The constable sighed. ‘We believe so, but we have not the evidence, and to take one of her age and standing in for … questioning’ – he had not meant questioning; I knew what he had meant. ‘To take her in for questioning without evidence would have caused more uproar than I have the men to deal with.’
I straightened a little at this, sensing some hope. ‘And what have you got?’
‘We have the papers Andrew Boyd received at Coleraine, sent from London, detailing Blackstone’s contraband shipment of weapons and when and how they were to be landed.’
‘The crates of slate,’ I said, almost to myself. Under my own eyes, Matthew Blackstone had taken delivery of the guns they were to sell to my grandmother. And under his eyes had been landed the very letters that would condemn him, ‘and the Madeira.’
Sir James raised a good-humoured eyebrow. ‘I believe a cask of that sort played its part. The papers were sealed in an internal compartment, with no damage to the liquid goods either, I am glad to say. It is a blessing on a man of fine tastes that these coopers know their trade.’
‘And that is why the Blackstones are so keen to hunt Andrew down.’
The constable nodded.
‘But Andrew does not have the papers. I am certain of it. I saw him half-drowned, stripped, treated and clothed all on the night of our flight from Coleraine: he had no papers with him.’
‘He knows better than to carry such papers on him. Shortly after the cask was landed, he checked its contents. Within an hour it was in the hands of another of our agents there, a man very close to the centre of Blackstone’s operations …’
‘The master of the brickworks,’ I said.
‘I cannot say. The man is still in the field. Let us say simply that within another hour, that cask was on the back of a cart of goods and on its way to me at Ballygally.’
I marvelled at the ingenuity of it, and at how easily duped I had been, I who had suspected nothing. ‘So, you had much news to convey to the castle here.’ The news of English treachery contained in the letters, the word of the coming rising, out of Andrew’s own mouth.
‘Much. Andrew Boyd has saved many English lives, and Scots. Not just in the towns like Coleraine. Londonderry and Carrickfergus, but out on the plantations, in the bawns. Like the one in which you yourselves spent the night.’
‘Armstrong’s Bawn?’
The constable nodded. ‘There were rumours that Franciscan agents were infiltrating the settlements, gathering intelligence in preparation for the planned attacks. Andrew was able to verify this for us.’
And so it had been no great work of coincidence that saw Andrew and me put up for the night in the very bawn where Stephen Mac Cuarta was gathering his information in the guise of an Irish baker. Andrew had indeed saved many lives, but how many Irish lives had he betrayed? Would he have betrayed me, had I answered Stephen differently that last night at Ardclinnis? I knew that answer already. One choice, one loyalty, as the constable had told me.
I had heard enough, and asked if I might rest awhile again in the kitchen storeroom before trying again at my grandmother’s house to make my peace.
‘Rest here as long as you wish, but, after all that I have told you here, you cannot go to your grandmother’s house.’
I returned wearily to my sacking bed, seeking nothing more than blissful oblivion.
Sleep came, but the sought-for oblivion did not. I knew myself to be standing on the shore beneath the castle, looking across the water to Scotland, from where voices I knew I could not hear were calling to me: Sarah, Jaffray, my father, little Zander. I kept trying to step into the water, to go to them, but a hand held tight to my wrist, pulling me back. It was my grandmother. She pointed with her other hand to some shapeless thing in the water, some shapeless thing in a white shift, and with my mother’s flowing black hair. Deirdre and Roisin were on either side of the thing, trying to pull it up, while my grandmother intoned again and again in my ear: ‘Better for you she had drowned. Better for you she had drowned.’
I didn’t know when the note was pushed under the door; I didn’t know who had left it. No one in the kitchens knew: they all denied having seen anyone. I told them it was of no matter when they started to wonder about calling a guard, and went back to my resting place to look at it again.
Alexander, for the love of God and our friendship, meet me tonight, at seven, in the church of St Nicholas. Tell no one, if you value my life.
Andrew
It was not his usual careful hand, but something more hurried and scrabbled. A man in fear of his life does not take as much care over his letters as he does when setting a line of accounts. I went back out to the kitchen and threw the paper into the fire.
TWENTY-SIX
Chichester’s Tomb
I had been so much in my own company, in hiding places, watching, listening, waiting, that I craved noise, hubbub, light. I felt a desire to walk the streets openly, to hear the laughter of others.
As I went down into the town, towards the marketplace, I could see lights blazing in the windows of the FitzGarrett tower house. I had promised Cormac I would look after Deirdre, but I knew with a certainty that my grandmother would not allow me entry to her house, and the constable had warned me away from there anyway. Who was there in that place now who would care for her? Maeve had barely looked at her once she had understood who Macha was and what her condition meant, and Eachan was not the man to treat my cousin’s fragile soul. ‘Deirdre of the Sorrows’ Cormac had called her. I was not sure I understood what he meant. Her husband might be in there even now – pleading with her, intriguing with Maeve. I had not the time to concern myself with the Blackstones tonight – wherever they might be in the town, they would be joining Cormac O’Neill in the castle prison soon enough.
Much of the air of apprehension that had cloaked Carrickfergus yesterday had lifted; word of Cormac’s capture, and the disarray of the rebels had begun to circulate in town and countryside and people were going about the usual business of their lives. The marketplace, the scene of so many entertainments for me as I had watched from my incarceration in my grandmother’s house, was cleared, business for the day being finished, and quiet. The life of the town now was behind doors and walls, in taverns and houses up winding lanes and darkened back streets, where families and companionship and friendship might be found. There was safety in these streets, up those lanes, where people simply lived and did not dedicate their lives to plot or policy, revenge and unattainable dreams. Between the uncertainties of the sea on one side and the unknowable expanse of Ulster stretching out in the darkness beyond the walls, there was the possibility of something I would have recognised as normality.
But it was not yet time for me to enter back into that world, and I turned my steps up the narrow street behind my grandmother’s house and towards St Nicholas church. The slate-grey sky of the day was giving way to dusk, and so little light escaped from windows or doors in this part of town that I found it difficult to see my way once I entered the churchyard. A light breeze had got up, and dry leaves were swirling around the paths, paving and gravestones. I wondered if any of my own forebears were buried here, and if they watched me now. It was difficult to cast such superstition from my mind as I made my uncertain way between tombs and headstones that seemed to rise up from the ground and lean towards me. The nocturnal stirrings of the churchyard made my heart beat faster. Bats swooped from the trees and from the eaves of the roof. I pulled my hood up against them, these messengers of the coming darkness, manifestations of the night. The wind caused the occasional creaking amongst the near-bare branches, and I was glad to reach the portal of the church, where the merest sliver of light edged the not-quite-shut door within the porch. I hesitated now; for the last few days, churches had been places of sanctuary, places of hiding, places of brutality: I did not know what might await me here. For all his secretiveness, his duplicity, I could not believe Andrew meant me harm, but I think I knew then I had been foolish in telling no one of the contents of the note. It was too late for these thoughts – a bell nearby started to toll the hour of seven and I pushed open the door of the church.