A Game of Sorrows

TWENTY-TWO Ardclinnis

It was not long before we were on the move again. The fishermen at the shore would have nothing to do with us, for they had seen Murchadh’s party leave for Rathlin, and had a good idea as to who they were after, and so we had to take the small boat belonging to the friary itself.

I was greatly relieved to see Andrew.

‘The old nun had hidden me under her bed. She was a thing to behold when the raiding party came to the door of her chamber. I have rarely seen such vitriol. She has no liking for Murchadh.’

‘Then she judges well, for the man is a vessel of evil.’ I told him what had happened to Michael.

‘Dear God,’ he said slowly, ‘this curse spreads, it contaminates everything.’

I did not question his superstition, I did not argue with him, for I knew it; I felt the contamination in every part of me, in everything I touched. No matter how far or how fast we ran from it, it came with us.

The friar, Brian, had helped me carry Deirdre in a litter from Julia’s cell down to the shore. He did not look at me, addressed not a word to me, and I knew the anger in his mind – for this, Michael was blinded. Deirdre was sleeping still, but not at peace. What her reaction to Andrew had signalled, I did not know. She must know of Cormac’s feelings for her, of Murchadh’s plans for her, and in their schemes there was but one place for Andrew Boyd, and that was the place they thought they had left him – under six feet of earth in an unmarked grave at Bonamargy. He had been insistent that he would take his turn in carrying the litter, but Stephen had been equally insistent that he should not. ‘You have more need of it yourself.’

The old nun had told Andrew, in a manner that brooked no argument, to forget such foolishness, but she had warned Stephen too that he had only the strength of a man. ‘A mortal man, and even you are mortal, Stephen Mac Cuarta. Your time is coming, but there are tasks required of you first.’

Stephen did not laugh off her words and her tone as I had expected him to, but looked at her suddenly, as if caught in a lie that even he had begun to believe. ‘That is the way of it, is it, Julia?’

‘For all men, eventually.’ She blessed him, and dismissed him with a kiss on either cheek. It was a parting of people who knew they would not meet again.

I looked at my companion at the other end of the litter.

‘They say she has the sight,’ he said. It was the only conversation that passed between us, and it discomfited me.

As I positioned myself at the oars, Stephen tried to assist me, but I began to think it was as if those who had taken Michael’s eyes had taken his strength, for a light had gone out of him, and his body was hunched. Yet his will was great, and the force of it overpowered the complaints of his limbs and drove him on. He raised a sail, the wind caught it from the west and began to blow us along the coast.

‘Where are we going?’

‘Ardclinnis.’

I had never heard the name. ‘Is it another gathering place for those in your rising?’

‘It is a refuge.’ We were a good few miles down the coast before it came to me who would be waiting for us at this new refuge; it was the one I had forgotten in all that had happened: Macha. If Murchadh had even begun to work out Finn O’Rahilly’s allusion to ‘the bastard child’, there would be no safety for Sean’s wife even within the walls of Bonamargy.

As we rowed, I cast many anxious glances behind me at the slowly receding Rathlin Island, looking for the boat carrying Cormac and Murchadh in their duped rage, a boat that I knew must surely come. We rounded Tor Head, and I remembered this was where Sean had been riding, alone, when the shot had been fired that nearly sent him over the cliffs. I remembered too the odd way he had said it: ‘I was riding home … I had been visiting – friends.’ This had been his call to me, this how he had brought me in, when his tale of the curse had left me unaffected, this reality of an assault, a threat made manifest on my mother’s family. And I knew now who those friends were – Murchadh and his crew – and what business Sean had been on. And if there had been such a shot, there can have been little doubt that it was one amongst Murchadh’s followers who had fired it.

The wind dwindled and we had been going two hours or more before Andrew desisted from his attempts to take the oars from the old priest.

‘What, do you think me so shameless that I would sit back while a man half-eaten by dogs ferries me to my home? See to your woman.’

We passed the burnt-out MacDonnell castle at Red Bay, and could see ahead of us the promontory of Garron Point; it seemed impossible that Stephen could pull another stroke, when at last he said, ‘Praise be to God; take her to the shore – we are at Ardclinnis.’

As we brought the boat up to the small expanse of shingle shore, I could at first see little to distinguish this place from so many other inlets we had passed on our voyage – bog and moss and heather and clumps of trees banding together up the hillside. Massive stones, tumbled on the slopes as if dropped by a forgetful God. But then, from beyond a swathe of birch and willow, at the side of the burn a hundred yards or so from where it ran into the sea I saw a welcome breath of grey smoke curl into the sky. I looked more closely and saw that dotted around the trees were not only rocks and boulders, but head-stones, and behind them a squat and ancient church.

Stephen inhaled deeply as he stepped onto the shore, gratefully stretching his arms and his chest. ‘Smell that air, Alexander. Did you ever smell anything so clean and pure in all of God’s creation?’

And indeed, beyond the constant smell of brine that had attended us from Bonamargy, made more rank at the shore by the seaweeds abandoned by the tide, the rich verdant earth of Ardclinnis was something that spoke to me of the first days, before God’s earth had been sullied by man.

Stephen said, ‘I will go ahead and warn Macha of our arrival; you see to our invalids.’

Deirdre was fully awake now and Andrew was readying himself to carry her to the shore.

‘Let me,’ I said quietly, and he did not argue.

I lifted her from the boat and onto the shore.

‘Can you walk at all?’

‘Yes,’ she said, ‘but I will need some help.’ She looked directly at Andrew, who had been waiting a few yards ahead of us, scanning the horizon for signs of Murchadh.

‘You see to the boat,’ he said to me, any notion of master and servant between us long since forgotten. He put his arm carefully around Deirdre’s back, holding the hand at the other side. ‘Can you manage?’ he said, so quietly I could barely hear him.

She let her head rest on his shoulder. ‘Yes, I can manage,’ and there was a softening in his eyes, the suggestion of a smile on his lips as they made their way to the church, the one wounded in body, the other in heart and mind.

As I watched them go, and thought of Father Stephen in his church, preparing Macha for our arrival, for the hurt of the first sight of me, a desire began to crawl through me to turn about and get back in the boat, to take the oars once more and row for Scotland, for Sarah, and what was home, to be away from this place or to drown in the attempt. And if Murchadh and Cormac should apprehend me, that would be the will of God, and if my suffering would be great it would not be long.

I had half turned when Stephen’s voice stopped me. ‘Alexander, we have everything we need from the boat.’ He watched me with a strange curiosity, waiting, and with great reluctance I turned my back to the sea and followed him.

He took me first into the church, a ruin long before he or I had ever drawn breath. ‘Will you make your devotions with me here, Alexander? We might be of two faiths, but there is the one God and it is He who has delivered us. Will you pray with me?’

I looked around the tiny chapel, bare of all furnishing save the simple altar below what remained of the east window. ‘I will.’

He knelt, and I stood, and we prayed to our God in silence together, and then aloud, in the words our Saviour had taught us, he in Gaelic, I in Scots. To the one God. And in this place, where God had been so long before man, there was no place for dogma, for doctrine, for words or forms that might have claimed one of us as right and the other wrong. He blessed me at the end and led the way through a small doorway to what evidently served as his home.

As I was bending my head to pass through the low archway, a glint of something to my right, just below the west window, caught my eye and my breath. It was a crozier, a staff such as I had seen in stained-glass windows and stone effigies, in the hands of bishops and saints. The base of the shaft was of simple wood, cleanly carved, but at the neck it was bracketed in gold, and its curved head was covered entirely in gold, intricately engraved with symbols of the earliest Christian days, and set with precious stones of black, green, red and turquoise. I had never been so close to an object so beautiful. It was a piece for a cathedral, not a lonely and abandoned church of the Culdees.

Stephen stopped ahead of me and looked back. ‘Alexander?’

‘What is that?’

‘The crozier? It has been here many lifetimes, left in the care of the church by an early saint. It will be here long after I am gone. A truth that has been touched by the hands of a saint, and will not be defiled.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘It is believed that this staff is a repository of God’s judgement, a rod of truth. If any man, or woman, be accused of a crime and deny that crime, should he swear his innocence on this crozier, and yet be a liar, his mouth will twist and freeze in its deformity. If he be innocent, he will go on his way unmarked.’

‘A man must tell the truth before this staff?’

‘A man must tell the truth, always.’

‘Then will you come before this staff, and tell the truth to me?’

He spread his hands before me. ‘Alexander …’

‘You have put me off long enough, priest. Stand before your piece of wood, and tell me why I am here.’

His head dropped and his body sagged. ‘I will then, I will. Just let us have some rest and warmth, some sustenance for the body. I will tell you all, just let us have some rest.’

He was an old man now. A sick old man. Every step he had taken from Bonamargy, every pull on the oars, had been to bring him here, and now that he was home, Death would not be long in gathering him. I could not deny his request. ‘I will see you on your knees in front of that staff before nightfall.’

‘You have my very word on it.’ He coughed, and steadied himself in the doorway. ‘I am a man not far from my maker. My word is of greater worth than most.’

We found Andrew and Deirdre in a room so tiny it was little more than a cell. Deirdre was seated by a small fire beside which, tending a skillet with frying fish, crouched a heavily pregnant girl. She straightened herself when we came in, and I knew then why Sean could never have loved Roisin O’Neill. The girl into whose momentarily startled eyes I looked was every part the equal of my cousin. Long chestnut hair hung in loose ringlets about her face and down her back. Her brows formed perfect arches above eyes of the warmest brown and the hesitant smile lit up a face that was full of life and kindness. I felt I had always known her. I knew Stephen had forewarned her, but her shock at the sight of me registered a moment before she composed herself. She stepped forward and greeted me in Irish, extending both hands towards mine and kissing me on the cheek.

‘I am greatly sorrowed by your loss,’ I said. ‘If there is anything I can do for your help or comfort you must ask me as you would a brother.’

‘He told me it would be so when he went for you. He always knew it might end in this way, as did I. I have his child and he has taken care that his legacy might be fulfilled. No more can we ask.’

I looked to Stephen, but he avoided my eye, and I sat down with some discomfort beside Andrew.

‘And so, Deirdre,’ said Stephen, affecting some of his old heartiness, ‘you have met your sister-in-law.’

My cousin looked up at Macha, smiling. ‘God has blessed us where we thought he had forsaken us. That I will soon see the face of my brother’s child lightens the sorrow in my heart.’

‘As it will your grandmother’s too,’ said Stephen.

Her face clouded, the smile fell away. She looked to Andrew and to me. ‘Must my grandmother know?’

‘There is no need …’ began Andrew.

‘Surely she must know, it is the child’s birthright …’

Deirdre looked pleadingly at the priest. ‘But you know what will happen; you know what she will do: the child will have no life!’

Stephen began to speak, his voice raised, but his breath failed him and he swayed on his feet, only a wheeze escaping his throat. I steadied him and Macha brought forth a small stool for him to sit upon. Once recovered, he tried again. ‘Your grandmother knows what is the child’s birthright. She will teach him what he must know, as she did Sean.’

‘Who is dead now, murdered …’

Andrew put out an arm to calm her but she shook it off. ‘You condemn this child.’

‘There are those who will protect him. We will be better prepared, the time is soon …’

‘The time is gone. Will none of you see it? The time is gone!’

She pushed past him into the church, from where the sounds of her grief wrenched the heart of me. Andrew would have followed her, but Stephen held him back. ‘Give her this time for her anger. She has held it too long, and now she will give it up to our Holy Mother. Let her have this time.’

Macha brought us the food on simple wooden platters. Despite her bulk, she moved with grace, and there was little in her to suggest she had known a life of servitude. ‘She is of a family in Down,’ Stephen had told me. ‘They fell foul of your grandmother’s family many generations ago. The certainty of Maeve’s wrath added to the attraction for Sean, I think. In truth, though, I cannot see that he would have married any other woman. And her lineage was every bit the match of his own. She will hold her own with your grandmother, and the old woman will take to her in spite of herself.’ I watched the girl as I ate, and knew the priest was right.

The cooked fish were coated in oatmeal and in an instant took me home, the softness of the flesh melting on my tongue, the small hard balls of the oatmeal cracking like crisp hot nuts on my teeth. Could I have done, I would have willed myself back there now, to Mistress Youngson’s kitchen in Banff, the austerity of her countenance matched only by the warmth of her welcome, the safety of her home.

In the poor light of the room it was difficult to see whether Stephen improved with the rest and nourishment, but soon Macha was chiding him gently for not having eaten enough, and had warmed a bowl of goat’s milk to tempt him.

‘He seemed strong as an ox,’ said Andrew. ‘Invincible.’

‘I think the trials of the last few days have proved too much for him. And who knows how long he has been living and travelling on reserved strength? He must have used what little fortitude was left to him to reach this place.’

‘It was his home, the girl told me. When he was a young boy, he was servant to the priest here. It was believed he was his father. I think he has come back here to die.’

‘We cannot linger here long. Murchadh and Cormac will be after us soon, and we must get the women to safety somewhere.’

‘We must get them to Carrickfergus.’

I nodded. ‘Rest now – I will need what strength you have tomorrow. We will make up a pallet for the priest in the boat and take him with us. Deirdre improves a little, thank God, but with Macha too it will be slow progress. We will start at dawn.’

Andrew looked over to the priest, who was sipping at the bowl of milk and smiling at Macha as if he were only doing it to indulge her. ‘I doubt he will make it to the dawn.’

Stephen finally nodded off to sleep and Andrew went to bring Deirdre back from the cold church. Macha knelt beside me, getting down to her knees with some difficulty.

‘He is much agitated and has made me promise I will waken him after he has slept an hour. I know he has business of some sort with you, but can it not wait until the morning, until he is better able for it?’

‘I do not think it can,’ I said.

‘Then I will make up a fire through there, for he insists he will speak to you only before the crozier.’

‘Let me do it,’ I said. ‘You cannot be long from your time.’

‘I do not think it will be many days now until my husband’s son cries his first upon this earth.’ I forced myself not to dwell on thoughts of what Sean would never hear, never see.

‘You are so sure it will be a son?’

‘I know it. It was promised and foretold.’

‘By whom?’

‘By Julia MacQuillan, at Bonamargy. She has the sight; she is never wrong. I shall bear my husband a son.’

In my homeland, such things would not have been spoken so freely, and I had trained myself for many years to pay no heed to them, but here, tonight, I knew that the old nun could not be doubted, that I would soon hold in my arms my brother’s son, and that Stephen Mac Cuarta would be dead by morning. I laid a fire of wood and peats before the crozier, beneath the west window of the church. Neither Andrew nor Deirdre questioned what I was doing, and I was glad to see the two women lie down soon after on clean straw in the priest’s cell, with rugs laid carefully over them. Andrew did not sleep for a long time, but watched them, as I had known he would. I waited until he, too, had finally dozed off and then quietly woke the priest. He seemed to come to with some relief, for his sleep had been a restless one, and once or twice he had muttered, as if struggling in a dream.

I supported him through to the church, for although it did not matter to me now where we spoke, it was he who insisted that we should do it there. The fire had lent what warmth it could to the crumbling building, and two large candles, mass candles, burned on the altar. Through a hole in the rafters where there was no thatch I could see the stars.

I eased Stephen down on to a pallet of straw covered in an old sheepskin, and waited. His breath came hard and heavy, but eased off at last when the exertion of walking from his cell passed. He bent his head towards the crozier and kissed it.

‘You do not need to do that,’ I said. ‘Your word is enough.’

‘For you, perhaps. But I have made many bargains with my God, and may He forgive me, I have not kept them all. He shall know by this that I tell the truth.’

‘He knows anyway.’

‘Perhaps. But indulge the beliefs of an old man, and pray that He might also.’

‘I have spent much of the night in prayer for you.’

He inclined his head a little towards me. ‘Thank you. Now, tell me where you wish me to begin.’

‘At the beginning.’

He almost managed a laugh. ‘The beginning? There is no beginning to Ireland, save the day of creation when God filled her with his bounty and then said, “Come, fight it out.”’

I did not like the blasphemy, and we had no time for humour. ‘Tell me when you became involved in the treachery of Murchadh O’Neill, what my cousin’s place in his scheme was, and why he brought me here.’

‘There is no treachery …’

‘Do not lie to me; I heard you at Dun-a-Mallaght. You plan rebellion against the king. You boast of continental powers …’

‘There is no treachery and there is no boast. We fight for the Holy Roman Mother Church and her daughter, Ireland. We cannot be traitors to a king to whom we have never bent the knee. Our people are paupers in their own land. Men like Murchadh, heads of great families, revered through all Ulster, forced to till the land like beasts or peasants.’

‘But there is peace,’ I said. ‘And Murchadh has prospered in this peace. Many have told me so – he has made his bargains with the English and has done well of it.’

‘And is held in distrust and contempt by the Irish because of it, and do you think he does not know that? He wanted Roisin to marry Sean to gain some of the affection and esteem in which your grandmother’s family is held, as well as to build up his lands.’

‘But surely that could have been achieved without rebellion?’

‘He can only properly establish himself by wresting power from his English masters.’

‘But why did you join with him? You saw what he did to Michael; you know what he has done to others.’ My mind went back to the shabby Scots inn where Andrew and I had taken rest and sustenance, where a widow and her children lived in the shadow of a murdered son.

He breathed deep. ‘I made common cause with Murchadh for a greater purpose than his: a cause whose ends could not be achieved in opposition to his, so must needs join with them. But it was never Murchadh who was to lead the struggle, it was to have been Sean. Murchadh does what generations of his sort in Ireland, leaders of septs, have done through time – he fights for himself. He has used the English to further his own ends, and has no notion of leading a rising for the sake of the Irish. Throughout time, for centuries, our poets have called for a leader who would put an end to rivalries, unite Ireland, and protect her against the foreign invader. It was to have been Sean. Did you think for a minute your cousin was involved with Murchadh for personal gain? Sean was all that a leader should have been, and with access to Murchadh’s power base, much might have been achieved. And he was faithful, too. Faithful to the Church and to Rome.’

It made sense now, the talk of powerful friends, of Louvain, Madrid. ‘And this is why you came back from the continent? To put your Franciscan mission in the hands of the king of Spain, and wrench Ireland from King Charles’s hands in the name of Rome?’

‘You think I had done better to stay in my college in Louvain and simply pray for Ireland?’

‘Better than to have joined with a butcher like Murchadh.’

‘Butchery, is it? Let me tell you something of butchery, my young Scottish friend. When Chichester burned and destroyed the whole of Ulster, when you were a babe safe in your mother’s arms in Scotland, and Sean had been abandoned by her, starving children were found with their hands in the innards of their dead mother; old women enticed boys and girls away from their play, to murder and eat them. And you would disdain Murchadh for making his peace with the English whilst hoping to raise himself once more? Those whom the earls left behind in their flight – brothers, sons – were rounded up, imprisoned, for the very fact of their existing, and some rot in the Tower of London still, children once, now men, grown to manhood in their chains. They will never see the blue of an Irish sky nor drink the clear water of a mountain burn again. Others, who took ship for England to plead their case with their king, their Celtic king, son of a faithful daughter of Rome, never saw his face before they were shipped to Virginia, to be murdered by savages or die of disease in his colonies. Say what you will about Murchadh, but he remains an Irishman, holding his land on Irish soil, and as such gives hope to other, better men, who do not.’

The effort of this speech had cost him much, and he lay back a moment with his eyes closed. I offered him a little water and he took it gratefully.

‘But I will die in Ireland. Unlike your uncle, Tyrone, Tyrconnell, so many others that I left with, so many years ago. I have seen the sun rise and set once again on the land of my birth, and for that I give thanks to God.’

‘And that is why you came back now? Because you knew you were dying?’ There was little point in sentiment, or dissembling. He had seen the last sunset of which he spoke.

He raised the familiar grin, and the trace of a sparkle came into his eyes. ‘The timing of that is merely a stroke of good fortune. Many powerful men on the continent take an interest in the affairs of Ireland. Tales of Murchadh’s planned rising came to their ears – through MacDonnell, I am certain – at about the same time that Sean’s letters on the same subject came to me.’

‘Good news for you,’ I said.

His eyes were quick. ‘No: the worst. Murchadh is unmeasured, hot-headed. He lacks discretion. We all feared a repeat of the debacle of ’15.’

‘What happened then?’

‘I forget you have lived your life in such blissful ignorance. In 1615, plans were laid for a rising against the English, to free prisoners – Tyrone’s own son amongst them – and to drive the English, those who were not put to the sword, from Ulster.’

‘And it failed?’

‘Failed? It never even began. The leader, Rory O’Cahan, did little but drink and brag the country round for weeks what he was to do. The English heard of it, of course, and he was caught, tried and hanged, with six others, a Franciscan priest among them, before flame was lit or sword lifted. The Spanish stood ready then, as they do now, to help. But they will brook no more Rory O’Cahans, and Murchadh is such a one. I was sent here to assess the readiness of the English in their settlements – not just the towns like Coleraine, but the bawns too – to meet our attacks, and to gauge the level of supplies we might garner from them. But I was also sent to protect Sean, and to rein in Murchadh. I have failed in my second object, but God willing, will not do so in my third.’

‘I think Cormac has greater honour than his father ever did, but his determination upon Deirdre threatens to blind him to all other concerns. He is no Sean.’

‘No,’ he said, looking at me as if by the concentration of his mind alone he could pierce my heart, ‘he is no Sean.’

It was cold enough in the crumbling church, and what heat the fire had first offered could do little against the advancing frost of the night, but the shiver that passed down my spine under his gaze had little to do with the air around us. I looked away, pretending to make a start on gathering up the straw.

‘Look at me, Alexander.’

‘It is very late. We have an early start in the morning. We should go back to your …’

‘I will go nowhere in the morning, as you know, save to the place of atonement for my sins.’

‘You may go where you will, if you believe in such places. I have need of sleep.’

I bent down to lift him to his feet, but he shook his head. ‘I will see my last of this world here.’ He gazed up through the hole in the rafters. ‘The stars in their firmament were never more beautiful than they are here, tonight.’ Then he looked back at me. ‘You know now why you are here, don’t you?’

‘I am going to my bed,’ I said.

He reached up and gripped my arm, a terrifying grip from a man so close to death.

‘You know why Sean brought you here, don’t you?’

‘The nonsense of the curse …’

He shook his head, impatient. ‘Sean no more believed that than you do. But Deirdre does, and more importantly Maeve. When the curse was laid and Maeve told him he had a cousin …’

‘He never knew we were brothers?’

‘Perhaps he suspected, who knows? But I don’t think he ever asked. I have heard from your grandmother’s priest that when Maeve sent him to fetch you to lift this curse, he took it as a message from God that our prayers had been answered, that a help had been found to us in our fight. One of Murchadh’s men, acting out of a misplaced enthusiasm and a misunderstanding of his master’s mind, made an attempt on Sean’s life not long ago. The attempt, as you know, failed, and the man paid for it with his own, but Sean knew he might never live to see the rising’s beginning, still less its end, and he knew what would happen to it and all our hopes should he die, without an appointed successor …’

I backed away. ‘I am a Scot, a teacher, and no follower of Rome. You were as well to get a dog to lead your rising as me.’

‘Do you tell me you cannot handle a sword?’

‘Of course I can handle a sword.’

‘That you are not the grandson of Maeve O’Neill?’

‘You have told me I am.’

‘And do you tell me I have not seen you finger that cross at your neck for comfort? Do you tell me I have not seen you on your knees, praying at our altars?’

The shock of his words stopped me where I stood. A denial was ready in my mouth, but I could not deny what he had said; I knew it myself. How had it come to this, that I had so easily lost sight of my own faith when surrounded by the snares of idolatry? I forced the words through gritted teeth at last. ‘I am no follower of Rome.’

‘Alexander, you were born to this. You have Irish blood enough for those who would ask it, if you have a heart to do what it is that they ask of you.’

His breathing was coming short and fast now. I put out a hand to calm him. ‘Do not agitate yourself over this. God’s will will be done. There is no more you can do.’

He did not calm himself, but by a supreme effort hauled himself up so that his eyes were almost level with mine. In the thin golden light that found its way to us from the altar, they were red, and shining. ‘Alexander, I beg of you. Take up Sean’s mantle. Do not leave them to Murchadh, all will be lost. MacDonnell will support you. They have my letter at Dunluce already, naming you your cousin’s successor …’ A pain seized him and he fell back down, clutching at his heart.

‘Alexander, I beg you,’ he gasped.

I ran for Macha and she was there in a moment, cradling his head in her lap. A smile of immense peace passed over his face. ‘I can hear the child’s heart beating,’ he murmured.

‘Hush, do not talk,’ said the girl, a tear falling from her cheek and splashing onto his face. ‘Do not leave me.’

He brought a hand up to cover hers. ‘Do not weep, my child. The stars in God’s heaven wait for me, it is my time, for as the Preacher says: “To everything there is a season …”’

But he hadn’t the strength to go on. I took up the words for him:

I let the words die in the room, and then his voice came, in a hoarse whisper. ‘I have loved and I have laughed; I have wept and I have danced; I have waged war and have craved peace. Do not mourn for me: it is my time.’

At that moment, the light in the church changed, and the darkness gradually receded in the face of a glory of reds and yellows and greens, as the sun rose and sent its magnificent rays through the east window of Ardclinnis, to light for the last time on the face of Father Stephen Mac Cuarta.

I dug the grave, while Andrew kept watch at the shore, for the sea was calm and would not have detained Cormac and Murchadh long at Rathlin.

I had chosen a place close to the church, by the hawthorn, the fairy tree, and we buried him there with some words from me and prayers from the women. Andrew intoned the forty-sixth psalm. There was no time for a headstone, or even to carve out a wooden cross, but Macha had taken a slip of a wild rose and planted it at the head of the grave to mark the place. ‘It will grow, and I will bring my son here,’ she said.

‘Where do we run to now?’ asked Deirdre.

‘Carrickfergus,’ I said warily, for I knew she would not like it.

‘You cannot go to Carrickfergus. You know what my grandmother in her delusions accuses you of.’

Andrew took up my argument. ‘We will plead our innocence and clear our names, but we can do it in no other place, although we must call first at Ballygally.’ I shot him a quizzical glance, but he chose not to notice it. As we walked to the boat he stopped me.

‘You are sure you wish to go south?’

His question surprised me. ‘Where else would I go? There is no other safe way for me to reach home to Scotland, and I certainly cannot go north.’

‘Not even to Dunluce?’ He was watching me carefully.

‘Andrew, what are you asking me?’

He looked away, to the sea. ‘I heard you speaking with the priest, in the night. I had long suspected something of what Sean’s business was, although I would not have thought him honourable, and now I believe he was. But now I know also what brought you here …’

‘I had no knowledge of it. It was the talk of the curse.’

‘The curse. And where is the curse now?’

‘With its maker, who hangs from a tree in the hills above Ballycastle.’

‘Is it? We neither of us know that.’

‘I thought you did not believe in it.’

‘And neither do I, but I believe in the evil intent in whoever paid Finn O’Rahilly to lay it, and so should you.’

I looked back at Ardclinnis, a slow mist rising from the ground beginning to envelop it, to take it back upon itself, away from the eyes of mortal men. ‘There is evil everywhere in this land, Andrew. I cannot concern myself with that I do not know, only with present danger. And that danger lies in Murchadh, and Cormac, to say nothing of the Blackstones, who may even now be in Carrickfergus ahead of us, adding their accusations to my grandmother’s.’ In my mind I heard the sound of Michael’s pistol shot, and saw again the horse that crashed down on its rider within sight of the walls of Coleraine.

‘Then you were not persuaded by the priest? You will not take Sean’s place at the head of their rising?’

‘I am not the man they seek. I am not the man he was.’

‘I think perhaps he was a better man than I knew.’

‘He was a better man than I am,’ I said at last. ‘I will not fill his place, have no fears on that. Come, we have little time to lose.’ And within minutes we were pulling away from the shore, from Ardclinnis, and from the last earthly resting place of the man who had so mistaken what I was. I cast a glance behind me as we rounded the headland. A boat, long and dark, bearing a standard I knew to be Murchadh’s, was powering down the coast from the north. I committed our party to God and rowed for all I was worth.