‘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 London
derry. 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 Black-stone’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 over-reached 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 th
at 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 grand-mother’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.
Alexander, for the love of God and our friendship, meet me tonight, at seven, in the church of St Nicholas. Tell no one, if you value my life.
A Game of Sorrows Page 32
