I turned my face from the grille and felt my way to the far corner of my cell, taking care where I put my feet, not knowing what I might find there. The place was cold and damp and told of death. My bones ached with fatigue, and putting up my hood to make some barrier between the dirt and my head, I lay down. I had heard enough tonight of these people and their doings and wanted to hear no more. I had known my cousin briefly, had come to love him and to believe I knew him well, but it appeared now that I had not known him at all, and that this was how he had intended it should be. I felt desolate, more so even than I had done when I had learned that he was dead. And so this was what Andrew had meant when he had alluded to ‘what we are constrained to call Sean’s “business”’. That Murchadh was at the heart of a planned uprising against King and Church did not surprise me in the least, nor, deluded as she was, did my grandmother’s involvement come as a shock. Father Stephen and Michael were also in on it. I began to wonder now whether Andrew had been right when he had questioned the coincidence of Stephen’s presence at Armstrong’s Bawn, and at Coleraine on the night we were unveiled as impostors and chased from the town, into the waiting embrace of his young, armed, acolyte. What did they want with us? Stephen, who had led me to the Cursing Circle of Kilcrue and abandoned me there to be found by the sons of Murchadh O’Neill, and his cowled and crucifixed brethren to whose supposed mercy, on this All Hallows Eve, I had left the helpless Andrew Boyd?
I could stay awake no longer. If I had the strength in the morning I would get to Deirdre somehow. If I had the strength. I must very soon have been asleep, too exhausted for dreams and too despondent for nightmares. If the spirits of the dead walked Dun-a-Mallaght that night, they left me in peace.
NINETEEN
The Dawning
I did not hear the bolt of my cell drawn back, nor the door open. It was only when I felt the breath on my torn cheek and the voice in my ear that I woke with a start.
‘Lie still and keep your mouth shut until I tell you to speak.’
The visitor had brought no light with him, and his back blocked much of the meagre grey light coming through the grille, but I knew by his voice that it was Cormac O’Neill. And coming to from a deep sleep though I was, I understood enough not to disobey his order. I waited, and when he saw that I understood, he continued.
‘Where is Boyd?’
I had had no notion that the new-anointed rebel leader had an awareness even of Andrew’s existence, and I sought to win some time by this. ‘Who?’
He slapped me across the cheek and set the wound his father had made to bleeding again.
‘Do not play games with me. Andrew Boyd. I know you left Carrickfergus with him, and that you were travelling with him to Coleraine. Where is he?’
‘What is it to you?’
He raised his hand again, but this time I got my arm up in front of my face in time to stop his fist coming down on the broken flesh.
Slowly, he removed my arm from the front of my face. ‘You will answer me, Seaton, or by God you will wish your mother had never met your father. Where is Boyd?’
‘I do not know.’ It was the truth, almost. I knew where the priest had told me they were taking him, but I did not know if he was there now, and I could not think Cormac O’Neill sought him out of concern for his welfare.
He sat back on his haunches, and told me to sit up. I did so, and in the fine gauze of light that told me it must be daytime, he scrutinised my face. ‘There is something in your eyes that was not in his, and in his heart that is not in yours. But you have the same arrogance, by God. The old woman’s blood runs strong.’ He looked at me a little longer, as if to be absolutely certain that I was not Sean. Then he stood up. ‘Enough of him. You are now the matter in question. I know why you say you are in Ireland, and Maeve confirms it, so my father says; it sounds enough like her to be true. But why did you ride to Coleraine, and what is Andrew Boyd in your scheme?’
‘I have no scheme. I went to Coleraine because Sean had some suspicion that Deirdre’s husband’s family might be behind the curse on ours.’
He smiled slightly. ‘“Ours,” you say. I see you claim them as your own now.’
‘I have no other,’ I replied.
‘And what did you find amongst the Blackstones?’
‘That they are people of few graces who want their hands on my grandfather’s business, but I do not think they would know how to go about treating with Finn O’Rahilly, or have any faith in his powers.’
‘Not the slightest. As Sean well knew, and your grandmother too. You went to Coleraine for something else. What was it?’
‘I swear to you, before God who knows all, I know of no other reason for me being sent there.’
He began to pace the small cell, thinking. Then an idea evidently came to him. ‘Who did you meet with?’
‘I told you, the Blackstones, Deirdre’s …’
‘No, not the Blackstones,’ he said impatiently. ‘Who else? Did you meet with no one on your journey?’
I cast my mind back to the journey of only three days ago. ‘We stopped at a poor Scots inn on the road to Broughshane, a widow and her children, friends of …’ And then I regretted that I had not thought more carefully. Friends of Andrew Boyd, in whom Cormac was so interested, and victims of the brutal roving of Cormac’s brothers.
Cormac nodded his head slowly. ‘I know the place. Why did Boyd take you there?’
‘Because we needed food and our horses rest. And to give the woman some trade.’ I looked him straight in the eye. ‘They are not far from destitute: armed bands roam the country there and passing travellers keep on their way for fear of their lives; her oldest son and best support was slain by lawless thugs when he would not pay their blackmail.’
‘I know all of this,’ said Cormac, ‘and do not think I take any pride in it. Those responsible were punished. I am sorry for the woman’s troubles.’
‘Your sorrow does not make her sleep any the easier at night,’ I said.
‘It should. It has been seen to. The woman has been reassured and recompense made.’
‘Such recompense as can be, for the loss of a son.’
‘Many women in this land have lost husbands, sons, brothers, seen their children die at their breast for want of nourishment. They have been forced from their homes and the lands of their people to poor and wild places with little hope of sustenance. What recompense can be made has been made, and more if they need it. I have said it, and my word is not doubted.’
I believed him, and, in spite of all the circumstances of our meeting, I began to warm a little to Cormac O’Neill.
‘What happened when you were at this woman’s place?’
I shrugged. ‘She and her daughter served us some broth, the young boy saw to the horses, she and Andrew talked a little of family, we paid her and left. Our stop was brief, for Andrew was anxious to get on.’