‘In God’s name, Alexander, what is that?’
‘I don’t know. She is gone.’
He looked now at the empty bed, grabbed the candle from me and was out of the door within seconds. I had not the strength to follow him at speed and could only fumble my way along the darkened corridor until a crack of light showed me the door to the stairs. The screaming continued, but through it, Cormac O’Neill’s voice came to me again, as he had tried to warn me of pursuing the curse, ‘… may think on his words if you must, but you will call down upon yourself whatever griefs follow.’ And those griefs were calling in my ears, ringing in them now. When I had asked him, Finn O’Rahilly had told me that no one else had come to see him about the blessing that became a curse – no one but Deirdre and my grandmother – and he had not lied. And only tonight, Deirdre herself had told me she would do anything, anything, to put an end to Maeve’s endless dreaming of a triumphant resurgence of the O’Neills in an Ireland that could be no more. Having no faith in the powers of poets herself, she had believed she could play upon the superstitions of her grandmother, warn, manipulate a woman who had spent a lifetime manipulating others. She had instigated the cursing of her own family and it was too late now, as the poet had told her it would be, to undo what had followed. I redoubled my efforts and ran the remaining distance to the room whence Macha’s screams, as she brought my cousin’s child into the world, reverberated through the house and into the night.
Andrew was there already, slumped out of breath beside the door, the candle still in his hand and a look of sheer relief on his face.
‘It is only Macha, Alexander, only Macha. The child will be born soon. All is well.’
‘No,’ I said. ‘Where is Deirdre?’
‘She is in there with her.’
‘I must get in.’
But the powerful arm of Eachan barred the door. ‘No one gets in but the women and the doctor. Cross that door and it will be the last step you take.’
‘Eachan, you do not understand.’
‘It is you who does not understand: I will …’
But he was stopped by a silence, and then a cry, a different cry from a woman’s agonies, the cry of a human child entering into the world. We held our breath a moment, we three men, and then Andrew broke into the broadest of smiles and I thought I saw a tear in the old Irishman’s eye. I took my chance and was through the door before he knew I had passed him.
I only had a moment to take in the scene. The room was ablaze with light – candles lit all around the walls, along the mantelpiece and in the hands of two servant girls on either side of the bed. A doctor was washing his hands in a bowl and congratulating my grandmother. The old woman paid him little attention, lost in an unwonted moment of tenderness, lovingly stroking Macha’s brow; and the midwife, having cleaned and swaddled the child, was handing him not to his mother but to my cousin Deirdre.
I took a step forward, opened my mouth to shout, and the last thing I felt before I went down was the huge fist of Eachan slam into the side of my face. There was nothing but blackness and startling lights in my head, and for a moment I think, for several moments, I succumbed to them. Eventually I forced myself up. By the time I had done so, the room had changed. It was still ablaze with light and fire, but almost all the people had gone save the midwife, a servant and the distraught girl on the bed crying out in Irish for her child. There was no Andrew, no Eachan, no Maeve and no Deirdre. And there was no child.
Lunging from one piece of furniture to the next, I reached the corridor. I could see them now, across the balcony, at the head of the stairs that led down to the great hall. Eachan was in a stupor almost, his hands at his sides, tears rolling down his face, repeating over and over again some Gaelic imprecation. Maeve was frozen, like an effigy of herself, dawning comprehension robbing her of the power of speech. Andrew was standing perhaps three feet from Deirdre, very still, but his eyes moving and his mind, I knew, calculating. In the hall below, hurriedly but quietly, servants were laying down cushions, mattresses, pillows: anything that would soften a fall. And there, by the head of the stairs itself, was Deirdre. Beautiful, her eyes shining, her hair tumbled loose over her shoulders, in the pale blue gown she had lain down to sleep in, holding close to her cheek and murmuring soft words of comfort into the ear of her brother’s child.
‘Give me the child, Deirdre,’ said my grandmother at last.
Deirdre only smiled, and continued to whisper into the baby’s ear, and to kiss its soft cheek.
‘Give me the child,’ my grandmother repeated.
‘No. I will not do that, grandmother. You would destroy him, as you destroyed my father, my brother. You will not destroy this child. I will keep him safe.’
The old woman was getting desperate. ‘I will not. I will send them away, tomorrow. The child and his mother. I will send them away, and Eachan with them to protect them. And money. I will give them money. I will never see them again.’
Deirdre shook her head, smiling at the child and not looking at her grandmother. ‘No, you lie. You have always lied. Ever since I was a child. Before that even. You told my grandfather his daughter was dead, but look, there is her son Alexander, here in this house, too late.’
‘Please, Deirdre,’ I said.
She continued to smile, at me now. ‘No, Alexander, it is too late. It was always too late.’
Andrew took a step towards her as she spoke, but she shrank back, drawing the child closer to herself.
‘It is too late,’ she repeated.
‘But we will go, as we planned. We will go with Alexander, make a new life for ourselves, and take the child. You will allow that, will you not, Maeve? We can take Macha with us even.’
My grandmother nodded in desperate acquiescence but still Deirdre shook her head. ‘No, you are lying to me too, Andrew. I heard you both last night. You will not let me take him. But I have to. No one else will protect him from her. I am taking him to his father.’
She moved closer to the edge of the balcony and what happened next was done so quickly I hardly knew where it began. She lifted the baby high in the air, Maeve screamed and Eachan, come to himself, started to run. But Andrew was closest and lunged for the child, only wrenching it from her arms as she hurled herself backwards over the balcony rail.
She seemed to fall for ever, her arms outstretched, her hair flowing behind her, a look of supreme peace on her face. Falling into the arms of those who had gone before her, she broke her neck on the hard stone floor below. There was silence, utter silence for a moment, and then the child started to cry. Andrew held him tight and tried to soothe him, but as his grip strengthened, his teeth gritted and his eyes became a film of tears, I feared he would crush the breath out of the tiny bundle in his arms. I made my way over to him and gently took it from him, handing him to my grandmother who, ashen-faced, went quietly with him towards Macha’s bedroom. And then I held Andrew as he succumbed to his overwhelming grief.
TWENTY-NINE
Parting
I had all but pleaded with him, but he would not come with me. We had parted at Ayr. I think he took something of me with him, and I something of him with me, and yet it was a lack I felt, an absence.
‘You could make the new life we talked of. You could have that new beginning.’
‘It was a dream, Alexander, of another time. It is gone now.’
‘I know it cannot be how it was to have been …’
‘No, she is dead.’
‘Yes, she is dead. And she can no more be in Dumfriesshire than she could in Aberdeen. There is nothing for you to the south that you would not find in the north.’