A Game of Sorrows Read Online Free Page A

in general and the stool of repentance in particular from that corner today, let me assure you.’
    My heart warmed more than ever to William, as I saw in my mind’s eye the day he had endured in his own house, all at the cause of my supposed misdemeanours. ‘And you will set me right, with the women, and with Davy then?’ I said.
    ‘Aye, I will,’ he answered. ‘And now let us eat, before I starve to death at my own table.’
    We made a fine supper of the salmon, and of the apple tart. The bell of St Nicholas kirk struck eight, and I realised with some sadness that Sarah had not sent Zander through to bid me goodnight as she usually did. Something in feeling that little head pressed to my chest, the sleepy murmur of goodnight, gave me a strength that little else did. I would not dwell on it, for I would see him tomorrow, and not many tomorrows after that I would call him my son.
    The house was quiet by the time I left, the women, children and servants all long asleep. The autumnal mildness of the day had given way to an early frost and the silent heavens were bejewelled with a thousand stars. I did not hold with the corruption of the proper science of astronomy peddled by the astrologers who cast the horoscopes of the foolish, but I felt a power, a sense of foreknowledge in the heavens of the destiny I set out towards. The next night I looked upon these heavens above this town, it would be with Sarah’s pledge in my heart and the prospect of peoples and nations over the sea before me. I was filled with gladness and the knowledge of the spirit working within me and powering me towards my destiny. It is what they call happiness.
    The College gatekeeper grunted as I passed that at last he might get some sleep, that I was always the latest of the regents abroad. I would have felt greater guilt at his sleeplessness had I not had to waken him from his slumbers to let me in. There was little noise save that of my own feet on the stone flags and the gentle breaking of the waves onto the darkened shore beyond as I mounted the chilly steps to the chamber that would be mine for only one night more until I returned. I murmured a curse at myself as I saw from the light beneath the door that I had left a candle burning. The folly and thoughtlessness of it angered me. I pushed open the door and stopped. The light from the candle was not bright, but there could be little doubt as to what I saw. There ahead of me, no more than four feet away, was my own image, as in a looking glass. Yet there was not and never had been a looking glass in my chamber, and as I stood dumbfounded and still, the image that I looked upon came towards me and offered me its hand.

TWO
The Man in the Mirror
     
    ‘Alexander Seaton,’ said the man, and my name echoed in the room as if my own mother were calling me. He grasped me by the right hand and threw his left around my shoulder, encircling me in his grip and holding me fast. He stood back to appraise me. ‘I had begun to think I would never find you.’ His face was suffused with such affection and joy that my own initial shock and apprehension began to subside. The eyes that laughed in mine were the same grey-green as my own, the lashes as long and dark. He had the same straight nose, the same set to brow and chin that my father had called arrogant and my mother manly. His hair, I would have said, was a little longer than mine and darker, almost black, but all in all, I doubted whether more than a handful of people still living could have told us apart. I knew before he released me and spoke again who he was, for there could be no other explanation.
     
    ‘Sean O’Neill FitzGarrett,’ he said with a flourish. ‘Son of Phelim O’Neill FitzGarrett, and grandson of Maeve O’Neill of the O’Neills of Ulster, who has sent me here.’
    ‘My cousin,’ I said, sitting down at last on the bed.
    The face smiled a mischievous smile. ‘None other.’ He pulled over the chair from my desk and turned it