Whispers of the Dead

by Peter Tremayne

“More with Enda than me or my sisters.”

  “Now, when you found the body, I understand that you were all playing together that morning?”

  The boy kicked at the floor.

  “Because Faife said we should. She’s my eldest sister and . . . well, you know what elder sisters are like.”

  Fidelma smiled softly.

  “Tell me.”

  “Bossy. You know.”

  “So you all went off to play because Faife told you to? What did you play?”

  “Hide and go seek. In the woods. It was boring, ’cos the girls are so easy to find. Enda finally became fed up and said he was going back to the house.”

  “But you stayed on?”

  “For a while. It was Faife’s turn to hide and it took a long time to find her. This time she hid herself well. Had it not been for the business of Enda, I think our mother would have been very angry with her.”

  “Angry? Why?”

  “I found her hiding under some bushes where it was wet and muddy. Her dress was in a terrible mess. Mother would have given her a good hiding had it not been . . . well, you know.”

  “So what did you do then?”

  “Faife wanted another game but I was bored, like Enda. I decided to go to look for him.”

  “And that is when you found him in the pond?”

  The boy nodded quickly.

  “When I saw him in the middle of the pond, I ran off to find my father.”

  “Two more questions. How far was the pond from where you were playing your game?”

  The boy frowned.

  “Not very far.”

  “Did you know about the theft of the eggs?”

  Maine nodded quickly.

  “What did Enda say when he was accused of taking the eggs?”

  “He said he had not taken the eggs. That it was a story that had been made up by the girls ’cos they didn’t like him. Mother wanted father to wallop him good, but father said he couldn’t but would speak to Enda’s father when he could.”

  Fidelma dismissed him and called for Una to come forward.

  She was eight years old and nervous.

  “Did you like Enda?” Fidelma asked.

  “Not much. Boys are rough creatures. I don’t see why we had to have him living with us and he was . . .”

  Fidelma examined her sharply.

  “He was—what?”

  “A thief. Mummy said so. Thieves are punished. That’s why he probably drowned in the pool. God probably drowned him. Mummy said so.”

  “But Enda denied he was the thief.”

  “He would, wouldn’t he? He’s a liar because mummy said so.”

  “And you always believe you mother?”

  “She’s my mother,” the girl replied with simplicity. Fidelma let her return to her seat.

  Faife was eleven years old, solemn, and trying to behave as a grown-up. When Fidelma posed her initially question the girl frowned in thought.

  “I did not dislike him.”

  “Not even when you discovered that he was a thief?”

  The girl sniffed.

  “I knew he had done wrong. I told my mother that he had stolen the eggs.”

  “Did he admit that he had stolen the eggs?”

  “I found him with the eggs. He could not deny it.”

  “Why would he steal eggs from the kitchen?”

  Faife frowned.

  “I don’t understand.”

  “He was living with your family and being fed by your family. What need had he of eggs?”

  She shrugged as if it was either not important or she did not care.

  “I can’t answer for him.”

  “What makes you so sure that he did steal the eggs?”

  “I said so, didn’t I?” A note of belligerence crept into her voice.

  “But how do you know?” pressed Fidelma, not put out by the girl’s tone.

  “Because I found him with the eggs.”

  “What happened?”

  The girl hesitated and then nodded quickly.

  “I went to where Enda slept sharing a room with my brother and my dad’s two apprentices.”

  “Why?” Fidelma’s voice interrupted sharply.

  There was no hesitation.

  “I went looking for Enda to come for the daily lesson my mother gave us in how to tell our letters.”

  “And?”

  “He was on his bed with the eggs. It is my job to go to the hen house and collect the eggs each morning. I had done so that morning and put them in the kitchen. He had stolen them from there.”

  “Did you ask him where the eggs came from?”

  The little girl chuckled.

  “He told me that he found them under his bed. Of course, no one believed him. Anyway, I said that I would take charge of them and return them.”

  “Did you do so?”

  “I was taking them back to the kitchen when my mother came. Enda had already scuttled off. My mother asked me what I was doing with the eggs and I had to tell the truth, ’cos that’s important, isn’t it?”

  Fidelma looked at the earnest expression on Faife’s face and sighed deeply.

  “What did your mother say?”

  “Mummy said that Enda would be in for a good beating when daddy returned.”

  “And was he?”

  Faife pouted, almost in disapproval.

  “Daddy said he was not allowed to touch Enda. We get hit when we do something wrong, why was it wrong to hit Enda?”

  “In what way do you get hit?”

  “Mummy usually hits us with a switch across the back of the legs.”

  “Go back to your place, Faife,” Fidelma said quietly. She paused for a moment. The law, according to her reading of it, was quite clear and did not only apply to foster children. Corporal punishment was prohibited against a child except for a single smack in anger with the palm of the hand. She wondered if she should make a point of this. She decided to leave it to judgment.

  “Is the neighbor whose honey was stolen here?” she demanded, when Faife returned to her seat.

  “It was my honey that was stolen.” A man with thin, sallow looks rose from his seat. His dress was of leather-patched woolen trousers, a short sleeve jacket and boots. “My name is Mel, lady. I am a neighbor of Colla and Dublemna.”

  “And you keep bees?”

  “Don’t worry,” grinned the man. “I know all about the Bechbretha, the law of bees, and I can assure you that I have given the necessary pledges to my four neighbors allowing them to have swarms from my hives to guarantee me immunity from any claim of trespass. However, as Colla had no wish to keep bees, I guaranteed him combs of honey from my hives in fair exchange. So I am aware of the law and I keep the law.”

  Fidelma regarded the farmer with a solemn look.

  “That is good. We have heard it suggested that you found that honeycombs were being removed from your hives?”

  “I can confirm it. I noticed the missing combs a few weeks ago and I went ’round to my neighbors to warn them that there might be a thief about. However, it was only one comb that went missing at a time and that only every few days. It seemed so petty. It was only a few days ago, after the boy—this boy Enda—drowned in the pool, that Dublemna told me that they had found part of a honeycomb in his belongings. Of course, I would not prosecute my neighbors for what the boy had done, even though Colla had taken on this role as aite—foster father.”

  Fidelma heaved a long inward sigh as she dismissed the bee-keeper. She sat in thought for a while.

  “I am going to adjourn this case for an hour or so,” she suddenly announced. “I want to see where this death occurred so that I might fully understand the situation.”

  It took them just under an hour to reach Colla’s homestead. Fécho, Tassach, Niall and Colla, Dublemna and their children as well as Mel accompanied Sister Fidelma and Brother Corbb. The party, at Fidelma’s request, made straight for the pond where Enda had been found. A copse of alder trees obscured it fro
m the homestead. They all halted at a respectable distance while Fidelma went forward to make her examination. It was as Colla had described it. Indeed, it did not take long to realize that with such gently sloping banks, it was beyond question that the boy could have fallen in by accident. She walked around the pond several times, scrutinizing the area in search of rocks, stones or anything else that could have made the wound described by Tassach and Niall.

  She turned and waved Maine forward.

  “I want you to show me where you were playing that morning,” she told him.

  The boy pointed to a section of larger woodland just beyond the copse.

  “Exactly where?” she pressed.

  The boy led her across to the woodland. It was not spacious between the trees and within a few meters one could be hidden along its paths. Fidelma noticed the ground was fairly hard and stony. There was an outcrop of boulders in one clearing. It was useless looking for the precise stone that came into contact with Enda’s head. Fidelma turned to the boy.

  “Just tell me again, Maine, because I would like to be absolutely sure ofthis . . . when you were playing here and Enda became bored with the game. He left.”

  The boy nodded.

  “And you all continued to play until you became bored and went off after him?”

  “We did so.”

  “Any idea of how long this was?” She did not ask with any hope, knowing that children really had no conception of the same sense of time as adults.

  “I think it was a long time. Long enough for Faife to insist we play another game of hide and go seek. And I know that she was a long time being found. That’s when I became fed up. Una thought that Faife had gone home for I was the seeker and I easily found Una. Then we both sought for Faife.”

  “But you found her eventually, under a bush?”

  “We did.”

  “Near here?”

  “She was under that big bush there,” he pointed.

  Fidelma moved forward and glanced quickly at it.

  Maine led the way back to where the others were still waiting by the pool. There was little else to be seen that would help her. Fidelma examined their expectant faces.

  “I will reserve my judgment in this matter. You will have my judgment on the seventh day from now.”

  She hurried away so as not to see the crestfallen, puzzled expressions.

  Three days later she was sitting in front of a fire in Brehon Spélan’s chambers. The old judge was seated on the opposite side of the fire to her, sipping mulled wine. Fidelma had just finished recounting the extent of the case to him.

  “I see your difficulty, Fidelma,” the old judged sighed. “It is not often that it seems obvious what happened but there is insufficient evidence to pronounce the guilt of the person.”

  “This is, indeed, a sad case,” she agreed. “Poor little Enda was placed in an environment that was hostile to him and that very hostility led to his murder. Indeed, not death by neglect, but murder. Colla tolerated him simply as a business transaction so that he would get all his smithy work done by Fécho. Colla’s wife Dublemna hated the boy. I think she is a bad woman who is not averse to physically punishing her children . . .”

  “Even though corporal punishment is against the law?” interposed Spélan.

  “Even so,” agreed Fidelma. “That much Faife made clear. And only Colla seems to have prevented harm coming to Enda because he had obviously been told the law of fosterage when he made the contract.”

  “So, from what you say, only little Maine welcomed Enda and in him did the child find any sense of companionship?” queried Spélan.

  “That is so. But Dublemna was a vindictive and cruel foster mother as well as mother.”

  “So you think it was she who actually killed Enda in some rage against the boy?” the old judged was frowning.

  Fidelma shook her head.

  “Enda left his game of hide and go seek that morning and walked back to the homestead. At the pond he was hit over the head by someone wielding a stone and then pushed into the pond. Maine found him and then ran to fetch help . . .”

  “But who did it?”

  “Dublemna’s influence was strongest on her daughters. Both of them took their cue of hatred for Enda from her. I suspect they were both hated by their mother and sought to please her. One of them, in fact, went out of her way to please the mother. That was Faife.”

  “But why?” Spélan was astonished. “Why would this child resort to murder?”

  “The logic of a child is not the same as that of an adult. I think that Faife, overhearing her mother’s anger at her husband for having brought the child into fosterage with them, and her dislike of the child, thought it would please her mother if the child was punished—especially when her father refused to punish the boy.”

  “It is strange thinking but I have heard similar tales of children trying to appease parents by doing things they think will please them.”

  “In fact, I believe that Faife even decided to provide some ammunition for her mother to justify her dislike. She was the one taking the honey. She stole the eggs and planted them under the bed and then came to accuse Enda.”

  “But what happened at the pond?”

  “I believe that when they were playing hide and go seek, Faife decided—having overheard the conversation between her mother and father—to physically hurt Enda as her mother wanted. Enda had left the game. The next game began—we heard from Maine that it took a long time to find Faife. In the time she was supposed to be hiding—when Maine and Una were trying to find her—she went after Enda, found a stone, and hit him on the back of the head. We may never know if her intention was to kill him. When she discovered he was dead she pushed his body in the pond. That’s how she muddied and soaked her dress. She tried to disguise it by pretending she was hiding under a bush. But the bush grew in stony, dry ground. It would not have been soaked or muddied, merely dirtied.”

  Brehon Spélan whistled softly.

  “But we cannot prove that Faife killed the boy. You are Brehon enough to know that your reconstruction would not stand up as proof in court.”

  Fidelma sighed deeply.

  “I know. That is the sad thing. There is no redress in law for Fécho unless he is persuaded to change his claim back to death by neglect. They have a good chance of being compensated by Colla paying half the dire, or honor price. Enda was over the age of seven, so after that age, the child’s honor price becomes half that of his father. Under law we can do no more. I can also fine Dublemna for hitting her own children as an infraction of the law but I don’t think I will make her see that her hatred of Enda, indeed, her dislike even of her own children, led to this tragedy. Colla and Dublemna will stop up their ears. The next recommendation is, that due to the fines, they be refused any position as fosterers in the future.”

  Brehon Spélan shook his head sadly.

  “This is one of those times when justice and law are not the same thing, Fidelma. I am sure that we will be able to get Fécho to accept that he press for the lesser charge. I agree about Colla and Dublemna. But what about Faife? What is to stop her the next time she feels like using violence as a solution? I know that you are fond of quoting Publilius Syrus, Fidelma. Didn’t he say that the judge is condemned when the guilty one goes free?”

  “He did. But then we are here to interpret and maintain the law, for whenever the rule of law ends rule by tyranny begins. At least we have our great féis every three years at which we can argue, with others, and attempt to change the laws that are wrong and expand those that need such amendment. But here and now it is not the law which is wrong but lack of evidence.”

  “Perhaps sometimes circumstantial evidence should be taken into judgment when it is very strong . . . such as when you find an overturned and empty pail of milk and a cat sleeping beside it. It is clearly the cat that is guilty.”

  Fidelma smiled mischievously.

  “Yet a good lawyer might argue that perhaps a dog happened by, o
verturned the pail, emptied the milk, which evaporated and afterwards a cat came along and merely went to sleep beside it. Who can with certainty say that the cat was the guilty party?”

  THE LOST EAGLE

  This is Deacon Platonius Lepidus, Sister Fidelma. He is a visitor from Rome and he wishes a word with you.”

  Fidelma looked up in surprise as the stranger was shown into the scriptorium of the abbey. She was a stranger in the abbey herself—the abbey of Augustine. Augustine was the former prior of St. Andrews in Rome, who had died here scarcely sixty years ago having been sent as missionary to the king of the Cantware. It was now the focal point of the Jutish Christian community in the center of the burg of Cantware. Fidelma was waiting for Brother Eadulf to finish some business with the Archbishop Theodore. The religieux who had announced the Deacon’s presence had withdrawn from the library, shutting the door behind him. As Fidelma rose uncertainly the Deacon came forward to the table where she had been seated.

  Platonius Lepidus looked every inch of what she knew to be a Roman aristocrat; there was arrogance about him in spite of his religious robes. She had been on a pilgrimage to Rome and knew that his aristocratic rank would immediately be recognizable there. He was tall, with dark hair and swarthy of complexion. His greeting and smile were pleasant enough.

  “The Venerable Gelasius told me that you had rendered him a singular service when you were in Rome, Sister. When I heard that you were here in Cantwareburg, I felt compelled to make your acquaintance.”

  “How is the Venerable Gelasius?” she rejoined at once, for she had warm memories of the harassed official in the Lateran Palace where the Bishop of Rome resided.

  “He is well and would have sent his personal felicitations had he known that I would be meeting with you. The scriptor has informed me that you are on a visit with Brother Eadulf, whom the Venerable Gelasius also remembers fondly. I was also informed that you are both soon to leave for a place called Seaxmund’s Ham.”

  “You are correctly informed, Deacon Lepidus,” Fidelma replied with gravity.

  “Let us sit awhile and talk, Sister Fidelma,” the Deacon said, applying action to the word and inviting her to do the same with a gesture of his hand. “I am afraid that I also have a selfish interest in making your acquaintance. I need your help.”