Andrew knew the town well, but where could he go? He was known everywhere. And his wounds would need attention again soon. There was little I could do for him now save offer up a silent prayer. I bent down towards the girl and this time she did take my hand.
‘Come,’ I said. ‘You are nearly home.’
‘I have never been here before,’ she said. ‘Strange to think it will be my home.’
We went quickly up Back Lane and down North Street to the marketplace. I had my first proper sighting in daylight of St Nicholas church, and felt a sudden longing to go through its doors, to reaffirm for myself my faith, my Protestant faith, so shaken by my times of sanctuary in other places. I felt against my skin the crucifix, put round my neck at Dunluce and never yet taken off, and recalled to myself with a sweep of nausea that St Nicholas church had been the site of Sean’s murder.
Sir James’s party was waiting for us in the marketplace, just in front of my grandmother’s tower house.
‘She will not let you in?’ I asked, incredulous.
He smiled. ‘The old woman is not as bad as that, do you think? No, I have not yet sought entry. It seemed right that I should wait for you. But where is Andrew Boyd?’
I quickly told him, and his face became troubled. He urged his horse a few steps forward, and taking a halberd from one of his men, banged with it upon the door.
I was not altogether surprised to see my grandmother herself appear on the parapet, Eachan beside her, searching the crowd below for any sign of danger to his mistress.
Sir James looked up. ‘I am Sir James Shaw of Ballygally and I bring here to seek sanctuary with Maeve O’Neill their grandmother Deirdre FitzGarrett and Alexander Seaton, and another who is of her kin and has a claim upon her hospitality.’
Maeve stepped closer to the edge of the parapet and narrowed her eyes, but it was evident they were too poor and she could not see us properly. Eachan was also looking, and spoke urgently to my grandmother. She shook her head, and again he spoke urgent words in her ear. Eventually she murmured something to him and he gave orders that we should be let in.
It was strange to enter my grandmother’s house from the front, openly, rather than as a thief in the night as I had done on my first arrival in Carrickfergus. And yet then I had been a figure waited for, welcomed; now I came as one reviled. I walked ahead of Sir James, ahead of the two women, with my shorn head and my unkempt beard, into a place that looked the same as it had done the first time I had seen it, but where everything had changed.
They were in the great hall, waiting for us. Maeve did not look at Deirdre, or Macha; she ignored Sir James; she looked only at me.
‘You foul thing; you filth. Do you dare to come into my house? Unnatural child of a wanton, ungrateful daughter. You murdered your brother.’
Whether she had intended to shock me by the revelation, I could not tell. ‘Grandmother, I …’
‘You are no grandson of mine. I cast you off! I disavow you! I curse the womb that bore you! That Finn O’Rahilly had only known of you before he laid his curse on me!’ Her voice had risen to a shout, and the effort of it winded her. A servant helped her to a seat, and she did something I doubt she had ever done in her life before: she wept. I was about to go towards her, but Sir James stopped me.
‘Madam, I knew your husband well these last twenty years. He trusted me and I him. I ask you to trust me now also, when I tell you that your grandson here, Alexander Seaton, did not murder his …’ he hesitated, looking from Maeve to myself. Neither of us said anything. ‘His cousin. He cannot have murdered his cousin in Carrickfergus as you have claimed, for I have it on good authority, that will stand in any court of law, that he spent the whole of that night, from dusk to the next dawn, at Armstrong’s Bawn on the road from Ballymena to Coleraine. He was there in the company of Andrew Boyd, a young man of your household whom I know well, and whose word I would trust before almost any other.’
Maeve stared bleakly at her hands.
‘And where is Andrew Boyd now?’
Her voice hung heavy with accusation.
I spoke reluctantly. ‘I don’t know. We know he reached Carrickfergus in safety, but that a party from Coleraine has been searching the town for him and for me. He went into hiding when he heard of it.’
An odd little smile appeared upon her lips. ‘From Coleraine. Those English that you entangled us with, Deirdre. Your husband’s brother, you know, is dead.’ They were the first words she had uttered to her granddaughter since we had entered the house. ‘They tell me he did not even have the sense to get out from under his own horse.’ And then she laughed, a horrible laugh, quiet, to herself.
Deirdre broke the dreadful silence that followed.
‘Can I sit down, Grandmother?’
‘You can please yourself; you always did,’ said the old woman, her poise gone, but her venom intact.
Sir James, at a loss for anything else, brought Macha forward from where she had been obscuring herself behind him.
‘And what trollop is this?’ said my grandmother, but before she could say more, Eachan had let out a sound of joy, and gone to Macha, and taken her into his strong, hardy arms. He held her close and wept, a torrent of thanks falling from his lips.
‘Blessed be the Holy Virgin, the Holy Mother of God that has brought you here. Mistress,’ he said, talking to Maeve, ‘this is Sean’s wife.’
‘Sean had no wife.’
I spoke again. ‘Sean was married to this girl by Father Stephen Mac Cuarta of Bonamargy, on the way to Deirdre’s wedding. Eachan was there and witnessed. This is your grandson’s wife and she is carrying his child.’
Deirdre let out a low groan and crumpled in her chair. Maeve ignored her and looked instead to me, the light that had gone coming back into her eyes. ‘How do you know this?’
‘Stephen Mac Cuarta himself told me.’
‘Mac Cuarta.’ Her voice was a mixture of bitterness and sadness. ‘He lived while my son died. His robes protected him, I suppose. But he wishes our family well, that cannot be denied. Where is he now? Why is he not here?’
‘Because he died two nights ago. He is buried at Ardclinnis.’
‘May the Lord have mercy upon his immortal soul,’ she murmured. ‘He will be a long time in Purgatory.’ Then she addressed herself to Macha. ‘Come forward, girl, that I might see what my son rejected Roisin O’Neill for.’ Macha went towards her, not hesitantly, but surely. She had been told all there was to tell of Maeve by Sean, by Deirdre, yet she had no fear of her, and the old woman liked that. ‘What is your family?’
‘The Magennises of Down.’
‘It cannot be helped, I suppose.’ Maeve walked around her slowly, looking in her eyes, feeling her arm, the width of her hips. ‘You are strong. He always knew how to pick a good mare.’ And then she came to her belly, and placed her hand on the swell beneath Macha’s woollen dress. ‘The child will come soon. You have eaten well?’
Macha nodded.
‘You have prayed for a safe delivery?’
Again the girl affirmed that she had.
‘And for a son?’
‘I know the child will be a boy.’
‘How do you know it?’
‘Julia MacQuillan told me. And it was confirmed by Finn O’Rahilly.’
At the mention of the poet’s name, Maeve recoiled from the girl, her hand dropping to her side.
‘When did you see him?’ I asked.
‘After Sean left for Scotland, when I was with the brothers at Bonamargy. I feared for Sean, and I wanted O’Rahilly to bless my child, so I went to see him one afternoon. But he said he could not. He only told me it would be a boy, and worthy of his father. I went on my way. I did not tell Stephen, for he did not trust the poet.’
Maeve seemed a little more at ease, Deirdre a little less so now.