‘Did I not tell you then?’ Sean’s voice was warm and happy.
The girl continued to gaze at me, as if she could not believe what was in front of her eyes. ‘I could not have … I would not have …’ And then she smiled, a smile that reached out and held me, and sent warmth to every part of me. She took my face in her hands and was gazing up into my eyes with love that lighted the room. ‘Alexander. I could not have believed it. Alexander.’
I could find no words, and stood there as one struck dumb, until a mighty slap on the shoulder from Sean brought me to my senses.
‘Do not tell me you don’t know your cousin, man. All I have heard since the day she was born is how like your mother she is.’
‘Yes,’ I said, stuttering a little, ‘yes … she is.’
‘Then I am glad,’ the girl said, ‘for you will have to love me now.’
‘You must never doubt that,’ I said. And I knew it was the truth.
She searched my face as if seeking out the differences between myself and her brother. Each feature was studied, memorised.
‘It will take some of the pressure off me, I don’t mind telling you,’ said Sean. ‘He is not so handsome, of course, and his manners are utterly beyond redemption, but no doubt the ladies of Carrickfergus will not be altogether disappointed when they eventually lay eyes on him.’
Deirdre gave her brother a withering look. ‘Are there ladies left in Carrickfergus? I am glad to hear it. You have surely been occupied elsewhere this last while, Sean. What ladies there are will not be allowed within a hundred yards of you, Alexander, if their fathers have any say in it. He ruins the family name nigh on every week.’
Sean laughed. ‘Did I not tell you she was a shrew, Alexander?’
‘You said nothing of the kind, and I would not have believed you in any case. Deirdre, I am glad to see you at last.’
‘And I you. You cannot know the blessing it is to us that our grandfather lived to see you.’
‘I would have liked to have longer.’
‘You must not grieve over what has passed and cannot be changed. The sight of you will have healed a wound he carried with him thirty years.’
We were all three silent a moment, before Sean spoke. ‘And yet we should not be sad, we three. He would not wish us sad. We are his legacy, and let it not be one of sadness; this is a joyful moment.’ He looked around him. ‘I suppose it would be too much to hope that Boyd keeps a drink in this room?’
‘I have never seen it if he does.’
‘All that Protestant discipline of his. It cannot be good for a man.’
‘You think your Catholic indiscipline keeps you in better health?’ Deirdre’s tone was severe, but her eyes were laughing.
‘I will go to my grave having known what it was to live.’
It was as if a cold breeze had travelled through the room.
‘Please do not speak of it, Sean. You must take greater care.’
His face became tender. ‘I take care where I must, little sister. You should not give so much credence to poets and their curses.’
‘And what of men and their muskets?’ she asked.
‘You know about that?’
‘The whole of the North knows about that, Sean. By the time the rumours of it reached Coleraine the tale was of twenty men with muskets, and that only some bewitchment, some pact with the fairy folk, kept you and your horse from death at the foot of the cliff.’
‘And do not tell me you believed any of this, you who laughed in the face of tales that sent me to my childhood bed in terror?’
‘Sean, I could sit here a month and still not have told Alexander of every escapade you have been in. There is no tale of you I could hear that I could discount at first hearing, other than that you had settled to a life of business and piety. But I took the precaution of speaking to our grandfather’s agent. He is the only man in Coleraine whose word I trust. He told me the truth of it. You must be careful. Murchadh …’
He glanced at me. ‘Not now, Deirdre. Let us talk of pleasanter things. It will not be long until the wake begins. Time enough for sombre thoughts.’
‘But the curse …’
‘Ach, the curse. Do not trouble your head about that. After the funeral, I am to take Alexander to O’Rahilly and …’
Her face paled at the mention of O’Rahilly’s name. ‘You cannot be thinking of that. You cannot place Alexander in that danger.’ She gripped my hand again. ‘You must not go. Please, you must not go.’
Before I could answer, the door to the room opened and Andrew Boyd walked in. He stopped short when he saw that I was not alone. Sean stepped back and Deirdre stood up. Boyd muttered something that sounded like, ‘I am sorry,’ and left as suddenly as he had come.
Sean looked to Deirdre. ‘Come on, your husband will be wondering where you are.’
‘I am his wife, not his lapdog.’
Her brother grinned. ‘I do not think Blackstone knew what he was about when he married himself an Irishwoman. But it is time for us to get ready, all the same. Alexander, Maeve has some plan for you for this evening. We will talk later.’
Deirdre kissed me on the cheek. ‘And you and I also will talk, and talk, for there is a lifetime of you that I must get to know.’ And then they were gone, and something of the light inside went with them.
It was not long afterwards that my grandmother entered the room. We had not spoken since the night of the strange, aborted baptism. There were no preliminaries.
‘Your grandfather will be buried tomorrow.’
‘I know that,’ I said.
‘No doubt. You should be there, by Sean’s side, at his funeral. It is your place, but it is not yet the time to make you known.’
‘I will do him honour here, in prayer, in scripture reading. I would like to have known him better, but I will pray to take example from what I have learned about him in life.’
Maeve’s mouth contorted slightly. ‘How Grainne must have suffered with such people,’ she said. ‘But you are in my house tonight, and there are none of your ministers here. It is my desire, and he would have expected it also, that you watch over your grandfather’s body tonight.’
‘You wish me to sit in the chapel with his remains?’ I asked.
She looked at me as if I were lacking in something. ‘His remains rest in this house. I wish you to be at the wake.’
‘How can that be if I am not to be made known? Is the house not full of people?’
‘There is a place in the gallery that you can watch from. Andrew Boyd will show you where. You must take great care not to be seen.’ Her voice was low and soft, as my mother’s had been, but there was no warmth in it for me. I still gave little credence to her worries, but I assured her I would be cautious. Her business finished, she made to leave, but paused a moment when I spoke again.
‘Tell me, who is Roisin O’Neill?’
She appraised me, interested.
‘Roisin O’Neill is the only daughter of my cousin Murchadh. Through the duplicity of others, Murchadh fell out of favour with the Earl of Tyrone in his youth, and had made his peace with the Crown before the end of Tyrone’s rebellion. The earl never forgave him, and Murchadh was not with him when he and the others, my own son Phelim amongst them, left for Spain, to seek help for our plundered land. But there was a blessing in it, for the English trust Murchadh, and he has managed to hold to some of his lands where others have had them wrenched from them.’ My grandmother seemed pleased with this, what must have been a well-rehearsed justification of her cousin’s prosperity where so many others had been driven to poverty and dishonour.