A Game of Sorrows

TWENTY-FOUR A Homecoming

‘It was a messenger. On foot. One of my tenants saw him coming over Ballygally Head a little before dawn. He was running like the wind. My man knew it was a native the moment he saw him. By the time he had saddled his horse to go in pursuit, the fellow was almost here. The men on the walls saw him from here – they took aim, but none hit him thank God – or we might all be ashes now.’

We were standing in the burnt-out remains of the inner courtyard of Ballygally Castle, an hour after unknown tidings from the fleet-footed messenger had caused Murchadh and his men to lift their siege and beat a hasty retreat to the north. The fires had all been doused, and what had yesterday been a picture of well-ordered industry was now a blackened and sodden mess. Animals had been calmed, and word had come from the nearby pastures that it was safe to let the beasts out once more.

‘It is a miracle, a blessing of God. Only six injured and none killed, and the house still standing. I doubt you will come closer to death without meeting it than you did last night, Mr Seaton.’

‘Your hospitality to us has cost you dearly, Sir James.’

‘It has cost me nothing that cannot be mended. Fore-knowledge of the events of last night would not have made me refuse you. But I think the time when my hospitality was a protection has waned, and we must get you all to Carrickfergus before Murchadh has dealt with his other business and returns.’

I was a little uneasy now, at the prospect of leaving Macha in Andrew’s care, but there was no option, and to separate would give at least one of us a chance of getting through to Carrickfergus, regardless of the fate of the other. Andrew took time to speak alone with Deirdre before he left, and then came to me. ‘Whatever you do, promise me you will not hand her over to Cormac. Give her a chance, at least, to come back to herself. With him she will have none.’

‘I will do nothing to put her at risk.’ It was not the answer he wanted, but he did not press me for another. I wished him well and gave him my hand, like a man, whereas two days ago I had embraced him as a brother. I turned away, and was back within the castle before the gates had opened. I watched with Deirdre at a window as they left.

‘I have driven him away,’ she said.

‘No. He only goes to get Macha to safety in Carrickfergus. We will meet with them again before nightfall.’

‘He will not give the child to my grandmother? Sean’s child must be free.’

‘We will decide on the safest place for them once we get there, once Sir James has spoken to your grandmother.’

It was as if she was not listening. ‘She must not have him,’ she said, and continued to watch after Andrew and Macha until the steward’s cart disappeared from sight. Lady Isabella tried to send me to my bed, but I told her what was the truth – I could scarcely remember when I had last had more than three hours’ sleep, and I feared what visions my mind would conjure for me when I shut my eyes again.

A little before midday Sir James declared that we should set forth soon, or lose the end of our journey to the darkness. Before we had even reached to Olderfleet, we were passed by a troop from the English garrison, heading north, and on the road to Carrickfergus, English soldiers were more in evidence than traders or labourers in the field. Lady Isabella commented upon it.

‘Something is afoot.’

‘It would appear so,’ was her husband’s only response.

Deirdre did not appear to notice, but Margaret, who took pains to look after her on the journey, was nervous and unsettled, looking around her all the time, as did the guards Sir James had riding with us.

Little over three miles from our destination, a detachment on the road counselled us to make haste, as word had come to Carrickfergus of a planned Irish rising from the North. They warned us too of two Scots fugitives from justice who had fled Coleraine a week ago, leaving one of their pursuing party paralysed and like to die. Sir James hazarded a glance at me and assured them that he would inform the governor at Carrickfergus should he chance upon such dangerous wretches on the road.

‘They are not in the town, of that we are certain, for the party in pursuit of them has searched every inch of it. No, they are in tow somewhere with those damned Franciscans the Earl of Antrim harbours.’

Sir James’s views on the Earl of Antrim’s loyalties had been made a little too openly and a little too volubly at dinner on the previous evening for his wife’s comfort, but out on the road he kept these views to himself, even amongst common soldiers. But it was of no comfort to me to know that the Blackstones had passed this way already, and that further tales of outlawry on my part would have reached Carrickfergus before me.

We approached the town from the Scots Quarter. If I had felt apprehension on leaving Carrickfergus only a week ago, I felt more now, about to re-enter it. Rather than a place of sanctuary and safety, what waited for me behind those walls might be imprisonment, condemnation, death. While Sir James might argue my innocence of involvement in the murder of my cousin, there was nothing he could do against the charges the Blackstones would level against Andrew and me over the injury to their companion, crushed by his horse when Michael shot at them as we fled from Coleraine. And Andrew had entered the town already, with no Sir James to speak for him.

The apprehension, anticipation of some evil to come, that I felt, was in the air all around us as we proceeded down through the Scots Quarter. There was stillness everywhere. A dog barked on the empty street, beasts snorted and jostled for position in the backlands, frustrated at being brought in and tethered so early in the day. Doors were shut; windows, where there were any, were boarded. There was not one human soul to be seen or heard upon the street or from the houses within.

I looked on the mean thatched dwellings that we passed, and thought of the damage that had been done to Ballygally the previous night. Sir James spoke my thoughts.

‘The savages will burn everything they have.’

Sir James was well known to the guards, and soon I found myself walking the streets of Carrickfergus in daylight for the first time. A beard of a week’s growth and the severe haircut Sir James’s barber had given me that morning afforded my only disguise, save the helmet of coarse brown wool and the hood of the short cloak I wore in common with his other men. Once within the gates, he took me aside and indicated two of his men. ‘Go now with those two. They will take you to the safe house where you will find Boyd. Tell him we are arrived safely, and purpose to go immediately to your grandmother’s house. Time is pressing. We must get you off the streets before you are seen. Once we have dealt with Maeve I will take you to the castle myself and argue your case there, although only God in His Heaven knows how I am to extricate you from this business at Coleraine.’

This business at Coleraine. How succinctly he put it. Four words to cover a night that had begun for the Blackstones in merriment and anticipation of a play, an entertainment, and ended with their younger son dead under his horse and Andrew and myself fleeing the town in the darkness with the help of renegade priests.

‘We should have told you of it, but …’

He held up a hand. ‘Enough for now. Go and fetch Boyd and the Irish girl that I might get your cousin to her grandmother’s before she collapses. We will meet with you at the marketplace.’

I was able to see Deirdre properly for the first time in several miles now, and it was evident that the news that her father-in-law and his party were also in the town had greatly shaken her. I went closer to her and looked in her face, to make sure that she listened to me. ‘It will not be long now, and you will be in a place of safety.’

‘No,’ she said, looking past me, ‘it will not be long now.’

Sir James’s men led me up a street behind the tholsel, past the palace of Joymount and on to Back Lane, where a nervous-looking young boy opened the door.

‘Where is your father?’

‘He is taking his turn on the walls,’ answered the boy.

‘Are you alone here?’

‘No. Yes. You are from Sir James?’

‘We are.’

At first I could see no one in the murky living area of the house, and then I was aware of a slight stirring in the corner farthest from the door. It was Macha.

I took a step towards her, my hand outstretched, but she shrank back, her eyes filled with fear; in the near-dark of the interior my disguise was too good. I pulled down my hood and removed the woollen helmet.

‘Where is Andrew?’ I asked her in her own tongue.

She began to answer, but she was anxious and upset and spoke too quickly; I had to ask her to slow down, so I could translate for Sir James’s men.

‘Men came, English men, not long after we arrived. A party from Coleraine. They were filthy brutes, I could see it. They only let me alone because this boy’s father told them I was his wife. They were looking for you both. Andrew was out in the backland, washing. He heard what was being said and was over the back wall and away before they could even get out there. It was a few hours ago; I have not seen him since.’

The boy confirmed her story. The Englishmen from Coleraine sought us by name – Andrew Boyd and Alexander Seaton. They charged us with the murder of Henry Blackstone, Deirdre’s husband’s brother.

Andrew knew the town well, but where could he go? He was known everywhere. And his wounds would need attention again soon. There was little I could do for him now save offer up a silent prayer. I bent down towards the girl and this time she did take my hand.

‘Come,’ I said. ‘You are nearly home.’

‘I have never been here before,’ she said. ‘Strange to think it will be my home.’

We went quickly up Back Lane and down North Street to the marketplace. I had my first proper sighting in daylight of St Nicholas church, and felt a sudden longing to go through its doors, to reaffirm for myself my faith, my Protestant faith, so shaken by my times of sanctuary in other places. I felt against my skin the crucifix, put round my neck at Dunluce and never yet taken off, and recalled to myself with a sweep of nausea that St Nicholas church had been the site of Sean’s murder.

Sir James’s party was waiting for us in the marketplace, just in front of my grandmother’s tower house.

‘She will not let you in?’ I asked, incredulous.

He smiled. ‘The old woman is not as bad as that, do you think? No, I have not yet sought entry. It seemed right that I should wait for you. But where is Andrew Boyd?’

I quickly told him, and his face became troubled. He urged his horse a few steps forward, and taking a halberd from one of his men, banged with it upon the door.

I was not altogether surprised to see my grandmother herself appear on the parapet, Eachan beside her, searching the crowd below for any sign of danger to his mistress.

Sir James looked up. ‘I am Sir James Shaw of Ballygally and I bring here to seek sanctuary with Maeve O’Neill their grandmother Deirdre FitzGarrett and Alexander Seaton, and another who is of her kin and has a claim upon her hospitality.’

Maeve stepped closer to the edge of the parapet and narrowed her eyes, but it was evident they were too poor and she could not see us properly. Eachan was also looking, and spoke urgently to my grandmother. She shook her head, and again he spoke urgent words in her ear. Eventually she murmured something to him and he gave orders that we should be let in.

It was strange to enter my grandmother’s house from the front, openly, rather than as a thief in the night as I had done on my first arrival in Carrickfergus. And yet then I had been a figure waited for, welcomed; now I came as one reviled. I walked ahead of Sir James, ahead of the two women, with my shorn head and my unkempt beard, into a place that looked the same as it had done the first time I had seen it, but where everything had changed.

They were in the great hall, waiting for us. Maeve did not look at Deirdre, or Macha; she ignored Sir James; she looked only at me.

‘You foul thing; you filth. Do you dare to come into my house? Unnatural child of a wanton, ungrateful daughter. You murdered your brother.’

Whether she had intended to shock me by the revelation, I could not tell. ‘Grandmother, I …’

‘You are no grandson of mine. I cast you off! I disavow you! I curse the womb that bore you! That Finn O’Rahilly had only known of you before he laid his curse on me!’ Her voice had risen to a shout, and the effort of it winded her. A servant helped her to a seat, and she did something I doubt she had ever done in her life before: she wept. I was about to go towards her, but Sir James stopped me.

‘Madam, I knew your husband well these last twenty years. He trusted me and I him. I ask you to trust me now also, when I tell you that your grandson here, Alexander Seaton, did not murder his …’ he hesitated, looking from Maeve to myself. Neither of us said anything. ‘His cousin. He cannot have murdered his cousin in Carrickfergus as you have claimed, for I have it on good authority, that will stand in any court of law, that he spent the whole of that night, from dusk to the next dawn, at Armstrong’s Bawn on the road from Ballymena to Coleraine. He was there in the company of Andrew Boyd, a young man of your household whom I know well, and whose word I would trust before almost any other.’

Maeve stared bleakly at her hands.

‘And where is Andrew Boyd now?’

Her voice hung heavy with accusation.

I spoke reluctantly. ‘I don’t know. We know he reached Carrickfergus in safety, but that a party from Coleraine has been searching the town for him and for me. He went into hiding when he heard of it.’

An odd little smile appeared upon her lips. ‘From Coleraine. Those English that you entangled us with, Deirdre. Your husband’s brother, you know, is dead.’ They were the first words she had uttered to her granddaughter since we had entered the house. ‘They tell me he did not even have the sense to get out from under his own horse.’ And then she laughed, a horrible laugh, quiet, to herself.

Deirdre broke the dreadful silence that followed.

‘Can I sit down, Grandmother?’

‘You can please yourself; you always did,’ said the old woman, her poise gone, but her venom intact.

Sir James, at a loss for anything else, brought Macha forward from where she had been obscuring herself behind him.

‘And what trollop is this?’ said my grandmother, but before she could say more, Eachan had let out a sound of joy, and gone to Macha, and taken her into his strong, hardy arms. He held her close and wept, a torrent of thanks falling from his lips.

‘Blessed be the Holy Virgin, the Holy Mother of God that has brought you here. Mistress,’ he said, talking to Maeve, ‘this is Sean’s wife.’

‘Sean had no wife.’

I spoke again. ‘Sean was married to this girl by Father Stephen Mac Cuarta of Bonamargy, on the way to Deirdre’s wedding. Eachan was there and witnessed. This is your grandson’s wife and she is carrying his child.’

Deirdre let out a low groan and crumpled in her chair. Maeve ignored her and looked instead to me, the light that had gone coming back into her eyes. ‘How do you know this?’

‘Stephen Mac Cuarta himself told me.’

‘Mac Cuarta.’ Her voice was a mixture of bitterness and sadness. ‘He lived while my son died. His robes protected him, I suppose. But he wishes our family well, that cannot be denied. Where is he now? Why is he not here?’

‘Because he died two nights ago. He is buried at Ardclinnis.’

‘May the Lord have mercy upon his immortal soul,’ she murmured. ‘He will be a long time in Purgatory.’ Then she addressed herself to Macha. ‘Come forward, girl, that I might see what my son rejected Roisin O’Neill for.’ Macha went towards her, not hesitantly, but surely. She had been told all there was to tell of Maeve by Sean, by Deirdre, yet she had no fear of her, and the old woman liked that. ‘What is your family?’

‘The Magennises of Down.’

‘It cannot be helped, I suppose.’ Maeve walked around her slowly, looking in her eyes, feeling her arm, the width of her hips. ‘You are strong. He always knew how to pick a good mare.’ And then she came to her belly, and placed her hand on the swell beneath Macha’s woollen dress. ‘The child will come soon. You have eaten well?’

Macha nodded.

‘You have prayed for a safe delivery?’

Again the girl affirmed that she had.

‘And for a son?’

‘I know the child will be a boy.’

‘How do you know it?’

‘Julia MacQuillan told me. And it was confirmed by Finn O’Rahilly.’

At the mention of the poet’s name, Maeve recoiled from the girl, her hand dropping to her side.

‘When did you see him?’ I asked.

‘After Sean left for Scotland, when I was with the brothers at Bonamargy. I feared for Sean, and I wanted O’Rahilly to bless my child, so I went to see him one afternoon. But he said he could not. He only told me it would be a boy, and worthy of his father. I went on my way. I did not tell Stephen, for he did not trust the poet.’

Maeve seemed a little more at ease, Deirdre a little less so now.

‘And he will be worthy of his father, and of his grandfather, and of all the generations that came before, and gloried in the name of O’Neill.’

‘No!’ Deirdre had stood up. ‘You will not do it to him! You will not steal his life as you did those of my father and my brother, to fuel your own fantasy! Those days are gone, Grandmother. Please, I beg of you, let Sean’s child be.’

Maeve afforded her a look of ice. ‘Look you to your own life, that you do not end it as his mother did.’ This indicating me. ‘And go down on your knees to pray God for widowhood, pray that your husband might soon join his dead brother, that He would give you another chance. Now get to your bedchamber and make yourself decent. It cannot be long before Cormac O’Neill rides into this town at his father’s side, and you will not refuse him in my house.’

I tried to go after my cousin, but was stopped by my grandmother.

‘You have done all you will do in this house. Do not think to set your foot over its door again.’

‘Grandmother, will you not believe me? I did not kill Sean.’ I looked in appeal to Eachan, but he was already guiding Macha to what had been Sean’s chamber and would now be hers: he had no further interest in me. Maeve made to follow them, pausing only for a moment to answer me.

‘If Sean were not dead, what you have done now would have killed him anyway.’

I could have torn my hair in frustration. ‘Woman, I do not know what you mean! Tell me, what have I done?’

‘You have betrayed our cause. Tell me why, if you were with Stephen Mac Cuarta, are you not with his people yet? Do not tell me that he did not ask you to join with them. Why have you brought Deirdre back here, away from Cormac, from Murchadh, whose protection she was in? Why do you come here, with this Scot from Ballygally, when I know, and all the town knows, that messengers rode yesterday from Ballygally to the governor of the castle here, to warn the English of the planned uprising?’

I began to stammer. ‘I told no one, I …’

‘If not you, who? You have betrayed everything your cousin lived for, and I pray God that you may soon drown in your own blood.’ And with these words, my mother’s mother sent me from her house.

All the short way from the FitzGarrett tower house to the castle, I asked myself the same question, ‘If not you, who?’ but there could be only one answer, and I knew that already. It had been Andrew. Andrew, who had listened in the night to my talk with Father Stephen while I had thought he slept; Andrew, whom I had found deep in conversation with Sir James soon after our arrival at Ballygally. I felt I had been betrayed. Yet why should I feel that? He had done no more than any honest citizen of the town of Carrickfergus would have done; he had done the duty of any honest subject of the king. And yet … And yet … He had betrayed Stephen, and Michael, and Sean, and Cormac, and me. He had not told me what he was going to do; he did not trust me. But I could not feel betrayed in that. He was right not to trust me. While I had refused to fight for them, I could not have gone against them. I could not have said, even now, that I would not have tried to get a warning to Cormac, somehow. Alexander Seaton: a man of no principles, of no commitment. Such a man cannot be betrayed, and yet I felt abandoned by Andrew, cast adrift and left behind.