I got up and put all my strength against the side of the chest, which had moved more easily in one direction than it would in the other. Another thud threatened injury only to the attacker. ‘Andrew, for the love of God!’
Eventually, I had the thing shifted and managed to unbolt the door. He almost fell through it.
‘Why did you not answer me?’
‘I did,’ I croaked, pointing at my own neck. ‘You were making too much noise yourself to hear me.’
He saw past me then to Deirdre, and that she was safe, and without ceremony took her tight into his arms.
‘You came back for me.’
‘I will not leave you, Deirdre. You will stay with me now, and I will not leave you.’
To my astonishment, Sir James Shaw was through the door behind him.
‘The men from Coleraine have all been taken to the castle. Their hired thugs will be released before long, I am sure – the constable has not the room nor the inclination to hold them – but Matthew Blackstone and his son will be in the Tower before the month is out. They will be shown no mercy for their treachery in selling arms to rebels against the king.’
‘What about his wife and daughters?’ I asked.
‘He is no fool – he would not have told them what he was about, and they will fare the better for it. Unless it be found that they colluded in his business, they will be left in peace.’
‘To fend for themselves,’ I said. ‘And what about Deirdre?’
He looked from me to Andrew and and back to me. ‘Your cousin cannot be assured of safety here. She has too many ties to too many people who have been involved in plotting against the king. Your grandmother will not lift a finger to help her.’ He spoke now to Deirdre herself. ‘I think you must leave Ireland, and as soon as possible.’
A shout from one of his men below called him away, and a moment later only his words remained where he had been.
‘Leave Ireland?’ she said, as if the thought had never before occurred to her. ‘But where could I go?’
The words were out of my mouth before I knew I had thought them. ‘To Scotland, with me.’
She shook her head. ‘I will not leave Andrew again. He is all there is left, he and my brother’s child.’
‘I am coming too,’ he said. ‘There is a boat leaving for Ayr tomorrow, at five o’clock in the evening. I have this afternoon purchased passage for all three of us. Alexander can return home and you and I, Deirdre – we can begin life anew, away from here.’
She smiled. ‘Is it possible? Is it really possible?’
‘It is possible. There is nothing for us here any more. I am sickened of this country. I have money for land and for trade. We can buy our way into some town …’
‘I have friends in Aberdeen who can help you,’ I said, picturing already the friendship that I knew would form between Andrew and William Cargill, the bond of sisterhood between Deirdre and Sarah, the healing there would be.
‘Truly, you can help us?’ said Andrew.
‘I have a friend who is a lawyer, well thought of in Aberdeen. The town and the countryside around are full of those looking for someone with money to invest. Even a small amount of capital is welcomed. And your experience in my grandfather’s business would help you to similar work soon enough, if you needed it. I am sure of it.’
‘It is so far away,’ said Deirdre.
‘A world away,’ I said. ‘From rebellions, and kindreds, and feuding, and poets and curses. A world away from our grandmother and from here.’
‘Where we might start again, where we might live our lives as others live them.’
‘Yes,’ said Andrew gently. ‘As others live them.’
‘But the child,’ she said.
We looked, uncomprehending, at each other, and then at her. I think Andrew was in some fears that she carried Edward Blackstone’s child, or even Cormac’s.
‘Sean’s child,’ she said.
‘We cannot take Sean’s child. It is yet to be born, and we must leave for Scotland tomorrow. I do not know how much longer you will be safe here. And besides,’ he took her hand tenderly, ‘it is Macha’s child, too, and she will never leave Ireland.’
‘But who will protect him?’ She looked frightened now, her eyes darting from one to the other of us.
‘Macha is stronger than you think. And Eachan …’
‘My brother had Eachan, and now he is dead. Besides, Eachan can do nothing against my grandmother. We must get the child away from her. We must protect it from her. She will poison his life as she did my father’s, Sean’s, mine. She will fill his head with nothing but dreams of the O’Neills, of the old Ireland, of leading rebellion. She will live out her last days through him.’
There was nothing I could say against this. I knew she was right.
‘We cannot take him from his mother, Deirdre, and his mother will never leave here; I am not sure that her dreams are so different from Maeve’s anyhow. She loved Sean for what he was, but for all he planned to do also.’
‘Then she should not have him either.’
‘Deirdre …’
‘She should not, she should not.’ She was beating her hands against Andrew’s chest as she wept.
Deirdre’s outburst had exhausted her, and we laid her down on Andrew’s bed to sleep. He went below, and returned with the news that Maeve believed Deirdre to have gone to the castle with Sir James, where she assumed I would be also. She was too taken up with the imminent birth of her great-grandchild to give much thought to either of us. Macha was now in what had been my grandfather’s room, awaiting her childbed, with Eachan in constant attendance, swearing death on almost any who came near her. Still traversing a dark valley of grief for Sean, his devotion was channelled now to the protection of his dead master’s wife and child. Once born, there would have been no hope of spiriting the child away from its mother, even had Andrew or myself had the slightest desire to do so. Neither of us did. We agreed that Deirdre must be persuaded to come away without him.
I lay down on the bed across from my cousin and watched her sleep, counting with every breath the moments passing until we could leave this place on tomorrow’s tide. She had spoken of my mother, but the life she was fleeing to would not be as my mother’s had been; my father had been a good man, a decent man, but he had not had the vision, or indeed the means, of Andrew Boyd. Deirdre would not have the endless work to do that had been my mother’s lot, would not grow to resent her husband‘s lack of learning, his satisfaction with his position in the world, as my mother had done. It would be a different life, a different future for them. Andrew, again condemned to a pallet of straw while I slept on feathers, laid himself down on the floor of his own room and was soon asleep.
These two, at least, would escape Finn O’Rahilly’s curse. But would I, who had not been encompassed by it? A fear was growing within me that it had already reached out, beyond these shores, to the place I had come from, the place I wished to return to, and begun to poison everything there for me. It had brought me here, that curse, entangled me in the lives of those it damned, and I could not escape untarnished. It had drawn back veils I had not known were there and shown almost everyone I had come to know in Ulster to be something other than I had supposed them to be. And yet I was still no closer to discovering who had hired the lips of Finn O’Rahilly to unleash those words in the first place. I fell asleep with the image of the poet in my mind.
I would have slept until dawn, had not the sounds of a living nightmare pierced my consciousness somewhere in the darkest hours of the night. It was a woman screaming, a scream of such terror and agony as I had never heard from a human throat before. I fumbled for flint and lit the candle as I tried to get out of bed. Deirdre’s place was empty: she was nowhere in the room. Andrew was already on his feet.