A Game of Sorrows (21 page)

‘I have been a fool longer, and know from this fool that passion can destroy a man.’ He finished his drink in silence, in one draught, and went to get himself another.

I noticed then that Matthew Blackstone was not in his place, but talking a little way off from the side of the stage with one of the players, the friar, who had been to conduct the marriage between Claudio and Hero. I could see little of their faces in the shadows as they were, and could get no impression of the tenor of their exchange. Then a second friar appeared at the first’s side. Unlike the other pair, he was standing in the light of one of the stage torches. It was the young man whom I had seen making his way so urgently through the crowd to me earlier, the one I had taken such pains to avoid. It was a strange occurrence, and one made all the stranger a few moments later when, as the play was approaching its end, the older friar made his entrance on the stage once more. I could see him very clearly in the light – the shape and colouring of him – but I did not need such information now to tell me that this was not the man I had seen talking with Matthew Blackstone, for that man had now left the company of my host and was hurrying away in the darkness towards Church Street and out of my view. The light caught his face as he passed out of the square and I knew him at once: it was Stephen Mac Cuarta, the Franciscan. His young companion was now nowhere to be seen.

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?

I could almost feel the breath of the horses on my neck, and the voices of our pursuers were loud in my ears. I hardly dared to look round to see how far behind me Andrew was, in case I should find one of them upon me, but I did look round, and my stomach lurched as I saw that he was almost caught. I opened my mouth to call out a warning, and the sound I heard was not my own voice but a terrible crack from the direction of the bridge. I stopped in horror as the leading horse reared up into the air, then collapsed, writhing, onto its fallen rider. Andrew was frozen in shock also, only three yards ahead of them.

He came quickly to his senses and began to move towards me at speed, aware his life depended on every stride. Not knowing what I was running to, I fixed my eyes on the bridge and did not look behind me again. I reached it at last, feeling I would collapse if I had to go a step further. I leant, wheezing, against the cold stone balustrade for a moment, allowing Andrew to catch me up. He all but lunged into me, before pressing his hands against the opposite balustrade and taking huge lungsful of air. Before either of us could master ourselves sufficiently for speech, another crack, much closer to us this time, rang out, and the three riders – who after a pause had taken up the chase again – reared up on their horses, two of them losing hold of their torches and scorching their already terrified animals, and wheeled back in the direction of the town and their fallen companion.

‘Holy Mother of God, thanks be to you.’

The voice came out of the darkness that enveloped the other end of the bridge, then a figure emerged from beyond the far parapet and began to move towards us. We both made for our knives, but the figure held out a hand. ‘Stay your weapons. I have been left here to help you.’

As he came closer and I could discern his outline better, I recognised the form of the tall young man from whom I had run at the quayside. While I relaxed my hand, Andrew did not, and I saw him very deliberately remove his knife from its sheath.

‘Who are you?’ I asked.

‘I am Brother Michael O’Hagan, of the friary of Bonamargy at Ballycastle. I travel with Father Stephen Mac Cuarta, who asks me to see you safe from the town and bring you to him.’

‘And where is he?’ demanded Andrew.

‘On his way to a safe house in Bushmills.’

‘Having first denounced us as impostors at Coleraine.’

‘No, he did not.’

‘I saw him myself, talking with Blackstone, not half-an-hour before we were hounded from the town.’

‘He did not denounce you. You must trust me.’

Andrew was scornful. ‘A priest with a pistol? Why should we trust you?’

Even in the darkness I could see a flash of brilliant white as the young man smiled. ‘Because I am of more use to you than a priest without one.’ He held his weapon up for us to see; it looked to be one of the new flintlock types that I had heard of but never before seen.

Looking back towards where the dead horse and its injured rider still lay, Andrew nodded. ‘We have no choice, do we?’

‘Very little,’ said the young man. ‘Now please, we must make haste. Three of the riders have gone back towards the town. The confusions and drunkenness in Coleraine will gain us some time, but it will not be long before they have gathered a new search party, and we should not waste a moment.’ He unscrewed the top of a flask of water and we both drank gratefully, I now very much regretting the amount of wine I had indulged in during the performance. ‘Now, let us get on,’ he said. ‘A few miles will take us to Dunluce and we can rest again there.’

Guided by the stars in a sky from which the clouds had begun to clear, we headed due north, and it was not long before the boggy edges of moorland became drier under our feet and a tantalising hint of salt came to me on the cooling night air. We were moving at a slow jog, all three of us ever anxiously looking back towards the diminishing darkened mound that was the town of Coleraine. There was still no sign of light or horses coming from it, but we knew it could not be long. Brother Michael led us from the shelter of one rock or group of ancient trees to another, so that we were seldom crossing exposed ground.

It was not long before I could hear as well as smell the sea. The land had started to slope downwards slightly and the gentle approach of the waves to the shore grew louder in my ears in the empty night. One by one, we slowed our pace and at last came to a halt at the stunning sight the moon now illuminated before us. Pale blue cliffs of chalk descended gently to a near-endless sweep of sand bordering the midnight black of the sea. It was only a moment’s respite, and soon we were moving again, keeping to the coast and heading east.

‘How far to Dunluce?’ gasped Andrew.

‘About three miles.’

‘You are sure we will gain shelter there?’

‘In the chapel. They will have been warned to expect us.’

‘Father Stephen?’ I asked.

‘Yes.’

I could not picture the sturdy baker of Armstrong’s Bawn, who had seen thirty summers and winters more on this earth than I had, making the journey we undertook tonight.

‘Is he on horseback?’

‘We seldom travel on horseback, unless it is necessary. It is the rule of our order. He is on foot.’

And then I recalled to myself that the man who had ridden at the side of my mother’s brother as he followed O’Neill to the ends of Ireland and back, through winter, who had gone into exile with him in Spain, and had spent the years since travelling in Italy, France and the Low Countries, would not have been much troubled by a night flight in a land he knew as well as his own hand.

I regretted my vanity in changing my clothes earlier in the evening for the performance – the clothes Sean O’Neill Fitz-Garrett would have worn for a night at the play were not those he would have chosen for a cross-country run through the night in the first stirrings of winter. Andrew was dressed in a more sensible fashion, but we had both been soaked to the skin in the moat and our clothes clung heavy to our legs. Brother Michael, his cassock hitched up around his thighs, ran like the wind. The colder air began to scorch my throat and lungs. I wondered whether our pursuers would catch us before we succumbed to certain fever.