Scales of Retribution

by Cora Harrison

  ‘But soon you will have nothing,’ she gasped. ‘Your baby will die soon and then you will know how I felt.’

  ‘Eileen, tell me what have you given him?’ Mara tried to keep her voice cool, tried to make it sound like a casual enquiry. As Brehon, she had often to deal with a case of madness and she knew that it was important to keep calm. Soon Eileen would be beyond speaking. The woman’s eyes stared blankly ahead, her mouth had rigid lines to each side of it and saliva poured out uncontrollably down her chin.

  ‘What was it, Eileen? What did you give him?’ Mara held her baby close; already a slight drool had appeared in the corner of the tiny mouth. She looked an anguished appeal, but Eileen was beyond words. She had slumped over on her side and now her eyes were closed.

  In a moment Oisín was by her side. ‘Let me take him; let’s get him back home. I waited because I thought you might get information from her, but it’s no good. Leave her. She will soon be dead.’

  For a moment Mara half-held out the baby to him, but then she shook her head. ‘No,’ she said. ‘No, I’ll hold him quietly here. It can’t be good to disturb him. You go. Go as quickly as you can. Fetch Nuala from Lissylisheen. Tell her everything. Tell her about the sweating and the saliva . . .’

  Oisín knelt at Eileen’s side, his quick eyes darting over her, feeling her hands, pulling up an eyelid and peering into the eye, noting all symptoms. Then he put his own hand on the woman’s heart.

  ‘Racing!’ he said with a grimace. ‘She won’t last long at this rate.’

  With a feeling of dread, Mara put her own hand on her baby’s tiny chest. The little heart beat, but there was no difference as far as she could tell. Oisín quickly moved her hand, lifting it off and replacing it with one brown finger.

  ‘Seems normal,’ he said shortly, and then he was gone, running vigorously out of the gate. Mara could hear the noise of his sandals banging against the stone of the road, going at full speed towards Lissylisheen.

  The woman on the ground beside her opened her eyes and gazed at the baby in Mara’s arms.

  ‘I’m dying,’ she whispered. ‘Get me a priest.’

  For a moment Mara wavered. It was a sacred duty on all to fetch a priest to a dying person. But what about her baby? The sweat continued to flow from his neck and now even from his forehead, and the few scraps of fluffy hair on his head were damp, but his tiny feet and hands were stone-cold. She held him close to her breast and almost felt as though the beat of her own heart was keeping his heart working. Perhaps it was a mortal sin not to fetch the priest; she didn’t know and she didn’t care. This woman had used poison to kill Malachy – that might be forgivable, but she also killed poor innocent Seán who was guilty of nothing but a love of gossip, she had made Fachtnan seriously ill and worst of all she had given poison to a baby. She did not wish her harm, decided Mara, but she would not risk her baby’s slender hold on life in order to go and fetch a priest.

  ‘Don’t trouble yourself,’ she said softly. ‘Just lie quietly.’

  Eileen groaned, but said no more.

  I should know what to do, thought Mara. She had assisted at many a deathbed; the lawyer, as well as the priest and physician, was a frequent companion for the dying.

  ‘Do you repent of your sins?’ she asked.

  Did she nod, or not? It was difficult to be sure as paralysis seemed to be setting in. Mara decided that it was a nod and went on with the ritual.

  ‘Deus meus,’ she said solemnly, hoping that the God she evoked was a merciful God, ‘ex toto corde poenitet me omnium meorum peccatorum, eaque detestor, quia peccando, non solum poenas a Te iuste statutas promeritus sum, sed praesertim quia offendi Te, summum bonum, ac dignum qui super omnia diligaris.’ In Eileen’s name, she expressed sorrow for her sins, and her belief in the goodness of God, and went on to promise to sin no more. ‘Ideo firmiter propono, adiuvante gratia Tua, de cetero me non peccaturum peccandique occasiones proximas fugiturum. Amen.’

  Everything was very still. Even the pigeons in the nearby wood had ceased their cooing. The sun had moved and the stone church cast a dark shadow over the two women and the baby. Eileen suddenly groaned. It was a strange sound, very deep, as if it came from the depths of her being. She gasped. Her back arched as if from some unbearable pain. Her eyes opened widely. Her hands went to her breast and then fell away. Suddenly the light went from her eyes with that awful finality – as if the lamp of the soul had been quenched.

  She was dead.

  And then, a minute later, there was a sound, the sound of horses being ridden down the narrow road at full gallop. The noise of voices, shouts, Turlough’s voice above all.

  And then he was through the gate and kneeling at her side, the man of arms, the king of war, and he was sobbing like a child.

  ‘Hush,’ she said, and then automatically, ‘don’t wake the baby.’

  And then Oisín was there, carrying a bag and Nuala following him. The girl didn’t say a word to Mara, just knelt down, lifted the eyelid, peered into the blue-grey eye, placed her ear to the tiny chest.

  ‘Have you got whatever she gave him?’ she asked.

  ‘She flung the potion over there somewhere.’ Mara whispered the words, still keeping up in her own mind the fiction that her baby was in a normal, healthy sleep. And then she noticed that Oisín was already rooting around in the undergrowth.

  ‘Would there have been any left?’ Nuala’s eyes went towards Oisín and then back to the baby. Her questioning was sharp and unemotional. Turlough still sobbed, on his knees beside his little son and even the bodyguards had tears in their eyes, but Nuala was completely focused on her task.

  ‘No, I don’t think so.’ Mara answered the question in the same tone as it was put. ‘She swallowed it, drained it, I saw it upside down, and then she threw it.’

  ‘How did she seem – before she collapsed?’

  ‘Sleepy,’ said Mara. Neither of them used Eileen’s name.

  ‘That fits,’ said Nuala with satisfaction. ‘I’ve read about this in my grandfather’s notes. She poisoned herself with hemlock, I would say. Very easy to get hold of that. It grows in lots of the hedgerows around here. She knew a lot about herbs and she was always anxious to know more. I seem to remember that hemlock was one of the things that she asked me about.’

  ‘What can you do?’ Mara could barely whisper the words. She forced them out, though, because the words in the back of her mind were: can you do anything?

  ‘Most poisons have some sort of antidote,’ said Nuala. She had a cheerful, authoritative note in her voice. Turlough stopped sobbing, wiped his eyes with his handkerchief and looked at Nuala with some hope on his face.

  ‘How bad is he?’ he asked, his voice still broken.

  ‘Not very bad,’ said Nuala reassuringly. ‘I would think that he has had quite a small dose. When we were coming along, Oisín told me about the woman’s heart beating so fast and I was worried that I would find the same with Cormac, but his heart is normal. And the pupils of his eyes don’t look very enlarged, either.’

  ‘Got the flask,’ shouted Oisín. He leaped the wall, rushed forward, unthinkingly striding through a large patch of stinging nettles, carrying it carefully upright.

  ‘Let me smell,’ said Nuala, and then gave a nod of satisfaction as he put it under her nose. ‘I think I’m right,’ she said. ‘It does smell of hemlock. It has a smell of mice. I know it. Like some other poisons, you can use it in a medicine. In fact, a small dose can help against other kinds of poisoning.’

  ‘What are you going to do, Nuala?’ Mara was glad that Turlough asked the question this time, because relief had made her own heart thud so fast that she could hardly draw a breath.

  ‘I’ll have to wait until Ardal gets here. I sent him on to Caherconnell. He’s bringing me some stuff from the stillroom, there. He has instructions to trample down Caireen if she gets in the way.’ Nuala gave a cheerful grin and Mara began to feel better.

  ‘I might have to make him sick – I don’
t like doing it with such a tiny baby, but it may be the best thing to do.’ As she was speaking, Nuala slipped her finger inside the baby’s mouth and was peering down the little pink throat.

  ‘Nothing like wolfsbane,’ she said. ‘That would have burned the mouth. I didn’t think so, but I wanted to make sure.’ She sniffed the baby’s mouth and smiled. ‘I think she gave him a little hemlock in a lot of honey; he smells of honey, don’t you think?’

  Mara bent over and inhaled her son’s breath. ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘yes,’ and then with great relief, ‘oh yes, you’re right.’ Surely no woman who had fed a baby at her breast would have tried to kill him.

  ‘Here comes Ardal.’ Oisín was at the gate before Ardal had time to dismount. He grabbed the bag from the chieftain and flew back down the path, holding it open so that Nuala could pick out what she wanted.

  ‘There we are, this is what I wanted.’ Nuala was calm and decisive, pointing into the bag. ‘Tannic acid. Do you remember I was telling you about that, Oisín?’

  ‘Comes from oak trees, well, well, well.’ Oisín took out the little flask and unstoppered it, sniffing its contents. ‘Smells of bark!’ he said happily. ‘I can let you have lots of oak bark when you are a famous physician, Nuala.’

  Nuala didn’t smile. All her attention was concentrated on her tiny patient. She took him from Mara’s arms and raised him up and down gently as if to remind herself of his size. Then she handed him back to Mara and found a tiny spoon from her bag and gave it to Oisín.

  ‘Fill the spoon,’ she said to him. ‘When I give you the word, just pour it straight down his throat.’ Quickly she put her finger under the tiny chin, tipped the baby’s head back, slipped a finger in through the toothless gums, pressing down the tongue, and said urgently, ‘Now!’

  And Oisín, as if he had been born to the profession, slid the spoon into the pink mouth and poured the dose down the throat.

  Cormac shuddered in Mara’s arms, opened his eyes indignantly, gave an enormous hiccup and then began to cry.

  ‘Good,’ said Nuala with satisfaction. ‘I was wondering how to rouse him. With an older child or an adult you would just make them walk up and down for about ten minutes, but crying is just as good. Don’t rock him, Mara, that will send him to sleep.’

  ‘Give him to me,’ said Oisín. He took the baby from her arms, handling him expertly and touched his finger to the small soft cheek. Cormac’s head twitched. Then Oisín touched the other cheek and Cormac reacted again. Next Oisín slapped him vigorously on the back and this time the large hiccup was followed by a spurt of watery vomit.

  ‘Good,’ said Nuala again. ‘Well done, Oisín. I must remember that. Of course babies get sick easily. Probably there isn’t much need to give them potions to make them vomit.’

  ‘Let’s keep him awake. Go on, make a noise, bang something.’ Directing his words at the two bodyguards, Oisín jigged the indignant, howling baby up and down a few times, rubbed his stomach and then once again tapped him neatly on the shoulder blades. This time, little Cormac heaved and vomited vigorously.

  ‘That’ll be it, I’d say,’ said Oisín, looking at him with satisfaction. ‘Here you are, Mother, you have him back.’

  Mara took the baby and held him close. Oisín had been clever, quick-thinking and adroit. His silent presence under the yew tree had been of great comfort to her. He had given her every chance to find out what drug had been given to the baby by Eileen and had only intervened when Eileen brandished the knife. He had summoned Nuala and the others without the waste of a second. He had immediately gone to search for the flask, knowing that it would be needed. He had handled the baby expertly. She owed him much. Somehow they had always had a slightly tense relationship – perhaps her own adoration of her lovely daughter and her reluctance to let her go had been at the root of that tension. That should, and could, end now, here in this tragic graveyard. Now was the moment to set things right between them. She looked at him and smiled.

  ‘Oisín,’ she said warmly, ‘if you call me “Mother” again, I’ll strangle you.’

  Nineteen

  Audacht Morainn

  (The Testament of Morann)

  No sin is greater than that of kin-slaying and suicide is regarded as a form of kin-slaying as a person who kills themselves, kills that which is nearest and dearest to him. It is a deed that fills all men with horror and it can only be condoned in the case of one who is temporarily or permanently deranged.

  ‘So tell us all about it. How did you decide that it was Eileen?’

  Mara sighed inwardly. She wished that she didn’t have to answer this question. She had just returned from a difficult interview with the priest at Kilcorney. Of course, it did look suspicious, the woman dying out there in the graveyard, her body slumped over the grave of her dead child, but she did not believe it to be any of her business to point the finger of suspicion and have Eileen declared a suicide, her body to be buried in unhallowed land, dug into some crossroads.

  ‘She had seemed very ill and then she died. I recited the act of contrition and she appeared to acknowledge it.’ Mara kept her tone neutral and cut short the interview by rising to her feet and excusing herself on the grounds of her legal duties. The priest would be even more suspicious when he heard of the judgement at Poulnabrone that Eileen was responsible for the murder of both Malachy and Seán, but that was a week away and by that stage the woman would be safely buried beside her baby son.

  ‘I should have guessed before,’ she said now in response to Turlough’s query. ‘It was stupid of me; but of course, I was feeling stupid on the day that Ciara came over and when she first spoke of Eileen.’

  ‘Just the after-effects of childbirth,’ said Nuala in a slightly superior manner.

  ‘But I can’t think what she said of such significance,’ said Sorcha. ‘And I wasn’t just after childbirth,’ she added to Nuala with a smile.

  ‘She spoke of the child dying of a fever – Eileen’s son, a very well-cared-for child – I should have enquired about that – should have found out that Malachy had been treating the child for a small wound and that he had been giving her comfrey to put on it – the same case as Blár, really, except that the child was very young, ran a fever and died of it. I perhaps didn’t want to upset her – didn’t want to bring up the subject until she did, herself – or perhaps, if I’m being honest, I didn’t want to think of a baby dying, not when Cormac and I had just gone through so much. But I just told myself that I should respect her privacy.’ It was sad, thought Mara, that if Eileen had not cared for her child so carefully she probably would not have brought him to Malachy. Very few of the farming community used the physician except in the case of an accident. Most had a knowledge of herbs handed down from mother to daughter, or from father to son. Most would have doctored a child’s infection themselves. No doubt, Malachy realized that Eileen, unlike most wives of shepherds, had her own silver gained from the sale of her embroidery at the markets. He probably gave her the same salve made from comfrey as he gave Blár, and it had the same effect of closing up the wound too quickly and allowing the yellow pus to fester inside the arm. The child, not being much more than a baby, sickened and died quickly.

  Mara rose to her feet and picked the baby from his cradle. She could not bear to have him out of her sight now, though he seemed to show no ill-effects from whatever dose that Eileen had given him.

  ‘Let’s go and have our supper, now,’ she said. She was not going to allow any more discussion of the murder, she decided. She would make her report to Turlough as king of the Burren, then she would tell the people of the kingdom when they assembled at Poulnabrone at the end of June. After that the whole affair would be finished. She led the way down the path between the baskets of sweet-smelling lilies. ‘We’ll have supper indoors,’ she said over her shoulder. ‘The sun seems to have deserted us tonight and those wretched midges might start biting.’

  The air was very heavy, she thought as she lit a few candles in her room. Sh
e hoped that the fine, sunny weather was not at an end. The air was still and the sky stayed overcast during their meal. She was not surprised when a clap of thunder came, just after Ardal and Nuala had left and Oisín and Sorcha had gone across to the guesthouse. Sorcha would come back later to feed little Cormac.

  ‘That will clear the air now,’ said Turlough, pushing open the casement window and leaning out. ‘A few hours of heavy rain is just what the countryside needs to get the grass growing again. What are you thinking about? You look very thoughtful.’

  ‘I was thinking about a wet nurse for Cormac,’ said Mara.

  ‘Hmm,’ said Turlough. He seemed to be about to say something else, but then checked himself. She understood his feelings, but Sorcha could not be asked to look after two babies for much longer. In any case, Oisín was restless and anxious to get back to Galway.

  ‘There’s a girl with a baby a little older than Cormac – Cliona is her name. I conducted her divorce case just the day before Cormac arrived. She’s struggling to look after a small farm and a herd of sheep at the moment, but it can’t be easy with a tiny baby to care for. I was thinking that if she agreed to live with me, either here or at Ballinalacken Castle, for six months, I would engage a man to look after her farm. Cumhal would help me to choose someone and he could keep an eye on it as well. What do you think?’

  ‘I think that’s great, if you are happy with her, are you?’ Turlough gave her a keen glance. ‘You never seemed too happy with Eileen, did you?’

  ‘No,’ said Mara. ‘I thought it was just me; I thought I was jealous of her. I should have relied on my own instincts. There was something strange about her. She said so little. I didn’t feel that I ever got to know her. Of course, I should have found out more. I blame myself so much. I could not have prevented Seán’s death – that happened while I was still ill and before Eileen ever came into this house. But she gave Fachtnan something to make him very ill and then . . .’

  ‘There must have been more than that, more than the fact that her own child had died; what else led you to her? Was she your only suspect? You said something about Blár O’Connor and Murrough of the Wolfhounds.’ Turlough’s question after a minute roused her from her thoughts. He looked at her keenly and she hoped that he had not guessed her vague suspicions of her own son-in-law.