A Game of Sorrows

TWENTY-FIVE Carrickfergus Castle

As we approached the gatehouse of the castle I was gripped by a cold apprehension, for it was in this massive, terrible foothold of the English Crown on foreign soil that I would see my name cleared or damned.

Archers and musketmen patrolled the parapet and the overhang beyond it. The occasional glint of a weapon could also be seen through arrow slits set in the walls. Unarmed, my head protected only by a hood, and dressed in the clothing of one of Sir James’s servants, I felt exposed and certain that for every three weapons I saw edge through the walls, one was trained on me. But on Sir James making himself known, the bridge was let down and first one portcullis and then the other lifted. At the gateway I glanced upwards with some trepidation, mindful of Sean’s tales of the gruesome fates of many who’d passed beneath the murder hole above my head, but there were no bowmen there, no soldiers readying boiling oil to pour over me. A moment later I was within the outer ward of Carrickfergus Castle; I should have felt safe there, but I did not.

A soldier escorted us to an upper room in the western tower of the gatehouse, where the constable was greeted by Sir James as an old friend.

‘Ronald, I see you are much busied.’

‘Busied? I have not slept since we received your letters, and neither has half the garrison. I have sent troops of men to hunt down O’Neill, and have had to make the castle ready for attack should we fail to find him. And this,’ he said, looking beyond Sir James to where I stood, slightly stooped beneath the doorway, ‘this, I am assuming, is Richard FitzGarrett’s other grandson.’

It was the first time since my arrival in Ulster that anyone had identified me by the name FitzGarrett – it was always O’Neill: Sean’s cousin, Grainne’s son, above all Maeve’s grandson, but to the constable, I was FitzGarrett, and that could only have been because Sir James had announced me as such. It was, I suspected, a shrewd move, and it gave me some hope.

‘Well, James, there has been a stir and a half here about this one, and Boyd also since the Blackstones thundered down from Coleraine. You know Matthew Blackstone’s younger son is dead, and Seaton here and Boyd said to be the cause?’

Sir James chose his words carefully. ‘I had heard something of it, but have not had the time to get to the bottom of it.’

‘And no more do I, my friend. What do you say, Mr Seaton? Did you and Boyd leave Coleraine with the shouts of murderers in your ears?’

‘We did, but we murdered no one. We …’

He held up a hand. ‘I have not the time. James, do you vouch for him or not?’

My countryman looked at me carefully. ‘I vouch for Andrew Boyd, and he for Seaton here.’

‘Then that will have to do. I leave him under your guard until I can attend to the matter. See you don’t let him out of your sight. Now, your wife has been spirited away by my own dear lady. You will find them in our quarters somewhere, gossiping even now, no doubt.’

As we were about to leave his room, the constable called us back. ‘James. Where is Andrew Boyd?’

‘I do not know. He came safe to the town, but then went into hiding from the Blackstones.’

‘Then we must pray we find him before they do. Matthew Blackstone is as a bull enraged. If he finds him or Seaton here, he has sworn to tear them limb from limb.’

Our escort took us to the inner ward, and finally the castle keep itself, having first checked with his constable that he was sure I was not to be warded in the sea tower prison instead. He made little attempt to mask his disappointment when told I was not to be, and led us away mumbling that I had ‘the very face of a rebel’.

It was evident that my company was not looked for in the great hall of the keep, and I went gladly to the small chamber next to the basement kitchen, where Sir James’s men were quartered and where I could be watched. Margaret brought me some food and drink. As had become her way, she avoided my eye, and spoke little to me.

In another place, in another circumstance, I would have left her to her silences. I had little interest in pursuing the society of those who did not wish mine. But we were bound by deaths, this girl and I, and bound by friendship with another.

‘Margaret, I wish you would look at me.’

She lifted her eyes but lowered them again. ‘Why?’

As was often the case when speaking to women, I found the words that came to my mouth inadequate. ‘Because I am Andrew’s friend, or have been, and I know that you care for him. There is no cause for hostility between us; I wish you would trust me.’

‘You do not know what you are talking about.’

‘Margaret, I killed no one. I never lifted a hand to my cousin, and I killed no one at Coleraine.’

‘I care nothing for Coleraine or what you did there.’

‘You cannot think I had a hand in the murder of Sean? I swear to you, I loved him as a brother.’ As a brother. I breathed deep. ‘Margaret, he was my brother.’

She looked at me now. She did not flinch, or turn away, but looked at me as if I were at last other than she had thought me to be. ‘Your brother?’

‘He never knew it; I never got to call him so, but he was my brother, for we shared a mother. Sean O’Neill FitzGarrett was my brother, and you who have also lost a brother must know what I feel.’

She stared at me a few moments longer. ‘Do not think to tell me what I know, or feel.’ She left and I knew, however well I might wish her, that she would never accept friendship from me.

I was disturbed only by the cooks coming in and out of the room for stores. What passed for my bed was an arrangement of sacks on the floor, but it was better than what I had laid myself down upon on several nights just past, and I slept with some ease. At some hour well before dawn I became aware of a stirring of activity, and anxious voices in the kitchens. The door of the storeroom was opened and light brought in.

‘He’s still here,’ said a harsh voice, whose owner I could not see.

‘Then see that you keep him there. He is not to be allowed near the other one. Who knows what plots they have on hand.’

‘The constable thinks the other had himself caught simply to get to where this one is.’

‘They are sly, every one of them, and it may be so.’

I struggled to my feet as the man closed the door again and the storeroom became dark once more. I tried to open the door, but it had been locked on the outside. I banged on it, provoking curses from my guard and shrieks of terror from the women in the kitchens.

‘Who have you taken? Who is it? Tell me who you have brought here!’

The door was wrenched open, and an angry face leered at me out of the darkness. ‘Hold your tongue and your noise while you still can: you’ll get to sing your song soon enough.’ He shoved me backwards into the storeroom and I heard the bolt brought to again.

And so I waited through the night, as the castle settled in on itself again, and it waited too. The servants in the kitchens, the dogs in the hall, returned to their sleep, but like the guards that walked the parapets above us and the curtain wall around us, I did not sleep. There was no attack, or sound of attack; no noise of skirmishing or fighting, no sounds of fire or panic from the town. Who had they brought in?

Perhaps two hours later I heard Sir James’s voice in the kitchen, and soon my door was opened again and the light brought in. Sir James took the candle, but ushered the guard away. He sat down on a flour sack and, with little ceremony, got to his point.

‘What do you know of Cormac O’Neill?’

Cormac? I had not thought it would be Cormac.

‘Cormac O’Neill … I … he is the son of Murchadh O’Neill.’

‘Murchadh, yes, who held you against your will, and pursued you to my home, which he then set alight.’

‘Yes.’

‘And Cormac, his eldest son, pursued your cousin Deirdre to my home, and begged that we should turn her over to him.’

‘Yes.’

‘This same Cormac who, I am informed, given the death of your cousin Sean, is designated leader of the planned rising.’

I did not ask him how he knew. Andrew: Andrew had told him everything.

‘If you know it all, there can be no need to ask me.’

‘Can there not? Then there is no need to ask why Cormac O’Neill should take pains to exonerate you from any wrong-doing in the death of Henry Blackstone?’

I was dumbfounded. There was nothing sensible I could say. The words that came to my mind were ‘Cormac wasn’t there,’ but some sense of self-preservation stopped me.

‘Well, have you no answer?’

I shook my head. ‘I have none. I do not know why Cormac would do that.’

‘But he has. He has sworn this night before the constable and myself and the governor’s deputy that you and Andrew Boyd played no part in the murder of Henry Blackstone; that when they reached Coleraine with your grandmother’s false accusations, you left the town to come back here and clear your name, that you fell in with a Franciscan priest, a consort of the rebel Stephen Mac Cuarta, who caused Blackstone’s death and brought you to Murchadh O’Neill. Is this the truth?’

Almost, it was almost the truth. But why should Cormac have chosen to tell it? Why should he offer to myself and Andrew a way out of our predicament where before there had been none? ‘Yes,’ I said, ‘it is the truth. Can I see him?’

‘The governor thought you might make such a request. You can see him, for ten minutes, and not alone. Come, we will do it now, before the dawn of a new day brings its own troubles upon us.’

The embers in the kitchen hearths still glowed. A kitchen boy, curled up with a hound before the hearth, stirred as we passed, but everyone else slept on. Out in the courtyard, guards were waiting for us and torches lit our way to the middle ward and then out towards the sea tower, jutting from the walls to the north and west, musket men guarding it. We entered by the guardroom at the basement, and a ladder was put up to the cell above. I heaved myself through the hatch and into a dank, foul-smelling room with little light or furnishing save a few sodden rushes on the floor. The place stank of seaweed and rot.

Cormac was in the corner, hunched, his feet shackled, his wrists bound. He did not look up, and I watched him a moment, feeling no triumph in the reversal of our roles.

‘Cormac.’

His handsome face broke into a momentary smile, then faded. ‘Have they taken you, too?’

‘I am not a prisoner, at least … I do not think so.’

‘Then I am glad of it.’

‘What happened?’

‘They took me last night, after I entered the town.’

‘Alone?’

‘My father and brothers have gone to Dun-a-Mallaght. Others of our men have gone to Tullahogue; we cannot wait any longer for Stephen’s help from abroad.’

‘Stephen is dead,’ I said.

‘I know. We found his grave.’

‘His great fear was that your father would be precipitate.’

‘My father has waited twenty years. Those who talked of helping us have had long enough.’

‘And you think Murchadh will come for you?’

Cormac laughed, a low laugh with little humour in it. ‘They will hang me before my father is halfway to his horse. I won’t see the sun reach its height in the sky today, nor go down in the sea again.’ It was a statement of fact, and I did not attempt to argue with him.

‘But why did you come into the town on your own?’

‘I was coming for her.’

For Deirdre. Of course.

‘Did you get as far as my grandmother’s house?’

‘I was in sight of it, almost within the shelter of the door, when the mob of Coleraine, with her husband and his father at its head, came on me. To be caught by such as these. It will be a wonder if the hangman gets his rope around my neck before I die of shame.’

‘Cormac, she will not go back to her husband.’

‘I knew that already. But who is there to protect her now? Your grandfather, Sean, both gone. You will leave this place as soon as you are able, I know that, and even the servant Boyd is dead.’

The words reached me from a nightmare. Andrew was dead. He could not be found, because he was dead. The knowledge sank like a stone on my stomach. ‘Was it you or the Blackstones?’

He looked at me strangely. ‘Was what?’

‘Was it you or the Blackstones that killed him?’

‘What are you talking about? He died at Bonamargy. We saw his gr–’ And then his face broke into a broad, unaccustomed smile. ‘By God. Well, by God! Were we taken in by that? You have Sean’s guile, Seaton.’

‘It was not I, but the friars who thought of it. They had the grave dug before I ever got there.’

‘And where did you hide him? We searched every inch of that place, apart from the old nun’s cell.’

I said nothing.

‘He was in there?’ Again he laughed. ‘My father said he would rather pass through the gates of Hell than cross that threshold. Well! The old woman has nerve. But I know it was Mac Cuarta we found at Ardclinnis. It is for the best. He would not have liked what he might have lived to see.’

I remembered Stephen telling me of the debacle of the planned rising of 1615, ended before it was begun by the drunkenness and swagger of its leaders. It had taken him and others thirteen years to persuade powers abroad that the Irish could be trusted again. With Sean, with Cormac, he might have been right, but with Murchadh? Cormac was right – it was as well Stephen had not lived to see what was going to happen now. But it was not Murchadh’s swagger that had ended it for them this time: this time the English had learned of their plans through Sir James Shaw. Through Andrew Boyd. Through me.

It was as if Cormac could read my thoughts. ‘And Boyd lives, you tell me?’

‘I do not know. I have not seen him since Ballygally. He came into Carrickfergus a few hours before me, but has not been seen since.’

‘He is not at your grandmother’s?’

‘Not when I was last there. But I cannot go back. She knows now I did not murder Sean, but I do not think she can forgive me that I live while he is dead.’

‘And you did not murder him? I am a dead man: you can tell the truth to me.’

‘It is the truth. Why should I have wanted Sean dead? That I might take his place? That I might have what is his? I have a life.’ My voice was rising and I could hear the guard at the ladder. ‘I had a life, and I do not want his.’

He tried to reach a hand towards me, but the bindings stopped him. ‘It is all right. I believe you, for what such credence is worth. And you do not know who murdered Sean?’

I was losing patience. ‘Cormac, who else could it have been but your father? Who else had cause to want him dead?’

‘It was not my father,’ he said quietly. ‘He never left Maeve’s house that whole night.’

‘Then who? Who did?’

‘Ach! How should I know? Half the country was in the house. How could anyone keep note of comings and goings?’ He grew angry in his frustration. He might as well have said, ‘How could I have noticed anyone else, when I could look at no one but Deirdre?’

‘And Deirdre did not come into any danger? She did not go after him?’

‘No! She did not go after him. Deirdre was unwell; she had been distraught since O’Rahilly’s appearance the night before. She left the hall only to rest. This has nothing to do with Deirdre.’ And then I began to see it, through his vehemence, through his anger, through his desperation; I saw the reason for his desire to believe that I had killed Sean, for his anger on being questioned on the events of that night, for his determination to get Deirdre away from Carrickfergus, to keep her hidden away: Cormac feared that my cousin, the woman he loved, had murdered her brother.

He looked directly at me. ‘You must take care of her now.’

‘You cannot think she murdered him.’

‘No. But she is so lost I … You must take care of her now. I have done what I could to clear your name over Henry Blackstone’s death. Keep yourself clear of further trouble.’ That was why he had done it: so that there might be someone to watch over her when he was gone.

He said something in Gaelic that I did not understand. I do not think he had meant me to hear, but I asked him to repeat it.

‘She is my Deirdre of the Sorrows. Did you never hear of Deirdre of the Sorrows?’

‘No.’

‘A long time ago, so the bards have it, a child was born whose name and fate had been decreed before she ever left the womb. She would be called Deirdre, and so great would be her beauty that it would be the ruin of Ulster, tearing the kingdom asunder and resulting in the death of three brothers, its finest warriors. As she grew, all that had been predicted came to pass – Deirdre was indeed beautiful; she was to marry a king, an older man whom she did not love, but she fell in love instead with Naoise, a handsome young warrior with whom, with the help of his two brothers, she eloped. The king pursued and harried them, and finally captured them by an act of treachery. The kingdom was ripped asunder by discord, and the girl’s lover and his two brothers put to death.’ He looked away from me. ‘Your cousin is my Deirdre of the Sorrows. She always has been.’

‘I will take care of her,’ I said. ‘But you should know: I would have done it anyway. There is something, though, that I want from you in return.’

He raised an eyebrow in question.

‘Tell me who laid the curse on my family.’

He was weary now, and longing, I think, for me to be gone. ‘Finn O’Rahilly laid the curse on your family.’

‘At whose behest?’

‘Does it matter, now?’

‘It matters to me.’ I asked him again. ‘Do you know who laid the curse on my family?’

‘What did the poet tell you?’

‘He told me nothing.’

‘He said nothing to you; he did not speak?’

‘He spoke to me, but he refused to tell me who had commissioned him in this work; he seemed to think he retained some remnant of honour in doing so.’

‘Then perhaps he did. You might follow his example.’

‘It was the curse that brought me over here, and before I leave this place – if, God willing, I ever leave this place – I will know who is behind it.’

‘And if such knowledge harms you?’

‘I must know it anyway.’

‘Then think on his words, if you must, but you will call down upon yourself whatever griefs may follow.’

I nodded and turned to the hatch, ready to descend from this freezing, miserable place to the world of free men.

‘Do one thing more for me, Seaton: tell her goodbye. And tell her I would have loved her better than any man who has walked this earth.’

Cormac O’Neill had finished with me now. And whatever dreams he might have had, they too were finished: he might have been a hero, in other times.

Sir James was waiting for me outside, talking with the guard. ‘The stench in that place would make a man vomit. You have finished your business with O’Neill?’

‘Yes, it is finished.’

‘A better man than his father, they say.’ He was awkward a moment, but it passed. ‘Ah well, we must run with the tide, and if we do not, we get caught. The constable wishes to see you. I have spoken up for you as far as I am able. For the rest, you must shift for yourself. Also, he has news for you of a sort you may not like. If that is the case, I counsel you to keep your misliking of it to yourself.’

The constable was waiting for us in a state of evident agitation.

‘He has been to see O’Neill? And?’

‘Nothing of substance. Some talk of the FitzGarrett girl, and their nonsense of poets, little more.’

We had kept our voices low, and the guard had been able to hear little.

The constable turned his eyes on me. ‘The matter of your cousin’s murder is unresolved, but witnesses at Armstrong’s Bawn have spoken for you, and of that, at least, you are clear now.’

‘I have always known I was clear of that atrocity.’

‘What you know and what you are called to answer for may not always be the same thing.’ He looked at me silently for a moment, before returning to his papers. ‘It is not usual, you understand, that I take the word of a professed rebel over that of a settled Englishman. And yet there are reasons why I am prepared to accord some faith to the words of Cormac O’Neill in the matter of the killing of Henry Blackstone. I have considered that it might be in O’Neill’s interest, if you are of his mind, to have you free to roam and communicate with his father, but the tale he tells seems likely enough. I have decided to allow you liberty, within the town but no further. Should you take it into your head to leave Carrickfergus there will be a patrol of my men on your tail with orders to show no leniency. Do you understand?’

‘I understand.’ I had hardly known a moment’s freedom since I had set foot in this country. To be allowed the liberty of the town was an unimaginable boon.

But the constable had not finished. ‘You have not asked why I should take O’Neill’s word over Blackstone’s. Perhaps you already know.’

I suspect from my face he registered that I had no idea what he meant.

He hesitated and looked to Sir James, who nodded for him to go on. ‘Andrew Boyd, under the supervision and instruction of your grandfather for some years now, has been an agent of the king in these parts.’

He’d as well have told me Andrew was an agent of the Pope. I did not believe him, and looked from one to the other for some explanation.

‘Your grandfather was one of the most trusted of the Old English subjects of the Crown in Ireland. Despite his marriage to your grandmother, the treachery of his son, and his clinging to the old religion, he was never anything other than a true and loyal servant of the king. When King James of his grace gave his blessing to the plantation of our northern counties, he had great need of such men, and your grandfather’s trading connections made him the ideal man for keeping an eye on the new merchants and planters in the North. There have been many others, of course, but few so well established as Richard FitzGarrett. As age overtook him he turned to his late steward’s son, who had grown up in his house, to aid him in this invaluable work.’

I had heard of such things, of course, but I could not believe it of the old man whose hand I had briefly held just over a week ago, or of the companion of my trials in the days since then.

‘You wish me to believe that my grandfather used Andrew Boyd to spy on his own wife and grandson?’ I could not keep the anger out of my voice.

The constable was unmoved. ‘Cool your passions and listen. Richard FitzGarrett was employed to report upon the planters, the new English settlers of Coleraine and Londonderry. He did from time to time transmit information about Murchadh to the king, but there were others whose primary function was to do that. Many of the planters who have gone to the escheated counties from England have become duplicitous, greedy. They think not of the higher purpose of the plantation, which is to civilise these parts with men of our own speech and religion, to break the dependency of the Irish on their kin, and to bring them under our laws. Some of these planters aim only at their own profit, plunder the rivers, denude the forests; they keep their workers ill-supplied and ill-paid, so that many of the best craftsmen will not come. Worse, they lease great portions of the land with which they have been entrusted not to decent English Protestants, or even Scots, but to the native Irish who will pay the highest rents for lands they once thought their own. Under such circumstances, the plantation will fail. And it has been getting worse of late, for the planters are falling out amongst themselves, bickering over their rights and sending conflicting tales to the king. Men like Andrew Boyd, paid by the Crown and with no interest in the plantation themselves, or like Sir James here, a loyal campaigner of long standing, have become more and more important for the gathering of intelligence to be sent back to London.’

I looked to Sir James. ‘And my grandmother, Sean, Deirdre – they knew nothing of Andrew’s activities?’

‘Do you think your grandmother would have had him in the house a moment after she knew of it? And as to Sean – if he had known of it, Andrew Boyd would not have lived to draw another breath.’

I sought to defend my cousin. ‘No, Sean wouldn’t …’ but the constable stopped me.

‘Your cousin was in league with Murchadh O’Neill. What country is it you think you have come to? Have you learned nothing of it yet? In this place, men have to make choices. There is no room for nobility in friendship that will compromise a man’s loyalty. I do not doubt your cousin was a man of honour – indeed, I know him to have been so, for all his faults – but he could only have one loyalty, and that loyalty was not to the king. He would not have waited for word from Murchadh or Cormac: he would have slit Andrew Boyd’s throat himself had he known.’

And Deirdre? How much of it might Deirdre have known? There could be no doubt now that Andrew had reported to Sir James all he had heard – where? At Armstrong’s Bawn, as I’d thought he slept, drugged? At Dunluce, between the priests? But no, he had been too far gone in his injury, and even I had been able to make out little that was said there. He had not been with me to Kilcrue, to the Cursing Circle, where Finn O’Rahilly had told me little enough anyway. He had not been to Dun-a-Mallaght, but how much had I told him of what had passed there? How much had he seen and understood of what passed at Bonamargy? But it didn’t matter, for he had been at Ardclinnis, and as he had not hidden from me himself, he had heard every word that had passed between Stephen and me on that last night. Andrew Boyd knew everything about the planned rising that I knew myself, and now everyone in it was being hunted down by the English authorities. But what was there for him to tell of Deirdre? And Macha? Macha, who carried Sean’s child.

‘Is my family to be arrested?’

‘Do you think they ought to be?’

The constable had talked of loyalty, of choices: he had mistaken the one I’d made. ‘They should be left in peace.’

He appraised me a while. ‘For the time being, they will be, for I have enough on my hands with tracking down Murchadh’s rabble, and trying to get MacDonnell to deal with these accursed Franciscans of his. By God, I’ll hang the lot of them if I can. And then there are the Blackstones.’

‘Cormac told you what happened to their son,’ I said carefully.

‘It’s not that business I’m talking about. When Boyd was in Coleraine, he collected documents proving Matthew Blackstone’s son Edward, your cousin’s husband, has been avoiding customs, having secret landings and sailings of goods from creeks and bays along the coast, outside the jurisdiction of Londonderry or Coleraine. We had our suspicions, but he overreached himself when he intrigued to bring in weapons for the rebels, all for profit.’

The avoidance of customs, the secret landings, I could believe, for such things were common enough near any major port, but this last, this bringing in of weapons for enemies of the king, could have one name only: treason.

I cleared my throat. ‘He was dealing with Murchadh?’

‘Not Murchadh: Blackstone was too closely watched; the only connection he had with the rebels was through your family. He was dealing with someone, but it was not Murchadh.’

‘You think Sean?’

‘That is not our information.’

‘You cannot think Deirdre had a hand in it?’

He shook his head. ‘She has always made her sympathies clear. She has never been suspected of favouring rebellion.’

‘Then who?’

‘Who is left?’

Maeve. Only Maeve. Ready at last to play her own part in the story of the O’Neills. ‘My grandmother.’ My voice was flat. For all she had done to me and to others that I cared for, I could not wish her the fate that would befall her should she be found a rebel against the king. But yes; Sean had told me how she’d raged against Deirdre’s marriage into the Blackstones, then gone into an unaccustomed silence on the matter. I recalled his words now, and wondered just how much Sean had known about her dealings with them: ‘in the end I think she may have come to believe that it was in her interests to let the match go ahead in any case.’ She had not gone to Coleraine with Deirdre to make preparations for a wedding she had no interest in: she had gone to buy guns.

The constable sighed. ‘We believe so, but we have not the evidence, and to take one of her age and standing in for … questioning’ – he had not meant questioning; I knew what he had meant. ‘To take her in for questioning without evidence would have caused more uproar than I have the men to deal with.’

I straightened a little at this, sensing some hope. ‘And what have you got?’

‘We have the papers Andrew Boyd received at Coleraine, sent from London, detailing Blackstone’s contraband shipment of weapons and when and how they were to be landed.’

‘The crates of slate,’ I said, almost to myself. Under my own eyes, Matthew Blackstone had taken delivery of the guns they were to sell to my grandmother. And under his eyes had been landed the very letters that would condemn him, ‘and the Madeira.’

Sir James raised a good-humoured eyebrow. ‘I believe a cask of that sort played its part. The papers were sealed in an internal compartment, with no damage to the liquid goods either, I am glad to say. It is a blessing on a man of fine tastes that these coopers know their trade.’

‘And that is why the Blackstones are so keen to hunt Andrew down.’

The constable nodded.

‘But Andrew does not have the papers. I am certain of it. I saw him half-drowned, stripped, treated and clothed all on the night of our flight from Coleraine: he had no papers with him.’

‘He knows better than to carry such papers on him. Shortly after the cask was landed, he checked its contents. Within an hour it was in the hands of another of our agents there, a man very close to the centre of Blackstone’s operations …’

‘The master of the brickworks,’ I said.

‘I cannot say. The man is still in the field. Let us say simply that within another hour, that cask was on the back of a cart of goods and on its way to me at Ballygally.’

I marvelled at the ingenuity of it, and at how easily duped I had been, I who had suspected nothing. ‘So, you had much news to convey to the castle here.’ The news of English treachery contained in the letters, the word of the coming rising, out of Andrew’s own mouth.

‘Much. Andrew Boyd has saved many English lives, and Scots. Not just in the towns like Coleraine. Londonderry and Carrickfergus, but out on the plantations, in the bawns. Like the one in which you yourselves spent the night.’

‘Armstrong’s Bawn?’

The constable nodded. ‘There were rumours that Franciscan agents were infiltrating the settlements, gathering intelligence in preparation for the planned attacks. Andrew was able to verify this for us.’

And so it had been no great work of coincidence that saw Andrew and me put up for the night in the very bawn where Stephen Mac Cuarta was gathering his information in the guise of an Irish baker. Andrew had indeed saved many lives, but how many Irish lives had he betrayed? Would he have betrayed me, had I answered Stephen differently that last night at Ardclinnis? I knew that answer already. One choice, one loyalty, as the constable had told me.

I had heard enough, and asked if I might rest awhile again in the kitchen storeroom before trying again at my grandmother’s house to make my peace.

‘Rest here as long as you wish, but, after all that I have told you here, you cannot go to your grandmother’s house.’

I returned wearily to my sacking bed, seeking nothing more than blissful oblivion.

Sleep came, but the sought-for oblivion did not. I knew myself to be standing on the shore beneath the castle, looking across the water to Scotland, from where voices I knew I could not hear were calling to me: Sarah, Jaffray, my father, little Zander. I kept trying to step into the water, to go to them, but a hand held tight to my wrist, pulling me back. It was my grandmother. She pointed with her other hand to some shapeless thing in the water, some shapeless thing in a white shift, and with my mother’s flowing black hair. Deirdre and Roisin were on either side of the thing, trying to pull it up, while my grandmother intoned again and again in my ear: ‘Better for you she had drowned. Better for you she had drowned.’

I didn’t know when the note was pushed under the door; I didn’t know who had left it. No one in the kitchens knew: they all denied having seen anyone. I told them it was of no matter when they started to wonder about calling a guard, and went back to my resting place to look at it again.

It was not his usual careful hand, but something more hurried and scrabbled. A man in fear of his life does not take as much care over his letters as he does when setting a line of accounts. I went back out to the kitchen and threw the paper into the fire.