The burial ground was deserted now, save the escort waiting at the porch. The tide was going out, and the sound of the sea was like a retreating horde. Looking back at the castle rocks, the massive gorges and gullies that had been cheated of their prey last night, I uttered another silent prayer of thanks for our deliverance. Andrew, on his pallet, had drifted back to wakefulness for a moment, and was mumbling, a run of words that made little sense. I went closer and told him to lie peaceful, but still he strained to sit up, to see something. He was looking upwards, at some point in the castle walls.
‘Please no,’ I muttered in spite of all I knew to be sane or godly. ‘Please God, no.’
‘Do you see her?’ he said at last. ‘Do you see Maeve MacQuillan?’
On the road to Bushmills a woman came out of her cabin and beseeched me to say a prayer over her sick child. ‘A word to St Lucia, father, that she might beg the lord’s mercy on my girl. Only a word, father.’ I froze, held fast by panic and indecision, as she clung to my robe.
Stephen put up the reins and got down. Gently taking the woman’s arm and leading her back towards her hovel, he said, ‘That fellow’s Latin is so bad, the saint would know not one word in ten that he says. Let me put up a word for your child – Lucia and I are acquainted of old.’
Three minutes later he was out again and we were back on the road.
‘How is the child?’ I asked.
‘She will be in the arms of the Mother of God before darkness falls.’ His face was grim, and he said no more until we had begun the gentle descent to the bridge across the river Bush. ‘I have business to see to here; it will not want more than an hour or two of our time, but I doubt your friend can wait that long. There is one of our order who is of the caste of the fir leighs; his family have been doctors to Irish chieftains for many generations. What little their learning left out, he made up for in study while we were at Louvain. He will attend to the wounds and the leg injury, and see to the fever.’
We crossed the bridge and Stephen brought the cart to a halt at a stone mill on the right bank of the river. The smell of malted barley hung heavy in the air. The waters of the Bush flowed pure and clear past the mills and out towards the sea. A man in a leather apron came out and greeted the two Franciscans by name, and nodded to me.
Stephen gestured towards Andrew. ‘Michael will take this one, under escort, to Gerard at Bonamargy. There is no time to be lost.’
The still man nodded, the look on his face suggesting he thought there would be little Gerard could do for Andrew in any case. He stole another glance at me. ‘I thought for a moment the dead walked. You had better keep that one out of sight.’
‘Have no fears on that score. I value his life.’
Stephen gave his instructions to Michael, who had now taken up the reins, and to the escort, but when I set off to walk beside them he called me back.
‘You must stay with me. We have much to talk about, and I have sent a message to Finn O’Rahilly; I am taking you to him at dusk. You will see your friend at Bonamargy tomorrow.’
I laid my hand on Andrew’s brow. It was slicked with sweat and his cheeks were burning now. His whole body was shaking under its blanket, and he moaned and mumbled words that were not words.
‘You can do nothing for him,’ said Stephen. ‘No more than he can do for you. You must see the poet, and O’Rahilly will consent to this one time. Let Michael take him now.’
With a heavy heart I realised I had no choice. I had to place myself in Stephen’s hands, and leave Andrew, struggling for life as he was, at the mercy of subversive priests.
I rested while Stephen went in to talk to the still man, and wondered what his business with him might be, but I was learning that the Franciscan would let out knowledge like a length of rope. He would give me only what I needed to cling on to: the rest he would keep hidden in the robes of his order. I did not ponder it long, and passed into sleep instead. Drifts of their conversation came to my semi-slumbering mind, they talked of stores and supplies in the field, but I did not care enough to listen. The hours spent in sodden clothing began to exact their price, however, and I was taken with a coughing fit. The conversation stopped and the priest was through the door again in a moment.
‘So, you are wakened? I would have thought you would sleep longer, but you Presbyterians do not much hold with rest and comfort, they tell me.’
‘Then they tell you wrong. I crave both, but there is none here.’
He assessed me silently for a moment. ‘Perhaps there is an aid to it though.’ He called something to the still man and in a moment the fellow brought us two small glasses filled with a clear amber liquid. I let the whisky warm its way from my tongue to my body and mind, relax my bones, expand my thoughts.
‘Tell me what happened to my cousin,’ I said at last.
He sighed, and refilled his own glass from the flask that had been left with us. He sipped carefully, then he pursed his lips and sucked in hard, tipping the whole glassful down without giving it chance of pause in his mouth. And then he told me what had happened to my family on the night of my grandfather’s funeral.
‘No one saw the girl, but Sean took it into his head that the note was from Macha. He would not let Eachan go with him, telling him to stay with Deirdre and your grandmother. But of course, Eachan did go after him. He followed him until he saw him turn in to St Nicholas church. He would have followed him there, but a moment after Sean entered, he saw a young woman, heavily wrapped against the cold, emerge from behind one of the gravestones and follow him. Satisfied that all was as it should be, Eachan left and returned to your grandmother’s house, to watch over the women there. He was not altogether easy at leaving Sean, and his unease grew as the night wore on. Sometime before dawn, leaving the house under guard of Murchadh and his sons, he went back to the church. All was silent, and he could see no one, but a light burned in the Donegall aisle and he went to it.’ Here the priest filled his glass and emptied it again. ‘There he found Sean’s body sprawled across Chichester’s memorial, his head almost severed from his neck.’ Against my will, I pictured the scene. I had never set foot in that or any church in Carrickfergus, but my mind forced the images on to me; suggestions of candlelight, marble, blood and silence.
Stephen’s voice grew bitter. ‘Eachan lifted him in his arms, as if he had been a fallen child, and brought him home. He laid your cousin down on his bed, and cleaned his murdered body as he wept. And so was Sean betrayed.’
My voice was almost dead in my throat. ‘Betrayed in what?’ I asked at last.
He looked up at me from his empty glass and studied my face a long moment. ‘In everything his life should have been. In everything that was before him to do. In everything that mattered.’
‘How do you know all this?’
‘Your grandmother’s priest sent word to Bonamargy. He fears she will go out of her mind for grief. The Blackstones were declaring they would leave for the North in the morning – not a moment to lose in moving on your grandfather’s business. Deirdre was in a hysteria, and refused to go with them. Cormac O’Neill and his brothers took her, in their protection, to one of their father’s strongholds. Eachan was fit to kill any who tried to come near to Sean’s body. The house is in a turmoil of despair.’