‘What you know and what you are called to answer for may not always be the same thing.’ He looked at me silently for a moment, before returning to his papers. ‘It is not usual, you understand, that I take the word of a professed rebel over that of a settled Englishman. And yet there are reasons why I am prepared to accord some faith to the words of Cormac O’Neill in the matter of the killing of Henry Blackstone. I have considered that it might be in O’Neill’s interest, if you are of his mind, to have you free to roam and communicate with his father, but the tale he tells seems likely enough. I have decided to allow you liberty, within the town but no further. Should you take it into your head to leave Carrickfergus there will be a patrol of my men on your tail with orders to show no leniency. Do you understand?’
‘I understand.’ I had hardly known a moment’s freedom since I had set foot in this country. To be allowed the liberty of the town was an unimaginable boon.
But the constable had not finished. ‘You have not asked why I should take O’Neill’s word over Blackstone’s. Perhaps you already know.’
I suspect from my face he registered that I had no idea what he meant.
He hesitated and looked to Sir James, who nodded for him to go on. ‘Andrew Boyd, under the supervision and instruction of your grandfather for some years now, has been an agent of the king in these parts.’
He’d as well have told me Andrew was an agent of the Pope. I did not believe him, and looked from one to the other for some explanation.
‘Your grandfather was one of the most trusted of the Old English subjects of the Crown in Ireland. Despite his marriage to your grandmother, the treachery of his son, and his clinging to the old religion, he was never anything other than a true and loyal servant of the king. When King James of his grace gave his blessing to the plantation of our northern counties, he had great need of such men, and your grandfather’s trading connections made him the ideal man for keeping an eye on the new merchants and planters in the North. There have been many others, of course, but few so well established as Richard FitzGarrett. As age overtook him he turned to his late steward’s son, who had grown up in his house, to aid him in this invaluable work.’
I had heard of such things, of course, but I could not believe it of the old man whose hand I had briefly held just over a week ago, or of the companion of my trials in the days since then.
‘You wish me to believe that my grandfather used Andrew Boyd to spy on his own wife and grandson?’ I could not keep the anger out of my voice.
The constable was unmoved. ‘Cool your passions and listen. Richard FitzGarrett was employed to report upon the planters, the new English settlers of Coleraine and Londonderry. He did from time to time transmit information about Murchadh to the king, but there were others whose primary function was to do that. Many of the planters who have gone to the escheated counties from England have become duplicitous, greedy. They think not of the higher purpose of the plantation, which is to civilise these parts with men of our own speech and religion, to break the dependency of the Irish on their kin, and to bring them under our laws. Some of these planters aim only at their own profit, plunder the rivers, denude the forests; they keep their workers ill-supplied and ill-paid, so that many of the best craftsmen will not come. Worse, they lease great portions of the land with which they have been entrusted not to decent English Protestants, or even Scots, but to the native Irish who will pay the highest rents for lands they once thought their own. Under such circumstances, the plantation will fail. And it has been getting worse of late, for the planters are falling out amongst themselves, bickering over their rights and sending conflicting tales to the king. Men like Andrew Boyd, paid by the Crown and with no interest in the plantation themselves, or like Sir James here, a loyal campaigner of long standing, have become more and more important for the gathering of intelligence to be sent back to London.’
I looked to Sir James. ‘And my grandmother, Sean, Deirdre – they knew nothing of Andrew’s activities?’
‘Do you think your grandmother would have had him in the house a moment after she knew of it? And as to Sean – if he had known of it, Andrew Boyd would not have lived to draw another breath.’
I sought to defend my cousin. ‘No, Sean wouldn’t …’ but the constable stopped me.
‘Your cousin was in league with Murchadh O’Neill. What country is it you think you have come to? Have you learned nothing of it yet? In this place, men have to make choices. There is no room for nobility in friendship that will compromise a man’s loyalty. I do not doubt your cousin was a man of honour – indeed, I know him to have been so, for all his faults – but he could only have one loyalty, and that loyalty was not to the king. He would not have waited for word from Murchadh or Cormac: he would have slit Andrew Boyd’s throat himself had he known.’
And Deirdre? How much of it might Deirdre have known? There could be no doubt now that Andrew had reported to Sir James all he had heard – where? At Armstrong’s Bawn, as I’d thought he slept, drugged? At Dunluce, between the priests? But no, he had been too far gone in his injury, and even I had been able to make out little that was said there. He had not been with me to Kilcrue, to the Cursing Circle, where Finn O’Rahilly had told me little enough anyway. He had not been to Dun-a-Mallaght, but how much had I told him of what had passed there? How much had he seen and understood of what passed at Bonamargy? But it didn’t matter, for he had been at Ardclinnis, and as he had not hidden from me himself, he had heard every word that had passed between Stephen and me on that last night. Andrew Boyd knew everything about the planned rising that I knew myself, and now everyone in it was being hunted down by the English authorities. But what was there for him to tell of Deirdre? And Macha? Macha, who carried Sean’s child.
‘Is my family to be arrested?’
‘Do you think they ought to be?’
The constable had talked of loyalty, of choices: he had mistaken the one I’d made. ‘They should be left in peace.’
He appraised me a while. ‘For the time being, they will be, for I have enough on my hands with tracking down Murchadh’s rabble, and trying to get MacDonnell to deal with these accursed Franciscans of his. By God, I’ll hang the lot of them if I can. And then there are the Blackstones.’
‘Cormac told you what happened to their son,’ I said carefully.
‘It’s not that business I’m talking about. When Boyd was in Coleraine, he collected documents proving Matthew Blackstone’s son Edward, your cousin’s husband, has been avoiding customs, having secret landings and sailings of goods from creeks and bays along the coast, outside the jurisdiction of Londonderry or Coleraine. We had our suspicions, but he overreached himself when he intrigued to bring in weapons for the rebels, all for profit.’
The avoidance of customs, the secret landings, I could believe, for such things were common enough near any major port, but this last, this bringing in of weapons for enemies of the king, could have one name only: treason.
I cleared my throat. ‘He was dealing with Murchadh?’
‘Not Murchadh: Blackstone was too closely watched; the only connection he had with the rebels was through your family. He was dealing with someone, but it was not Murchadh.’
‘You think Sean?’
‘That is not our information.’
‘You cannot think Deirdre had a hand in it?’
He shook his head. ‘She has always made her sympathies clear. She has never been suspected of favouring rebellion.’
‘Then who?’
‘Who is left?’
Maeve. Only Maeve. Ready at last to play her own part in the story of the O’Neills. ‘My grandmother.’ My voice was flat. For all she had done to me and to others that I cared for, I could not wish her the fate that would befall her should she be found a rebel against the king. But yes; Sean had told me how she’d raged against Deirdre’s marriage into the Blackstones, then gone into an unaccustomed silence on the matter. I recalled his words now, and wondered just how much Sean had known about her dealings with them: ‘in the end I think she may have come to believe that it was in her interests to let the match go ahead in any case.’ She had not gone to Coleraine with Deirdre to make preparations for a wedding she had no interest in: she had gone to buy guns.