Suddenly, before he could answer, the door to Julia MacQuillan’s cell opened again and Andrew came through it, leaning on a crutch for support. ‘Alexander,’ he said, his ravaged face breaking into a broad smile of relief. He came over and grasped my arm in affection, as of a long-remembered friend. ‘I thought never to see you again.’
‘Nor I you,’ I said, embracing him, then quickly releasing him as he winced at the pain of his bruised bones. ‘You were nearer death than life the last time I saw you.’
‘I rambled a great deal, they tell me.’
‘I could not make out a word of it.’
A look of relief passed over his face. ‘Then I am glad. The brothers have also told me I said nothing to offend. They have been mending me well.’ He grinned. ‘I will never be so pretty as I once was, but I believe my scars will lend me some distinction.’
‘A great deal,’ I said.
‘Truly, it is good to see you again, Alexander.’ Then he glanced at Stephen with less distrust than had been his wont. ‘But whatever the cause of dispute between you, you must have it out elsewhere. The Sister tolerates no disturbance. You will waken Deirdre with your rumpus.’
I felt the rage in me subside a little at the mention of my cousin. I turned to Stephen. ‘Later. We will have this out later, but I will be deceived no longer.’
The nun’s cell was tiny, and only a poor grey light seeped through its one small north-facing window. On a stool, dropping some liquid from a tiny phial into the barely parted lips of my cousin, was another friar, whom I took to be Gerard, the doctor-apothecary. The figure on the bed, covered by blankets pulled tight and a warm, clean, sheep’s fleece, was so thin and pale as to be like a wraith, almost without substance. I stood in the doorway a moment, unable to move, struck by a sudden terror that she was dead. I held my breath until at last I saw the cover at her chest rise and fall a little.
‘How long has she been here?’
‘Less than an hour. Michael brought her just before dawn. I thought I was dreaming. They brought her straight to the nun’s room, and Gerard has been attending to her ever since.’
‘How is she, Father?’ I asked in a low voice.
‘I cannot tell. She has no fever; there is no vomiting or effusion, and her blood beats slow in her veins. I think she has had a great shock, and her mind has closed her eyes and ears to the knowledge of it.’
‘You mean she does not want to wake up.’
‘Yes, I think that is exactly what it is: she does not want to wake up.’
We sat a long time watching her, Andrew and I, each of us bound to her as if she was the only link between us and everything around us. And if that link should break, we would each of us be set loose in a land where we had no place. I looked across the bed and saw in him anger, hurt, rage, tenderness. At one point he reached out a hand to touch her, just for a moment, and in that moment I saw the tale of a man who has loved too long. When at last she began to show some signs of stirring, he left the bedside and went to stand by the door.
‘Alexander,’ she said, as her eyes opened on the grey dawn. Some of the apprehension that had been building up for the last hour left me: the delusion was over. Her lips were cracked and dry, and speech came to her only with great difficulty. ‘You should not have gone, Alexander. I begged you not to go.’
‘Ssh,’ I said. ‘Rest now. Time enough to talk of this later.’
But she grabbed me fiercely by the wrist. ‘No. Sean is dead. You are in danger now. The curse has found us.’
‘No curse, Deirdre, but a killer, and I will not leave Ulster until I have found him out, and I will not leave you.’
As she sank backwards again, she caught sight at last of Andrew, standing behind me. She closed her eyes, turned her head away on the pillow and groaned. ‘Oh God, oh God, oh no.’
Andrew looked at her a moment, then something in him broke, and he left us.
I waited longer with her as she drifted back to sleep, shutting herself off from the world she had found herself in and the knowledge of its dreadful truths, and I almost wished I could join her. But I could not, and the time of my hiding from the truth was over. I left the doctor to his vigil and went in search of Stephen.
I found him, eventually, in the church. The nave was dark, much darker than I had expected, but I found my way to the east end where a finely carved wooden screen led to the chancel. Through the screen doors a transforming light flooded from the east in a myriad of colours. I walked towards it in a kind of wonder, feeling a tinge of unfamiliar regret that such beauties of man’s creation had been destroyed in my homeland. So entranced was I for a moment by the jewels of colour sent out by the great east window that I did not at first notice him. I had been looking straight ahead of me, and upwards. There was enough of my vision to tell me that there was no one in any of the wooden stalls to either side of the aisle. But then my eye was taken by the altar, and what lay beneath it spread out on the floor.
His head was at the edge of the step and his arms flung out to either side of him. He was not moving, but as I drew closer I could hear a low sort of groaning coming from his throat. I started to bend down towards him, but hardly had I stretched out my hand to his shoulder than I found myself flat on my back, my head only just having missed the edge of the stone step, and the old Franciscan pinning me down with one hand while he held a knife to my throat with the other. We stared at one another for what seemed an eternity but what in truth must have been less than two seconds, until something odd came on to Stephen Mac Cuarta’s face, and he started to laugh as if he would never stop. He released his hold on me and sat back, wiping tears from his eyes with the hand that less than a moment before had been on the verge of slitting my throat. He laughed and wheezed and took a deep breath to steady himself, and then wiped away some more tears.
‘Alexander Seaton, is it? O’Neill, more like. They never taught you to creep about like that in your heretic seminary, I’ll tell you that. That is in your blood, and let no one tell you otherwise. Phelim himself could not have got closer. By God, you were near enough to getting yourself filleted; I took you for one of Murchadh’s crew.’
‘I thought you were injured,’ I said, still shaken, ‘or dead.’
‘No,’ he said, recovering his composure at last, ‘not dead, but praying.’
‘A heartfelt prayer, by the look of it.’
‘Oh, yes: it is all that. I pray God’s forgiveness for the injustice I have done you, that others who loved you have done you also. And that perhaps, if God so grants it, you would forgive me too.’
I rubbed my arm where he had twisted it behind my back. ‘You must tell me first what it is that I am to forgive. The truth, with no more deception.’
He looked away a moment, searching for words he did not wish to speak. Eventually he was ready. ‘You must understand that the lies, the deceit I have practised upon you, were at the instance of those who had a greater call on my loyalty, aye and on my love, than yourself. Promises made nearly thirty years ago, but as fresh to me as if I had made them this very morning, and it grieves me to break them now, but I see I must. First, though, I’ll get my old bones off this floor, if you don’t mind.’ He got up from his crouching position, and indeed, for the first time it seemed to me that he felt something of his age as he stretched and straightened himself. He took up a seat in one of the wondrously carved oak stalls of the chancel and waited until I had settled myself properly on the step by the altar.
‘Now,’ he said, assuming some of his accustomed heartiness. ‘Where to begin? Here, now? Or then.’
‘I think you had better begin with “then”.’
‘Aye, perhaps so.’ He leaned forward a little in his stall, beginning to move his hands outwards, then taking them back in, folding them in his lap. He did not know what to do with them; he did not know how to start.