A Game of Sorrows

SIX Conferences in the Night

Only the dead slept in Carrickfergus that night. An endless eerie wailing of women, the keening, echoed through the house and the tolling hours of darkness. I felt myself the inhabitant of some pagan nightmare. Within half an hour of the departure of Finn O’Rahilly everyone who was not related to my family by blood had gone. I began to make my way to the balcony steps. As I did so, Andrew looked up. For a second, his face froze, and then he made the smallest movement of his head. The muscles in his face and neck tightened, and he formed his lips into a silent ‘No’ that brooked no misapprehension. I slunk back into the shadows, into my secret place.

Soon, he had appeared beside me. ‘You were about to do something very foolish.’

‘There are none left in the house that are not friends or family.’

He shook his head almost wonderingly at me.

‘Did you understand any of what the poet said?’

I nodded. ‘Most of it, I think.’

‘Then you need to understand that behind the face of every friend in this house may be the face of a foe. These people play a long game: they have been playing it since before you were born, or your mother either. I would not trust one of them with my horse, never mind my life. I advise you to adopt similar caution.’ He turned back down the steps. ‘Come with me; your grandmother is asking for you.’

As we approached my grandmother’s room, I discerned the sound of raised voices intermingled with the weeping of women from other places in the house. Eachan opened the door to us. Inside it was much more brightly lit than on the night of my grandfather’s death. Deirdre sat on a footstool by the fire, crouched over the embers as if she would never get warm, and Sean and Maeve were on their feet in the middle of the room. Sean was in a fury. ‘He has no knowledge of the country or the people. How should he begin to discover what we wish to know? Send me and I will soon bring you an answer, on the end of my sword if need be.’

Maeve remained calm. ‘You cannot go; I will not permit it. Too much rests on you. You have been cursed, to the risk of your life. You will stay here, until the curse is lifted.’

He shook his head in frustration and spoke with near contempt. ‘Curse! The man has been paid to do this!’

‘The poets have always been paid,’ she said calmly. ‘They have never been the less honoured for that.’

‘Finn O’Rahilly is the dregs of the poets. He will take his coin from whoever will pay him. He has no honour. You can lift the curse tomorrow; you can lift it now. Tell everyone of Alexander, tell them what nonsense this charlatan speaks. And then let me find who it is that has set him up to this …’

Her face was grey with anger now. ‘What do you know of the poets? “Dregs”? He sat as a boy at the feet of Mac an Bhaird himself! He might have accomplished many things; all you see is what he has been reduced to. Lift the curse? He has made it and only he can lift it. And I will send Alexander to him, to show himself, and to show the curse is ill-founded.’

‘Please, Grandmother …’

Maeve turned with venom upon her granddaughter. ‘You dare to speak? What is this to you? You have turned your back on this family. I have only allowed you into my house because your brother insisted upon it!’

Deirdre stood up now and showed herself the equal of the old woman. ‘You could not have stopped me. He was my grandfather. There are things I know that you would not wish to have known. You could not have stopped me coming here now.’

Maeve had opened her mouth to speak, but something in my cousin’s words silenced her. She looked at Deirdre with something approaching hatred.

Sean took a step towards his sister. ‘Deirdre, there are other forces at work here. O’Rahilly has been put up to this. I will …’

‘I will go to him,’ I interjected. ‘Just tell me where to go.’

Only now did any of them notice me. Sean opened his mouth to remonstrate, but my grandmother held up her hand.

‘You have had your say. Let your cousin speak.’

I spoke directly to Maeve. ‘I will go to this man and tell him he is wrong. I will tell him that my mother did not drown, but lived to bear me. Let him make what protest he likes then – his “curse” can have no validity. And when that pretence is stripped from him, he may be better induced to reveal who is behind this.’

Deirdre came over to me and took my hands in hers.

‘Alexander, you have only just come back to us. We have so much to put right, we three. You do not understand the risk you will be placing yourself in. Sean, who knows this country so well, was very nearly murdered by an assailant in the darkness. His life is still threatened, endangered. How could you, a scholar and a stranger here, hope to go where you must go, do what you must do, and return to us in safety? Do not risk your life on this fool’s errand.’

She had almost persuaded me. The call to me in her eyes, in the face that I had known a lifetime, almost reached me, but then her last words overturned the rest. I sought to reassure her.

‘It is because it is a fool’s errand that I go. The charms and incantations of your poets cannot touch me.’ I turned to my grandmother. ‘I suspect your purse will also be needed.’ Maeve nodded her agreement. ‘But understand that I do this for my mother’s sake, to find out who is threatening her family, who has such malice for you, for Sean and for Deirdre.’

She regarded me in her accustomed cold manner. ‘Do it for whatever reason pleases you. Eachan will go with you, to show you the way and to help you find O’Rahilly. His whereabouts are secretive, but messages can be got to him if you make yourselves known at Bushmills.’

Sean was prepared to countenance this, but his better mood was short-lived.

‘I will not go. Curse or no, Sean’s life has been threatened. I will not leave him. You must find someone else.’

Maeve was struck motionless in astonishment.

‘You’ll go where you’re told to go,’ said Sean.

Eachan looked him full in the face. ‘I will not,’ he said, and went to sit on the floor in a corner by the door, arms folded across his knees.

Sean cursed him and all his line in English and Irish and some hybrid of the two, with such vehemence that I almost expected one or other of them to have a seizure, but Eachan was not to be moved. ‘Then you cannot go,’ said my cousin, finally turning to me in frustration.

‘I will go with him.’ It was Andrew Boyd who had spoken.

‘I will take him by the new settlements, where you are not known, Sean, and where we are less likely to meet with the Irish. He can masquerade as a Scottish planter seeking his fortune, and I will play his servant. We will reach Coleraine safely that way and take our chances from there to Bushmills.’

Nobody said anything for a moment, but Deirdre’s face was ashen. Eventually she spoke. ‘Why are you doing this?’

‘Because I have had my fill. The sooner this is ended the better. It will be the last service I do this family. When it is over, I go my own way.’

Maeve looked at him. ‘Go with my blessing. You have never shown your father’s loyalty, but you might prosper, for a while. Now, I must go to the other women. Deirdre, you will come with me.’

‘No, not yet.’

‘As you please. You will hardly be missed.’ She did not look at me as she left; there were no parting words of love or farewell from my grandmother.

Sean ranted a few more minutes, at Eachan for his obstinacy and parentage, at me for my lack of gratitude – for what I do not know – at Andrew Boyd for his duplicity in taking my side, but eventually he ran out of curses and causes, and began to think. He told Eachan to make ready the two best horses from the stables, and fetch money for our journey, and then he turned to Andrew, and the curses of only a few moments ago were forgotten. ‘Pay no heed to my grandmother,’ he said. ‘She is an old witch. It is an honourable thing that you do and you will always have my gratitude for that.’

But there was no gratitude in Deirdre’s eyes. She stood before Andrew, looking at him a long moment before finally speaking. ‘Do you really hate me so much?’ Without waiting for a response, she went in the way of her grandmother. Andrew stood there, unmoving, unflinching, but I saw something in him break.

After she had left, Sean went over the plan for our trip. I was of little consequence for the most part of this, that was until my cousin revealed a plan that would require more audacity and a stronger nerve than I possessed: when we arrived at Coleraine, we were to go to the home of the Blackstones, where I was to be presented as Sean himself.

This took my attention. ‘Have you taken leave of your senses? No, but have you? These people will know within minutes of looking at me that I am not you, that is if their credulity survives the opening of my mouth.’

He laughed. ‘If I can be taken for you in Aberdeen, you will pass for me in Coleraine. These people do not know me from my grandfather’s horse. Other than Edward Blackstone, who is to be in Carrickfergus another two days, I met them only once, at Deirdre’s wedding. I arrived late. There had been more interesting – distractions – eh, Eachan? – on the road. I made my bow to the father, paid my compliments to the mother, and attempted to dance with each of the sisters, who were evidently half in fears, half in hopes that I would ravish them. The temptation was not great, I will tell you that. Not one of them speaks Irish, and your northern tones will sound little different in their ears from what they hear from the Ulstermen hereabout. The idea that you might not be me will not enter their heads.’

‘And what – for the sake of conversation – am I to tell them I am doing there? From what you have told me of them, I hardly think they will know the whereabouts of a Gaelic poet.’

He moved closer to me. ‘You are to say nothing whatsoever about the poet. I am not convinced that they are not behind the thing somehow. Tell them you have come with your steward to see to our late grandfather’s business in the town – for he had much trade with the planters at Coleraine. The Blackstones have no notion of hospitality, but they will have to let you stay. Andrew can go into the town and find out more about them, and you can observe the family itself.’

‘For what?’ I asked.

Sean raised his hands in a gesture of indifference. ‘Signs. Indications. Slips of the tongue. Anything that suggests they mean our family harm, or look to wrest our grandfather’s business from us. They will know well enough that I have no business head. Taking you for me, they may try to draw you into some swindle. Of course it may well be that they have nothing to do with it. Whoever is behind this clearly seeks to send our grandmother from her senses and see to it that, should I dodge further musket balls, I have no friends left.’

‘And to prevent your marriage to Roisin.’

He waved my words away. ‘That is something different. Remember: Edward and Henry Blackstone will leave here in two days’ time, so you must not tarry in Coleraine any longer.’

‘And then?’

‘I will get a message to a person who is known to me at Bushmills. He will take you to Finn O’Rahilly. Show the charlatan to his face what falsehoods he peddles, and with the contents of your purse you will learn something of who set him to it. And yet I doubt you will get as much from him as I could have done. I fear your techniques of persuasion will be more subtle than my own.’

I did not need to ask him what he meant. I looked at Andrew. ‘Can it be done?’

Andrew had been thinking it through. He did not take long to answer. ‘Yes, I believe it can be done.’

Sean raised an eyebrow. ‘This is how things stand, is it? You have roomed together five nights and now my place in my cousin’s esteem is usurped.’ He was trying to make light of it, but I could see in his eyes that he was hurt. It was the kind of hurt I used to see in the eyes of Archie Hay, if I should take myself off with other student friends for a day, to speak of things of scholarship in which he could feign no interest. Sean and Archie, they were the gilded ones. But there was a little truth in what he said, for I was beginning to feel that beneath the stubborn indifference to the world with which Andrew carried himself, there was a warmth and a well of friendship waiting, for those whom he might come to trust. And he was a man of integrity in whom sense would always be the master of emotion.

‘You cannot blame me, Sean,’ I said, ‘for seeking sound counsel of a fellow Presbyterian, and a Scot at that, against the schemes of an adventuring Irish scoundrel like yourself. What to you is a mere diversion might be a matter of some difficulty to more cautious men.’

He broke into a gradual smile and then laughed, slapping me on the back. ‘Caution be damned, Alexander. Two men who can face down Maeve O’Neill as you have both done care little for caution.’ All was well with him again, and even Andrew smiled, a smile that lifted five years from his face and showed a glimpse of the young man he must, not so long ago, have been.

Our humour was broken by the sound of approaching voices. ‘Murchadh,’ said Sean. I felt myself being bundled towards the garderobe and pushed through its door. ‘Under the seat,’ was all Andrew had time to hiss before pulling it closed behind me. I was in complete darkness, with very little room even to turn. I could hear Sean greeting Murchadh and his son Cormac by name in the room next to me. I groped around, almost knocking over the water-butt, until my hand found a lever under the lid of the seat. I depressed it and instantly a panel behind me opened and I was facing a recess in the wall. I stepped into it and pulled the panel shut behind me. A narrow slit in the stone afforded what meagre light the stars could offer, and all the air I had. There was not room to turn or sit, and the cold and damp had reached into my bones in moments.

Murchadh and his sons made very little effort to lower their voices, but they spoke quickly, and in the Irish tongue, and often more than one of them at a time, so I found it hard to follow what was said. That there was bad feeling between my cousin and Roisin’s father was evident. Her name was mentioned at an early point in their conference, the resolution of the matter was put off to another time. The younger men talked of harsh justice for the poet, but their father counselled caution, talking of honour, and his name, and disgrace and greater cursing. Sean kept his peace on the matter. It became clear that despite the current of animosity between them, Murchadh treated him as an equal and would not allow any of his sons to have the upper hand over my cousin. There was much talk of the kindred, of messengers, of ‘the Franciscan’, and of Dun-a-Mallaght, a name repeated several times, in lowered voices. It repeated itself in my head, against my will. My mind was translating where I would have preferred to remain in ignorance. Eventually, the name came to me in my own tongue: Dun-a-Mallaght: the Fort of the Curse.

After perhaps an hour, someone came into the garderobe to relieve himself. I was in terror that he would find and press the lever, by accident or design. I hardly dared breathe until I heard the waste washed down the outlet channel and the garderobe door open and shut once more. There I stood, freezing and numb, nauseous from the odours assailing me in that confined space, until the first hints of dawn began to filter into my tiny window, and Andrew Boyd came at last to release me from my prison.

‘I had begun to think I would never be let out, that my bones would be found many years hence, walled up in this privy.’ I sought to make light of it, but there had been times through the night when I had wondered if I should ever be taken from my recess alive, if the ghost of my mother’s child would haunt this house for ever.

‘Murchadh, Cormac and the rest have only just gone to their beds,’ he said.

‘What did they want?’

He shrugged. ‘I was dismissed as soon as they appeared.’

‘By Murchadh?’

‘By Sean.’

It was clear he would talk no further here, and when we re-entered my grandfather’s room, Sean was still there with Eachan, who was holding a bundle of clothing – finer by far than my own – for me. Sean handed me a long mantle of sheepskin and a pair of good boots. ‘They are my own, but they will fit you well, and I cannot send you out in the country in your scholar’s shoes.’ I looked down at my feet. William had berated me for some time about my want of elegance – a message, I knew, from his wife. The money was given to Andrew. Sean smiled. ‘These Scots will never waste a penny. You have too much of my Irish blood to be trusted with the purse. Boyd fears you will be induced to gamble it away, or worse.’

Andrew’s face was severe, but his eyes were crinkling in a smile. I was as anxious as any to lighten the mood of our parting. ‘I have never gambled in my life.’

My cousin looked genuinely appalled. ‘Then when you return to Carrickfergus, you must give me two weeks. Two weeks of your life before you return to your dour Scottish town and your teacher’s robes, and I will put right all that you have missed in your life, all that you have neglected, for who knows after that when we will meet again?’

I laughed. ‘I will give you two weeks, cousin, and perhaps it is I who will change you.’

‘And what I lack, you will be to me, and what you lack, that will I be to you. Keep safe, Alexander.’

He clasped me round the shoulders as he had done on our very first meeting, and wished me good fortune. ‘I wish Eachan was going with you, but he is a recalcitrant troll and you will have a pleasanter journey without him. And, withal, it is a good man you have with you in his place. Play my part well, but steer clear of those sisters for my sake: they are foul of face and ill of humour. Make no promises to them on my behalf.’

‘I will study to resist the temptation.’ And then, promising that I would be returned within the week, to share with him my adventures, I bade farewell to my cousin.