‘You do not know what you are talking about.’
‘Margaret, I killed no one. I never lifted a hand to my cousin, and I killed no one at Coleraine.’
‘I care nothing for Coleraine or what you did there.’
‘You cannot think I had a hand in the murder of Sean? I swear to you, I loved him as a brother.’ As a brother. I breathed deep. ‘Margaret, he was my brother.’
She looked at me now. She did not flinch, or turn away, but looked at me as if I were at last other than she had thought me to be. ‘Your brother?’
‘He never knew it; I never got to call him so, but he was my brother, for we shared a mother. Sean O’Neill FitzGarrett was my brother, and you who have also lost a brother must know what I feel.’
She stared at me a few moments longer. ‘Do not think to tell me what I know, or feel.’ She left and I knew, however well I might wish her, that she would never accept friendship from me.
I was disturbed only by the cooks coming in and out of the room for stores. What passed for my bed was an arrangement of sacks on the floor, but it was better than what I had laid myself down upon on several nights just past, and I slept with some ease. At some hour well before dawn I became aware of a stirring of activity, and anxious voices in the kitchens. The door of the storeroom was opened and light brought in.
‘He’s still here,’ said a harsh voice, whose owner I could not see.
‘Then see that you keep him there. He is not to be allowed near the other one. Who knows what plots they have on hand.’
‘The constable thinks the other had himself caught simply to get to where this one is.’
‘They are sly, every one of them, and it may be so.’
I struggled to my feet as the man closed the door again and the storeroom became dark once more. I tried to open the door, but it had been locked on the outside. I banged on it, provoking curses from my guard and shrieks of terror from the women in the kitchens.
‘Who have you taken? Who is it? Tell me who you have brought here!’
The door was wrenched open, and an angry face leered at me out of the darkness. ‘Hold your tongue and your noise while you still can: you’ll get to sing your song soon enough.’ He shoved me backwards into the storeroom and I heard the bolt brought to again.
And so I waited through the night, as the castle settled in on itself again, and it waited too. The servants in the kitchens, the dogs in the hall, returned to their sleep, but like the guards that walked the parapets above us and the curtain wall around us, I did not sleep. There was no attack, or sound of attack; no noise of skirmishing or fighting, no sounds of fire or panic from the town. Who had they brought in?
Perhaps two hours later I heard Sir James’s voice in the kitchen, and soon my door was opened again and the light brought in. Sir James took the candle, but ushered the guard away. He sat down on a flour sack and, with little ceremony, got to his point.
‘What do you know of Cormac O’Neill?’
Cormac? I had not thought it would be Cormac.
‘Cormac O’Neill … I … he is the son of Murchadh O’Neill.’
‘Murchadh, yes, who held you against your will, and pursued you to my home, which he then set alight.’
‘Yes.’
‘And Cormac, his eldest son, pursued your cousin Deirdre to my home, and begged that we should turn her over to him.’
‘Yes.’
‘This same Cormac who, I am informed, given the death of your cousin Sean, is designated leader of the planned rising.’
I did not ask him how he knew. Andrew: Andrew had told him everything.
‘If you know it all, there can be no need to ask me.’
‘Can there not? Then there is no need to ask why Cormac O’Neill should take pains to exonerate you from any wrong-doing in the death of Henry Blackstone?’
I was dumbfounded. There was nothing sensible I could say. The words that came to my mind were ‘Cormac wasn’t there,’ but some sense of self-preservation stopped me.
‘Well, have you no answer?’
I shook my head. ‘I have none. I do not know why Cormac would do that.’
‘But he has. He has sworn this night before the constable and myself and the governor’s deputy that you and Andrew Boyd played no part in the murder of Henry Blackstone; that when they reached Coleraine with your grandmother’s false accusations, you left the town to come back here and clear your name, that you fell in with a Franciscan priest, a consort of the rebel Stephen Mac Cuarta, who caused Blackstone’s death and brought you to Murchadh O’Neill. Is this the truth?’
Almost, it was almost the truth. But why should Cormac have chosen to tell it? Why should he offer to myself and Andrew a way out of our predicament where before there had been none? ‘Yes,’ I said, ‘it is the truth. Can I see him?’
‘The governor thought you might make such a request. You can see him, for ten minutes, and not alone. Come, we will do it now, before the dawn of a new day brings its own troubles upon us.’
The embers in the kitchen hearths still glowed. A kitchen boy, curled up with a hound before the hearth, stirred as we passed, but everyone else slept on. Out in the courtyard, guards were waiting for us and torches lit our way to the middle ward and then out towards the sea tower, jutting from the walls to the north and west, musket men guarding it. We entered by the guardroom at the basement, and a ladder was put up to the cell above. I heaved myself through the hatch and into a dank, foul-smelling room with little light or furnishing save a few sodden rushes on the floor. The place stank of seaweed and rot.
Cormac was in the corner, hunched, his feet shackled, his wrists bound. He did not look up, and I watched him a moment, feeling no triumph in the reversal of our roles.
‘Cormac.’
His handsome face broke into a momentary smile, then faded. ‘Have they taken you, too?’
‘I am not a prisoner, at least … I do not think so.’
‘Then I am glad of it.’
‘What happened?’
‘They took me last night, after I entered the town.’
‘Alone?’
‘My father and brothers have gone to Dun-a-Mallaght. Others of our men have gone to Tullahogue; we cannot wait any longer for Stephen’s help from abroad.’
‘Stephen is dead,’ I said.
‘I know. We found his grave.’
‘His great fear was that your father would be precipitate.’
‘My father has waited twenty years. Those who talked of helping us have had long enough.’
‘And you think Murchadh will come for you?’
Cormac laughed, a low laugh with little humour in it. ‘They will hang me before my father is halfway to his horse. I won’t see the sun reach its height in the sky today, nor go down in the sea again.’ It was a statement of fact, and I did not attempt to argue with him.
‘But why did you come into the town on your own?’
‘I was coming for her.’
For Deirdre. Of course.
‘Did you get as far as my grandmother’s house?’
‘I was in sight of it, almost within the shelter of the door, when the mob of Coleraine, with her husband and his father at its head, came on me. To be caught by such as these. It will be a wonder if the hangman gets his rope around my neck before I die of shame.’
‘Cormac, she will not go back to her husband.’
‘I knew that already. But who is there to protect her now? Your grandfather, Sean, both gone. You will leave this place as soon as you are able, I know that, and even the servant Boyd is dead.’
The words reached me from a nightmare. Andrew was dead. He could not be found, because he was dead. The knowledge sank like a stone on my stomach. ‘Was it you or the Blackstones?’