A Game of Sorrows

SEVENTEEN The Cursing Circle

They had said it often enough: she was going mad. Finn O’Rahilly and his curses, Deirdre and her vision of Maeve MacQuillan, grief over the husband she had deceived for so long. And now the loss of Sean, her hope, her future. But what madness could create in her heart this hatred of me?

My mind was fracturing, and my head and eyes ached as I struggled to keep hold of what I thought I had understood. All my life, I had not known my cousin, and then I had known him, and loved him. I could look in a glass and see his living image, but he was dead. I had played his part, I had been Sean FitzGarrett in the eyes of others, I had walked in his very boots, and all the while he had been dead. The grandfather I had never known had loved me. The grandmother I knew despised me. I had come here for Sean, abandoned all that I knew and all that knew me, for Sean, but there was no Sean now, only Alexander. The grief that many years ago had threatened to rip me apart when I had learned of the death of Archibald Hay had hunted me down across the Irish Sea, and found me once more. And if ever Alexander Seaton saw Scotland again, it would be from Dunluce, from the Hanging Hill. I would never look again on the face of the woman I loved, never know what it was to touch her. Oh, God help me. The man in the clothes of a priest, hung round with the trappings of idolatry, calling on his God.

Stephen reached a hand out to my shoulder. His voice was gentle, but urgent. ‘We must tarry here no longer, Alexander, if we are to be at Kilcrue before sunset.’ And so, within the half-hour, I found myself on the road again. I had passed the middle of the day in sleep, and was again walking towards the night. Favoured words of my counsellor and friend Mr Gilbert Grant, late schoolmaster of Banff, came to me: ‘Yet a little while is the light with you, walk while ye have the light, lest darkness come upon you: for he that walketh in darkness knoweth not whither he goeth.’ Blind at the end, these had been the last words to pass the old man’s lips.

Upwards, away from the sea we went. The ground became difficult underfoot, bog and heather, and in time we entered woods once more, ancient woods of oak, hazel and willow. As I thrust my staff into the ground with every new step forward, I struggled to remember why I was here now, why I had come to seek out Finn O’Rahilly. My cousin was dead, and there was little in me that cared now for the poet’s ramblings or his curses. And yet his voice came clearer to my mind, the words pulling at me. ‘All these things will come to pass. Your grandson will soon lie with his fathers, in the cold chambers of the dead.’ Sean was dead and the curse was no longer rambling, no longer a malevolent retelling of what everyone already knew: what O’Rahilly had predicted had begun to come to pass. I had to set aside my resentments and my griefs, and accomplish what I had come here to do. I must summon my determination and marshal my thoughts: what did I know, and what must I ask?

My grandmother had gone to O’Rahilly, to hire him to declaim at Deirdre’s wedding. Maeve had insisted upon it, and, in the face of her own granddaughter’s protests, her will had won out. The poet had accused and insulted Maeve, my mother, Deirdre, dishonoured Murchadh’s name, derided his aspirations, humiliated his daughter. He had exposed Sean’s secrets and foretold his death, and it had come to pass. And yet he did not know about me. Who had paid him, who had put him up to all this, and what was their end?

We came, at length, to a clearing in the wood, and at the edge of the clearing was the ruin of an ancient church. For the first time in many miles, I looked about me properly. What I had thought to be random boulders and stones were not – they were set, carefully, in a circle at the entrance to the overgrown burial yard of the church, and at their centre stood a stone, upright, thin, that came almost to my shoulder, inscribed on it a simple cross.

‘What is this place?’ I said. The birds were no longer in song or sight, and the air had grown cold and still.

‘Kilcrue,’ he said at last. ‘The Cursing Circle.’

I put down my staff and walked towards the centre, to where the stone stood. The burial ground was so near and overgrown. I had never liked burial grounds. The place reeked of the knowledge of death: a once holy place that was holy no more. Unwittingly, I put my hand to my neck and felt for the coarse wood and moulded metal of the cross that hung there.

‘Tell me about the Cursing Circle,’ I said.

‘There is little I can tell you.’ I noticed he took care to keep outside the ring of stones. I was in too far now to do the same.

‘Tell me why it is so called.’

He thought out his words with care. ‘It is said that these places were used in pagan rituals in ancient times.’

‘What sort of rituals?’

He caught a breath, and spoke again, slowly. ‘It is said that the stone, the cross, before it became a cross, was perhaps an altar …’

A sacrificial altar. I felt the blood freeze in my veins. ‘And the name?’ I insisted. ‘What is the meaning of the name?’

‘It is the place of cursing, where curses are laid by the poets. It is the home of Finn O’Rahilly.’

The snap of a twig underfoot from the direction of the ruined church took my attention and I turned towards it to see Finn O’Rahilly, more gaunt than I had remembered, standing at the entrance to the circle. He looked at me and then at Stephen. ‘What trick is this, old priest? What game is this you seek to play me in?’

‘No trick, no game,’ answered the Franciscan. ‘Simply the man I told you wished to come.’

The poet stepped back, steadying his hand on a jutting rock and never taking his eyes from me. ‘This man is dead.’

I advanced a step towards him. ‘No, not dead. Death has not found me yet. I know it is a matter you take some interest in. What do you know of my cousin’s death?’

He held his ground this time, but more colour drained from his face. ‘You have no cousin.’

‘My name is Alexander Seaton, and I am the cousin of Sean O’Neill FitzGarrett and of his sister Deirdre. I was called to Ulster by my grandmother Maeve O’Neill to tell you that your curse has no truth in it. I am the son of Grainne FitzGarrett and my grandmother’s line will end not with Sean, but with me.’

He sat down, breathing heavily, on one of the flat stones of the outer circle. His knuckles were white as his fingers gripped the staff in his hand. ‘I was not told this.’

‘What were you told?’

He opened his mouth to answer and then thought the better of it. The silence was heavy in the stillness of the circle. Stephen spoke to me in a low voice. ‘I have brought you here as I promised I would, but now I must go. I have business to attend to tonight that will not keep. I will return in the morning and bring you to Bonamargy. Use your time well. Master your anger and use your mind more than your tongue to draw out of him what you need. And remember the contents of your purse.’

I had not bargained for this. I did not greatly like the knowledge that I was in this priest’s power, or that I had left Andrew Boyd to the mercy of his companions.

‘Wait but half an hour and I will come with you; it cannot take longer to find out what this man knows. I have no desire to spend the night in this godless place.’

‘Have you no faith, then?’ he asked.

‘I have faith in my God,’ I said, ‘but there are forces at work here that come from a darkness I do not comprehend.’

‘Then you must pray for the strength to withstand them, and I will pray that also for you.’ He said no more, and reminding me again that he would return for me the next morning, he disappeared into the trees.

A wind had got up, and the coldness of it whistled through the branches and around the stones that encircled me. Finn O’Rahilly had risen to his feet.

‘Do you stay?’ he said.

‘I have no choice. I do not know this country in the light, never mind the darkness. I will trespass on your hospitality this one night. I have no greater wish to be here than you have to have me here. Tell me what I need to know, show me a corner where I might lie, and I will trouble you no more.’

He stared at me levelly with his startling blue eyes.

‘You have been sent to me that I might lift the curse on your family?’

‘That is what my grandmother wishes – although the worst of it has already come to pass. Yet it might comfort her and my still-living cousin to know the curse to be lifted, so mumble what words you must, that I may not lie to them when I tell them you have done what they begged for with their purses to do.’

He glanced for a moment at the pouch I had now set at my feet, then returned his gaze to me. ‘You think the worst has come to pass? How little you know this place, or the people whom you claim as yours.’

‘I claim no one,’ I said. ‘I have been claimed, but those who had a right to do so have almost all gone. When I am finished my business here with you, I too will be gone from this country.’

‘As if you had never been.’

‘As if I had never been.’

He seemed a little reassured by this thought and sat down again on the rock. He motioned towards another, and I sat down and waited. There was a great stillness about him, as if an hour, a day, passed here like this would be as nothing. It was clear he would give me no help: I must begin myself.

‘My grandmother and my cousin Deirdre came to you here, did they not?’

He nodded.

‘Who else came?’

‘No one.’

‘My grandmother wished you to give a blessing at Deirdre’s wedding, but Deirdre was against it.’

Again he nodded.

‘Why did she not want it?’

‘They did not argue of it before me. Your cousin may not like our ways, the ways of your grandmother, and of me, but she knows them well and respects them, although she does not fully understand their power. She would not dishonour your grandmother or me by arguing about it openly before me.’

‘And yet you know she did not want it?’

He smiled slowly. ‘I have spent long years in study of words and of people. You must know a person before you can know the words you must use for them. Ever since I was a child, I have watched people. I watched your uncle, Phelim, your mother too. And when she came here, I watched your cousin. I watched her eyes and the small movements of her face and her body. She did not want what your grandmother wanted. She thinks she can take the road of the new English, and find her place in Ireland. She is wrong. I tried to tell her she was wrong …’

‘And so my grandmother paid you to do her bidding – to do what?’

‘To tell the glories of her family through the generations, to extol her lineage above others, to assert its claims for supremacy in Ulster, to bless this new union that it might further those ends.’

‘And of the Blackstones? What were you to say of them?’

‘The English ones?’

‘The family of the groom,’ I said, flatly.

‘They were not to be mentioned at all.’

‘But the oration you made was something quite different.’

‘There are times when the duty of the poet is to point out the errors of his patron, to set him on the right path, to give warning to others that they might not …’

‘That may well be,’ I broke in, ‘but that is not what happened at Deirdre’s wedding. You were paid by someone to …’

He was on his feet. ‘Do not insult me.’

‘I do not insult you. You know the truth better than I. You have sold the dignity of your calling. My mother schooled me well enough in the understanding of the exalted place of the poets, the years of training required, the honour you were accorded in noble households. Where is your honour to be found now?’ I threw the pouch at him. ‘At the bottom of a greasy purse.’

‘Do not presume to cite me your mother on honour. A whore who abandoned Ireland at the first opportunity. What would she know of noble households, she who rolled in her servant’s bed?’

His last words dropped like stones onto the carpet of fallen leaves around us, and lay there heavy and still. A bolt of coldness ran through my body.

‘What are you saying?’

‘Ask those who remember. I can tell you no more.’

What was he saying? My father had never been a servant. He had been a craftsman, and a soldier. I had not been born until a year after she had returned with him to Banff.

‘Are you trying to say I am not my father’s son?’ I said.

‘Is your name truly Seaton? That was the name of the man they said she left with, so you are probably his son.’

Disgust with the poet swamped me; I was growing tired of puzzles and riddles, of things that claimed to be other than what they seemed. I wanted to root out the knowledge I had come for and leave. Remembering the words of the Franciscan, ‘Master your anger,’ I swallowed down the rising bile. ‘Who paid you to curse my family?’

‘I was honouring a patron, I was …’

‘Enough of honour. You were paid. Who did it, and to what end?’

He shook his head. ‘You think that I do not know that I am degenerate from my forefathers? Do you think I would be here in this desolate place, selling my talent and my worth, if I could have the place of my forefathers? We are persecuted by the English, who fear our power over the minds of the people, we are made destitute by the destitution and banishment of our lords, those who once feted us, we are abandoned by those who remain and do not give us succour for fear of falling out of favour with the English masters at whose knees they crawl. So I scrape what living I can with my words and my mind, for I have not been taught any other. But I have my honour and I will not betray my patron to you.’

‘You betrayed my grandmother.’

‘I spoke only the truth.’

‘For a murderer,’ I said. ‘My cousin is dead and you foretold it.’

‘He would have been dead soon enough anyway. Look about you. Look at this country. Listen to what is said. Watch. There will be death. But I tell you this: the person who had me curse your cousin will not be the person who murdered him.’

‘How do you know this?’

‘I told you, I watch people, and I know love.’

I called from my memory the images of the night of my grandfather’s wake. I sought out the poet, as he ate, drank, as he stood to declaim our family’s fall. Who had he watched, where had his gaze landed? Faces, faces, faces, all around. But my mind had been taken up entirely with his words, and my memory would not tell me that he had looked on any of them.

His voice broke into my searching. ‘You must forget this now. You must learn the lesson of the Cursing Circle: it has no end.’

There was no more to be had from him and I got up in dejection, leaving the money pouch on the ground beside him. I could hear the steady crinkle and splash of a stream running nearby and sought it out, to slake my thirst. The nuts were just bursting from an overhanging hazel and I took them gratefully, with brambles from the bushes. I looked around me for somewhere I might find good shelter and lay my head for the night, but all was damp or jagged underfoot, and would afford me little comfort. I made my way back to the clearing, where Finn O’Rahilly still sat as I had left him, the pouch untouched at his feet.

‘My home is in the church,’ he said, indicating the ruin from which he had emerged. ‘You may spend the night there; there are clean rushes in the corner of the east wall; you will be dry and warm by the hearth. You would not be the first visitor to take rest here before returning to the world. There is a candle and flint in a niche above the bedding. I will not disturb you.’

For want of an option, I thanked him, and sought out a corner for myself in the ruined church. Much of the roof had gone, and what little remained was of old thatch. When the elements were at their worst there can have been few places of true shelter in the shell of the building, but the corner by the hearth protected me from the advances of the east wind, and the night was dry. It was almost dark. I lit the candle I had found in the niche, and lay down amongst the rushes, wishing I had Sean’s heavy mantle about me now. I flinched as a bat swooped down from a rotting beam above my head and swept out into the night. I had never liked the creatures. I had always had a terror that they would entangle themselves in my hair. I was glad now of my monk’s hood and pulled it up about me. Other creatures scuttled around me, in the rushes, across the stone floor. The noises of the wood seemed to come closer as evening advanced further into night.

O’Rahilly himself sat in the doorway, looking outwards beyond the clearing into the darkness of the wood. I wondered what he was seeing, what he was remembering, the young boy who had sought sanctuary and training with the last of the poets when Phelim was in his prime and my mother in her bloom; what he had known before the cause was lost and the heroes fled, what trials had brought him here, to cling to the last remnants of his dignity in this desolate place. I wondered if he had ever had a family, loved a woman … For a while I had thought he might be sleeping, but his eyes were open, and every so often his lips moved in some silent speech. The last remnant of his race.

‘Tell me a poem,’ I said into the silence.

He did not move and so I asked him again.

‘Why do you want to hear a poem?’

‘Because I want to know the art of it, the life. I want to know what my forefathers knew, all those generations that will be lost now, in me.’

‘Hear then “The Downfall of the Gael”.’ And the same low, clear, powerful voice that I had heard on the night of my grandfather’s wake went out into the night.

As his voice carried to me, the faces of my family – of those who were dead and gone and those who were now left, in distress and abandoned to fear – came before me. The face of the pilgrims Stephen, and Michael, came before me; Deirdre, with her vision of death; Murchadh and his sons came before me, with Maeve leading their decimated hopes and empty dreams. The memory of myself and Andrew, in our desperate flight to Dunluce, came to me with such force that I had to remind myself that that night was past. I wished I had never spoken.

After a moment, O’Rahilly came back into the church and went to a chest out of which he lifted some garment I could not see. Without so much as turning his head to look at me, he then went out of the door and walked through the circle, crossing himself as he passed the centre stone, and out into the woods. I laid my head down upon the rushes and prayed for that lost man and his lost brothers, and it was all I could do not to forget my religion and ask God’s mercy on those of my blood, of this race, who had gone to Him before me.

I closed my eyes and wished for sleep. If it came, it came only lightly, for there was not one moment when I was not aware of the rustling and scuttling of creatures on the ground, the beating and swooping of things in the air, and the creaking of the trees in the wind. And then, into it all, came a sound I had never heard before, but knew; a sound that should not have been in these woods: a howling. I stood up cautiously and quietly snuffed out the candle, which had burnt very low. Hardly daring to breathe, I pressed myself as far back against the wall of the church as I could, and waited. A cloud passed from the face of the moon at the top of the trees, and I watched in a kind of terror as the wolf slowly crossed the circle, pausing at the centre to sniff the air. It howled once again and, looking for a long moment in the direction of the church, walked on, in search of its brothers.

I did not sleep after that, but stood at the edge of the burial ground keeping watch for I knew not what. The bats swirled from tree to tree, an owl hooted somewhere in the woods. I was startled by a movement amongst the stones of the burial ground, but it was nothing more than a solitary fox. I tried to turn my mind from thoughts of what might have happened in this place before the Christianity of Patrick had claimed it for God, but the more I tried to find consolation amongst the scriptures I had by heart, the more my mind ran to the powers of the Devil, to the foul and dreadful deeds committed in his name, to the paganism, the baals, celebrated wherever the light of the gospel did not shine. My mind ran to what Sean had said, long ago now, it seemed, but in truth not so long ago, as I had mocked the superstitions of his people, of my people. He had told me of the attempt made on his life as he rode alone at night, and of his fear then, of the powers of darkness and the spirits of the world beyond, and I had scorned them. ‘These forces may have retreated from your land,’ he had said, ‘but they have a home yet in ours, and they are not ready to be vanquished.’ I wished I could have told him now that I understood.

Where Finn O’Rahilly had gone, and if he had encountered the wolf, I did not know. He had had no light with him, taken no staff for travelling, no food or drink that I could see. As my eyes became more accustomed to the darkness, and my ears to the natural sounds of the night, my body began to relax a little, and I could see perhaps how a man for whom the world has little further use might eke out his days in a place such as this. But surely that fate would not be mine; surely my grandmother’s madness could not take hold in the minds of reasonable men? I wondered if Finn O’Rahilly had gone to report me to the authorities – whatever authorities there were that would take the word of one such as he – but I saw that the pouch of money lay still on the ground, unopened, where he had left it.

Gradually, I became aware of a new sound in the night, the sound of horses. Not many horses, not the great wolf-hunt that had pursued me from Coleraine, but perhaps two or three beasts and their riders, moving cautiously through the wood, coming closer. I moved quickly and quietly back into the church, found candle and flint again and got myself some light. There was nothing amongst Finn O’Rahilly’s few belongings with which I might defend myself, and so I committed myself to prayer.

At last the riders emerged from the forest and came to a silent halt at the edge of the circle. What little I could see of the outline of their forms against the trees told me that these were not the Blackstones, the men of Coleraine. The horses were different, somehow; the set of the men, their clothing different; all three were dressed as Sean had been the first time I had seen him. I was not left long to wonder, for a strong voice rang out, demanding in Irish,

‘Show yourself, O’Rahilly. Step out of your sanctuary and meet your fate.’

I emerged from the church into the darkness and held up my light to look into the faces of three men. The two younger sons of Murchadh O’Neill, and another, who by the look of him was a kinsman. For a moment there was silence, even the creatures of the night seemed to stop in their movement, hold their breath. And then the youngest of the three cried out in terror, startling his own horse and those of the others.

‘Holy mother of God,’ said the lead rider slowly, crossing himself. He regarded me for a long moment and then spoke.

‘What are you?’

‘I am a man.’

‘It is the spirit of Sean risen. Let us leave this place. Ciaran, let us go, before we are damned.’

‘This is no spirit.’ Ciaran O’Neill turned his eyes once more on me. ‘I ask again. What are you?’ He edged his horse forward, but those of the two others shied back from the stones and would come no nearer.

‘I am Alexander Seaton.’

‘You are Sean O’Neill FitzGarrett risen from the dead!’

Again Ciaran chided his young kinsman. He spoke once more to me. ‘Whatever your name, you are of the O’Neills. What are you to the O’Neills?’

And so once again, slowly, in English and in a clear voice, I told my lineage.

‘Grainne died.’

‘Yes,’ I said, ‘she died. When I was seventeen years old, and she had been safe landed in Scotland eighteen years.’

‘And she told no one of your birth?’

‘My grandmother …’

‘That would be right. The old bitch. And now?’

‘Now?’

‘Who knows of you now?’

‘What is that to you?’

‘This is not a game, Scotsman, and if it were, the cards would be in my hand. You would do well to answer what you are asked.’

I said nothing and held firm to my staff, as if guarding the church. Beneath my priest’s robes, my heart pounded in terror.

Ciaran got down from his horse and the others did the same, careful to keep a pace behind him, casting me glances as if to ascertain that I truly was corporeal. ‘You do better to trust me than to make an enemy of me,’ he said, venturing a smile at me for the first time. ‘I am Ciaran O’Neill, son of Murchadh. We have come for the poet. Stand aside and let us pass.’

‘He is not here.’ I was glad for a moment for their attention to shift from myself.

‘Where is he hiding?’

‘I do not know. He left a few hours ago and has not returned.’

It did not take them long to make a search of the ruined church. They cursed their frustration in Irish, and then reverted to English, to treat with me. ‘And what are you doing here? Who has sent you?’

‘There were things I wished to know from him, information I wished to have.’

One drew a knife from the sheath round his neck, and stepping closer to me slowly raised the blade to my throat. Ciaran did nothing to stop him. ‘What is your business with O’Rahilly?’

‘I came here to find out who paid him to curse my family.’

‘Who brought you here?’

‘To Kilcrue?’

‘To Ireland.’

‘Sean.’

‘Safe enough in saying that now, for he is dead.’

I ground out my words. ‘He was sent by my grandmother to fetch me from Scotland, with some idea that when he saw me O’Rahilly would lift the curse.’

Ciaran laughed. ‘He told you that, did he?’

‘Why else would they have brought me here?’

‘I would give much to know that, and I suspect my father would also.’

‘Our father will know well enough the minute he sees him,’ said Padraig, the younger brother. ‘Another Franciscan.’

‘I am not.’

‘Of course not. None of you ever are. But I see the hand of Stephen Mac Cuarta in this.’ He had evidently heard enough. ‘Come on, we are wasting our time here. The clouds are gathering. We should get out of these woods.’

‘You are right,’ said Ciaran, turning also from me. ‘But first we must find O’Rahilly. Donal, bind him.’ And within seconds, before I fully knew what was happening, my arms had been pulled behind my back and my hands bound together with rope. A shove in the back sent me in the direction of the waiting horses, but the shock of it made me stumble, and I caught the side of my face on the centre stone as I fell to the ground. There was nothing I could do but struggle to my feet again and go where they bade me, and I was soon heaved up on to the back of Padraig’s mount.

After a short debate they urged their horses not southwards, back to where they had come from, but eastwards, to the part of the wood that I had come through myself a few hours earlier. We had not travelled far on the moonlit paths before the lead horse, under Ciaran, brought us to a halt. It whinnied and tried to turn back, refusing to continue. He dismounted, and proceeded cautiously on foot.

‘Damn him to every torment.’

‘By God, he did our job for us.’

‘Do you think? He will never tell his mysteries now.’

And then I saw it: a few yards ahead of us, arrayed in the magnificent robes of white and gold given to him by my grandmother, hanging by its neck from an ancient hawthorn tree, was the dead body of Finn O’Rahilly. The three men crossed themselves.

‘Will we cut him down?’

Ciaran shook his head. ‘Let the crows have him. He was a traitor to his race, and his words an outrage to ours. Let his rotting corpse serve as warning to others who might think to do the same.’

He turned to me. ‘Think not to pray over him, priest. Save your prayers for us and yourself when we bring you and not O’Rahilly to our father.’

‘I have told you, I am no priest.’

They merely laughed in scorn. ‘Well, you had better find some God to appeal to before you find yourself before Murchadh.’

‘At Carrickfergus?’

‘Carrickfergus?’ Ciaran smiled grimly. ‘No, my friend, he is not at Carrickfergus; we are taking you to Dun-a-Mallaght.’

Within an hour we were out of the woods and riding hard towards the coast once more, trying to outrun the storm which had broken over the hills and was pursuing us down towards the sea. As we approached I saw, encompassed by unbreachable headlands at either end, the broad sweep of a bay, where the sea came in increasingly powerful waves to the shore. I chanced to look back once, when I thought I could keep my balance, and saw a huge bolt of lightning strike right where I imagined Kilcrue to be. In my mind’s eye I saw it strike to the heart of the stone – the priest’s stone, O’Rahilly had called it – before the storm moved on to seek out the poet himself.

On the headland to my left, watching over the bay, rose a castle. Below, nearer to the shore, was a small town, huddled in darkness from the advancing storm. Further along the bay was another settlement, structured, more formal, but ruined in part. My heart lifted a little when I saw it, and the lights burning in some of its windows. It was a religious house, a church. ‘What is that place?’ I called in Padraig’s ear.

‘You know it well enough.’

‘Bonamargy?’ I said.

‘Aye, Bonamargy. Do not excite yourself unduly. This is as close as you’ll be getting to it.’ He pulled his horse to the left, as his brother had done, and spurred the beast on towards the western edge of the bay, and a strange mound that rose grim and threatening from the earth.

‘What is that?’ I shouted.

‘You are not superstitious, priest?’

‘I am not … superstitious.’

‘That is Dun-a-Mallaght. The Fort of the Curse.’

‘I give no credence to your curses.’

He slowed his horse.

‘On any other night of the year, neither do I. But it is said that on All Hallows Eve – tonight – the ghosts of the dead walk forth from Dun-a-Mallaght into the world. I would be here on any night other than tonight.’

We forded a narrow river and dismounted. Six yards from the entrance to the fort Ciaran let up a strange cry, a call, in Irish, that seemed to come from the depths of himself. The cry was returned from inside and bolts pulled back. Doors swung inwards and I found myself walking, just as lightning struck the ground three feet from where I stood, into the lair of Murchadh O’Neill, the Fort of the Curse.