I felt a trickle of amusement to see him so riled, but I judged best not to take it further. ‘What do you know of Macha?’ I said.
‘Macha?’
‘Yes. What do you know of her?’
He frowned, wrinkling his nose in a beginning of disgust. ‘There is a legend of a woman, many centuries ago … Has the priest been telling you stories?’
‘Not that kind of story. Did you know Sean has a wife?’
‘I’d sooner believe the Pope has a wife.’
‘The priest says he has a wife whose name is Macha. He married her two months ago, and she is at this moment under the protection of the priests at Bonamargy Friary. He says she will very soon give birth to my cousin’s child.’
All humour went from his face. ‘My God – if Murchadh should find out … But Sean cannot hide them for ever.’
‘I do not think he intends to hide them for ever.’
‘Then may God help them when he brings them before the world. Come on, let us get on.’ But it was not long before he resumed our conversation. ‘What did he have to say of Deirdre?’
‘Deirdre? I … he said nothing of Deirdre.’
‘He must have said something.’ There was an edge to his voice, an effort at self-control he could not mask.
I scrambled through my mind. ‘He told me he promised Phelim he would keep an eye on both his children. I should have thought to ask him more, for there is something far wrong in Deirdre’s marriage. I would hardly have thought a few weeks of marriage enough time for the breeding of such resentments.’
‘Resentments here can be roused in seconds and last for centuries.’
‘I am coming to see that; and with the sons of Murchadh stoking the fires of those resentments, they will burn a long time after the passion between Deirdre and Edward Blackstone has cooled.’
I saw him swallow, look straight ahead of him as he spoke. ‘There never was any passion between them.’
I looked at him. ‘Andrew,’ I began.
‘Do not ask me, Alexander. Do not ask.’ He dug his heels into his horse’s flanks and rode hard for the northwest. I thought again of the night of the wake, of the trouble between Deirdre and her husband. And I wondered how many, when Edward Blackstone’s brother had shouted that Deirdre’s lover was flaunted in her husband’s face, had thought as I at first had thought, that he meant Cormac O’Neill. I wondered also how much of the truth Cormac O’Neill knew, and what it would mean for Andrew should he ever find out.
ELEVEN
Coleraine
By the time I caught Andrew he had reached a forest, where woodcutters felled and sawed relentlessly. I tried to talk to him, but he made it clear he would not hear what I had to say, as if our conversation of earlier had not taken place at all. ‘The planters are stripping these woods to the bone to build their towns at Derry and Coleraine, and making a nice profit on the side with illegal exports.’
I looked around me. ‘There is enough wood in these forests to build ten towns.’
‘But not to satisfy the greed of those who live in them. They can hardly find the time to build their houses, so busy are they sending this wood to France and Spain for making barrels and building ships.’
‘But the king is at war with …’
‘I know that and they know that. But the king is in London – he’d be as well on the moon, for all the heed his Irish Society’s agents here pay to the good of their nation.’
We came to the river Bann at last, and kept close to its banks from then on. The light was beginning to fade and the day had grown much colder, a wind from the north bringing with it the smell of the sea. A mile or so after we had left the salmon leap behind us, I began to discern a large mass, like a stunted hill leaching out from the riverside up ahead in the gloom.
Andrew stayed his mount for a moment, and held out his hand towards the mass. ‘There it is: the city of dreams; the Promised Land.’
As we approached closer to the gates of Coleraine, any optimism I had felt seeped out of me. I had expected stone walls, towers, magnificent gatehouses: a shining citadel of this new-made civilisation. What was before me, across the broad, water-filled ditch that served as a moat for the enclosure, was a fortification of earthworks, perhaps fifteen feet high, jutting out at angles into the ditch and towards the surrounding countryside, for the walls and flankers of the London Companies’ new town at Coleraine were, like an ancient compound of savages, made entirely of earth. To our right they reached massively northeastwards. To our left they came to an abrupt end at the Bann, with only a flimsy wooden palisade stretching down into the fast-flowing waters.
Andrew had come to a halt across the moat from a timber gatehouse. He shouted our names and our business, and I heard myself for the first time announced as Sean FitzGarrett. I did not need to ask Andrew why in this place, this great enterprise of the new English occupiers of Old Irish land, he had omitted the ‘O’Neill’ from my cousin’s name. Now the time had come to play my part, and for every moment until we left this place I must think myself Sean FitzGarrett, Catholic gentleman, grandson of a wealthy Anglo-Irish merchant and of his noble native Irish wife. The bearing of a Calvinist scholar, the son of a poor Scottish craftsman, must be left at the gates. The watchman let down the timber drawbridge and we crossed, the sound of the horses’ hoofs jarring hard and clear on the wood after their two days travelling overland.
Andrew asked the gatekeeper for directions to Matthew Blackstone’s house. The man laughed and said we knew little enough about the town if we could not find it for ourselves. ‘There are two decent houses in Coleraine: there is Sir Thomas Philips’ house, within the walls of the old abbey, down towards the river; Matthew Blackstone’s is the other.’
‘And in which street is that to be found?’ Andrew had no patience for the gatekeeper’s humour.
The man smiled, a row of rotten and missing teeth coming into view behind his grey lips. ‘The only street with a decent house on it.’ He turned to his companion, and both roared with laughter as they went to pull up the drawbridge behind us.
It was almost dark, and Andrew had asked the watchmen for a torch, but they had laughed again and replied scornfully that they’d as well set fire to the town themselves as give a lighted torch to a stranger with an Irishman in tow, however grand he might carry himself. When we were far enough out of earshot of the gatekeepers, I asked Andrew what he was smirking about, for that was the only way to describe the look on his face when the watchman had thrown his last insult.
‘Do I smirk? Indeed I might.’
‘Why?’
‘Because he took you for an Irishman without question. You are as much Sean FitzGarrett to look at as I am Andrew Boyd. You sit your horse with the same look of entitlement on your face, the same arrogance in your bearing. Pride. A good pride, I think. But how our kirk ministers in Aberdeen have tolerated it in you, I do not know.’
It was my turn to smile now. ‘Often they have not,’ I said. The street leading into the town from the southern gate was straight and broad, and utterly deserted down one side. On the other, a mixed row of squat, shoddily built houses, mainly timber-framed and plastered, with thatched roofs, faced out onto the emptiness of the untenanted plots across from them. At the end of the row of about a dozen such houses, the street was bisected by another, just as broad and straight, but this one utterly devoid of habitation. There were some rigs of land on either side, some showing signs of cultivation, of pig- and hen-keeping, others dead and sterile. In time, the street came to its end in a broad open square that must have served as the marketplace. There were no signs of any activity whatsoever. Of the houses on the square, none could remotely have been imagined to belong to the family of Deirdre’s husband.