On the headland to my left, watching over the bay, rose a castle. Below, nearer to the shore, was a small town, huddled in darkness from the advancing storm. Further along the bay was another settlement, structured, more formal, but ruined in part. My heart lifted a little when I saw it, and the lights burning in some of its windows. It was a religious house, a church. ‘What is that place?’ I called in Padraig’s ear.
‘You know it well enough.’
‘Bonamargy?’ I said.
‘Aye, Bonamargy. Do not excite yourself unduly. This is as close as you’ll be getting to it.’ He pulled his horse to the left, as his brother had done, and spurred the beast on towards the western edge of the bay, and a strange mound that rose grim and threatening from the earth.
‘What is that?’ I shouted.
‘You are not superstitious, priest?’
‘I am not … superstitious.’
‘That is Dun-a-Mallaght. The Fort of the Curse.’
‘I give no credence to your curses.’
He slowed his horse.
‘On any other night of the year, neither do I. But it is said that on All Hallows Eve – tonight – the ghosts of the dead walk forth from Dun-a-Mallaght into the world. I would be here on any night other than tonight.’
We forded a narrow river and dismounted. Six yards from the entrance to the fort Ciaran let up a strange cry, a call, in Irish, that seemed to come from the depths of himself. The cry was returned from inside and bolts pulled back. Doors swung inwards and I found myself walking, just as lightning struck the ground three feet from where I stood, into the lair of Murchadh O’Neill, the Fort of the Curse.
EIGHTEEN
Dun-a-Mallaght
I had a sensation of walking into the depths of the earth. Orpheus entering the Underworld, but I knew not with what purpose. Certainly there was no Eurydice waiting here for me. The passageway was narrow – only room enough for one man to pass at a time. The heavy smell of damp earth suffused the air, but was gradually overpowered by the aroma coming from a peat fire some way ahead. The passageway was lighted every few yards by torches in the wall, and was smooth and dry underfoot. My arms were still tied behind my back and ached as I had never known my limbs to ache before, and it was with great anticipation of relief that I at last saw a pool of light ahead of Ciaran, and soon afterwards found myself stepping into an open space once more.
We had come into a large vaulted chamber, with arched wooden beams supporting the earthen roof. The floor was beaten earth, with rushes spread all around. At the centre was a peat fire, sending blue smoke up through a small hole in the roof, although the rest of the place was filled with smoke also. At the far end of the chamber was a dais, on which I could just make out the forms of a man and a woman sitting. Flickering torches gave intermittent illumination to shapes of men, occasionally women, sitting on the floor.
Ciaran strode towards the dais while the others remained on either side of me, Padraig confiding under his breath that one wrong move would see my throat cut and me at the gates of Hell before dawn.
‘Is my father not returned then?’
‘We expect him soon. There has been some cause of delay with the old woman at Carrickfergus.’
I lifted my eyes and peered through the gilded gloom; it was Cormac, the oldest of Murchadh’s sons, and beside him, like a queen under some enchantment, was Deirdre. She was dressed in a gown of red velvet, the bodice laced tight over a mantle of the purest white linen, sleeves hanging long at the wrists and edged with lace. At her neck hung a crucifix studded with jet, and at her waist a girdle embroidered with gold. On her head was a linen headdress, and beneath it fell locks of burnished copper. The sombre wife of the English burgher was gone: distilled to her essence, every inch the consort of the man beside her, she was magnificent.
Cormac’s gaze went beyond his brother’s shoulder to where I stood, my cowl still up as it had been against the storm. ‘What is this? Is it the poet or a priest you have brought us?’
‘Neither, he would have us believe.’ I was pushed forward and my hood pulled down. I could feel the shock that echoed round the chamber, the collective drawing-in of breath. Nobody moved for a moment and then, slowly, men started to reach for their weapons as their wives and daughters regarded me in terror. Cormac himself had flinched when he had seen me, and stood up slowly. ‘What trickery is this?’
‘No trickery, brother, but what the …’
He got no further, for Deirdre too had risen from her seat. Her face was suffused with love, and for a moment, forgetful of the reason, the wonder and delight of it caused me to smile back at her. She began to walk, and then to run, towards me, and I realised with a sickening certainty that she had mistaken me. Cormac put out an ineffectual arm to stop her, but she pushed it away. In a moment she was on me, her arms around my neck, tears of joy flowing down her cheeks. The words in Irish came tumbling, one after the other in a torrent of love and thanks to saints I had never heard of.
‘Oh my darling, my brother, sent back to me this night. My brother, my darling one.’
I let her hold me, and weep, and gently I put my arms around her and held her, no one trying to stop me. Dun-a-Mallaght held its breath, for a moment, on All Hallows Eve, as a young Irishwoman welcomed her murdered brother back from the dead. Gradually, the heaving of her chest, her sobs, subsided and Cormac stepped forward to lift her hands from my neck; I let my arms fall to my sides, and he drew her tenderly from my embrace.
She looked from one to another of us, her heart willing her mind to believe something she knew was not true.
‘What … why … you would not …?’ She turned from Cormac to me. ‘Sean?’
Slowly, I shook my head, my lips parted to speak but no words came from them.
‘Not Sean, but the murdering Scot, Alexander Seaton.’
It was Murchadh O’Neill; and there beside him, at the entrance passageway and looking at me in mute terror, was Roisin, behind them a gathering of his men. He strode forward and took Deirdre firmly by the arm.
‘Take her out of here.’
Donal began to lead her towards a side passage away from the main chamber. ‘Come, Deirdre, it is not him. You know it is not him.’
She didn’t seem to hear him, and looked desperately over her shoulder as he pulled her away. ‘Sean,’ she called. ‘Sean!’ The sight of her tore the heart out of me and I closed my eyes until her cries became distant and dim.
Murchadh had taken Cormac’s place on the dais. ‘Chain him,’ he said, casting the briefest of glances at me. And then, ‘O’Rahilly? You found him?’
‘We found him all right, hanging from a tree. He has spoken his last curse.’
Murchadh damned the poet to the depths of Hell. He got up and began to stride around the dais, pausing only to fire out questions at his sons.
‘Where did you come upon him?’
‘Kilcrue.’
‘You searched his lair? You found nothing?’
Padraig jabbed a thumb in my direction. ‘Only this one.’
‘Aye, this one.’ Murchadh regarded me a long moment with a look in his eyes that might have been hatred, might have been fear. He stepped down from his platform and began to walk slowly over to where I had been chained to a post at the far end of the chamber, his eyes never leaving my face for a minute. ‘Alexander Seaton. The son of Grainne FitzGarrett, cowering in the dirt like a beast.’
I tried to stand up, but found myself pulled back down by my fetters. I lifted my head though, determined that I should look him in the eye.
‘I have no fear of you,’ I said.