It was the following morning, and Andrew had found me standing at the end of my bed and with intent to go further. A night’s rest in sheets rather than straw had restored enough of my strength that I could walk a few steps unsupported without fear of falling. The pain from my wound was sharper, more insistent now though. Deirdre had done what she could, but it was clear some sort of infection was setting in. Remembering one of Jaffray’s methods, when all other means were lacking, I had asked him last night for a little whisky to clean the wound, but he had thought I was in jest, and had in a similar vein admonished me that I had been too much amongst my cousin’s associates and that abstinence from vice would do for me what drink and other things could not. I had had neither the energy nor the wit to explain to him properly, and I was paying for it now. I tugged at the bandages.
‘I think it has become infected.’
He lifted the dressing carefully, and this time it was he who winced when he saw what lay beneath. ‘I will send for the doctor.’
‘What about my grandmother? She will know I am here.’
‘Word of Margaret’s death and her guilt in Sean’s murder is all around the town. Your grandmother was up much of the night, busied in commending that girl’s soul to all the punishments of the damned. She is not yet ready to acknowledge your innocence, but she will. You are safe here now.’
The doctor arrived within the hour, and did little more than raise his eyebrows when told the cause of my wound. ‘It is in the blood, it would seem. I treated your cousin, and your uncle before him, for woundings of this nature on more than one occasion. You will be left with a scar that will more than match that on your forehead. Do not tell me that a young girl gave you that too?’
It took me a moment to understand what he was talking about.
‘No, not a young girl. A powerfully-built man with a rock in his hand and an intention to embed it in my skull gifted me that,’ I said, rubbing at the deep gouge in my temple carved out by the provost of Banff, over two years ago.
‘Do you O’Neills never consider the peaceful resolution of disputes?’ he asked, as he steadied his hand to thread the needle that would soon be drawing together the skin at the gash in my neck.
I attempted a smile. ‘I did not know I was an O’Neill, then.’
Later, as darkness was drawing in, Andrew came again to see me, bringing with him a bowl of broth and some bread, ‘and the eager wishes of Deirdre and Macha to see you. Your grandmother will not hear of it. Macha she will not let out of her sight, and she holds Deirdre in scarcely less contempt than she does you.’ He was silent for a moment. ‘She blames her for the death of Cormac.’
‘But that is ridiculous. How could she …?’
‘However ridiculous, Deirdre has joined her in the certainty of her own guilt. I have tried to reason with her but she will have none of it. She says if she had but done what Maeve wanted her to do in the first place, none of this would have happened.’
‘She cannot believe that is true.’
‘More than that, she cries out about the curse, that it is her fault, that she has brought it down upon us.’
‘Andrew, that is madness.’
‘I know it is madness, but she is beyond telling. I begin to fear it might truly send her mad. She says that her only consolation is that she has seen Maeve MacQuillan, and must surely join Sean and Cormac soon.’
‘And my grandmother?’
‘She stokes the fire of her delusions, goads her on, with accusation after accusation.’
She was engulfed in a storm, this cousin, this girl whom I had sworn to Sean and to Cormac that I would protect, and I did not know how to get her to safety; it seemed that here there was no way out for her, no possibility of shelter.
‘What can we do, Andrew?’
‘We? There is nothing we can do until we know for certain that she will allow it to be done.’
A loud banging on the outer door beneath us interrupted our conversation. Andrew ran to look out over the machicolation and I attempted to hobble after him.
‘It is the Blackstones; I must alert them at the castle,’ he said, before rushing down the stairs.
I saw that he was right. Deirdre’s husband Edward was there, and his father Matthew with him. They had in attendance a rabble of men – not the hunting party that had pursued us to Dunluce, but an ill-mounted assortment of what I thought must be brickmakers, builders, tenants, all men in Matthew Blackstone’s pay with little option but to do his bidding. The genial Englishman at whose table Andrew and I had dined a few nights ago was gone, his place taken by an enraged, blustering bull of a man. His own son looked to be in fear of him.
‘Let us in, you conniving whore, or I will break these doors down.’
A servant’s voice replied. ‘You will gain no entrance here. Go back where you came from, if you value your liberty.’
‘Liberty? I will have no liberty; your man Boyd has seen to that with his creeping about, setting spies amongst my own men, when the greatest culprit, the greatest traitor to the king, was reared within these walls by that bog-nurtured old bitch you take your coin from.’ He turned to his men. ‘Break it down.’ And the rabble set to with a pole they had brought with them, which they began to ram with increasing force against the door.
I left my position at the window and made my way to the stairway down to the balcony above my grandmother’s great hall. I reached the bottom just as two doors burst open – the one on the ground floor, having finally succumbed with a sickening crack and splintering of wood to the Englishmen’s blows; and the other, the small door that I knew led to my cousin Deirdre’s chamber. She appeared, pale and insubstantial, like a ghost of herself, in the doorway. I held up a hand to stop her, and taking advantage of the noise and confusion below, crossed the balcony as quickly as I could to where she stood. I did not know if she had thoughts of going down to her husband, but I could not see – in her father-in-law’s frame of mind – that any good would come of that. I took her by the arm, and began to lead her back towards the safe hiding place of Andrew Boyd’s chamber.
We had not covered half the distance, at my halting pace, before the intruders had made their way into the house and up to the hall where my grandmother, attended only by her steward, was waiting for them. There was no sign of Eachan; he would be with Macha, protecting Sean’s unborn child. I pulled Deirdre with me behind the pillar from where I had watched my grandfather’s wake. Gone were the groaning tables, the musicians, the servants and mourners. Gone too were Sean, Cormac – Murchadh also by now, perhaps. There was only a defiant old woman, with her steward, standing in her empty hall, the glories of the past hung in faded colours all around her.
She was the first to speak, her voice careful, soft. ‘So, Englishman, you come uninvited to my house. You must forgive my want of hospitality: I had not looked for visitors at this hour.’
‘Your hospitality be damned. I will have what I am owed.’
‘You are owed nothing. Murchadh O’Neill and his son paid you every penny that was agreed for what arms you supplied to them. And you will see not a penny more from my husband’s coffers.’
‘I do not talk of money, woman.’
She raised an eyebrow, mocking even now. ‘But I have heard you speak of little else. I had not known you to concern yourself with other matters.’
This was too much for him, and the rage he had been trying to master exploded out of him. ‘My son, you murderous bitch. My son!’
Although the steward had moved forward a little, to stand in front of my grandmother, she herself had not so much as blinked.
‘I see your son beside you there,’ she said. ‘Will one lumbering oaf not do you as well as another?’