A pallor had descended on the faces of many of the guests, and principally the English, for what in Murchadh’s mouth was a rallying call to the Irish was in their ears nothing less than sedition. Henry Blackstone stood up. His brother tried to pull him down, but the younger man struggled free, knocking over a tankard of ale as he did so.
‘Do you think we have come here to listen to this, you old Irish goat? Your poets and your harpers are gone, and your days are gone too, you and all your kind.’
All along the principal table, and at the upper ends of the side tables, hands went to hilts. There was a dead silence. Andrew Boyd whispered to me, ‘At a word from Murchadh, they will slit his throat.’
Edward Blackstone made another attempt to pull his brother down. ‘Henry, you make a fool …’
‘No, Edward, you are the fool. Do you allow yourself to be treated like this by your own wife? Having your family and your nation insulted in this way? Consigned to the lowest tables like an inconvenient stranger? Your wife’s lover flaunted in your face …’ Half-a-dozen Irishmen leapt from their seats; Sean was only kept in his by the firm hand of Eachan, who had rarely left his side all evening.
Edward Blackstone let go his brother’s arm: he looked utterly defeated. He pushed his plate away and got to his feet. He ignored his brother now, and looked past him to Deirdre. ‘Well?’ he said to her.
‘It is not the place …’ she began.
‘No. It is not. And I will not stay here.’ He took his brother by the arm and began to walk from the hall. As he came to the stair head, he turned again to his wife. ‘Well? Do you come with me?’
She had not moved. ‘My grandfather …’
‘Your grandfather be damned,’ he snapped. ‘You are my wife. I return to Coleraine two days from tomorrow; you will come with me then or not at all.’ Without waiting for her reply, he left.
All eyes were on my cousin. Her long, loose hair glinted brilliantly like the red leaves of autumn in the candlelight. Her composure had not faltered, but I could see that she breathed deeply, and that her fingers gripped hard to the goblet in her hand. Cormac O’Neill stared long after my cousin’s husband, and I would not have slept easy in my bed had I been Edward Blackstone that night. Further down the table, Sean’s face was like thunder, and I noticed Eachan’s hand still pressed hard on his shoulder. At the centre of the table, Maeve had never wavered, and only a slight smile at the corner of her lips betrayed what she felt. She lifted high the glass in her right hand, and again her steward filled it.
The players had their pipes and bows flying in a jig within minutes. The tension was broken, and soon all around the hall there was movement, music, the clamour of talk between old friends and the exchange of wary or defiant glances between old foes. Andrew Boyd had told me the names of as many of the mourners as he knew, and I had tried in my head to match them to Sean’s stories of rivalries and feuds between families and neighbours. Everywhere was brilliant light and warmth, yet when I looked at Roisin O’Neill I saw she sat alone, unreachable in her stillness and silence. I wondered what it was in her that my cousin had no interest in knowing.
‘What did Henry Blackstone mean,’ I said, ‘when he spoke to his brother about his wife’s lover?’
There was no response from Andrew Boyd and for a moment I thought he had not heard my necessarily low whisper. I repeated my question. ‘Who did he mean by Deirdre’s lover? Is it Cormac?’ Murchadh’s oldest son was tall, striking, with a strange beauty to him that might dazzle man or woman.
Andrew Boyd followed the direction of my gaze. ‘Your cousin has no lover,’ he said, in a tone that suggested that should be the end of the matter, but there was more I wanted to know.
‘Even so …’
He turned exasperated eyes on me and waited.
‘Even if that is so,’ I continued, ‘could no one have stopped her throwing herself away on Edward Blackstone? She clearly does not like him, still less love him.’
He looked away from me, his voice hardened. ‘I am not made privy to such matters.’ And in that moment, I heard the answer to all the questions I might yet ask: it was not Cormac O’Neill who had been Deirdre’s lover.
I could say nothing, but after a moment something in him relented. ‘Maeve tried, of course. You know that already. But she was not dissuaded. She did it to defy your grandmother, to throw off her Gaelic roots and to find herself a place in this new Ulster.’
The woman I was looking at was an Irishwoman in every part of her being. ‘I think she is wasted with him.’
‘A pearl before swine,’ he murmured, and then he looked at me, a light in his eyes that I had never seen there before. ‘She told me once that she wanted to escape, as your mother had done. But I think your father was a better man than Edward Blackstone, and that your mother chose a better path. Deirdre would have done well to have fallen in with Maeve’s plan that she marry Cormac.’
When I looked again at the man she had refused, and thought of him she had chosen, I realised that my cousin’s abhorrence of our grandmother’s world must be great indeed.
As Andrew was showing himself more inclined to conversation than he had ever done before, I thought I would try my luck a little further. ‘Why will Sean not defy Maeve in the same way? It is evident that he does not love Roisin O’Neill.’
He squatted down on his haunches and regarded me as one would an inquisitive child.
‘You really do not understand these people yet, do you? But Sean does, for all his careless manner, he knows what is expected of him. Roisin is an O’Neill, and her father, by conforming to English law, has held on to some of the old O’Neill lands. With your grandfather’s money now coming to Sean, and trading on the FitzGarretts’ good standing with the English administration, they will buy into more lands. Sean will take his FitzGarrett name and his FitzGarrett money and dazzle the English with them. He will be given some of the old O’Neill lands in return, he will promise to nurture his tenants in loyalty to the Crown. The English will think themselves well served in this bargain.’
‘And will they be?’ He did not answer me at first. I persisted. ‘Will they be well served?’
He considered a moment and spoke slowly. ‘About as well served as a coop of chickens by a starving fox.’
I looked at Murchadh O’Neill and his sons. They might have kept their peace and kept their lands for twenty years, but everything in their bearing, their appearance and their speech told they were Irishmen, through and through. As Roisin’s brother called to the players for a livelier air, I suspected they would not dance to the English tune much longer.
Andrew got up. ‘I am needed downstairs,’ he said. ‘You should forget what we have spoken about tonight. And take care you do not move into the light; I thought I saw you once.’
As he was going down the steps from the gallery, I heard a shout from somewhere outside. Few in the hall appeared to notice it. After a moment it came again, and then a third time. Andrew had heard it too, and started towards the ground floor, taking the steps two at a time. It was a few minutes before he returned, his face set and determined. He went directly to Sean, whose expression darkened as he listened. Then they went to Maeve. Whatever message they brought had only a slight effect on my grandmother’s countenance, the briefest flicker of something – fear, surprise – then a deepening of its habitual resolution. She said a brief word to Andrew and took up her seat once more at the centre of the table. He hesitated a moment, but it was clear that Maeve was not going to give her order twice, and he went to do her bidding. After standing a moment in a kind of shock, Sean began to speak urgently to her. Maeve rewarded him with a few words only and continued to gaze straight ahead, a picture of composure. With a great reluctance, Sean took up his seat beside her once more. Both now watched the head of the stairs, waiting.