I came to a halt two paces from her – there was no intimation that I should approach any closer than that. She searched my face. Her mouth smiled though her eyes did not. ‘You are no Scot. Your mother ran as far as she could from her own people, but she could never have got far enough. She carried them in every part of her being and she gave birth to them in you. It was meant to be.’
I looked to Sean for some explanation but he, ill at ease, said nothing.
‘Are you saying Andrew Seaton was not my father?’
She shook her head impatiently. ‘Andrew Seaton was the name of the man she abandoned her home and name for, and he was your father, no doubt, for she fancied herself in love, for a time, as I had warned her it would be. But I should not have been angry with her, for she could no more help her leaving than I could prevent it. I should have seen it. It was meant to be that she left this place and gave birth to a son far away from here where he would not be known, that you might return one day to break your family’s curse.’
It was clear she was in earnest, and I knew I could not listen to this from her. ‘It is as well that you understand now, Grandmother’ – for I did not know how else to address her – ‘that I have no belief in your superstitions. I am here because my cousin asked me to help him in whatever danger threatens him and this family. I have come for the sake of my mother’s love for this place and people, but this is not what I was born to, and when I have done what I have to do, I will return to my own country and people, for they are not here.’
Her only response was in her eyes, whose contempt said I would do whatever she required of me, and that whatever I thought I had been born to was no concern of hers, or mine.
Eventually she said, ‘You sit and eat also. Sean, I will take you now to your grandfather.’ My cousin got up, draining his glass in one. ‘And then we must talk, for Roisin’s father has become anxious, and the girl herself is getting restless.’
Sean glanced at me. ‘Another time, Grandmother. Another time.’ He followed her up the wooden stairway to the gallery above, there to disappear from view.
Although I had not eaten for many hours, my appetite had gone completely, and the wine, fine though it no doubt was, tasted sour in my mouth. I put my glass down and looked around me. The furnishing in the room was solid work, of good quality, not shabby but well worn. Chairs, tables, cabinets, settles, had all been here a long time. But how long? Had they been here thirty years? Had my mother known them? I could not tell. But the hangings on the walls, those had been there more than one lifetime, I was sure of it. I looked more closely and saw what I knew my mother must have seen as a young girl, standing where I now stood, and again in her mind’s eye many years later as she told those stories to me. As I looked on them I began to recall the tales again, of Lugh and Balor, of Niamh and Oisin and of Cuchulainn. Images of feastings, battles, shape-changing heroes and tragic lovers were in my mind and before my eyes. It might have been a matter of minutes, or it might have been an hour, before Sean’s voice interrupted my reverie.
‘Alexander, will you come now?’
He stood behind the carved wooden balustrade and waited for me. As I drew nearer it seemed to me that his face had aged ten years. Beneath his eyes were shadows that had not been there before, and his mouth was drawn tight in an effort to keep his composure.
‘Is he still living?’
He nodded, once. ‘But it cannot be long now. I think he will be gone before morning. Come.’ I followed him to a small arched doorway set back in one corner.
The room we passed into was very dimly lit. Despite the early frost that had taken hold outside, it was almost overwhelmingly warm, like a place that had known no true air or light for days. Maeve was there, and in a corner, only just illuminated by the meagre light, was a dark-hooded figure, mumbling in Latin as a set of beads moved though his hands. I did not care. My only interest was in the figure lying propped against the pillows in the centre of the heavily canopied bed. That he was very ill was clear even from where I stood, but so too was a light in his eyes that could not be mistaken, a light I had last seen ten years ago, before my mother had left this world. Maeve started to speak but I ignored her and went to him.
‘Grandfather,’ I said.
He reached out a hand and I took it in mine. Two hands, the fingers the same length, the same shape, but separated by fifty years of time and life. What would I have given to have had the hand of my four-year-old self in the firm grip of that man in his prime? To have been embraced by those arms when they were still strong, to have known him a lifetime?
By some great effort he spoke. I bent closer. ‘Alexander. My Grainne’s child. My boy, my boy. That I lived to see this day.’ He gripped my hand more tightly but the effort of speech was too much and he sank back into the pillows, exhausted. Maeve left the room, but the mumbling priest did not, and I understood that he would remain until my grandfather passed from this world into the next. Sean came over to the bed and sat down on the other side. He gently stroked the old man’s forehead and took his other hand in his. Our grandfather smiled one last time and closed his eyes, to begin a sleep from which we two who were with him knew he would not wake. I would have waited until he made that final crossing, but I did not, for I had not been that four-year-old boy, that strapping youth, that young man sharing hopes; I leaned over and kissed his forehead and then got up and left, leaving him with the one who had.
I was taken by Eachan to the top of the house, up a narrow, almost hidden set of steps from the balcony, to a kind of attic behind the vaulted ceiling. We passed from the top of the steps through a walkway, jutting out from the parapets and open to the elements – the machicolation – from which overhang any enemy approaching to the tower house could be watched in safety and, if necessary, dealt with. I was hurried along the walkway to a small door in the other corner of the parapet. Eachan knocked on the door and spoke in a low voice to the person on the other side.
The man who opened the door was older than me, older than Sean too, thirty-five, perhaps. His straight blond hair came halfway down his neck. He glanced at me only for a moment, green eyes in a strong-boned face assessing me before he turned to Eachan and said, ‘By God: he is like Sean after all.’
Eachan said nothing, merely nodding before he left us alone in the tiny chamber. There were two beds in it, and some plain furnishings – a chest, a stool and small table with a chessboard on it, wooden candlesticks with cheap-smelling tallow candles – but after the travels and discomforts of the nights on my journey from Aberdeen, its cleanliness and simplicity were things of luxury to me.
The other indicated one of the beds. ‘You can sleep there. I will not disturb you, but if you want anything, food, drink, the latrine – you are to ask only me. You are not to wander the house yourself.’
‘Am I a prisoner?’
He seemed to consider a moment. ‘No, but aside from your grandparents, Sean, Eachan and myself, no one knows that you are here, or even of your existence. The mistress would have it kept that way.’
He turned his back, our conversation over. I didn’t even know his name. He carried himself with some authority, and I wondered if he was Deirdre’s husband.
‘Who are you? What is your place in this household?’
‘My name is Andrew Boyd. My father was your grandfather’s steward. I work in your grandfather’s merchant business and travel for him throughout the province. I have the status of a servant in this house.’
He did not have the bearing of a servant, or of one who would remain a servant long.
‘I am Alexander Seaton,’ I said. ‘But you will know that already.’