I pushed through the crowd at the wine-vendor’s stall as the play reached its climax, but there was no sight of Andrew there. To call out for him would have been useless, as the audience cheered and stamped its acclamation of the players. The whole multitude seemed to be converging on me, determined on more drink and food to finish their evening off. The closeness of the tide of bodies, the smell of their sweat and their foetid breath, almost turned my stomach. I glimpsed again, briefly, the young friar who had been with Stephen Mac Cuarta, but the throng kept him from seeing me, for which at least I could be thankful. I got at last to the edge of the crowd and saw Matthew Blackstone escorting his wife and daughters back in the direction of their home: too genteel to take part in the public merriment that would follow the play, their night was over.
Still I could not see Andrew. I could not think he would have returned to the Blackstones’ place without me. The only other people I knew him to be acquainted with in Coleraine were my grandfather’s agent and the master of the brickworks, and I went in that direction. It was not a place through which I would have chosen to wander alone at night. What light there was from the marketplace behind me dwindled as I walked, until I could scarcely see my hand in front of me. Figures lurched past, revellers uneasy on their feet, or lovers looking for dark and secret places to play out their desires. About halfway down to the river, regretting with every step my choice of direction, but reluctant to turn back before I had assured myself that he was not there, I felt a hand grasp my shoulder. I spun round.
‘What in God’s name …’
‘Alexander, it is only me.’
‘I know that,’ I said, my heart still pounding. ‘What possessed you to wander down here alone?’
‘I needed some air, and the play was not to my liking. How did it end?’
‘How did it …? I cannot tell you. I was distracted; I think we may have trouble.’
‘What sort of trouble?’
‘The friar. He was here again tonight, talking to Blackstone, and had a brother of his order with him. It was the same young man I only just got away from earlier.’
‘Did you hear any of their conversation? Could you judge their mood?’
‘I was too far away.’
‘Where are they now?’
‘I don’t know. I think Mac Cuarta may have been leaving town. The other is still looking for me, I would lay my life on it.’
His voice came quiet in the darkness. ‘Let us pray you will not have to.’
We kept to the shadows where we could. The marketplace was emptying and we could see no sign of the young brother. We were soon making our way up Church Street, and were almost at the Blackstones’ house when I noticed a movement at an upper window. Less than a moment later the front door opened and the master mason himself appeared in the doorway. He looked in our direction and turned inward to say something to someone standing in the darkened hall. I heard a shriek from within the house, and the kitchen boy ran out, stared at us a moment in terror and then shot up the other side of the street, shouting for all he was worth for the constable. He was closely followed by two men I recognised instantly, and my heart gave within me: Edward and Henry Blackstone, Deirdre’s husband and his brother. They were coming straight at us, both with swords drawn. From the house came a hellish womanly chorus of ‘Murderers! Impostors! Murderers! Thieves!’
My mind turned quickly. ‘Which way?’ I shouted to Andrew.
‘The church,’ he said, already on his way. For a strongly built man who would not see thirty again he had tremendous speed; I knew that few could catch me on the flat – to their astonishment, I had beaten all my scholars in their summer races at the King’s Links, despite the burden of my ten extra years – but Andrew could have come close. The Blackstone brothers were slowed in having to turn, and encumbered by the heavy riding cloaks and boots they still wore. The desolate spaces encompassed by the earthen walls of Coleraine closed to the brothers any advantage familiarity with the town might have given them over us, for we could see our way clear beyond the church to the ramparts themselves and the unmanned bastion beyond the east port. I cleared first one wall of the churchyard, then the other, heedlessly trampling the graves in between. Andrew was behind me, making the leaps with as much ease as I did myself. We were twenty yards from the bastion when I heard shouting coming from the guards at the east port, and saw a man running along the top of the earthworks – he would reach the place before us.
‘There!’ Andrew shouted, and pointed to a breach in the rampart where much of the earth and turfs had been washed away by rain. I was through it in moments and, almost before I knew it, up to my neck in the filthy, freezing water of the moat and swimming for the other side. I could hear shouts and curses and commands to turn back, but I did not pause to look behind me until I had scrambled up the opposite bank. Some of the shouts were coming from Andrew, whose head appeared briefly above the water and then sank down below it. He emerged again, taking a huge gulp and struggling to speak before he went under again. Realising at last that he could not swim, I plunged back into the murky water and had reached him before the first of the guards managed to scramble down the outside of the rampier. I had Andrew under the arms now, and was pulling myself back as hard as I could towards the other side once more. Edward and Henry Blackstone appeared at the top of the wall, cursing the guards who pleaded fear of drowning. The men of Coleraine stood, momentarily frozen in impotence, as I for a second time reached the far bank of the moat.
‘Where now?’ I gasped to Andrew.
‘The bridge,’ he spluttered. And so we ran on, towards a distant bridge over the mill brook.
Halfway there I risked looking back, and already men with torches had appeared on the brow of the ramparts, shouting and pointing to each other the way we had gone.
‘Why don’t they come after us?’
‘Horses,’ Andrew panted, and indeed, within ten minutes I could hear the distant clatter of horses’ hoofs on the drawbridge of the east port. The bastion obscured them for a while from view but then I saw them – half-a-dozen horsemen, and at their head my cousin’s husband and his brother. My heart and lungs were fit to burst, and Andrew could not speak, but I knew, however fast we ran, we could not reach the bridge before they overtook us. I knew also that the men of the town would never have gone to these lengths in the chase of a mere impostor, and the shrieks of Matthew Blackstone’s wife and daughters echoed in my ears, – ‘Impostors! Murderers! Thieves!’ Oh God in His Heaven, of what did we stand accused?