A Game of Sorrows

TWENTY-SIX Chichester’s Tomb

I had been so much in my own company, in hiding places, watching, listening, waiting, that I craved noise, hubbub, light. I felt a desire to walk the streets openly, to hear the laughter of others.

As I went down into the town, towards the marketplace, I could see lights blazing in the windows of the FitzGarrett tower house. I had promised Cormac I would look after Deirdre, but I knew with a certainty that my grandmother would not allow me entry to her house, and the constable had warned me away from there anyway. Who was there in that place now who would care for her? Maeve had barely looked at her once she had understood who Macha was and what her condition meant, and Eachan was not the man to treat my cousin’s fragile soul. ‘Deirdre of the Sorrows’ Cormac had called her. I was not sure I understood what he meant. Her husband might be in there even now – pleading with her, intriguing with Maeve. I had not the time to concern myself with the Blackstones tonight – wherever they might be in the town, they would be joining Cormac O’Neill in the castle prison soon enough.

Much of the air of apprehension that had cloaked Carrickfergus yesterday had lifted; word of Cormac’s capture, and the disarray of the rebels had begun to circulate in town and countryside and people were going about the usual business of their lives. The marketplace, the scene of so many entertainments for me as I had watched from my incarceration in my grandmother’s house, was cleared, business for the day being finished, and quiet. The life of the town now was behind doors and walls, in taverns and houses up winding lanes and darkened back streets, where families and companionship and friendship might be found. There was safety in these streets, up those lanes, where people simply lived and did not dedicate their lives to plot or policy, revenge and unattainable dreams. Between the uncertainties of the sea on one side and the unknowable expanse of Ulster stretching out in the darkness beyond the walls, there was the possibility of something I would have recognised as normality.

But it was not yet time for me to enter back into that world, and I turned my steps up the narrow street behind my grandmother’s house and towards St Nicholas church. The slate-grey sky of the day was giving way to dusk, and so little light escaped from windows or doors in this part of town that I found it difficult to see my way once I entered the churchyard. A light breeze had got up, and dry leaves were swirling around the paths, paving and gravestones. I wondered if any of my own forebears were buried here, and if they watched me now. It was difficult to cast such superstition from my mind as I made my uncertain way between tombs and headstones that seemed to rise up from the ground and lean towards me. The nocturnal stirrings of the churchyard made my heart beat faster. Bats swooped from the trees and from the eaves of the roof. I pulled my hood up against them, these messengers of the coming darkness, manifestations of the night. The wind caused the occasional creaking amongst the near-bare branches, and I was glad to reach the portal of the church, where the merest sliver of light edged the not-quite-shut door within the porch. I hesitated now; for the last few days, churches had been places of sanctuary, places of hiding, places of brutality: I did not know what might await me here. For all his secretiveness, his duplicity, I could not believe Andrew meant me harm, but I think I knew then I had been foolish in telling no one of the contents of the note. It was too late for these thoughts – a bell nearby started to toll the hour of seven and I pushed open the door of the church.

Inside the porch, all was darkness, only the faintest glow of light emanating from the nave, allowing me to find my way up the steps and under the stone archway into the church proper. There was not a sound anywhere save my own footfalls echoing in the vast building, and the creaking, high above, of the roof beams in the wind. I called out his name, but my call found no response and, in the gloom, I could see no sign of Andrew anywhere.

I made my way up the nave towards the chancel. What shapes my straining eyes could make out were large, solid, inanimate – the preacher’s lectern, the stalls of the choir and, at the very far end, the altar itself. I reached the crossing where the transepts cut nave and chancel, and saw, through a gap in the carved wooden screen, that there was a light, a single candle, burning at the end of the aisle to my left. I called Andrew’s name again, and this time the silence that returned it seemed deeper. Slowly, I ascended the steps up to the aisle and began to walk towards the glimmering light. The sound of my boots on the tiled floor was unnaturally loud in my ears, and I could hear my own clothing rustle as if the wind were blowing through them. Every stirring, every noise in the place was emanating from me, and yet I knew that I was not alone. And I knew now where I was going: up ahead of me, rising out of the darkness in marble and alabaster, was the monument above Chichester’s tomb, that ornate manifestation of man’s earthly pride. I had been called to the altar upon which my cousin’s life blood had run and his dream of Ireland perished.

I reached out my hand and touched the creamy stone: it was pure and smooth and clean. Sir Arthur Chichester, late governor of Carrickfergus and Lord Deputy of Ireland, and his wife, Letitia, praying in effigy over the body of their baby son. I read the epitaphs carved into the stone beside them, of how Chichester had made the land flourish in peace, how he had subdued the wildest rebels, and through justice, gained an honoured name.

I remembered what Sean had told me of Chichester’s justice, his road to peace – that he had burnt the homes of the Irish, destroyed their crops to render them starving, and slaughtered the people, without regard for age, sex or quality. I felt within me a quiet fury that my cousin had had to die with this man’s image before his eyes. I spoke again through gritted teeth, quietly at first.

‘Andrew, are you here?’

Nothing.

Louder, then. ‘Andrew? This is no time or place for games. Andrew, I …’

Even as my words were echoing, unfinished, about me, I saw it: a flash of movement, of something shining out of something white. And then before I could understand it there was the sharp, cold tip of the knife in my neck and slicing to the bone. I grabbed out with my left hand, clutching fruitlessly at the sarcophagus as I fell. There was shouting, Andrew shouting my name; his voice was distant but coming closer. He was thundering down the nave, shouting out my name. I was helpless to do anything other than watch my own blood trickle down the creamy marble to the floor, and see the knife fall from the girl’s hand as she ran.