‘I will study to resist the temptation.’ And then, promising that I would be returned within the week, to share with him my adventures, I bade farewell to my cousin.
SEVEN
Tales of the Dispossessed
We left Carrickfergus very soon afterwards, as the dark crispness of the night faded in the face of the coming dawn. There was an early frost still on the ground and we headed to the northwest. When we came to the common grazing grounds I looked behind me. The walls of Carrickfergus stretched far to the east and west, flankers jutting out into the land beyond. Behind the walls clustered a hotchpotch of rooftops, thatched, slated, or bright with red pantiles. To the west was the spire of the church of St Nicholas and to the east the gaudy palace of Joymount, at odds with the stoic tower houses that lined the high street. Finally, closest to the sea, were the rounded gatehouse towers of the castle. The town that had been the stronghold of the English in the North for centuries remained a formidable sight. Every pace of my horse took me further from its solid outline and the protection it offered me, and I advanced into territory unknown.
Andrew sensed my apprehension. ‘Come on, you have been too long shut up, and so have I.’ He dug his spurs into his horse’s flank and flew. I followed his lead and soon the cold morning air in my lungs and the wind in my hair blew from me the fears of the dawn. I could see him up ahead of me as he unfolded himself into the air and the open spaces, and threw his head back, a man released. I caught up with him, but this served only to spur him on, and we raced until the terrain became too rough for the gallop, and we had to pull up, at the foot of a small glen, laughing like two boys truanting school.
‘It is good to be out of that damned town,’ he said.
I took a moment to get my breath. ‘Why have you stayed so long?’
‘It had claims on me. No more.’ And he went on again, more carefully now, as the road had grown worse, boggy in parts and narrow, twisting round the bases of ancient oaks or by crumbling stone bridges, and at times disappearing altogether. The sun was not yet high enough in the sky to glimmer through the turning leaves of yellow, red and gold that made a canopy over our heads and shrouded us in a strange half-light. The leaves already fallen softened the sound of the horses’ footfalls, making me all the more aware of the silence around us.
‘This is an eerie place.’
‘There are too many of these places hereabouts; I would have avoided it if I could, but the other routes are worse.’
‘For what?’
‘The woodkerne,’ he said. ‘Dispossessed natives who lived in the armed retinues of the old Irish lords. The native Irish must toe the English line to be awarded even the poorest land, but these kerne will not submit to the new order; they cite their pride and their lineage, which makes it a disgrace for them to turn their hands to a day’s work, and prefer to live in the forest, ambushing and attacking travellers and new settlers. Some are as poor as common vagabonds, but there are others, of your cousin Murchadh’s ilk, who are not.’
‘For all I dislike him, Murchadh O’Neill is a man of wealth and standing. He is no forest-dwelling bandit. He has kept his lands.’
‘Oh yes, he has kept them, and he will never be caught with the bands of riders and woodsmen who terrorise so many, and neither will Cormac, the first-born. They know how to play to the English rules. I told you that.’
I remembered what the poet had said of Murchadh, who had kept to the fold while the wolf devoured his brothers.
‘And the rest?’
‘Murchadh’s younger sons and his followers?’ His face was a picture of contempt. ‘They ravage the country up and down and gather tribute for their father.’
‘And Sean?’ I could not believe he would ride with such men.
His face was stony. ‘I am not privy to his counsels.’
‘Does Deirdre know what Murchadh and his sons are? Is that why she rejected Cormac?’
He looked straight ahead of him. ‘I am thirty-four years old. What do I know of what is in a young woman’s heart?’ He picked up his pace. ‘Come on, let us get out of this infernal woodland. I am determined that we should put up for the night before dark. There are places in this province where the ground itself cannot be trusted. Further north there is a lake, Loughareema, they call it the vanishing lake. The track skirts its edges, but on most days there is no water to be seen and you would think the land sound for miles around, but then, of a sudden, the water rises bubbling out of the ground and the place becomes an impassable lake. The people say it is the water spirits, come to claim the souls of those who have scorned them, and that the ghosts of those who drowned there haunt the place at night. It is not a Christian place.’
I looked around me and began to understand how a man of so firm a faith could still talk of spirits, ghosts, things of superstition. As we left the woods, the land became desolate, devoid of all signs of life save my companion and myself. The wind that had not found us in the glen blew harshly in this exposed landscape, bringing a promise of winter from the north. Everything was dun, brown. Everything looked dead, the occasional wild cherry or hawthorn standing as old and dry as stones. In a place like this a man might lose his reason, forget his faith. As a child I had believed every word of the stories my mother told me, of kings and princesses, giants and gods and messengers of the spirit world, fairies, banshees, changeling children. When I had grown to manhood, I had let these beliefs slip into memories of childhood, knowing they were the superstitions of the godless and the pagan, forgiving my mother what many around me could never have forgiven her, for conjuring tales of the spirit world, of her own country, to entertain her child. But now, in this place, so expressive of the ageless powers and harsh beauty of the earth and the elements, I began to see how it was that men and women of sound mind and good faith could hold these tales as truth. I spurred my own horse on, anxious as Andrew to reach the security of one of the new settlements soon.
We stopped at last outside an inn, a squat place of clay and thatch with only two windows and a smoke-hole in the roof, giving little promise of hospitality. A traveller would be desperate indeed before he consented to spend the night in such a place. As we slid wearily from our horses, a young woman appeared in the doorway. She was thin but strong-looking, brown from outside work. Her hazel eyes were lit with warmth at the sight of Andrew.
‘Margaret,’ he said.
Flustered, she straightened her apron and tried to tidy the hair from her eyes, and then her glance fell on me, and her face froze for a moment in a shock of disbelief. Andrew had not noticed, busy as he was greeting the older woman standing behind her.
‘Jenny, it is good to see you.’
‘And you, my boy,’ she said, reaching up to embrace him. ‘It is too long since you have stopped at our place.’ She looked old and weary, but her joy at Andrew’s arrival took years from her face.
‘I am kept busy these days.’ He gestured towards me. ‘This is Alexander Seaton, new arrived from Scotland. I am taking him up to the north coast.’ I noted the care he took not to lie to her, and I warmed to him the more for it.
She turned her smile on me. ‘And yourself, Andrew?’
‘I have some people to see near Ballymena, before I make up my mind. My old master is dead now, and there is little to keep me in Carrickfergus. It is the right time for me to move on.’ She nodded, a little pleased, it seemed, and ushered us inside, calling to her young son to bring more peats for the fire as she did so.