He moved closer to me. ‘You are to say nothing whatsoever about the poet. I am not convinced that they are not behind the thing somehow. Tell them you have come with your steward to see to our late grandfather’s business in the town – for he had much trade with the planters at Coleraine. The Blackstones have no notion of hospitality, but they will have to let you stay. Andrew can go into the town and find out more about them, and you can observe the family itself.’
‘For what?’ I asked.
Sean raised his hands in a gesture of indifference. ‘Signs. Indications. Slips of the tongue. Anything that suggests they mean our family harm, or look to wrest our grandfather’s business from us. They will know well enough that I have no business head. Taking you for me, they may try to draw you into some swindle. Of course it may well be that they have nothing to do with it. Whoever is behind this clearly seeks to send our grandmother from her senses and see to it that, should I dodge further musket balls, I have no friends left.’
‘And to prevent your marriage to Roisin.’
He waved my words away. ‘That is something different. Remember: Edward and Henry Blackstone will leave here in two days’ time, so you must not tarry in Coleraine any longer.’
‘And then?’
‘I will get a message to a person who is known to me at Bushmills. He will take you to Finn O’Rahilly. Show the charlatan to his face what falsehoods he peddles, and with the contents of your purse you will learn something of who set him to it. And yet I doubt you will get as much from him as I could have done. I fear your techniques of persuasion will be more subtle than my own.’
I did not need to ask him what he meant. I looked at Andrew. ‘Can it be done?’
Andrew had been thinking it through. He did not take long to answer. ‘Yes, I believe it can be done.’
Sean raised an eyebrow. ‘This is how things stand, is it? You have roomed together five nights and now my place in my cousin’s esteem is usurped.’ He was trying to make light of it, but I could see in his eyes that he was hurt. It was the kind of hurt I used to see in the eyes of Archie Hay, if I should take myself off with other student friends for a day, to speak of things of scholarship in which he could feign no interest. Sean and Archie, they were the gilded ones. But there was a little truth in what he said, for I was beginning to feel that beneath the stubborn indifference to the world with which Andrew carried himself, there was a warmth and a well of friendship waiting, for those whom he might come to trust. And he was a man of integrity in whom sense would always be the master of emotion.
‘You cannot blame me, Sean,’ I said, ‘for seeking sound counsel of a fellow Presbyterian, and a Scot at that, against the schemes of an adventuring Irish scoundrel like yourself. What to you is a mere diversion might be a matter of some difficulty to more cautious men.’
He broke into a gradual smile and then laughed, slapping me on the back. ‘Caution be damned, Alexander. Two men who can face down Maeve O’Neill as you have both done care little for caution.’ All was well with him again, and even Andrew smiled, a smile that lifted five years from his face and showed a glimpse of the young man he must, not so long ago, have been.
Our humour was broken by the sound of approaching voices. ‘Murchadh,’ said Sean. I felt myself being bundled towards the garderobe and pushed through its door. ‘Under the seat,’ was all Andrew had time to hiss before pulling it closed behind me. I was in complete darkness, with very little room even to turn. I could hear Sean greeting Murchadh and his son Cormac by name in the room next to me. I groped around, almost knocking over the water-butt, until my hand found a lever under the lid of the seat. I depressed it and instantly a panel behind me opened and I was facing a recess in the wall. I stepped into it and pulled the panel shut behind me. A narrow slit in the stone afforded what meagre light the stars could offer, and all the air I had. There was not room to turn or sit, and the cold and damp had reached into my bones in moments.
Murchadh and his sons made very little effort to lower their voices, but they spoke quickly, and in the Irish tongue, and often more than one of them at a time, so I found it hard to follow what was said. That there was bad feeling between my cousin and Roisin’s father was evident. Her name was mentioned at an early point in their conference, the resolution of the matter was put off to another time. The younger men talked of harsh justice for the poet, but their father counselled caution, talking of honour, and his name, and disgrace and greater cursing. Sean kept his peace on the matter. It became clear that despite the current of animosity between them, Murchadh treated him as an equal and would not allow any of his sons to have the upper hand over my cousin. There was much talk of the kindred, of messengers, of ‘the Franciscan’, and of Dun-a-Mallaght, a name repeated several times, in lowered voices. It repeated itself in my head, against my will. My mind was translating where I would have preferred to remain in ignorance. Eventually, the name came to me in my own tongue: Dun-a-Mallaght: the Fort of the Curse.
After perhaps an hour, someone came into the garderobe to relieve himself. I was in terror that he would find and press the lever, by accident or design. I hardly dared breathe until I heard the waste washed down the outlet channel and the garderobe door open and shut once more. There I stood, freezing and numb, nauseous from the odours assailing me in that confined space, until the first hints of dawn began to filter into my tiny window, and Andrew Boyd came at last to release me from my prison.
‘I had begun to think I would never be let out, that my bones would be found many years hence, walled up in this privy.’ I sought to make light of it, but there had been times through the night when I had wondered if I should ever be taken from my recess alive, if the ghost of my mother’s child would haunt this house for ever.
‘Murchadh, Cormac and the rest have only just gone to their beds,’ he said.
‘What did they want?’
He shrugged. ‘I was dismissed as soon as they appeared.’
‘By Murchadh?’
‘By Sean.’
It was clear he would talk no further here, and when we re-entered my grandfather’s room, Sean was still there with Eachan, who was holding a bundle of clothing – finer by far than my own – for me. Sean handed me a long mantle of sheepskin and a pair of good boots. ‘They are my own, but they will fit you well, and I cannot send you out in the country in your scholar’s shoes.’ I looked down at my feet. William had berated me for some time about my want of elegance – a message, I knew, from his wife. The money was given to Andrew. Sean smiled. ‘These Scots will never waste a penny. You have too much of my Irish blood to be trusted with the purse. Boyd fears you will be induced to gamble it away, or worse.’
Andrew’s face was severe, but his eyes were crinkling in a smile. I was as anxious as any to lighten the mood of our parting. ‘I have never gambled in my life.’
My cousin looked genuinely appalled. ‘Then when you return to Carrickfergus, you must give me two weeks. Two weeks of your life before you return to your dour Scottish town and your teacher’s robes, and I will put right all that you have missed in your life, all that you have neglected, for who knows after that when we will meet again?’
I laughed. ‘I will give you two weeks, cousin, and perhaps it is I who will change you.’
‘And what I lack, you will be to me, and what you lack, that will I be to you. Keep safe, Alexander.’
He clasped me round the shoulders as he had done on our very first meeting, and wished me good fortune. ‘I wish Eachan was going with you, but he is a recalcitrant troll and you will have a pleasanter journey without him. And, withal, it is a good man you have with you in his place. Play my part well, but steer clear of those sisters for my sake: they are foul of face and ill of humour. Make no promises to them on my behalf.’