Free A Game of Sorrows by Shona MacLean

The rest of the Blackstone crew have been politely informed that they need not trouble themselves with such a journey at this time of the year.’
    I could not help but smile with him. In spite of her coldness, there was something almost admirable in my grandmother’s monstrous pride, for I knew already that I did not like these Blackstone upstarts. ‘And she will be told of me then?’
    ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘but Maeve will only tell Deirdre face-to-face, alone – even her husband, Edward, is not to know.’
    ‘This is more secrecy than I am used to.’
    Sean laughed. ‘Then you have not been long enough in Ireland. But in truth, what you must understand is this: Maeve fears you will be killed if your existence is known before the curse can be lifted. Whoever has made this threat to our family has made it clear that I am to be disposed of. How then do you think they would react upon learning of you?’ He looked at me, now very serious. ‘When I first saw your face, Alexander, I saw in it the answer to questions that have haunted me my whole life, but I saw too answers to what besets this family now. Maeve and I differ on many things and always have done, but on this I agree with her: there are risks we cannot take with you. You hazarded a great deal to come here, I know that.’ I had told him about Sarah, about the second chance for happiness God had given me in bringing her into my life. I had told him also of the trip to Poland, that would have fulfilled so many youthful ambitions. I had told him about the tatters my name would now be in. ‘But, God willing, you will win back all you think you have lost. The funeral is to be in five days’ time, and then I am to take you to Finn O’Rahilly. After that this secrecy will end, and this place will be a prison to you no more.’
    We talked on until long after the food and drink were gone. He reminisced about his childhood, our grandfather, and made much of what our grandfather would have made of me. There was regret, sadness, humour and bravado, a kaleidoscope in one man about to shoulder responsibilities he had long avoided. I was reminded of my last night with Archie, my bosom companion from boyhood to manhood. Archie who had hunted, fought, drunk, laughed, loved to the full, who had coloured my life where there might only have been shade. Archie, who was now dead. I had not thought to feel such a bond with another man again: I had not thought ever to know the bond of blood that can bind like no other, and yet I felt it now, with Sean.
    As he was about to finally leave, he surprised me by asking suddenly, ‘How do you find Andrew Boyd?’
    ‘He has been – courteous to me, more courteous than I would be were the roles reversed, I think.’
    Sean nodded. ‘Perhaps so. But his is a cold courtesy, full of resentments.’
    ‘You do not like him?’
    ‘It is not a question of liking,’ he said. ‘Born in another time, another place, things might have been otherwise, but there is nothing in him for me or in me for him. We are just different.’

FOUR
Deirdre
     
    The next five days passed in great activity in the house beneath me, and in near-silence in my own chamber. I had brought with me no books of my own in that rushed departure from Aberdeen, and so my only reading was in Andrew Boyd’s bible. I sought assurance in its pages that I was in the right place, that I had not wandered from the right path, but all I found there were reminders that I should have been in another place, I should have been making my way to the Baltic, searching for ministers of the Word, rather than hiding in a tower house in a town I did not know, in a land still awash with priests and poets.
     
    The near-endless hours of darkness from early evening until sleep would finally take me were spent in trying to write to Sarah something she could understand, believe, forgive, but the words came slow and awkwardly, and lifted dead and cold from the page. I closed my eyes and tried to see