A Game of Sorrows by Shona MacLean Page A

in a tone that suggested that should be the end of the matter, but there was more I wanted to know.
    ‘Even so…’
    He turned exasperated eyes on me and waited.
    ‘Even if that is so,’ I continued, ‘could no one have stopped her throwing herself away on Edward Blackstone? She clearly does not like him, still less love him.’
    He looked away from me, his voice hardened. ‘I am not made privy to such matters.’ And in that moment, I heard the answer to all the questions I might yet ask: it was not Cormac O’Neill who had been Deirdre’s lover.
    I could say nothing, but after a moment something in him relented. ‘Maeve tried, of course. You know that already. But she was not dissuaded. She did it to defy your grandmother, to throw off her Gaelic roots and to find herself a place in this new Ulster.’
    The woman I was looking at was an Irishwoman in every part of her being. ‘I think she is wasted with him.’
    ‘A pearl before swine,’ he murmured, and then he looked at me, a light in his eyes that I had never seen there before. ‘She told me once that she wanted to escape, as your mother had done. But I think your father was a better man than Edward Blackstone, and that your mother chose a better path. Deirdre would have done well to have fallen in with Maeve’s plan that she marry Cormac.’
    When I looked again at the man she had refused, and thought of him she had chosen, I realised that my cousin’s abhorrence of our grandmother’s world must be great indeed.
    As Andrew was showing himself more inclined to conversation than he had ever done before, I thought I would try my luck a little further. ‘Why will Sean not defy Maeve in the same way? It is evident that he does not love Roisin O’Neill.’
    He squatted down on his haunches and regarded me as one would an inquisitive child.
    ‘You really do not understand these people yet, do you? But Sean does, for all his careless manner, he knows what is expected of him. Roisin is an O’Neill, and her father, by conforming to English law, has held on to some of the old O’Neill lands. With your grandfather’s money now coming to Sean, and trading on the FitzGarretts’ good standing with the English administration, they will buy into more lands. Sean will take his FitzGarrett name and his FitzGarrett money and dazzle the English with them. He will be given some of the old O’Neill lands in return, he will promise to nurture his tenants in loyalty to the Crown. The English will think themselves well served in this bargain.’
    ‘And will they be?’ He did not answer me at first. I persisted. ‘Will they be well served?’
    He considered a moment and spoke slowly. ‘About as well served as a coop of chickens by a starving fox.’
    I looked at Murchadh O’Neill and his sons. They might have kept their peace and kept their lands for twenty years, but everything in their bearing, their appearance and their speech told they were Irishmen, through and through. As Roisin’s brother called to the players for a livelier air, I suspected they would not dance to the English tune much longer.
    Andrew got up. ‘I am needed downstairs,’ he said. ‘You should forget what we have spoken about tonight. And take care you do not move into the light; I thought I saw you once.’
    As he was going down the steps from the gallery, I heard a shout from somewhere outside. Few in the hall appeared to notice it. After a moment it came again, and then a third time. Andrew had heard it too, and started towards the ground floor, taking the steps two at a time. It was a few minutes before he returned, his face set and determined. He went directly to Sean, whose expression darkened as he listened. Then they went to Maeve. Whatever message they brought had only a slight effect on my grandmother’s countenance, the briefest flicker of something – fear, surprise – then a deepening of its habitual resolution. She said a brief word to Andrew and took up her seat once more at