No more, please, no more. I am wrung dry of tears, as though I were a rag twisted in the hands of mighty Samson himself. They have spilled upon this cold stone floor all night, this floor that I pace my agony across this floor that was to be his inheritance. I look out of the window at the passers-by upon the muddy, straw-strewn street. I see their glares, their stolen glances and the turmoil within my head increases in intensity. Has God invented such things to try us men, to remind us of the abyss that lies between his justice and our own? If so, He is a cruel God, the God of the Old Testament who demands the ultimate sacrifice from the faithful.

I have sought recourse in the Good Book, but have found no consolation. It has not absolved me of this which I must do, but instead left me with the foul confirmation of this course I must navigate. I struck out at my wife, when she would not cease the horrible keening and wailing of which these ragged natives are so fond. I hear her still, sobbing in her quarters, and I feel the loops of guilt tighten themselves around my weak heart. Hasty to anger I have always been- I was famed for it in my youth, and my rage has come back to haunt me.

I must do it.

I cannot.

I must- I am King Arthur. I never cared a fig for those romances but now I see their point. Would that I had his decisiveness, or the wisdom of King Solomon! But I have only myself, here in this accursed grey outpost lashed by the wind and rain.

And in his defence, what had he to say?

“She was a buxom lass, just off the boat. I knew not of her provenance or of her ties. I knew simply the burning look she gave me that said ‘You may have me tonight’. I knew it. I knew it from the toss of her jet-black locks, I knew it from the fire in my loins and I knew it from the way she let me glimpse the smooth, sallow sheen of her thigh as she passed me by. Oh, she wanted me and well did I know… and you are hardly one to talk! The beds of all the wenches in this castle have been warmer than my mother’s for more nights than I care to remember. Yes, I know what goes on under this roof too, and I’ll wager that you and I have been thrusting in some of the same places…”

And I struck him. He came for me, and it would have been the shallow rocky grave for one of us if my constable had not pulled us apart. Perhaps it would have been me, for he is young and quick and I am old and tired. I think I wish it had gone that way and I wouldn’t have to see this infanticide through.

They came to the house, at least a dozen of them, heavily armed and seeking redress. Oh, it would have been no matter to cut them down in the street, but where would that leave this fledgling town? Or this family’s noble reputation?

‘Everfaithful!’ That is us.

But ever faithful to whom? To the ties of blood? To the ties of duty? To Justice, that blind bitch who sees everything? More than all of this, I think, is faithfulness to my own pride- the fear of becoming a hypocrite, the fear of failing to live up to a code which I set myself.

“Where is he?” they demanded.

“Who?” I asked innocently before the horrific dawn of reality came upon me.

They told me what had happened, or at the least their version of it, which I am loath to believe readier than his. He was not in the house.

I had raised the guard and we found him easy enough, without a care in the world, drinking the early hours of the morning away in a peasant’s shack, his arm groping the naked breast of some peasant girl. His stupor was such that he made no attempt to escape, or to challenge the accusations. He merely shrugged and smiled at me, as if to say ‘touché’. It was dawn as we marched him back to the castle, and the peasants were already out on the roads, wandering to and from one another’s meagre holdings to work for a daily meal of oats or black bread. In their inscrutable faces I thought I read a shadow of satisfaction. Perhaps it was hunger, or the deference they showed as they tugged their forelocks. Perhaps it was my own tormented mind, but I felt them laughing at me, as though they knew. They know far more than they show, these peasants, and I sense they are just waiting for me to show weakness. Then they will pounce like starving dogs and break down all that which I have made of this estate my father was thrown as an afterthought. They have seen me hang their fathers, brothers and even womenfolk for the thievery, lawlessness and sedition that is endemic in this place.

And that is why I must be strong and see this thing through.

“I entertained the Don, as you commanded me, and I showed him the utmost courtesy. I even directed the musicians to play some of his foreign music, as best as they could. I executed your commands to the very word, and I found him to be most receptive to the new tariffs and trading agreements you had instructed me to negotiate with him. Once that tiresome business was done, I took to showing those mariners some Norman hospitality. I drank fine port and sherry with some of his crewmen. I sang with them and wagered with them, allowing them to win enough to keep dignity. I did all of this in an ambassadorial capacity, to further your ambitions, to strengthen your alliances, to fill your coffers with coin. And after all this, was it so bold of me to taste of the fruits of that Mediterranean land.”

He did not understand, he still does not understand, that this is not a world where you can do as you wish, that this is a world where you do as you must. Duty. Noblesse oblige.

“She was willing, a game filly indeed. You expect me to satisfy myself with the horse-faced daughters of the other families? I would rather throw myself upon the peasant wenches of the O’Connors or the O’Flahertys! They, at least, know how to please a man. They have not been tainted with the notions of courtliness or the cold bed of an arranged match. Look at your own marriage, father!”

I know what it has produced, this marriage of convenience. But he lives in a world fed by stories of knights and romance, the bawdy tavern songs of sailors and the whirling, frenzied dancing of the natives. A world of submission to desire. Yet this is not the world for us. More is expected of us.

The Don was implacable. I offered him damages for the loss of his cousin. I offered him anything that was in my power to give and more besides, but Don Colón refused everything. He would settle for nothing less than the ultimate penalty or he threatened to sever relations completely and use another port. All my work would be in vain, all my careful negotiations and plentiful bribes. His trade would make this a city, would raise it from a settlement of scavenging dogs to a place of importance here on the edge of the world. Blood is thicker than water, I have heard it said, but it is the ties of the water that keep this port alive. Without it, and without my control of it, then this colony is nothing.

Today, I cannot be a father. Today, I must be the blind hand of justice, and if the Bacchae tear me to pieces for it, then this is the price I will pay. If only I could give my own life for his- my life that is old, my limbs knotted up from the effort of building all this for him.

“I laid that dusky Iberian jewel down in the hay-barn. Yes, father’ (he spat the word) I am telling you what happened but please allow me to savour this conquest as though it were my last. It may be my last?”

For a moment, I saw a scared young man, ill-versed in the harsh ways of the world, pleading with his father to extricate him from some tangle he was in. And then it was gone.

“It may be that her moans drew attention to the barn or that someone had seen us leave- I do not know, but I was just about to… well, you know what happens… when I saw a man enter the barn, babbling intelligibly in that rapid tongue. I could understand little, but between my poor Latin and the demeanour of the man I caught the sense of it. And, the sword he brandished left little room for misunderstanding. He meant to kill me, father. I do not know why. Perhaps he was enamoured of the girl. Perhaps she was a sister, a cousin, I do not know. Yet I should think it was obvious that I had not forced myself upon her. Perhaps these Spaniards do not understand their women’s noises...”

This had aggravated Don Colón and his men, and they would have had him there and then if they were not strangers at my mercy. I roared at them, feeling some angry vigour of youth returning.

“There are but two dispensers of justice in this town! God is one, and I am the other. You will await my decision, sirs!”

“He came at me, shouting threats and curses. I reached for my jerkin and unsheathed my dagger, as I unsheathed myself from her. I do not recollect exactly what happened next, but I know that what I did, I did in defence of myself, perhaps even in her defence, for the man was enraged. I had no choice! I had no choice, father! Would you rather it was me lying dead in that barn? Perhaps you would…”

I allowed the Spaniards to present their case and their witnesses. They would not allow the girl to speak as they claimed she was feverish and could not leave their caravel. No other had seen the incident, only my son holding a bloodied dagger over the fallen body of their compatriot.

I sat the night thinking. They demanded justice, and swiftly, for they had to sail with the favourable winds or not at all. How I wished I could send men to their ships to murder every one of them and sink this matter beneath the water for ever. But I could not. For so many reasons, I could not.

It is my castle. It is not so large as the castles of the Ormonds, nor so elegant as those of the FitzGilberts, nor so sturdy as those of the Earls of the South. But it is mine, and the seat of my power. My land is not so fertile as theirs, and my subjects are neither as productive nor as fertile as theirs. Mine is a different territory, and the sea brings this place closer to Spain and Barbary than to the Pale. Here, I am the law. I look around the room, at the tapestries and the hunting trophies, at the crudely made furniture and the imported glassware, at the wines and spices form Spain, at the flax and leather that we trade with them. I look at the illuminated books, some of them centuries old and relics of a more civilised time on this island. I look at the ledgers and the census books, a feeble attempt to count the indolent wealth and population of an unknowable people in constant flux. I look at the legacy of my life’s work, and I feel nothing. I feel I have been simply a shell, a slave acting upon some higher command. I look at the statue of the Lord Jesus and I feel his disappointment. Yet I merely do what Abraham would have done. There is no reprieve for me, no voice of approbation from above. I look at my wife and she will not stare me in the eye.

I look everywhere but I cannot look out the window, where an audience of Spaniards and Irish watch my son soil himself as he slowly chokes to death at the end of a rope that I knotted for him.