Ardal moved the ladder and repositioned it so that the top now touched the wooden door – uninjured, noticed Mara. As if by a signal, Sorley put his hand on the key and climbed up without a word. The cords that suspended the key from his jerkin were long enough to permit him to undo the lock without untying. He went straight inside and all held their breath while Ardal climbed up also. They would both now be in the tiny round first-floor room which had seemed so hot a few hours ago at noon. She expected them to pull in the ladder in order to reach the top floor, but they did not do so; the inside ladder must not have been damaged, proof that the fire had been relatively trivial.
Mara, followed by her boys, moved forward and gazed upwards. Yes, they had succeeded in climbing up. Perhaps, she thought, hoping for the best, the relic had escaped. All might still be well and she and the boys could go back to their peaceful law school and get on with their studies without having to spend time working on unravelling a mystery which did not interest her greatly. She strained her ears, hoping against hope, but heard no word from either of them.
Then the sound of returning footsteps came to them. In a moment, Ardal was back down again and one look at his face, drained of all colour, told her what he had found. Father MacMahon groaned aloud and the boys shuffled their feet with embarrassment.
‘I think you had better look at this, Brehon.’ Ardal’s voice was very quiet and he held out a small object to her. The boys crowded around. ‘Don’t touch it – it’s hot.’ His left hand, she saw, had the mark of a burn on the fingers, but he did not appear to notice it, other than by using an unaccustomed right hand.
‘You know what it is, don’t you?’ he asked, and she nodded.
‘A traveller’s lamp,’ she said. Most travellers and pilgrims carried them in the satchels beside their horses. Small rounded lamps, the size of a baby’s fist, with a perforated lid that could be lifted and a spike inside where the stump of a candle could be held upright and safely. It had a small ring of quartz at the base. A quick slash with a knife against the quartz would produce a spark and the candle could be lit and safely enclosed with the perforated lid. Once it had been made from bronze, probably, but now the metal had dissolved and then set into an ugly lump.
And yet, oddly, there inside the lid was something that was not metal.
‘Vellum,’ said Cormac, looking over her shoulder.
Ardal took the tip of his knife and levered up the lid, wincing slightly as the heat from the metal inflamed his burn. The small piece of calf skin had half-dissolved in the heat. Cormac picked it out with his nails and held it up, waving it gently to and fro to cool it.
‘Why put a piece of vellum in the lamp?’ asked Slevin with interest. ‘Though vellum or parchment would burn well, wouldn’t it, Domhnall? I remember we had a small fire in our barn once and a lambskin that was pegged up to dry was the first thing to burn – it’s the fat in the skin, Brehon,’ he added, and Mara smiled an acknowledgement. She liked the way boys of Slevin’s age assumed that she had little knowledge of practical matters. They probably fancied that she did not know the origin of the parchment and vellum which they used in the law school.
‘I think I know why that piece of vellum was used here,’ said Domhnall. He and Slevin always worked well together; the more volatile Slevin often started an idea and Domhnall would then pursue it to its logical conclusion. His dark eyes now showed that concentration that made him such a good scholar. ‘Perhaps it was originally a longer piece of vellum than the bit we’ve got,’ he said slowly. ‘In that case it might have had one end touching that velvet cushion and the rest of it tucked in beside the candle.’
‘And the heat from the candle would warm the fat; it would blaze up quickly – and then the fire would travel along the line of the vellum.’ Slevin looked excited.
‘A clue! That vellum comes from the hand of the villain!’ exclaimed Cormac loudly and dramatically. He lowered his voice as Mara frowned, but whispered loudly in Art’s ear, ‘A pity it’s not a murder. I’d love a murder to solve.’
‘This is worse. A crime against God is a greater crime than a crime against man,’ said Art piously.
‘That’s not true, according to the law. According to the law, the worst crime is the rape of a girl in plaits,’ said Cormac airily.
‘There’s a word here, Brehon,’ said Domhnall. He held up the twisted piece of vellum to the light.
‘A number – the number 90.’ Slevin peered closely.
‘Funny letters,’ commented Finbar.
‘Let us see,’ commanded Cormac, pushing Finbar to one side. ‘T, A, G, E,’ he spelled out the letters with difficulty.
Mara held out her hand for the scrap of vellum. She peered at the ornately curling letters intently. ‘It’s German,’ she said slowly. She glanced over her shoulder but Father MacMahon had already come over and was standing just behind her and peering at the twist of vellum. Still, there was no help for it. The truth had to be uncovered and the matter dealt with by the law. A crime had been committed and restitution had to be made.
‘I think, Father,’ she said, ‘this is an indulgence – an indulgence written in the German language. “90 Tage” would probably refer to a remission of 90 days’ suffering in the fires of purgatory.’
‘German!’ Ardal’s voice was harsh with suspicion. ‘Hans Kaufmann?’
‘Or possibly one of the other pilgrims,’ said Mara. ‘These people have been visiting lots of shrines. Indulgences are to be … to be acquired at all of those places – and the language would not necessarily alter their efficacy in the eyes of the pilgrims. Is that not right, Father?’ She spoke from an automatic dislike to give a ruling before an investigation of the facts was completed, but she had little doubt in her own mind now that Hans Kaufmann was a follower of Luther and had destroyed the relic at his master’s behest – perhaps others, also. And had shown his contempt of indulgences by lighting his fire with one of them.
‘Get them back, all of them!’ Father MacMahon’s face was now so red that she feared he might have a fit.
Without a moment’s hesitation Ardal shouted ‘Danann!’, and followed by his steward he set off at a run towards the stables in front of the inn. Nechtan O’Quinn followed him, shouting at his own steward to get other men.
The die is cast, thought Mara. She wondered what would be the end of this. She feared fanaticism of any kind – it upset balances and checks. Who would take charge of this case – a matter of petty arson, really? After all, what was destroyed: a carved shrine blackened with smoke, slightly melted, a few of its ornate decorations slightly damaged – it could easily be repaired; a small velvet cushion burned and saturated with water; and a one-inch piece of wood …
Valueless, or beyond all value? That depended on the belief of the assessor. Or did it depend on the beliefs of the injured party – and did the beliefs of the guilty party play a part also?
Despite herself, Mara smiled slightly. She so loved to wrestle with a complicated problem like this. The Brehons of Ireland had an annual meeting in August of each year, and she thought that the events of this year of 1519, when the world of religion in the European countries was beginning to change, might be a very interesting time for the lawyers of Ireland to debate. In secrecy, of course; the Pope might have a rule against laity discussing such matters. Yes, she thought, there could be an interesting discussion next year.
But in the meantime there was another problem for her to deal with. Her eyes went to Father MacMahon, now striding up and down as though he could not wait for the transgressors to be hauled back in front of him.
The law of the Church or the law of the king – which was in charge of this affair? Mara set her lips firmly. King Turlough Donn was away in the north of Ireland on an important mission. It was up to her, as the King’s representative, to take this matter firmly into her hands and to render justice with mercy according to the tenets of Brehon law. This was a Gaelic kingdom, not England, not Rome. Still, there was no point in anticipati
ng trouble. She turned to her scholars.
‘Let’s go and search the round tower and see if we find anything,’ she proposed.
‘Clues,’ said Cormac enthusiastically, but it was the methodical Art who found the first clue.
At the bottom of the round tower, on its east side, just below where the door stood above head height, Sorley had planted a bush of fragrant lavender. Sheltered from cold winds, exposed to the sun and warmed by the retained heat from the stone wall behind it, the bush had flourished. It had reached a height of about four feet and then stopped growing, but year after year it had thickened and widened. On this fine day in early September the exquisite pale purple of the tightly-budded flowers seemed to glow in the heat and they were full of bees desperately seeking stores of honey before the winter.
But purple wasn’t the only colour to be seen. Lying on the far side of the clump was a small patch of deep rose. Art, careful as always, had not touched it, but called Mara instantly. For a moment she stood there, standing as he had directed her, halfway up the ladder that led to the raised doorway of the round tower, and gazed down. The shape of the object was hidden by the stems and flowers, but the colour was distinctive and she had seen it very recently.
The object, she thought, may have been held in the hand of someone who stood there on the ladder – perhaps taken off in order to hear better and then dropped. Or perhaps the bonnet was removed to show the one beauty – the silky blonde hair of a woman whose other beauties had been disfigured by scars,
But why not picked up? There could, she thought, be two possible reasons for that.
Mara went back down the ladder, skirted the wide bush and picked out the small, neat, finely woven bonnet dyed in that distinctive colour by the combination of blackberries and bilberries. She held it for a moment in her hand, reconstructing the scene.
Could Grace have followed the handsome young German over to the churchyard, climbed the ladder leading to the round tower, stood outside its massive door, perhaps put her ear to the large keyhole, removing her bonnet to hear all the better …?
And then something disturbed her. Perhaps Hans Kaufmann and Mór had shown signs of coming out, or perhaps she could not bear the murmurs any longer. But, of course, there was another possibility.
Could she have wanted to burn the relic in order to please a man who had secretly expressed contempt for it?
Whatever had happened she had fled, leaving the small bonnet behind, hidden by the purple flowers and the clusters of bees until Art’s sharp eyes spotted it.
When next Mara had seen Grace, her head had been demurely covered with the hood of her travelling cloak, her face almost invisible.
‘It’s Fachtnan,’ shouted Slevin, just at the moment when Mara was regretting that her boys, even Domhnall, were too young to appreciate the nuances of adult love and the problems of a woman, badly scarred and yet deeply attracted by a man in whose company she had already spent weeks. Fachtnan, she knew, would be able to bring a mature understanding and compassionate heart to this problem.
Fachtnan was Mara’s assistant teacher. He had first been a scholar in her school, had managed with enormous difficulty to pass the lowest grade for qualification as an aigne, and had stayed on as her assistant, trying desperately to pass the further examinations but finding a poor memory an insuperable handicap. Mara valued him immensely, not just for his gentle, kind nature but for his intelligence and his deep understanding. Eventually, when it became plain that he could progress no further, she had offered him this position as a permanent teaching assistant. It had been an impulse that she had never regretted, and now she often wondered how she could have managed without his companionship, his intuition and his caring relationship to the scholars that she taught. Six years ago he had become betrothed to Nuala the physician who owned property at Rathborney – only a couple of miles from the law school. As Nuala was Mara’s cousin and as dear to her as a daughter, it had been one of the happiest days in Mara’s life when Fachtnan and Nuala had married, and now they had three small girls – worshipped by their father.
Mara came forward now, her hands outstretched. ‘Fachtnan,’ she said impulsively. ‘You are just whom I was wishing for. What made you come? How on earth did you know about this?’
‘The O’Lochlainn sent one of his men to go to Cahermacnaghten, and Cumhal immediately sent someone down to Rathborney with a message,’ explained Fachtnan. Mara nodded in understanding. Ardal would have known that she would value help and had thought of her even in the course of the headlong chase to arrest the passage of the pilgrims to Aran.
‘That was like Ardal,’ she exclaimed thankfully. ‘Domhnall, you tell Fachtnan what happened. Art and Cormac, you go and have another look around the churchyard and see whether you can discover any more clues. Slevin and Finbar, go and ask Blad whether you could check the pilgrims’ bedrooms to see whether anything may have been left behind.’
She waited till they were all occupied and then mounted the ladder and went into the small, windowless first-floor room of the tower. Yes, she thought, a very cosy and private place for an assignation. With the key in her possession, Mór would have not failed to take advantage of it. Mara remembered the wink and the whisper in the ear of the German. Had others noticed it also? Of that she could not be sure.
Four
Seanchus Mór
(Great Traditions)
And this is the Seanchus Mór. Nine persons were appointed to arrange this book. Three bishops: Patrick, Benen and Cairnech; three kings: Laeghaire, Corc and Daire; two Brehons, learned in law: Rosa mac Trechim and Dubhthach; and one poet: Fengus. Nofis, therefore, is the name of this book that they arranged, that is the knowledge of nine persons.
It was said of St Patrick that there were three offences which he particularly forbade among the Irish:
Killing trained oxen.
Offences against milch cows.
Arson – in particular the burning of church buildings.
The small group of pilgrims was dwarfed by the size of its escort. Ardal, or his steward Danann, had picked up additional men from the tower house of Lissylisheen and were riding in the van of the group. Nechtan O’Quinn’s men, flamboyant in their red jerkins bearing the O’Quinn badge, and armed with prominent knives and throwing spears, were lined to the front and back of the three men and three women, enclosing them in a cordon of militant iron. And behind them, came another solid block of O’Lochlainn men, red heads flaming, blue eyes steady and cold. Ardal O’Lochlainn was a man who commanded the complete loyalty of his clan, and if he had not been totally loyal and devoted to his king, to Turlough Donn O’Brien, Mara would have been worried at the number of men-at-arms he kept, and trained, at his tower house so near to her law school.
Nechtan O’Quinn wore a triumphant air and his eyes avoided those of his wife, Narait, who had drawn near to the entrance gate as soon as the noise of horses’ hoofs had sounded on the limestone road. The beauty of eye and colouring had failed her in this moment and she looked pale, older and rather frightened. Like everyone else in the churchyard she was looking at one man.
In the front of the pilgrims, riding boldly erect, was the magnificent tall, broad figure of Hans Kaufmann. He looked at the group of people awaiting the arrival – Narait, Father MacMahon, Blad the innkeeper and his daughter Mór, Sorley the sexton, the man whose life’s blood had gone into enshrining, cherishing and guarding what he had considered to be one of the most sacred objects that the world held, a relic of the true cross – and then, unbelievably, Hans Kaufmann smiled. He smiled mockingly and lifted his hand to Sorley in a slight salute, as if to say, that was my lucky toss of the dice. Then he put his head back and roared with a great burst of laughter as though he were a spectator at some play.
Sorley started and glared at him. He took one step forward, fist raised, but Ardal O’Lochlainn, who was in the front of the cavalcade, shook his head firmly at the sexton and Mara felt a moment of thankfulness for his loyalty and his good judge
ments. She must, she made a mental note, remember to tell Turlough how very helpful Ardal had been to her. Turlough would be pleased. His opinion of the taoiseach of the O’Lochlainn clan on the Burren had always been high.
‘Madame, Madame, Madame,’ called out the prioress in agitated fashion, riding out from the group and towards Mara. ‘Why have you brought us back here – I understand that it is by your orders that our sacred journey has been interrupted? You cannot possibly think that I or my sisters or these gentlemen could have had anything to do with such a terrible thing.’
‘Probably not a crime, but an accident,’ said Hans Kaufmann in a light, careless tone. Mara saw him look appraisingly around the churchyard and then cast a shrewd glance at Ardal O’Lochlainn. Ardal looked straight back at him and there was a cold look in his eyes. Ardal’s suspicions, like her own, were directed at the German pilgrim, thought Mara. He had, after all, been recently to Rome and had heard all about the former German monk, Luther, and his impassioned outburst against such practices as the sale of indulgences and relics. Quite a few German pilgrims might be finding themselves under suspicion these days. Father Miguel, also, was looking at Hans Kaufmann and there was an ugly expression on his face. Mara felt a slight coldness go down her spine as she remembered the tales of the terrible Spanish Inquisition where thousands and thousands of innocent Jews and Muslims had been burned to death – and now the same thing was happening to Christians, who, like Martin Luther, rejected some of the teachings of Rome.
Cross of Vengeance (A Burren Mystery) Page 5