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

her cousin’s prosperity where so many others had been driven to poverty and dishonour.
    ‘And Roisin?’
    She looked at me, surprised that I had more to ask. ‘Unlike Deirdre, she knows her duty, and her worth. She is a true Irish-woman. Roisin will be Sean’s wife. After a decent period of mourning for my husband has passed, they will be married, and Sean will at last begin to take his place amongst our people.’
    I thought of the scene I had witnessed outside the house earlier that same day, and my heart sank for my cousin and the beautiful woman who would be his unloved and unhappy wife. I thought my grandmother was finished with me, and I prepared to take up my pen again. But she was not finished.
    ‘And you?’ she said.
    ‘Me?’
    ‘Yes. Are you yet married?’
    ‘No,’ I said flatly, ‘I am not married.’
    The trace of a smile appeared for a moment on her lips.
    ‘Good,’ she said, turning to make her way back down the corridor. ‘That is good.’
     

FIVE
The Funeral Feast
     
    Andrew came to fetch me just as I had consigned my letter to Sarah to the flame. I had struggled in the candlelight and failed to write on paper words I had never been able to say to her when she was standing before me. I did not have the words to tell her of the emptiness, the ache within me the lack of her caused. All I had, night after night, were ashes. He looked from the ashes to me as if he would say something, but thought better of it, not yet ready to breach that barrier.
     
    The place he led me to was a broad stone pillar at the far side of the gallery. All along the rest of the gallery, torches burned in the sconces on the wall, but there was no sconce here.
    ‘All of these houses have such a place,’ he said, ‘where people may watch, listen, unseen. None of these people trust one another.’
    ‘In the mix of all the races?’
    ‘It is the Irish themselves I am talking about. They live to fight. There is not an insult or an intrigue they will let pass for an excuse to go to feud. They would spend all they had on hospitality for a man one night and slit his throat the next if they thought themselves slighted.’
    ‘I will take care to watch my tongue, then,’ I said, laughing.
    He turned his startling green eyes on me, and his face was deadly serious. ‘Watch everything. Always. Do not let up your guard for a moment. With anyone.’
    He left me, and I edged forward to peer through the wooden balustrade down onto the hall below. It had been transformed since last I had seen it. The comfortable settles and chairs had either been removed or pushed back against the walls. In their place was an array of long trestle tables, arranged with benches for the seating of over sixty people. The top table was backed by seven carved, high-backed oak dining chairs upholstered in red velvet. Three more tables ran down the room from this one, set out with good pewter whilst the ware on the top table was of fine silver. Candelabra blazed at each table, casting a burning sheen of light upon already unimaginable quantities of food. Baskets of oat bread and towers of fresh autumn fruits contended for space with platters of salmon, majestic-looking still, gutted and poached in their entirety. Tureens of shellfish simmered on each table, sending up aromas that brought to me memories of the best of student feasts. Dishes of nuts and dried fruits were set on the side tables. Pungent rounds of cheese, bowls of bonnyclabber and mounds of butter, already beginning to glisten in the heat of the extravagant candlelight, were set at intervals from one end of the tables to the other. Every manner of fowl and game bird was represented, roasted and stuffed, on the boards. And then, just as the guests were about to enter the hall from the top of the main stairway, huge salvers of hot roasted meats began to appear from the kitchens below.
    The musicians had assembled themselves at the far side of the gallery and had begun tuning their