat of his night’s ride and the stale sourness of wine on his breath. ‘You should fear me, schoolman, because I can kill very slowly.’

There was a general murmur of agreement and approval from around the room. ‘Do it, Murchadh!’ called out one voice.

‘Give us some sport!’ shouted another, and soon my ears were filled with calls in Irish for many kinds of torturing and a slow death.

Murchadh stood up straight and wiped his hand on his thigh, as if near contact with me was a contamination in itself. ‘Calm yourselves, you shall have your sport. The whore’s offspring will cross the Irish Sea no more.’

‘My mother was no whore!’ I had tried to stand up, but was again thwarted by my chains.

Murchadh pushed me by the shoulder back to the ground. ‘Your mother had much the same taste as your cousin that’s through that door.’ Behind him I saw something in Cormac’s face, some small flicker in the stone. He turned again to his followers. ‘You will have your sport, in good time, but first there are some things I would have of our guest before he loses his tongue.’ More laughter from around the chamber, more assured this time.

The laughter was brought to a halt by a shout travelling down the entrance passageway from the watchmen at the door. It was echoed by the watchman to the chamber. ‘Strangers coming. Wait – holy men.’

Murchadh’s eyes went quickly from the door back to me. ‘Take him to the pit. Be quick.’ Padraig again took hold of me while Donal loosed my chains. I tried to struggle free from his grip but was rewarded by a tremendous strike into the side of my face by Murchadh’s gloved fist. The glove was not quite thick enough to cushion me from the sharp contours of the garnet-studded gold ring he wore on his right hand, and as I staggered to my feet once more I felt a soft trickle of blood begin to make its way down my cheek. Padraig pulled my arm up so tightly behind my back I felt my shoulder burn.

The pit was a small dug-out room set still further into the bowels of the earth. I had to stoop to enter it, almost gagging on the foul human odours that reached my nose and my throat. There was barely enough room in the place to accommodate both Padraig and myself. There was no furnishing or floor covering of any sort, and the only light came from a small grille near the roof, the length and width of the span of my hand, that looked on to the floor level of the main chamber.

‘Do not think of trying to get out. And do nothing to attract any attention to yourself; you may not like the attentions we have to offer.’ And to my great relief, he left.

As soon as he was gone, I crept to the grille. By craning my neck I could see the floor of the main chamber and feet and the hems of cloaks brushing over it. But I had evidently not been the first unfortunate to find myself here, for on bending down I could see that there was a foothold in the wall, and by pulling myself up to the grille from it I could see much further around the chamber. I could hear too, but the general hubbub was too great for me to be able to distinguish one voice and what it said from another. Then there was a standing to readiness, and all movement in the room stopped. Silence. I could hear my own heart beating, so loud in the silence that I almost feared it would draw someone’s attention to me, but I did not dare move from where I was. At last the voice of the watchman echoed through the chamber again, breaking the tension. ‘Father Stephen Mac Cuarta of the order of St Francis at Bonamargy seeks audience with Murchadh O’Neill.’

Murchadh was silent, but only for a moment. ‘Then let the father enter, and be welcome.’

I shifted position enough that I could see the end of the passageway and, a moment later, Stephen and Michael entered. Stephen gave a blessing in Gaelic to his ‘brothers’. There followed murmuring and nodding and general sounds of welcome, before Murchadh spoke again.

‘Be welcome, Father. May you bring God’s blessing to this place.’

‘Amen,’ said Michael.

‘Indeed,’ followed Stephen, ‘and on a night such as this it is in need of it. The powers of darkness are at their height in this land tonight.’

‘And have been rising some time,’ said Murchadh. ‘But let us not forget the hospitality due a guest, even on such a night.’ His welcome was too quick in coming, his smile too easy. ‘Roisin, have the women bring food and drink.’

Stephen watched the girl as she went to the fire at the centre of the chamber, where a hog was being slowly turned and roasted. ‘Your daughter has grown up a credit to her mother, God rest her.’

‘Amen to that. She will be a credit to Ireland also.’

‘I do not doubt it. But,’ said Stephen carefully, sitting down on the floor as Murchadh had indicated he should do, ‘she will mourn the loss of her betrothed.’

‘As do we all,’ responded Murchadh, just as carefully.

‘It will be a great blow to you also, who had such hopes for the union of your family with that of Maeve O’Neill.’

‘Sean was not Maeve’s only grandchild, nor Roisin my only child.’

‘But Deirdre is already married.’

‘There are divorcements, are there not? Besides, that is not the only possibility.’

‘Oh?’ said Stephen, as casually as if all that concerned him was the comfort of his robes, which he was taking some trouble over rearranging beneath him. ‘What other possibilities might there be?’

‘Who knows what God will provide? Or has provided?’

‘Indeed,’ said the priest, setting to now to the steaming platter Roisin had brought him. ‘Who knows?’

‘Father, should we not thank the Lord?’

Stephen smiled apologetically at Michael. ‘Indeed, my friend. You must forgive me: the habits of an old campaigner die hard.’ He said the grace and the pair gave their attention to the food and drink they had been brought, chewing slowly and drinking deep. The silence all around them began to weigh heavy on their host, until finally he called on the harper to earn his keep. As the soft music plucked from the strings gradually filled the air, there was the slightest relaxation in the tension around the chamber, but not in Murchadh O’Neill, nor, I noticed as I studied him more closely, in Stephen Mac Cuarta.

Eventually, when the friars had finished and Roisin had brought them a bowl of water in which to wash their hands, Murchadh told the harper to stop. The time had come.

‘We have not met in many years, Father.’

‘Indeed we have not. Nearly thirty years. Kinsale.’

There was an audible drawing in of breath at the mention of the word, a marked rising in tension. I scrambled through my memory a while until I had it: Kinsale, the last great hope of O’Neill’s rebellion against the English, when he and his men had marched the length of Ireland in winter to meet with their Spanish allies, sent by Philip III to help them hound the Virgin Queen from Ireland. But the allies had been relentlessly besieged, and in open battle on Christmas Eve the expedition had ended in ignominy and disaster. As for Murchadh, he had been the last to join in the southern march and the first to abandon his kinsmen and their Spanish brethren to their fates. No one mentioned Kinsale in front of Murchadh O’Neill.

‘Aye, Kinsale. A place out of season then, and of no consequence now.’

Stephen took great care in the drying of his hands. ‘But perhaps it is,’ he said at length. ‘Perhaps it is of consequence, or should be, if we are not to repeat past failings.’

‘And past mistakes,’ countered Murchadh.

‘Indeed. For such mistakes would cost us all dear, would cost Ireland dear, as they did before.’

Murchadh threw down his goblet and turned on the Franciscan. ‘What do you want, priest? State your business now or leave this place. I have business to attend to and no hours to spare on you and your old grievances.’

Stephen looked up, as if he were measuring Murchadh, inch by inch. ‘My masters have long memories, but this is no old grievance; it is something of three days’ standing I would know of.’

The whole chamber held its breath. My mouth formed the words as Stephen spoke them: ‘Who murdered Sean FitzGarrett?’

Two or three of the men around Murchadh stepped forward, ready to draw their swords. Murchadh put up a hand to stop them. ‘I am sure you are not here to accuse me, but my men are nervous and see slights where perhaps none was intended. The temper of the times.’

‘And always has been,’ responded Stephen. ‘But no, we are not here to accuse you. I know it was not you who cut the throat of Sean FitzGarrett, but I believe you know who did. Do not seek to protect him; powers greater than you have an interest in this and will find it out.’

‘Then they need no help from me.’

I wondered why, given that both of them knew of my grandmother’s accusations against me, neither of them made any mention of me.

Stephen persisted. ‘It will be in the interests of no one to protect Sean’s murderer. The news will reach Louvain, and further afield before much more time has passed. You had better show yourselves loyal to our cause or you and all of yours will be swept aside in the onslaught that is to come.’

Murchadh closed in on him. ‘I know that your Spanish masters and His Holiness have other plans for the sovereignty of Ireland, but a leader, a figurehead, is needed for Ulster, for the people of Tyrone, of Tyrconnell, of Antrim and all the rest will not be ruled from Louvain, nor Madrid, nor yet Rome. You and your Pope may do as you please with the faith of the people, and the King of Spain may rest assured that Ulster will always give sound bases for his armies – a thorn in England’s flank that cannot be removed. That is all they want us for. For the rest, you know as well as I, they will leave us in peace.’

Stephen was struggling to master his ire. ‘Dismiss the Church if you must, but you will find that no rebellion will succeed without it. And I would counsel you not to speak of His Majesty of Spain with such contempt: the English will never be driven from Ireland without him.’

‘It will take more than another foreign monarch who cares little for Ireland to drive the English out. The people will only rally to one of their own.’

‘And that one was to be Sean O’Neill FitzGarrett.’

‘My daughter’s betrothed.’

‘Who is now dead.’

‘Who is now dead.’

‘And who would you see in his place? Who would the old families and their followers accept?’

‘They all knew Sean was to marry Roisin; they all knew my lands were to be joined with FitzGarrett’s, that FitzGarrett’s wealth was to be used to buy in to more of the old O’Neill patrimony. It is in their minds already.’

Stephen shook his head slowly. ‘They will never accept you, Murchadh. Memories are long; distrust has burnt slow: you would be engulfed in their desire for revenge.’

I watched Murchadh, as did everyone else, waiting for an explosion of rage that did not come. ‘Truly, you think so, Mac Cuarta? They will not forgive?’ His eyes gave out some shadow of sadness, a dawning understanding, at last, that the dreams harboured since his youth would not be fulfilled.

The priest went towards the rebel leader. ‘Nor forget, Murchadh.’ He laid his hand on the other’s forehead and uttered a Gaelic blessing.

All through this, Cormac had watched without moving, without speaking, but the sinews in his arms were stretched to their limit, and a muscle twitching in his jaw gave him away – to me, at least, for no one else had the view that I had.

‘There is another,’ said Murchadh, at last.

‘There is indeed,’ said Stephen.

Cormac chose this moment to declare himself. ‘And I am ready, Father. Give the word, and our kindred will rally to me; the others will care not that I am your son so much as I am an O’Neill, and a union with Maeve’s family …’

‘You?’ said Stephen, as if the idea had not occurred to him.

‘If not me, then who else is there?’

A light had come again into Murchadh’s eyes, but he said nothing. Stephen exchanged an uneasy glance with Michael.

‘No one,’ he answered in some bewilderment. ‘There is no one.’

‘Then give me your hand, Mac Cuarta, as I give you mine, and let us acclaim my son, Cormac O’Neill, as leader of our rising and, God grant it, the liberator of Ulster.’

Stephen’s eyes were travelling the hall, where over fifty armed men waited to butcher or to cheer him. He gripped the forearm that was offered to him and Murchadh clasped him around the shoulders as if he were a returning brother. The roar that went up all around them threatened to bring the earthen roof down on all our heads. Cormac was hoisted on to the shoulders of two of his strongest companions and carried in triumph around the hall, shouts of acclamation and the beating of spears on the ground almost deafening me. And through this great moment, through the length of the room from father to son, was a smile as wide as the river Bann and eyes as cold as the water in it.

Eventually, when the cheering had begun to die down, Cormac was set on the ground again and raised a hand for silence. The clamour faded.

‘You do me great honour, and place in me a great and sacred trust. Ireland weeps, she has been raped and plundered. She is abandoned by those whose duty it was to protect her. Let the men of Ulster rise to her defence, and where we lead may Leinster, Munster and Connaught follow in our wake!’

More cheering, more stamping, more shouts of acclamation. Again, Cormac let it engulf the room, then again he put up his hand. ‘But Ireland has not suffered alone. The Church, our Holy Mother Church, has been brutalised, trampled, stripped by the heretic Saxon horde, and now her bones are gnawed by the avaricious Scot, insatiable in his misery.’ This brought much murmured and mumbled assent, wise nodding and deferential inclination of heads towards the Franciscans. It was them that Cormac now addressed. ‘And so I ask you to give me your blessing, and to beg the Holy Virgin’s intercession on behalf of our enterprise.’

I could almost have admired him. He knew it was not a thing the friars could refuse, and by encompassing their cause in his own, binding it so closely to himself, they, and those in Louvain, in Spain and in Rome in whose name they acted, could not oppose him. Stephen nodded, the slightest movement of the head but it was enough. With Michael at his side, he beckoned Cormac forward. Cormac knelt down before him, his head bowed, and in that action I saw a glimpse of something better than his father, better than the raiding and the brutality of his brothers, something I might have called noble. Michael made the sign of the cross over him, followed by Stephen, who then laid his hand on Cormac’s head and began to speak.

‘In the name of Mary, Holy Mother of God, I ask God’s blessing on you, Cormac O’Neill, in this great enterprise of the liberation of Ireland and of her Church, the Bride of Christ. Grant us the wisdom, oh Lord, to rise, and the strength, to go willingly to an agonising death in defence of our Church and our nation, rather than to bend our necks in the tainted service of a heretic king.’

Fervent amens resounded around the room. From a pouch hanging from his belt Michael drew a small silver casket and held it out towards Stephen. The older Franciscan affected not to notice.

‘The ointment, father,’ persisted Michael, murmuring under his breath. Stephen looked at him, giving the slightest but unmistakable shake of his head, but Cormac had now looked up, as had one or two of the others, and Stephen was forced, with great reluctance, to take the casket. He opened it slowly, and dipped a finger inside which he then laid on Cormac’s forehead in some approximation of the form of the cross. Then he mumbled some words in Latin, the right words, almost, some of them, for a blessing, for an anointing, but in no relation to one another that made any sense to me, and Latin came as easy to me as did my own Scots tongue. Michael glanced uneasily towards him before Stephen again made a cross in the air and called out, clear and with some finality, ‘Amen.’ All present in the room followed and Cormac stood and thanked the friars, with only the mildest of questioning in his eyes, before accepting once more the acclamation of his followers.

I turned my face from the grille and felt my way to the far corner of my cell, taking care where I put my feet, not knowing what I might find there. The place was cold and damp and told of death. My bones ached with fatigue, and putting up my hood to make some barrier between the dirt and my head, I lay down. I had heard enough tonight of these people and their doings and wanted to hear no more. I had known my cousin briefly, had come to love him and to believe I knew him well, but it appeared now that I had not known him at all, and that this was how he had intended it should be. I felt desolate, more so even than I had done when I had learned that he was dead. And so this was what Andrew had meant when he had alluded to ‘what we are constrained to call Sean’s “business”’. That Murchadh was at the heart of a planned uprising against King and Church did not surprise me in the least, nor, deluded as she was, did my grandmother’s involvement come as a shock. Father Stephen and Michael were also in on it. I began to wonder now whether Andrew had been right when he had questioned the coincidence of Stephen’s presence at Armstrong’s Bawn, and at Coleraine on the night we were unveiled as impostors and chased from the town, into the waiting embrace of his young, armed, acolyte. What did they want with us? Stephen, who had led me to the Cursing Circle of Kilcrue and abandoned me there to be found by the sons of Murchadh O’Neill, and his cowled and crucifixed brethren to whose supposed mercy, on this All Hallows Eve, I had left the helpless Andrew Boyd?

I could stay awake no longer. If I had the strength in the morning I would get to Deirdre somehow. If I had the strength. I must very soon have been asleep, too exhausted for dreams and too despondent for nightmares. If the spirits of the dead walked Dun-a-Mallaght that night, they left me in peace.