A Game of Sorrows

FIFTEEN A Council of Priests

I had never set foot in a Romish church before, but I had never known such relief at entering the house of God as I did on crossing the threshold of the ancient church of St Cuthbert, in the shadows of the castle. The mingled perfume of damp stone and incense caught in my throat and set me to coughing. Burning candles spread circles of light and some blessed warmth around where they stood, in sconces in the walls and in candlesticks of gold on altars at the front and down the side of the small church. There were no pews, but some elaborately carved and sumptuously upholstered oak chairs near the base of the main altar. A brazier burned in the near corner, and we carefully laid Andrew down there.

‘What is this place?’

The older priest took down his hood. He was tall, slightly stooping and with an aristocratic bearing. ‘Father Fintan MacQuillan,’ he said. ‘You are in the church of St Cuthbert, anciently St Murgan’s. You may take rest and sanctuary here for the night, until help can be brought to you in the morning.’

There was a comfort in hearing the old, old names. Despite the incense, and the golden candlesticks, and the ornate carvings, I felt I could rest easy a while in this place.

‘Thank you. My friend is much in need of rest.’

‘His wounds must be cleaned also. We can do something for him tonight, but for the rest, he will have to wait until you get to Bonamargy.’

I looked at Michael. ‘Why are we going to Bonamargy?’

‘Father Stephen will explain. Fintan has sent to Bushmills for him, he will be here before dawn. Now, Fintan,’ he said, turning to the old priest, ‘have you dry robes for us?’

Within the half-hour, while Fintan attended to Andrew, Michael and I had stripped and washed every inch of ourselves in freezing-cold water from the chapel well, and before getting into the coarse grey robes the priest had found for us I had been persuaded to rub myself with pungent ointments from a box brought from the priest’s own house.

‘What are these for?’ I asked, with less grace than I should have done. After my grandmother’s nocturnal attempt to baptise me into her faith, I had little trust in priests and their ointments.

‘They may do something to disguise your scent,’ Fintan replied. ‘Who knows, with their aid, and my old robes, you may throw them off yet.’

I felt something sink in my stomach. ‘The hounds. They are still after us.’

‘And will not give up,’ said Michael, ‘until they lose your trail.’

‘That is why you have been brought into the church,’ said Fintan, ‘rather than to my own house.’

‘Will they respect the sanctuary?’

‘The dogs will respect nothing,’ said Michael, ‘but the huntsmen will not dare trespass on the sanctuary beneath MacDonnell’s very walls. The town of Coleraine will take great care not to offend the Earl of Antrim.’

Andrew had woken while his wounds were being cleaned and dressed. He managed to sit up a little, and take some broth. I ate hungrily everything that was offered me. Though I had dried myself thoroughly and was now in clean clothes – the priest‘s robe and thick woollen hose – I felt the cold and damp still to the depth of my bones. The stars tonight were much as they had been on my last night in Aberdeen as I’d walked home from William Cargill’s house, promising myself that the next day I would secure my wife and set out on a mission to call others to the ministry of the Kirk. How then had that man come to be here, dressed in a priest’s robes, with holy oils rubbed into his skin, a fugitive fleeing a wolf-hunt? The trappings and tentacles of the world my mother had known before she had ever known me were closing in on me, and I prayed God for the strength and the faith to withstand them. In the place I now found myself, it seemed the borders between the spiritual and physical worlds were blurring, eliding. I tried to pull myself back to the world of the material, to what I could understand. My eye lighted upon Michael, who had taken up a position by a southwest window and was peering into the night for signs of our pursuers.

‘Why did you come to Coleraine? Why were you looking for me?’

He did not turn away from the window. ‘It was not to give you up to the Blackstones, you must believe that.’ After all that had just passed, I could not but believe him, yet I knew there was more. He breathed deep. ‘I came to warn you that Edward and Henry Blackstone were on their way back from Carrickfergus. And to tell you …’

He was searching for words he did not seem to have, and my patience was failing me.

‘Michael,’ I said, ‘what am I running from? They would not have gone to these lengths to track and bring to punishment a man who had masqueraded as his own cousin.’

‘No, they would not,’ he said quietly.

‘What then?’

He left off his window vigil. ‘Alexander, your cousin is dead.’

The warmth that had at last started to come into my hands and feet went in that moment as a sickening chill spread through me.

‘Sean?’

‘Yes.’

‘No.’

‘I am sorry. The Blackstones knew you could not have been Sean, because they knew he was dead. He was murdered on the night after your grandfather’s funeral. They rode hard for Coleraine as soon as the news became known. Deirdre refused to go with them.’

‘Is she safe?’

Michael looked at Andrew. ‘All I know is that she would not leave with her husband. Father Stephen will know more.’

I was shivering now, more than I had done on the cliffs, more than when I had first plunged into the moat at Coleraine. I wrapped my arms hard about myself but the shivering would not stop. I clamped my lips shut, tight, and bit down on my own cheeks to stop the scream that was rising from my stomach. Andrew lifted a hand but he could not reach me and it dropped again to the floor. It could not be so. God would not allow it to be so.

‘You have been deceived,’ I said to Michael at last. ‘Sean cannot be dead.’

‘Alexander, I am sorry …’

‘He cannot be dead. He was so …’ I could not finish it. Because he was so much alive. What cruel game of Providence was it that sent me on a fool’s errand after poets and grasping men, when my cousin, who had been forced to remain in our grandmother’s house, with his most trusted servant at his side, was murdered? How could Sean, who had Eachan, be dead?

Father Fintan was already lighting a candle at an altar, was already on his knees and praying, urgent words in Latin for the repose of my cousin’s soul, and words in Gaelic that I could not catch. He begged favour and mercy on some ‘cause’. I pulled my robe close and leant my head against the wall next to the brazier. Rest would not come, comfort would not come, only pain. I lay there, in a stupor of exhaustion and grief, hoping only for sleep or some other oblivion. As I passed into the world of dreams, my cousin’s laughing face was in my mind’s eye, and I drifted into sleep with the warmth of his voice wishing me a last ‘goodnight’.

I was awoken from turbulent dreams by a cacophony of shouting and barking, and a loud banging on the door of the church. It was still night. Father Fintan, who had evidently not slept, was up and drawing back the bolt on the door, Michael behind him with his pistol ready. The door opened and in blasted Father Stephen, who hastily slammed it behind him, holding it fast with his powerful frame until Fintan got it bolted. ‘Mother of God! The beasts would have had my throat.’ He knelt then and crossed himself before the altar.

Michael had returned to his place at the window. ‘They have been circling two hours, almost since we got here.’

I had come to myself fully now, and struggled to stand up. The old friar seemed to notice me for the first time. A light came into his eyes and was quickly extinguished; his face fell and he walked towards me, uttering some Gaelic prayer. He put his arms out and brought me into his huge embrace and wept, and I knew that for a moment he had thought I was Sean.

The dogs were still barking outside, and there came another loud banging on the door. I had been ordered down beside Andrew, and a blanket hastily thrown over the two of us, but I could still see something of what passed in the doorway. Outside was a man with a torch, more behind him, and baying hounds at the back. ‘In the name of the city of Coleraine, I demand entrance here.’

Fintan raised himself up to his full dignity, and I would not have believed such a roar could come from the old man’s throat. ‘And in the name of God and of the Earl of Antrim, I tell you to remove yourselves and your pack of dogs from this hallowed ground. You trample on the graves of MacDonnell!’

The man took a step back, clearly shaken, then made another attempt to hold his ground. ‘We have reason to believe that you harbour two fugitives from …’

‘Off!’ roared Fintan, and even the dogs jumped back with a yelp. ‘The city of Coleraine has no jurisdiction here. If you doubt it, take it up with MacDonnell himself!’

I heard the horsemen outside, cursing, mount their beasts and call their dogs. I looked at the old priest in a wonder of admiration, then saw that he was breathing heavily and his hands were shaking. Stephen passed him a flask he carried at his hip, and the old man drank gratefully. When he had passed it back he spoke to Michael.

‘Go through my house and take the passage to the castle. Tell them that we need a guard, one man on horseback, with MacDonnell’s standard, at dawn, to take Stephen Mac Cuarta and others to Bonamargy.’

Stephen knelt down by me. He put his hand gently to Andrew’s forehead, which was now cold and clammy. ‘There is one of our order at Bonamargy who has the skills he needs. All will be well with your friend.’

I opened my mouth to speak but he shook his head briefly. ‘And you and I will talk when we leave here. There is much I realise you want to know, but first there are matters I must discuss with Fintan that cannot wait. Take some rest now: you will need it for the days to come.’

It was good counsel, and I tried to take it. I lay down behind Andrew, for warmth for both of us. The beads of sweat that had formed on his forehead were cold to the touch, and his face and hands were like wax. The gashes on his face and temples had been cleaned, but gaped angrily, and I knew they would need to be stitched soon if the wounds were not to become infected. He was murmuring in his sleep, words I could not understand.

The two older priests were close to the altar, at the far end of the church. Stephen had also lighted a candle, and he too prayed for the repose of Sean’s soul – as if the words of man, however earnest, could change the foreordained judgement of God. Through the pre-dawn gloom, in the light of the candles which were steadily burning down, I watched the two men draw their heads together and talk. The words I caught were words I had heard before: Murchadh, Louvain, MacDonnell, Deirdre, Rathlin, Macha, Dun-a-Mallaght. I could make sense of none of it, and was glad when Michael reappeared and told us to make ready, for our escort waited without in the burying ground, and it would soon be dawn.

An extra blanket was brought for Andrew, and Father Fintan laid a crucifix at his neck and tried to press on me another. I held it back out to him; the man had treated us with Christian charity, and we might have perished on the black, wet rock of Dunluce otherwise, but there was a limit beyond which I could not allow myself to go, and I knew in my belief that I spoke for Andrew also. ‘I need none of your superstitious charms, and nor does he. The will of God cannot be changed by the wearing of a trinket.’

Father Stephen looked up from his examination of Andrew’s ankle. ‘It is not the will of God you need to concern yourself with. There are eighteen miles to Ballycastle. We will pass many people on our way. If they are to believe you to be friars of my order you must look like friars of my order. And if you think the crucifix but a trinket, it will cost you nothing to wear it.’

Michael had asked at the castle for a pony and cart also. ‘Your friend is strong built. It is not a burden I would like to carry far.’ Tall and slim, with shiny locks that were almost black covering a high brow, he looked to be of a studious disposition, better suited to the life of the Jesuit than the eternal roamings of the Franciscans, and although he could run like a deer, I doubted in truth whether he could have helped me carry Andrew five miles, still less the eighteen that we had to go. Father Stephen was a different proposition entirely: he might have been nearly forty years older than Michael, but he had the strength and the miles behind him of an old soldier, and I had the impression he could have carried Andrew to Carrickfergus and back if need be.

The burial ground was deserted now, save the escort waiting at the porch. The tide was going out, and the sound of the sea was like a retreating horde. Looking back at the castle rocks, the massive gorges and gullies that had been cheated of their prey last night, I uttered another silent prayer of thanks for our deliverance. Andrew, on his pallet, had drifted back to wakefulness for a moment, and was mumbling, a run of words that made little sense. I went closer and told him to lie peaceful, but still he strained to sit up, to see something. He was looking upwards, at some point in the castle walls.

‘Please no,’ I muttered in spite of all I knew to be sane or godly. ‘Please God, no.’

‘Do you see her?’ he said at last. ‘Do you see Maeve MacQuillan?’

On the road to Bushmills a woman came out of her cabin and beseeched me to say a prayer over her sick child. ‘A word to St Lucia, father, that she might beg the lord’s mercy on my girl. Only a word, father.’ I froze, held fast by panic and indecision, as she clung to my robe.

Stephen put up the reins and got down. Gently taking the woman’s arm and leading her back towards her hovel, he said, ‘That fellow’s Latin is so bad, the saint would know not one word in ten that he says. Let me put up a word for your child – Lucia and I are acquainted of old.’

Three minutes later he was out again and we were back on the road.

‘How is the child?’ I asked.

‘She will be in the arms of the Mother of God before darkness falls.’ His face was grim, and he said no more until we had begun the gentle descent to the bridge across the river Bush. ‘I have business to see to here; it will not want more than an hour or two of our time, but I doubt your friend can wait that long. There is one of our order who is of the caste of the fir leighs; his family have been doctors to Irish chieftains for many generations. What little their learning left out, he made up for in study while we were at Louvain. He will attend to the wounds and the leg injury, and see to the fever.’

We crossed the bridge and Stephen brought the cart to a halt at a stone mill on the right bank of the river. The smell of malted barley hung heavy in the air. The waters of the Bush flowed pure and clear past the mills and out towards the sea. A man in a leather apron came out and greeted the two Franciscans by name, and nodded to me.

Stephen gestured towards Andrew. ‘Michael will take this one, under escort, to Gerard at Bonamargy. There is no time to be lost.’

The still man nodded, the look on his face suggesting he thought there would be little Gerard could do for Andrew in any case. He stole another glance at me. ‘I thought for a moment the dead walked. You had better keep that one out of sight.’

‘Have no fears on that score. I value his life.’

Stephen gave his instructions to Michael, who had now taken up the reins, and to the escort, but when I set off to walk beside them he called me back.

‘You must stay with me. We have much to talk about, and I have sent a message to Finn O’Rahilly; I am taking you to him at dusk. You will see your friend at Bonamargy tomorrow.’

I laid my hand on Andrew’s brow. It was slicked with sweat and his cheeks were burning now. His whole body was shaking under its blanket, and he moaned and mumbled words that were not words.

‘You can do nothing for him,’ said Stephen. ‘No more than he can do for you. You must see the poet, and O’Rahilly will consent to this one time. Let Michael take him now.’

With a heavy heart I realised I had no choice. I had to place myself in Stephen’s hands, and leave Andrew, struggling for life as he was, at the mercy of subversive priests.

I rested while Stephen went in to talk to the still man, and wondered what his business with him might be, but I was learning that the Franciscan would let out knowledge like a length of rope. He would give me only what I needed to cling on to: the rest he would keep hidden in the robes of his order. I did not ponder it long, and passed into sleep instead. Drifts of their conversation came to my semi-slumbering mind, they talked of stores and supplies in the field, but I did not care enough to listen. The hours spent in sodden clothing began to exact their price, however, and I was taken with a coughing fit. The conversation stopped and the priest was through the door again in a moment.

‘So, you are wakened? I would have thought you would sleep longer, but you Presbyterians do not much hold with rest and comfort, they tell me.’

‘Then they tell you wrong. I crave both, but there is none here.’

He assessed me silently for a moment. ‘Perhaps there is an aid to it though.’ He called something to the still man and in a moment the fellow brought us two small glasses filled with a clear amber liquid. I let the whisky warm its way from my tongue to my body and mind, relax my bones, expand my thoughts.

‘Tell me what happened to my cousin,’ I said at last.

He sighed, and refilled his own glass from the flask that had been left with us. He sipped carefully, then he pursed his lips and sucked in hard, tipping the whole glassful down without giving it chance of pause in his mouth. And then he told me what had happened to my family on the night of my grandfather’s funeral.

‘No one saw the girl, but Sean took it into his head that the note was from Macha. He would not let Eachan go with him, telling him to stay with Deirdre and your grandmother. But of course, Eachan did go after him. He followed him until he saw him turn in to St Nicholas church. He would have followed him there, but a moment after Sean entered, he saw a young woman, heavily wrapped against the cold, emerge from behind one of the gravestones and follow him. Satisfied that all was as it should be, Eachan left and returned to your grandmother’s house, to watch over the women there. He was not altogether easy at leaving Sean, and his unease grew as the night wore on. Sometime before dawn, leaving the house under guard of Murchadh and his sons, he went back to the church. All was silent, and he could see no one, but a light burned in the Donegall aisle and he went to it.’ Here the priest filled his glass and emptied it again. ‘There he found Sean’s body sprawled across Chichester’s memorial, his head almost severed from his neck.’ Against my will, I pictured the scene. I had never set foot in that or any church in Carrickfergus, but my mind forced the images on to me; suggestions of candlelight, marble, blood and silence.

Stephen’s voice grew bitter. ‘Eachan lifted him in his arms, as if he had been a fallen child, and brought him home. He laid your cousin down on his bed, and cleaned his murdered body as he wept. And so was Sean betrayed.’

My voice was almost dead in my throat. ‘Betrayed in what?’ I asked at last.

He looked up at me from his empty glass and studied my face a long moment. ‘In everything his life should have been. In everything that was before him to do. In everything that mattered.’

‘How do you know all this?’

‘Your grandmother’s priest sent word to Bonamargy. He fears she will go out of her mind for grief. The Blackstones were declaring they would leave for the North in the morning – not a moment to lose in moving on your grandfather’s business. Deirdre was in a hysteria, and refused to go with them. Cormac O’Neill and his brothers took her, in their protection, to one of their father’s strongholds. Eachan was fit to kill any who tried to come near to Sean’s body. The house is in a turmoil of despair.’

But there was something more. I asked the question slowly, afraid of the answer I knew would come. ‘Why did the Blackstone women cry out that I was a murderer?’

He was hesitant to begin and poured himself a third glass from the flask and me a second. ‘Your grandmother, as I told you, has been driven from her senses by the curse of Finn O’Rahilly and all that has followed. She has never been a kind or loving woman. Quick to suspect and slow to trust, swift to accuse and never forgiving. She was murmuring that she had brought it all upon her own head, and telling, to any who would listen, the story of Diarmuid and the boar.’ He paused a moment, a sad smile on his face. ‘Tell me,’ he said, ‘did Sean never tell you the tale of Diarmuid and the boar?’

‘Never,’ I replied.

He nodded, as if he had expected such a response. ‘And I’ll wager your mother never did either?’

‘No,’ I said, ‘she didn’t.’

‘Then I’ll tell you. Diarmuid was a warrior, of the Fianna of Finn McCool, the god-king. Diarmuid had a half-brother, the offspring of an illicit union of his mother and his father’s steward. When the child was born, the husband took it and dashed it against the rocks. But Diarmuid’s foster-father took pity on the bastard child, and through magic, brought it back to life in the shape of a boar. This creature dedicated the rest of its life to the pursuit and killing of its half-brother. There came the time when Diarmuid was tricked into joining the Fianna in a boar hunt. At the climax of the hunt, the boar fatally gored Diarmuid, just as he was driving his spear into its heart. At the moment of death, the beast transformed at last into its human form, and Diarmuid saw that it was his brother.’

‘A fine fable,’ I said, when I realised it had come to its end and its moral had not presented itself. ‘But what is it to my grandmother? Why are you telling it to me?’

He looked me steadily in the eye. ‘That you might think on it, as I have been.’

‘I am not in the humour for riddles,’ I said.

There was a long silence before he spoke again. ‘Alexander, the reason that you were pursued from Coleraine, that you are pursued still, is that your grandmother has put it out, has called down judgement from the heavens, that it was you who murdered your cousin.’

I felt the glass drop from my hand and saw the golden liquid seep into the rushes on the floor.