Fugitives! (10 page)

The roar and clatter of conversation, the reek of smoke from the torches, and the hurried steps of servants serving the top table, was as heady as the wine and ale that was liberally served. The banquet was well advanced, and James had hardly had a bite, partly out of excitement, but partly because Father had called on him to act as his squire.

‘James,’ he would say, leaning back to where James was standing behind him, ‘Sir Arthur’s glass!’ and James would take a jug from one of the servants and see that the great man’s glass was topped up; then he would see to the glasses of the other guests at the top table. Of them all, Chichester drank the least. The seating had been arranged by Fenton, who seemed, in some mysterious way, to know where everyone should sit according to their rank. ‘Dr Fenton knows about these things,’ Father had said with a mysterious chuckle. James picked up snatches of conversation: at one minute Chichester was asking Father about his harvest, and then next was turning to Mother to tell her of changes in fashion in London since Elizabeth, the old queen, had died. Not a word about past battles, not a word about Hugh O’Neill. It was all just as Fenton had said it would be – fine words and good manners.

Outside, the common soldiers were happily eating their way through their roasted ox. Inside the castle, however, the meats on
offer were just the finer cuts.

‘I’m sorry the beef’s so fresh, Sir Arthur,’ Father shouted over the swell of voices. ‘If we’d known you were coming we’d have had it hanging for you this past week.’ Then, beckoning to James, ‘What else do we have to offer, son?’

‘We have venison – that’s really ripe, sir – then there’s pork, and, of course, mutton; and I believe a suckling pig is on its way. We have fowl too, if you’d prefer a lighter meat.’

‘I’ll stick with the beef. As an old campaigner, Sir Malachy, I’ve found that most meats cooked within an hour or so of slaughter eat remarkably well.’

James called to the servers to bring beef. ‘Fillet for Sir Arthur!’

At the high table they ate off silver plates, while ‘below the salt’ the meat was served on bread trenchers. James’s mouth watered; he preferred a trencher any time – ‘loved by boys and dogs’ grown-ups would laugh. The delicious gravy would soak into the bread to be eaten last or thrown to the dogs.

What’s Sir Arthur saying to Mother?
He leaned forward. ‘Your daughter is quite a charmer, madam, and dressed in the height of fashion, I see.’ James followed his gaze to where he could see Sinéad in animated conversation with two of their visitors. He’d not had time to appreciate her new dress. In this setting, the transformation took him by surprise. He’d never thought of his sister as pretty, let alone a charmer, but just now she did look – well – quite stunning he supposed, and very grown-up. Sir Arthur was chuckling. ‘She seems to have caught young Bonmann’s eye.’

‘Ah, she’s only a child! But he’ll regret it – she’d talk the legs off a donkey!’ smiled Mother.

‘She might be doing just that,’ said Sir Arthur, with a small, tight smile. As if Sinéad had become aware of the eyes on her from the high table she blushed and got up to leave the room.

Father turned to James. ‘Go, boy, get yourself something to eat,’ and James went off willingly enough; he was starving. He couldn’t see Sinéad, but he did notice that the officer called Bonmann was making his way after her towards the door. His own priority now was food.

Up to this moment, Sinéad had loved the plumed hats, the silk doublets and coloured hose of the men, the colours all varied in the ruddy glow of the torches on the walls and the yellow glow from the candelabras on the tables. She had been frightened for James when he had ridden out to meet the army, but they seemed friendly; she had imagined something much more formidable. Now Father had cleverly turned the incident into a party, and she was loving it. Perhaps James was right and the English didn’t all have horns and tails. For the first time in her life, she found herself the centre of attention among a group of men who were treating her as if she really were a young lady, not just a child in a pretty dress. She responded by simply being herself, answering their questions and laughing at their jokes, most of which she didn’t really understand. They were like children themselves; when she admired their plumed hats and embroidered doublets, they would blush and preen like peacocks. Rather tactlessly, she told how they had once had a peacock that had been eaten by their wolfhound! They
complimented her on her English, laughing when she slipped in an Irish word by mistake.

There was one of them she didn’t like, however, as he had an irritating habit of touching her as he spoke – her hair, her cheek, her shoulder. His said her English was ‘Wemarkable’. As she didn’t understand the word, she queried it: ‘Wemarkable?’ she asked. And for some reason this caused a gale of laughter from all the others. That was the moment that she noticed the people at the high table looking in her direction and decided that perhaps she should leave. There were screens along the walls so the servants could come and go without disturbing the feast, so she ducked behind these and moved towards the door. Then, suddenly, her way was blocked. It was the young man with the funny way of speaking.
Bonham, that’s his name
, she remembered.
Perhaps he’s looking for the garderobe?

‘Over there,’ she said, pointing towards the opposite corner, and moved to pass him, but as if by accident he stepped in her way. They both laughed, she nervously. She tried again, and this time it was no accident. He was deliberately blocking her way. Quite suddenly she just wanted to get away from him. There was a gap between the screens, so she squeezed through, back into the banquet area, and made for the castle door, where she breathed in great gulps of the clean night air. The camp-fires of the visiting army glowed and sparked. There were shouts, followed by gales of laughter; occasionally a voice would be raised, but it seemed no wilder than on a normal holiday night. At least her heart had stopped thumping … At that moment an arm was laid over her shoulders and she froze.

‘No place for a pwetty little girl like you!’

She tried to move away. His hand tightened on her shoulder.

‘Don’t wiggle, my sweetheart.’

Sweetheart!
That was a word she hated. ‘Your men seem to be enjoying themselves,’ she said.
Oh, how can I get away?
she thought.

‘Not as much as I am enjoying you, my sweetheart.’

She elbowed herself around in a fury, thinking,
I’m nobody’s sweetheart!
– and she moved to walk past him, but he put his hand under her chin, and forced her to look up. Now his face was looming closer and closer – his wet lips – she wrenched her face to one side, as his meagre moustache brushed her cheek.

Then, from just behind her, came a voice: ‘Are you all right, Miss Sinéad?’ The rough voice of the guard was music to her ears. It startled the young man, who loosened his grip on her shoulders. She tore herself free, ducked under his arm, and fled for the stairs and the safety of her bedroom.

It was there that James found her twenty minutes later. ‘What on earth are you doing up here?’

‘I’m hiding from him!’

‘Him?’

‘That creep, Bonham.’

‘It’s Bonmann, not Bonham. A
bonham
’s a piglet in Irish, as you well know – and he’s a gentleman! He can’t be a creep! Do you know he’s the son of the Earl of Middlesex, for God’s sake! If he was teasing you, you deserved it. I saw you flirting with them all quite shamelessly!’

‘Flirting! I wasn’t flirting. It’s just they started laughing over
some mistake I made in English. Then, when I saw you all looking at me from the high table, I went to get some air, and he followed me. It was horrible, James. He kept touching me and even tried–’

‘Oh nonsense, Sinéad. Think how Uncle Hugh tickles you and throws you around.’ Sinéad thought wistfully of Uncle Hugh, how just today he’d pretended they were going to elope, but this had been quite different. James was going on, ‘It’s Uncle Hugh’s fault anyway, dressing you up like a fast woman.’

Sinéad slapped him for that, but there was no force behind it; she didn’t have the energy. ‘Anyway, what are you doing up here yourself?’ she asked.

‘A harper’s turned up. Why do we have to entertain the English with bog music?’

‘Oh I love a harper! Why didn’t you tell me? I wonder …’
Could this be Con’s poet?

‘What do you wonder?’

But she didn’t tell him. ‘Oh just mind your own business; you don’t know the half of what goes on here. I’m going down, and you can be my protector.’

They arrived back in the hall to hear a polite patter of applause as the harper finished his first piece. Sinéad cursed herself for having missed him. He was younger than she expected, a trim beard, with just a wisp of grey in the hair that was clasped behind in a ponytail. His face was dark, as someone is who spends much of his life on the road. She edged closer to him, trying to read his face.
Serious
, she
thought,
but those are laughter lines about his eyes
. He was wearing the traditional poet’s gown; they kept a spare one in the castle for musicians and poets of the proper rank. The hum of conversation was growing again, but he seemed lost in his own world, his hands running over the strings of the harp like two butterflies barely touching the strings. One of the visitors turned to him and asked him a question in English; he smiled and shrugged apologetically, indicating that he didn’t understand English. A servant was passing with a jug of mead, so Sinéad got him a mug of the golden honey brew and carried over to him.

‘Welcome to our home,’ she said in Irish, and bobbed a curtsey. ‘I hope you will play again because I missed your first piece.’

He looked up, and his eyes crinkled as he smiled. ‘Thank you, child, I will play again. Just now I am trying to remember a tune that might please your guests. They tell me it was composed by old King Henry, though I doubt it. Talk to me while I send the music down to my fingers.’ So Sinéad told him who she was and who made up the gathering. ‘Thank you, my dear,’ he said. ‘I had a dream about a boy on a horse in a saffron shirt. Do you ever have dreams like that?’

Sinéad laughed. ‘That’s strange because I too had just such a dream and he was talking, of all things, to a haystack!’ She dropped her voice. ‘He came in time to see his father and his party safely away. He would wish you well.’

The harper nodded. ‘The tune I was searching for seems to have reached my fingers now, so let’s see if they recognise it.’ Then, without any apparent change in volume, the harp began to fill the room with a pure and enchanting melody. The roar of voices fell to
a hum, then a murmur. Sinéad sat back happily. Compared to Irish airs it was simple, a melody that invited a song. The visitors were smiling, recognising it and swaying to it. Then, out of the murk of the smoky room, a single voice rose, singing in a light tenor: