A Game of Sorrows by S. G. MacLean Page B

hand of my four-year-old self in the firm grip of that man in his prime? To have been embraced by those arms when they were still strong, to have known him a lifetime?
    By some great effort he spoke. I bent closer. ‘Alexander. My Grainne’s child. My boy, my boy. That I lived to see this day.’ He gripped my hand more tightly but the effort of speech was too much and he sank back into the pillows, exhausted. Maeve left the room, but the mumbling priest did not, and I understood that he would remain until my grandfather passed from this world into the next. Sean came over to the bed and sat down on the other side. He gently stroked the old man’s forehead and took his other hand in his. Our grandfather smiled one last time and closed his eyes, to begin a sleep from which we two who were with him knew he would not wake. I would have waited until he made that final crossing, but I did not, for I had not been that four-year-old boy, that strapping youth, that young man sharing hopes; I leaned over and kissed his forehead and then got up and left, leaving him with the one who had.
    I was taken by Eachan to the top of the house, up a narrow, almost hidden set of steps from the balcony, to a kind of attic behind the vaulted ceiling. We passed from the top of the steps through a walkway, jutting out from the parapets and open to the elements – the machicolation – from which overhang any enemy approaching to the tower house could be watched in safety and, if necessary, dealt with. I was hurried along the walkway to a small door in the other corner of the parapet. Eachan knocked on the door and spoke in a low voice to the person on the other side.
    The man who opened the door was older than me, older than Sean too, thirty-five, perhaps. His straight blond hair came halfway down his neck. He glanced at me only for a moment, green eyes in a strong-boned face assessing me before he turned to Eachan and said, ‘By God: he is like Sean after all.’
    Eachan said nothing, merely nodding before he left us alone in the tiny chamber. There were two beds in it, and some plain furnishings – a chest, a stool and small table with a chessboard on it, wooden candlesticks with cheap-smelling tallow candles – but after the travels and discomforts of the nights on my journey from Aberdeen, its cleanliness and simplicity were things of luxury to me.
    The other indicated one of the beds. ‘You can sleep there. I will not disturb you, but if you want anything, food, drink, the latrine – you are to ask only me. You are not to wander the house yourself.’
    ‘Am I a prisoner?’
    He seemed to consider a moment. ‘No, but aside from your grandparents, Sean, Eachan and myself, no one knows that you are here, or even of your existence. The mistress would have it kept that way.’
    He turned his back, our conversation over. I didn’t even know his name. He carried himself with some authority, and I wondered if he was Deirdre’s husband.
    ‘Who are you? What is your place in this household?’
    ‘My name is Andrew Boyd. My father was your grandfather’s steward. I work in your grandfather’s merchant business and travel for him throughout the province. I have the status of a servant in this house.’
    He did not have the bearing of a servant, or of one who would remain a servant long.
    ‘I am Alexander Seaton,’ I said. ‘But you will know that already.’
    He looked up from taking off his boots and shook his head, the trace of a smile for the first time showing on his lips. ‘Until an hour ago, I knew nothing of your existence. In the last hour I have learned that my master’s dead daughter did not drown within days of leaving her home, but went to Scotland and there bore a son, who was the living image of Sean, and of his father Phelim before him, an O’Neill to the marrow of his bones. I have learned that Sean was not away in the south, on what we are constrained to call “his business”, but in the far reaches of Scotland, to