‘He never knew we were brothers?’
‘Perhaps he suspected, who knows? But I don’t think he ever asked. I have heard from your grandmother’s priest that when Maeve sent him to fetch you to lift this curse, he took it as a message from God that our prayers had been answered, that a help had been found to us in our fight. One of Murchadh’s men, acting out of a misplaced enthusiasm and a misunderstanding of his master’s mind, made an attempt on Sean’s life not long ago. The attempt, as you know, failed, and the man paid for it with his own, but Sean knew he might never live to see the rising’s beginning, still less its end, and he knew what would happen to it and all our hopes should he die, without an appointed successor …’
I backed away. ‘I am a Scot, a teacher, and no follower of Rome. You were as well to get a dog to lead your rising as me.’
‘Do you tell me you cannot handle a sword?’
‘Of course I can handle a sword.’
‘That you are not the grandson of Maeve O’Neill?’
‘You have told me I am.’
‘And do you tell me I have not seen you finger that cross at your neck for comfort? Do you tell me I have not seen you on your knees, praying at our altars?’
The shock of his words stopped me where I stood. A denial was ready in my mouth, but I could not deny what he had said; I knew it myself. How had it come to this, that I had so easily lost sight of my own faith when surrounded by the snares of idolatry? I forced the words through gritted teeth at last. ‘I am no follower of Rome.’
‘Alexander, you were born to this. You have Irish blood enough for those who would ask it, if you have a heart to do what it is that they ask of you.’
His breathing was coming short and fast now. I put out a hand to calm him. ‘Do not agitate yourself over this. God’s will will be done. There is no more you can do.’
He did not calm himself, but by a supreme effort hauled himself up so that his eyes were almost level with mine. In the thin golden light that found its way to us from the altar, they were red, and shining. ‘Alexander, I beg of you. Take up Sean’s mantle. Do not leave them to Murchadh, all will be lost. MacDonnell will support you. They have my letter at Dunluce already, naming you your cousin’s successor …’ A pain seized him and he fell back down, clutching at his heart.
‘Alexander, I beg you,’ he gasped.
I ran for Macha and she was there in a moment, cradling his head in her lap. A smile of immense peace passed over his face. ‘I can hear the child’s heart beating,’ he murmured.
‘Hush, do not talk,’ said the girl, a tear falling from her cheek and splashing onto his face. ‘Do not leave me.’
He brought a hand up to cover hers. ‘Do not weep, my child. The stars in God’s heaven wait for me, it is my time, for as the Preacher says: “To everything there is a season …”’
But he hadn’t the strength to go on. I took up the words for him:
‘And a time to every purpose under the heaven;
A time to be born, and a time to die;
A time to kill, and a time to heal;
A time to weep, and a time to laugh;
A time to mourn, and a time to dance;
A time to love, and a time to hate;
A time of war, and a time of peace.’
I let the words die in the room, and then his voice came, in a hoarse whisper. ‘I have loved and I have laughed; I have wept and I have danced; I have waged war and have craved peace. Do not mourn for me: it is my time.’
At that moment, the light in the church changed, and the darkness gradually receded in the face of a glory of reds and yellows and greens, as the sun rose and sent its magnificent rays through the east window of Ardclinnis, to light for the last time on the face of Father Stephen Mac Cuarta.
I dug the grave, while Andrew kept watch at the shore, for the sea was calm and would not have detained Cormac and Murchadh long at Rathlin.
I had chosen a place close to the church, by the hawthorn, the fairy tree, and we buried him there with some words from me and prayers from the women. Andrew intoned the forty-sixth psalm. There was no time for a headstone, or even to carve out a wooden cross, but Macha had taken a slip of a wild rose and planted it at the head of the grave to mark the place. ‘It will grow, and I will bring my son here,’ she said.
‘Where do we run to now?’ asked Deirdre.
‘Carrickfergus,’ I said warily, for I knew she would not like it.
‘You cannot go to Carrickfergus. You know what my grandmother in her delusions accuses you of.’
Andrew took up my argument. ‘We will plead our innocence and clear our names, but we can do it in no other place, although we must call first at Ballygally.’ I shot him a quizzical glance, but he chose not to notice it. As we walked to the boat he stopped me.
‘You are sure you wish to go south?’
His question surprised me. ‘Where else would I go? There is no other safe way for me to reach home to Scotland, and I certainly cannot go north.’
‘Not even to Dunluce?’ He was watching me carefully.
‘Andrew, what are you asking me?’
He looked away, to the sea. ‘I heard you speaking with the priest, in the night. I had long suspected something of what Sean’s business was, although I would not have thought him honourable, and now I believe he was. But now I know also what brought you here …’
‘I had no knowledge of it. It was the talk of the curse.’
‘The curse. And where is the curse now?’
‘With its maker, who hangs from a tree in the hills above Ballycastle.’
‘Is it? We neither of us know that.’
‘I thought you did not believe in it.’
‘And neither do I, but I believe in the evil intent in whoever paid Finn O’Rahilly to lay it, and so should you.’
I looked back at Ardclinnis, a slow mist rising from the ground beginning to envelop it, to take it back upon itself, away from the eyes of mortal men. ‘There is evil everywhere in this land, Andrew. I cannot concern myself with that I do not know, only with present danger. And that danger lies in Murchadh, and Cormac, to say nothing of the Blackstones, who may even now be in Carrickfergus ahead of us, adding their accusations to my grandmother’s.’ In my mind I heard the sound of Michael’s pistol shot, and saw again the horse that crashed down on its rider within sight of the walls of Coleraine.
‘Then you were not persuaded by the priest? You will not take Sean’s place at the head of their rising?’
‘I am not the man they seek. I am not the man he was.’
‘I think perhaps he was a better man than I knew.’
‘He was a better man than I am,’ I said at last. ‘I will not fill his place, have no fears on that. Come, we have little time to lose.’ And within minutes we were pulling away from the shore, from Ardclinnis, and from the last earthly resting place of the man who had so mistaken what I was. I cast a glance behind me as we rounded the headland. A boat, long and dark, bearing a standard I knew to be Murchadh’s, was powering down the coast from the north. I committed our party to God and rowed for all I was worth.
TWENTY-THREE
Ballygally Castle
It was the mist that saved us, and they could not see us. Or their need to search Ardclinnis, that bought us time. Or God in His Providence, who had not finished with us yet. Whatever the cause, we got away from the search party of Murchadh O’Neill and before midday had won to the safety of Ballygally.
‘Sir James Shaw is a Scot, well affected to the king and the Protestant cause. We will find sanctuary there, and a place of rest for the women.’
The latter was becoming a pressing concern: Macha was in a deal of discomfort, and the constant movement and exposure to the elements were playing hard on Deirdre’s weakened state of health. Her sleep last night had been restless, and full of terrors she could not name on waking. She had murmured of Sean, of the poet, and of Maeve MacQuillan, and I wondered if she was seeing again in her mind’s eye that vision of a death foretold.