When at last she had finished, I found my voice. ‘I am sorry that …’
I stopped, not knowing how to continue.
She looked at me directly. ‘That what?’
‘That I am not Sean.’
Again her lips parted slightly, and then she closed her mouth and her eyes. When she opened them I could see tears hovering on her lashes. ‘Sean did not want me anyway.’ And then she was gone, leaving me wishing I had never spoken at all.
My ears had accustomed themselves to the rhythms of movement of Dun-a-Mallaght, and I realised it must be evening time when Stephen and Michael finally returned from the friary.
‘So, Murchadh, we have brought the medicine for the girl.’
‘You were long enough about it. She could have been to the Devil in this time.’
‘The preparation had to be made up. The simples were ready, but the decoctions take time; there is little room for error in their preparation.’
Stephen was permitted to go, with Cormac and Padraig in attendance, to administer the medicines to my cousin. Roisin, I assumed, was already with her. As they left, I saw the priest glance towards my grille and Michael, following his eyes, do the same.
When at length they returned, Cormac’s face was ashen, and even in the dim and flickering yellow light, I could see the darkened circles beneath his eyes.
‘How fares the girl?’ asked our host and jailer.
‘She is a little more settled, but she is still fevered, and easily frightened. It is not good having too many in the room with her,’ answered Stephen
‘She cannot be left alone.’
‘No, but Roisin is all that is needed – she has knowledge enough already, and as for the rest, I have shown her what to do. Have your men stand guard outside her door by all means, but it is not seemly that they should be in her chamber, and they disturb the balance of her mind.’
Murchadh looked to Cormac, who readily assented, and went to clear the guards out of Deirdre’s room. The glance between Michael and Stephen made me uneasy.
‘And now,’ said Stephen, ‘that goodly business attended to, my young friend and I should no longer trespass on your hospitality, and indeed the offices at the friary require our attention …’ His face was breaking into a grin, his eyes dancing.
‘But surely you would not think to leave us so soon,’ said his host.
‘Well,’ said Stephen, rubbing his hands and inclining his head in the direction of the spit, where a hog had been several hours turning, ‘it is a cold night for all that, and Michael and I haven’t had a morsel since the morning; we will have long missed our poor supper at the friary by now.’
Michael attempted a jovial smile in agreement, but he was not so practised in deception as was the older brother, and the nervous grin of a boy was all he could offer. This seemed to please Murchadh even more.
‘Then indeed you will stay. Let it never be said that Murchadh O’Neill sent servants of our Holy Mother Church out into a cold night, with dry throats and empty bellies.’
Music had started up again, and all around, men were bringing out dice and dealing cards. The pig on the spit surrendered at last to the appetites of Murchadh’s followers, and the noise of people forgetting their troubles and their coming trials grew to such a pitch that I wondered that Deirdre or any human creature could sleep through it.
I watched the priests eat and drink, Michael initially with some hesitation and then with less caution; Stephen heartily. Michael was very soon drunk, and found himself assailed by the charms of a pretty young serving girl. The harper had been called for, and a poet also – no Finn O’Rahilly this, but an aged and revered fellow who had known better days for his patrons and caste – who having lamented the passing of the great days of the O’Neills, and looked forward to their resurrection under Cormac, was applauded and dismissed. A pipe was taken up, and then another. They were joined by a flute, the sound strange and discordant at first to my ears, and then the bodhran came, soon followed by the bones. If ever there was heathen music, music of another age, I was hearing it now. The speed of the playing increased, the dexterity of the players incredible. It was not possible that a man should be clear in his mind with such music. I felt my foot beat on the hard earth, my body move in time to the building rhythm and power of the sound that filled every part of my cell and seeped into my every sinew. I poured the last draught of wine from the jug Roisin had left me, but that did nothing to clear my thoughts or form in me any good resolve. I should have known that it couldn’t.
If I was set on a dangerous path, few in the chamber were far behind me. Those who were not at dice or cards flew in pairs and sixes and eights around those who were. Murchadh himself made the lustiest dancer of all, young girls throughout the hall trying to hide their terror in affectation of delight. Only one person in the place seemed cut off from the exhilaration, the incipient danger, the sense of approaching abandon: Cormac sat alone on his dais, brooding, with the look of one who watches but does not see what he watches. As his father caught a young girl and buried his face in her torn bodice, Cormac drained his cup and, his face set in resolve, left his place and strode towards a doorway at the other side of the chamber, and a corridor I could not see.
It was a few moments later that I saw Roisin: she was standing, hesitantly, with her back to the door Cormac had disappeared through. Her pallor and stillness called to me through the orgy of movement, of reddened faces and sweating bodies that separated us, and it seemed through the smoke and the movement, the daemonic bacchanal of the music, that she looked directly at me. I felt the heat of the place pass through me, and shut my eyes against the knowledge of what I wanted, of what I was. But I did not step back; I did not lay myself down on the cold, bare earth as I should have done. I opened my eyes and continued to look on her.
She was standing in a shaft of light. Her pale blonde hair fell loose down her back and over her deep blue velvet gown. At her neck she wore a single white pearl, pearls hung also in diamond-encrusted drops at her ears. Everything about her was clean, pure. A harper was called to the space by her; a certain Diarmuid was called for, and the hall fell silent as the harper began to pluck at his strings and the young man opened his mouth in a lament I knew well, for my mother had often sung it to me, a song of longing and promise for her homeland: Roisin Dubh, Dark Rosaleen. A lover promised help would come from across the sea to his abandoned virgin bride; help from the Pope, wine from Spain; that the woe and pain and sadness of the dark Rosaleen would soon be over, every step homewards of the unresting lover was taken that his love would be lifted again to her sovereign throne. The singer’s voice was fine, the object of his performance filled with grace, but she was no Roisin Dubh, no Dark Rosaleen, for that, I knew, was Ireland herself. The final verse had always frightened me: