Scales of Retribution

by Cora Harrison

  Nuala, a very different person to Sorcha, went across to Cuan obediently, but she did not seem to be making much effort to engage him in conversation – she just sat down and stared ahead glumly. Mara saw young Cuan make a few attempts to talk, and then flush painfully as it was obvious that Nuala was not listening.

  ‘How are you, Cuan, and how is your mother?’ Mara came to the rescue. Nuala, to her annoyance, immediately slipped away.

  ‘She’s well, Brehon, we’re all well.’ Cuan was still flushed and embarrassed.

  ‘Don’t take any notice of Nuala,’ said Mara consolingly. ‘She’s going through a very bad time. It’s been quite a shock to her – you’ve heard of the death of Malachy the physician, her father, haven’t you?’

  ‘Yes.’ Cuan lengthened the word, sounding rather dubious, and then added with a shrewdness which surprised Mara, ‘But they weren’t on good terms, were they? Wasn’t there some sort of talk that Malachy was trying to take away from her the property that Toin left her in Rathborney?’

  ‘That’s right.’ Mara was still bemused by the change in Cuan. She had thought him slightly simple-minded up to now. Perhaps wealth and freedom from his father had suited him. Possibly she had misjudged his mother. Maybe Cuan had begun to take up the reins of government of his lands and his silver mine. There was a note of authority in his voice now.

  ‘He wasn’t a very nice man, anyway,’ continued Cuan, still with that ease of manner which had surprised her. ‘There’s an old man that lives up beyond my place, in Lochánn, just above the sea at Fanore. Do you know him? Padraig O’Connor. He has a fleet of fishing boats . . .’

  ‘Yes, I do,’ said Mara with an eye on the top table. Aidan and Moylan were getting wilder by the minute, and Enda and Mairéad had started to kiss each other in a very passionate way. As for Saoirse and the O’Connor boy, well, she wasn’t sure what was going on under the table . . . Her presence would, she was sure, calm matters, but she did not like to abandon Cuan so soon after he had been left by Nuala.

  ‘Well, poor old Padraig was getting a bit absentminded, nothing too much, just searching for the odd word and forgetting a few things – still pretty shrewd about giving orders to his boat captains, though – so he sent for Malachy, and Malachy came and gave him a flask of some mixture, and told him to take it every morning and every evening.’

  ‘And it did him no good, I suppose.’ Mara scanned her mind for some excuse to leave Cuan and return to her unruly scholars. Even the gentle, shy Hugh was getting overexcited and shouting remarks to Nessa.

  ‘It was not just that,’ said Cuan earnestly. ‘It seemed to make him worse. I told him to stop taking it, but he said that he wouldn’t like to do that – especially when the man went to so much trouble as to keep coming out and visiting him.’

  ‘Yes, the country people are like that, aren’t they, always so courteous.’ Mara got to her feet, sending a long hard stare in the direction of Aidan, who had just got on top of the bench and appeared to be about to climb on to the table. ‘What is that boy up to?’ she asked, and then added rapidly, ‘Excuse me, Cuan, I must go over there.’

  Perhaps I’ll send Oisín over to talk to Cuan; he’ll be very interested when he hears about the silver mine in the mountain above Rathborney, and also the silversmith business in Galway. He’ll probably wangle an invitation to the tower house, thought Mara, a little maliciously. Let Oisín cross swords with Cuan’s redoubtable mother. That would be an interesting encounter.

  And then, suddenly, she stopped thinking of Cuan, and of Nuala, and of Oisín. A horse, ridden fast down the road, had pulled up at the gate. Mara recognized the rider. It was one of Turlough’s men – a young relative – one of the O’Briens of Thomond.

  With a murmured word of excuse, she got up and walked slowly towards the gate. Cumhal was there, he had greeted the man, and then something about Cumhal’s shocked face made her stop for a moment. Was it bad news?

  Her legs weakened beneath her. Cumhal, never the most religious of men, had lifted his right hand, touching forehead, breast and then both of his shoulders. He had made the sign of the cross. But why? In ordinary conversation, away from a church ceremony, there was only one reason for this. Cumhal had just been told of a death.

  Instantly Mara saw it all. The triumphant journey home. And then a sudden attack. Perhaps the Great Earl had not gone back to Kildare with his tail between his legs, had lain in wait and tackled his enemy, O’Brien of Thomond, once again. This time the outcome might have been fatal . . .

  Mara stayed very still, her hand on the stout trunk of an apple tree. She could not move. All her courage had ebbed away.

  Cumhal’s eyes met hers. Swiftly he left the new arrival and walked towards her. He had been her father’s servant and then steward and farm manager since before she was born. He and Brigid had cared for and loved the small motherless daughter of their master, the Brehon of the Burren. He knew her well, could read her expressions, and he almost ran the last few steps.

  ‘My lord is well, Brehon,’ he said reassuringly. ‘He sends his greetings.’ And then he lowered his voice, stood very near to her and said quietly, for her ear only, ‘There is some news that concerns us all here. Would you like to talk to the messenger indoors? These young people will be off to the bonfire at Noughaval soon and I’ll go along to make sure that all is right with them.’

  ‘Thank you, Cumhal,’ said Mara steadily. There were only a few days to go to the end of term; the boys were excited; even Shane and Hugh were getting quite wild, daringly flicking yarrow stems at Nessa and Áine. Sorcha was sweet but lacked authority and Oisín might well decide to go off on his own affairs. It would be a comfort to her if Cumhal went, also.

  What was the news? she wondered, walking steadily beside Cumhal. She greeted the young man with courtesy, inviting him to have a cup of wine with her.

  He said nothing until after Cumhal had left and then sipped appreciatively at the wine.

  ‘You have news for me, is that right?’ Mara could see that he was trying to put off the moment. Her heart sank again. Was Turlough wounded?

  ‘Well, it was my lord, the king, himself, who saw it first . . .’

  ‘Saw what?’ asked Mara.

  ‘Oh, I thought that Cumhal would have told you that.’ Young O’Brien had the air of wishing that someone else could tell the whole of his story, but he struggled on, ‘Saw the cob, I mean.’

  ‘The cob!’

  ‘That’s right, my lord said that it was the cob from the law school, that he would swear to that black and white face.’

  ‘The cob,’ said Mara again, but this time in a low voice. Her quick brain instantly knew the rest of the news. The cob, a handsome, heavily built riding horse, was usually reserved for Cumhal’s use, but occasionally and reluctantly he lent it to Seán when his worker had a long journey ahead.

  ‘Go on,’ she said.

  ‘Well, the poor beast was glad to see us, though there was plenty to eat where we found him – it was just next to the abbey of Emly – next to the graveyard, in fact. He had broken reins trailing – it looked as though someone tied him up – perhaps while having a meal or something.’

  He stopped, but she said nothing so he continued with a grave face.

  ‘A few of the men had a hunt around to see if they could find the rider – we thought that he might have been thrown and perhaps injured – even killed. It wasn’t long before they came across him.’

  Mara nodded. There would be a body; she had guessed that instantly.

  ‘What we hadn’t expected was that not only was the man dead . . .’

  ‘But that he had been dead for over a week,’ she interrupted.

  He bowed his head with a look of surprise on his face, but he did not question her.

  Of course, thought Mara. Seán was the messenger who was sent for Malachy to attend the childbirth on that morning of the eleventh of June. He had seen something – someone – doing something odd; someone in a place where they should
not be; someone who roused his slow mind to suspicion; whatever it was, it had happened when he had ridden that road through Kilcorney and on to Caherconnell on the morning when she was giving birth. Seán, being Seán, would not have been able to keep his mouth shut. He had hinted, said something; perhaps asked for money. How had it been done? wondered Mara. A simple gift of food, something to eat on the journey. Sooner or later he would eat it and then the fatal poison would begin to work. He would have been discovered earlier if he had eaten it more quickly. Useless, now, to wish that he had thrown it in the ditch for the crows to find!

  ‘He was just about recognizable,’ said the young man simply. ‘There was no sign of violence, but in this warm weather, it was hard to know what he had died of. But died he did! My lord got the abbot of Emly to bury him in the graveyard. He had remembered that you told him the man had no family.’

  ‘No, he had no family.’ Mara said no more. She did not wish to go into Seán’s history. He had been found as a tiny child wandering along on the road near Kinvarra on the way to Galway. Her father, a compassionate man, had brought him back to Cahermacnaghten and he had been brought up by the elderly widow of one of the labourers there. Somehow he had never fitted in. He had been lazy, awkward and unreliable. Brigid and Cumhal would mourn him in a conventional manner, but they would not be deeply sorry. The people of the kingdom of the Burren would hardly notice his absence. Seán had been a misfit. Money and status was very important to him, as he knew that he lacked the status that family would give him in a Gaelic community. Was that his undoing? Did he go to the murderer and say: ‘I saw you at Caherconnell – it was just at the time that Malachy the physician was murdered, wasn’t it? Does the Brehon know that you were there?’ Poor Seán, he would not have done it subtly. He was not a man of brains, or even a man of integrity.

  But she, Mara, Brehon of the Burren, had to make sure that his murderer would be brought to justice – the case needed solving just as much as the case of the secret and unlawful killing of Malachy, physician of the kingdom of the Burren.

  ‘May we offer you a night’s lodging?’ she asked the young man, but was not surprised when he shook his head cheerfully.

  ‘No, Brehon,’ he said. ‘I shall spend the night at Inchiquin. It’s only an hour’s journey from here. My brother serves the tánaiste there.’

  Mara nodded. Conor, Turlough’s eldest son and heir, had his household at Inchiquin. The young messenger would enjoy the midsummer festivities in the company of members of his own family.

  ‘And on my way I must drop into Teige O’Brien’s place at Lemeanah – the dead man had a letter in his pouch addressed to the king. It was from Teige and I bear an answer to that. And that reminds me – this satchel was lying beside him. My lord told me to give it to you.’ He handed over the leather satchel. It was bleached and puckered as it had lain out in the rain, sunlight and night dews for ten days, but the straps were still buckled. He undid them neatly and showed her the contents. A change of clothing, and a linen cloth that showed the remains of food – small shreds of meat and a pungent smell of horseradish. There was also a large, flat, well-padded leather pouch.

  Mara took the pouch – she recognized it as one from the schoolhouse. She opened it. As she had expected, it was filled with the examination papers. She recognized Shane’s neat writing on the uppermost page and put the papers aside for the moment. This was something that she could deal with afterwards. First must come the solving of the murder. She stared at the cloth in a puzzled manner. It was not the usual piece of coarse hemp that Brigid used to wrap the boys’ food. This was a carefully hemmed piece of linen, the slanting stitches small and perfect – more like a fine handkerchief than anything else. Not something that Seán would have owned.

  ‘My lord thought you would be interested to see the satchel. He thought it meant that the man had been poisoned. Anyone who struck down a man and killed him would have seized the satchel and fled, or at least opened the buckles to see what had been inside. My lord thought that Seán had died there, by himself.’

  And then, with a bow, he was gone. Mara spent a while in the quiet room of her house, thinking through the implications of this latest death – murder, she told herself, and she was as sure as if she had witnessed the horrifying, degrading death of the man who had swallowed a fatal dose of wolfsbane. It would have been a terrible death, and a death unsoothed by the presence of family, friends or clergy. A death of terror, no doubt. Seán was not intelligent, but even he would recognize the fatal signs. He would have known that he was about to die just as Malachy had died.

  So who could Seán have seen? There were the six suspects: Caireen and her son Ronan, Nuala – all of these were present at Caherconnell when the fatal dose had been put into Malachy’s brandy glass.

  And then Blár O’Connor had been on his way past the house towards Glenslade – and so had Oisín, her son-in-law and Malachy’s heir. And Murrough of the Wolfhounds lived close by.

  But which of those six suspects could have handed Seán the fatal food or drink that had killed him?

  And what about the man who had sent Seán on that errand to Thomond? Why had he done that? Was it just the bumptiousness of a young and untried man? And yet it was strange. What was the rush? After all, she had been expected to recover and to take the reins into her own hands within days. Why had the examination papers been despatched so hurriedly to Thomond? Was it an excuse to get Seán out of the way? And if it were, what possible reason could he have for this action?

  Fourteen

  Heptad 3

  A woman may divorce her husband on the grounds of:

  If he repudiates her for another woman.

  If he fails to support her.

  If he spreads a false story about her.

  If he circulates a satire about her.

  If he has tricked her into marriage by sorcery.

  If he strikes a blow which leaves a blemish.

  If he fails to maintain a child of the marriage according to its status.

  ‘So what we have to do now is to trace poor Seán’s last movements while he was still in the kingdom of the Burren.’ Mara looked around at her scholars. They were quite subdued this morning. Seán, after all, had been part of the law school for as long as any of them could remember. There was a certain tension – or was it fear? – in the air of the schoolhouse this morning when she had broken the news. They had come in exuberantly, still excited by the fun of bonfire night and now they looked at each other from the corners of their eyes – subdued by the near presence of death.

  ‘On the other hand,’ continued Mara, ‘I wonder whether I should ask you to do any more investigating. The murderer is out there and still has murder in his heart. You are my responsibility and I must not allow you to run any risk.’

  ‘So you think that Seán was murdered because he knew something?’ asked Enda alertly.

  ‘I can see no other reason,’ said Mara sadly.

  ‘But how could he?’ Hugh sounded puzzled. ‘How could he work it out if we can’t?’

  ‘He wasn’t too bright, was Seán,’ supplemented Moylan, and then flushed a bright red, looking confused and embarrassed. Hugh gave him a reproving look and moved a little to the side, as if to distance himself from this scholar who lacked discretion.

  ‘I think that we have to treat this case as if the dead man were not someone who lived and worked in our premises. Here in this schoolhouse we can say things that we would not say outside of it.’ Mara had noted the blush and the reaction of the others and knew that the boys had to be enabled to treat this murder as objectively as possible.

  ‘Of course, the fact that he was not too bright may have led him into danger,’ said Fachtnan dispassionately. ‘I can just see Seán going up to someone and whispering in his ear, “I saw you put the wolfsbane into Malachy’s glass” or even, perhaps, saying, “By the way, what were you doing at Caherconnell on the morning when Malachy was killed?” – or some such sentence. A clever person mi
ght realize the risk of saying something like that, but Séan would not stop to think.’

  ‘Well done, Fachtnan,’ said Mara approvingly. ‘You put that very well.’

  ‘But was he near Caherconnell on that morning?’ Hugh still looked puzzled.

  ‘I don’t know . . .’ began Mara and then suddenly she thought of something. Brigid’s voice, raised in anger, was clearly to be heard, telling Nessa not to empty the dirty water outside the kitchen door but to take it across the yard and pour it into the sink – that hole filled with stones that Cumhal dug every year for the disposal of waste water.

  ‘Shane would you ask Brigid if she could spare a minute?’ she said rapidly. Brigid would be delighted to be asked to help in the investigation and Nessa would be spared a prolonged scolding. The girl was willing, but, like poor Seán, not too bright.

  Brigid’s colour was still high, when she followed Shane into the schoolhouse, but she looked pleased when Hugh politely brought a chair for her and all the scholars turned eager faces in her direction.

  ‘We’re discussing the death of poor Seán, Brigid,’ said Mara. ‘This is in confidence, and it would be best not to talk about it outside this schoolhouse—’

  ‘My right hand raised to God on high; cross my heart and hope to die,’ said Brigid, rapidly crossing herself.

  ‘It’s a matter of trying to see whether there was any connection between Malachy’s death and Seán’s death,’ explained Mara, ignoring Moylan who was doing a clever imitation of Brigid for Aidan’s benefit.

  Brigid turned an attentive face towards her as Mara continued, ‘And I just wondered, Brigid, if you could tell us who was sent to summon Malachy when I was in childbirth? Was it Seán?’