The Sting of Justice

by Cora Harrison

  ‘So Sheedy is our suspect, then, Brehon, is that right?’ Aidan nodded wisely.

  ‘I imagine,’ said Mara thoughtfully, ‘that Sheedy won’t be the only suspect. A man like Sorley Skerrett makes many enemies.’

  FIVE

  BETHA IM FUILLEMA GELL (PLEDGE-INTEREST JUDGEMENTS)

  Silver is the basis for all fines and loans under Brehon Law. A sét (treasure) is valued as half an ounce of silver and one milch cow is valued as one ounce of silver.

  A king must always be paid in silver, never with cows or other animals. Conversely, a man of low status, such as an ócaire must not be paid in silver as it may be of no use to him.

  If defective silver is used to pay an obligation then the contract is cancelled when the defect is discovered, even if years have elapsed.

  ‘I’M LOOKING FORWARD to seeing this mine,’ said Enda as they rode down the hill towards Rathborney. ‘I was reading something in a judgement text about what happens when a mine pollutes the land. If Sorley’s mine is a big one, then that might be the problem with Sheedy. Anyway, I’d like to see how it works. I think we should understand these things if we are going to see how the laws affect silver and copper mines.’

  ‘Are you worried about this Sheedy, Brehon?’ asked Fachtnan. ‘Don’t you think that we should visit him as well?’

  ‘I’m not sure that we have the time to do both, Fachtnan. At this time of the year dusk comes early.’ Mara pursed her lips in exasperation. It was a familiar wish of hers that the days, whether it was winter, summer, autumn or spring, had a few more hours in them.

  Toin’s stableman was happy to accommodate the boys’ ponies as well as Mara’s Arab mare. Toin himself came out to point out the best route for the short, steep climb towards the mill.

  ‘Have you heard about the death of your neighbour, Sorley Skerrett?’ asked Mara. Toin looked a little better, she thought. As usual he was cheerful and seemed to enjoy the sight of Aidan running races across the field with Bran.

  ‘Save your energy,’ he called and then turned back to Mara. ‘Yes, I have.’ There was a certain reserve in his voice and, as she glanced at him, he added, ‘A neighbour, but not a friend.’

  ‘You didn’t like him much.’ Mara put a query into her voice and he nodded a silent assent. ‘I saw his son last night,’ she continued. ‘I hadn’t even realized that there was a son. What happened to the mother, why did he divorce her? What was her name?’

  ‘Her name is Deirdre,’ Toin’s voice was compassionate. ‘As for why Sorley divorced her, well, she isn’t what you could call a good-looking woman. She was only about sixteen when Sorley married her, so perhaps she had a certain bloom, then. I think that Sorley just got tired of her. He divorced her when the boy was about seven or eight. He said that she had a lover, swore it in front of the Brehon at Kinvarra; they were living most of the time at Kinvarra at that time, and he won the case. I don’t know that anyone around here believed it. She didn’t look like the kind of woman to have a secret lover. She spent a lot of time here at Newtown Castle while he was away in Galway, buying and selling, or even while he was at Kinvarra: she liked this place best of all. She was very religious and she was devoted to her children, especially the boy, and anyway there was no sign of a lover afterwards.’

  ‘Did she go back to her own people then?’

  ‘No,’ said Toin. ‘She’s still living around here. She lives up the mountain, up there.’

  ‘I see,’ said Mara. ‘I think I saw her walking away from the church with young Cuan after the burial Mass for Father David.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Toin. ‘She was there. I remember noticing her going into the church in front of Cathal the sea captain.’

  His voice was now quite faint and Mara looked at him with concern. ‘Come on, boys, we’d better be going,’ she said, ‘we have a climb ahead of us.’

  ‘Keep your eyes on the village, Newtown, as Sorley used to call it,’ said Toin as he walked to the gate with them. ‘You have to go right through that. Then you have another short climb. You see up there, the top terrace is just above the village, if you can call it a village – it’s just a collection of hovels – no farmer would house his cows in a place like that. Anyway, you’ll see it for yourself. Go about halfway up to that and you will be at the mine entrance. Bring the boys in for something to eat on your way back. I’d enjoy their company.’

  ‘I don’t think I will,’ said Mara gently. ‘Brigid will have their meal ready and would be annoyed if they didn’t turn up.’ A message could be sent to Brigid, she knew, but Toin would probably find six sweaty, tired boys a bit too much for him.

  ‘Well, you would have been very welcome, but, in the meantime, here is something to keep them going.’ Toin beckoned to Tomas who came up with two large linen bags. ‘Just a few oatcakes for the lads,’ he said, and Enda stuffed one bag into his satchel with a beaming smile and an elegant bow while Fachtnan took the other with murmured words of thanks.

  The lower slopes of the small mountain were full of beauty. The limestone glittered in the slanting rays of the sun as it moved over towards the bulk of Slieve Elva. Silver-blue harebells tossed their silky heads among clumps of grass deep in the fissures and small stunted holly trees, with the gnarled trunks of fifty-year-old veterans, showed their gleaming berries, different on every tree, some orange, some scarlet and some a deep crimson.

  When they were about halfway to the summit, though, Mara could see how the bare smooth sides of Cappanabhaile were scarred with the ugly workings of the silver mine. Great rocks, showing the dark blue of newly cut limestone, had been hacked out of the hillside, leaving ugly gaps; small wheeled wooden carts were piled high with crushed stone and the grykes were filled with dead and dying heaps of blackened vegetation.

  ‘Let’s stop here to catch our breath,’ she said, whistling to Bran to recall him to his mistress’s side.

  ‘You can see the men,’ said Hugh pointing. ‘Look, Brehon.’

  Mara’s eyes followed the direction of his pointing finger. Silhouetted in front of the deep blue of the sea, and the pale hazy outlines of the Aran Islands, she could see a long line of men toiling down its stony slopes carrying leather buckets.

  ‘The village is just over the brow of this next bit, Brehon,’ called Enda who had gone ahead after depositing his satchel at her feet.

  ‘Let’s look at it, then,’ said Mara. ‘You can eat the oatcakes afterwards.’ She was curious to see the little village of houses that Sorley had built for his workers and she followed the boys up the last bit of hill and then stopped.

  As Toin had described, it was indeed an ugly, sordid place, the single-roomed hovels built from loosely stacked stones, even one that seemed to be made entirely from sods of turf. All of the roofs, made from decayed rushes, had large gaping holes. Here and there, the doors were rotten and hanging crookedly from their hinges of leather. There were very few people around, just a couple of heavily pregnant women with some very small children. Everyone else seemed to have gone to work in the mines above. The children upset her. They were dressed in rags and were all very thin and lethargic-looking. Mara sent a friendly smile in their direction, but no one moved or smiled back. One mother clutched at two small boys and firmly marched them into the house behind and slammed the door. Mara turned to go back. This place disturbed and distressed her. No human beings should live in conditions like these. However, live they did and it was their homes. She should not invade their village with her troop of well-fed and well-dressed boys. She snapped her fingers at Bran, who was trying to make friendly overtures to a few of the ragged children, and she had turned to go when she heard a hoarse chuckle from behind her.

  ‘No sense in staying too long here,’ said a voice almost from under her feet. ‘There’s nothing here for anyone.’

  Mara started in surprise and almost fell over the body at her feet. It was the man whom she had seen at the graveyard, twisted and gnarled with a missing arm, a hunched-up body and a disfigured face. He h
ad been sitting on the ground beside the little cabin made from the sods of turf and the rags which half covered his mutilated body were so mouldy and stained that it was hard to distinguish him against the greens and browns of the vegetation around. Indeed, he hardly looked like a man, crouched there, peering up at her, but Bran had no hesitation. Like his mother before him, Bran was a dog that loved all mankind and with a bark of pleasure he bounded forward. The man screamed, a horrible sound, a scream which seemed to be dragged from the depths of a body which had known so much suffering that it could take no more.

  ‘Get back, Bran!’ shouted Mara desperately; but for once the dog did not obey her. Bran was already on top of the man, overjoyed to find one of his beloved humans at his own level and was enthusiastically licking the man’s face. She grabbed Bran’s collar and tried to drag him back. She had no fear that Bran would hurt the man, but that scream had been unnerving. However, the man was now smiling, at least Mara thought he was smiling – it was hard to be sure – and his remaining arm had gone around the dog’s neck. Mara could now see that one of his legs was useless, withered and twisted beneath him. He was an appalling sight, a repulsive sight and, with shame, Mara knew that if the dog had not run over, her own instinct might have been to avert her gaze and move away as quickly as possible. Something of the loneliness and the desire for comfort within the unfortunate man seemed to have been communicated to Bran. Always friendly, he was now showing the degree of love that he normally kept for a few favoured special friends.

  The boys huddled together in an aghast group and Mara knelt down in the wet soil and looked into the man’s face. ‘You have been badly hurt, my friend,’ she said gently.

  The man grimaced. ‘It’s not new,’ he said. ‘This happened a while ago, about eight months ago. A mine shaft collapsed, the lucky ones died, but I was dragged out from under the rocks and I lived, but I could never work again.’

  Mara glanced at the wretched cabin behind. ‘You live in there, Anluan?’ she asked, appalled.

  ‘Yes,’ said the man indifferently. His speech was hard to understand, he spoke a mixture of the Welsh dialect with the Irish Gaelic language; she could follow that well enough, but his mouth had been mangled and very few teeth remained. ‘I live there, if you can call it living. The neighbours are good to me, poor things; they don’t have much themselves, none of Sorley’s riches comes to this place, but they give me a crust from time to time.’

  Silently Fachtnan opened his satchel and took from it a few oatcakes. Hesitantly he handed them to the man who instantly crammed them into his mouth, like a starving animal. But then Anluan stopped, looked at Bran’s pleading eyes, broke one cake in half and handed the larger bit to the dog. Mara felt tears come to her eyes.

  Fachtnan took the linen bag off his shoulder and placed it beside the crippled man. ‘You eat these, yourself,’ he said, gesturing to show the meaning of his words. ‘We’ve all had our dinner and so has Bran.’ He took Bran firmly by the collar. Bran gave the man’s face a last lick and then allowed himself to be hauled away.

  ‘I had to give them to him,’ asserted Fachtnan when they had left the village. He gave a challenging look at Moylan who was the big eater of the law school. But Moylan’s eyes fell beneath his gaze. Even Moylan had been shocked by the poverty and air of starvation in the little village.

  ‘This is disgraceful,’ muttered Mara between her teeth. ‘I shall speak to the king about this. How could Sorley have allowed it? Well, it’s not going to go on. I shall see to that.’

  ‘There’s thirteen cakes left in my bag,’ announced Enda after a careful count. ‘If you have one, Brehon, then it’s two each for the rest of us.’

  Mara took the cake to avoid arguments. She bit into it and was surprised by the sudden rush of flavour from the fresh blackberries with which it was stuffed.

  ‘Last day for blackberries – shouldn’t have blackberries after Samhain,’ said Aidan. ‘The devil spits on them on the eve of Samhain.’

  ‘Don’t talk nonsense,’ said Mara irritably, getting to her feet. ‘Why blame the devil for everything; man has enough of the devil in him to account for most evils. Come on all of you, if you’re going to see the silver mine and get back home in time for supper then you can’t delay any longer.’

  ‘I’ll eat yours if you like,’ offered Moylan, picking the last crumbs of his oatcakes from his léine before jumping to his feet. Aidan did not reply. He crammed the rest of the oatcake into his mouth, though he looked aggrieved. Mara did not often snap at them for no reason. She felt a twinge of remorse; she was still upset after what she had seen at the mining village, but that was not Aidan’s fault.

  ‘How did you know that poor fellow’s name, Brehon?’ asked Shane.

  ‘I saw him at Father David’s burial,’ said Mara. ‘I heard one of the other workers call him that.’

  ‘I’m amazed that he managed to get all the way down and then back up again,’ said Shane, with a glance over his shoulder at the steep climb.

  ‘He had a stick when I saw him.’ She spoke mechanically because her mind was still occupied with thinking about the mining village. She felt ashamed that she had never taken the trouble to come up here before. They were Welsh, the occupants, and the Welsh had exchanged Brehon law for English law over three centuries ago, but that was no excuse. As the king’s representative, she should have made it her duty to know what was going on in all parts of the kingdom. With an effort she dismissed the thought from her mind. When she first became Brehon she had resolved never to think about the past unless it held any relevance to the future and, usually, her strong will had enabled her to keep that resolution. She gave herself a mental shake. The important thing now was not to allow this situation to go on: the family at Newtown Castle was going to be forced into rebuilding this wretched place and feeding these workers properly. And it was then that she suddenly realized what she had said to Shane. Yes, of course, Anluan did have a stick.

  ‘He couldn’t have given the straw skep a poke with the stick, could he?’ asked Shane, reading her preoccupied face with his usual sharp intelligence.

  ‘I was just thinking about that stick,’ admitted Mara.

  ‘He’d never have the strength for that,’ said Moylan.

  ‘How much strength does it take to push over a straw skep, birdbrain?’ asked Enda scornfully.

  ‘And he did come in late,’ said Fachtnan. ‘I remember you saying that.’

  ‘So would you if you were as lame as that, clodhead,’ persisted Moylan.

  ‘And he would hate Sorley,’ persisted Fachtnan, ignoring the insult. ‘After all, Sorley was responsible for his injuries.’

  ‘He wouldn’t know about Sorley always swelling up after a bee sting, though, would he?’ argued Moylan who seemed to have constituted himself the defender of Anluan. For a boy with a huge appetite, the sight of Anluan’s obvious hunger seemed to have come as a shock.

  ‘Only his family and the beekeeper and a few others would have known about that.’ Aidan came to Moylan’s aid.

  ‘Do you think this crime was planned, or was it a spur-of-the-moment thing, Brehon?’ asked Enda.

  ‘I’m not sure how it could have been planned,’ said Mara. ‘Of course, on the one hand, you could argue that the murderer might have heard about Sorley’s problem with bee stings, and perhaps was waiting for an opportunity, but on the other hand, it is such an unusual crime that I feel it was an impulse that was immediately acted upon. It may not have worked. The bees might have gone in a different direction; they might have concentrated on saving the honey from their damaged hive. No, the more I think of it the more I feel that this crime was not planned. Someone hated Sorley and seized the opportunity to either injure him or kill him.’

  ‘But it could have been Anluan.’ Enda was determined to prove his point.

  Mara nodded her head. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I suppose it could have been Anluan. He is a man who has not much to live for, a man who would feel he had nothing to lose.’r />
  As they approached the gaping hole in the side of the mountain, there was a buzz of conversation. One small dark man, who was speaking loudly to another with the shafts of a barrow held in his hands, stopped talking abruptly, turned his back on the party from the law school and rushed into the mine entrance.

  ‘Gone to get the manager, probably,’ said Enda, his face alight with interest as he looked around.

  There was a small stone cabin built into the shelter of the mountain about fifty yards away. In front of the cabin a dead heifer calf, its stomach swollen, lay spread-eagled on the ground. There were two people inside the cabin, but one was doing most of the talking. The door stood open and it was easy to hear the words. The boys looked at each other and grinned. The stream of swear words was embarrassing even to the older scholars and Shane and Hugh were wide-eyed with amazement. The small dark man hesitated before the doorway as if reluctant to enter, and then compromised by gingerly stepping over the body of the calf, reaching out and knocking on the frame of the doorway.

  ‘Someone is losing his temper,’ murmured Enda as the stream of words went on unabated.

  Then there was a final scream of obscenities and a small narrow-framed man burst out through the door. His face was dripping with sweat and was a strange shade of white, patched with red. He kicked the body of the heifer and plunged on. Mara stepped forward instantly; she recognized the man, the young face and the almost bald head were instantly memorable. She thought she had seen him climb the hill after the burial of Father David and he had been standing near the gate to the church while she had been talking with Toin this morning. She had noticed how no one seemed to speak to him, or even to greet him.

  ‘You are Sheedy,’ she stated, standing in his path.

  He gave her an uncertain look, and then suddenly turned and bolted back over the lumps of scattered rock and heaps of crushed stone. Enda gave a long low whistle.