‘And Fachtnan,’ she said after he had hoisted up the boy, ‘I need Nuala. We must have a physician look at this body as soon as possible. He must not be moved from here until then. Do you think that Nuala can leave her hospital?’
‘There won’t be a problem.’ Fachtnan as Nuala’s husband was reassuring. ‘Peadar can cope with anything. In fact Nuala gets a bit annoyed that people keep asking for her as she thinks very highly of Peadar.’
‘That’s the Burren for you,’ said Mara, glad to find something that relaxed her lips into a smile. ‘Memories are long. Peadar will always be the boy from Scotland and Nuala will always be an O’Davoren of the Burren, descended from a long line of physicians.’ Then she noticed her son’s face, struggling between his strong affection for his foster brother and his desire to be manly and stand beside the naked dead body with the other scholars. She said hurriedly: ‘Will that pony be too much for you, Cormac, as well as your own? Should I send Domhnall with you?’ And then bowed her head meekly as he told her scornfully how very competent he was to lead one pony while seated on another. She waited until they had gone before turning to the three remaining scholars.
‘Well?’ she said, and there was a query in her voice.
‘The man is dead and he didn’t die of anything natural,’ said Slevin promptly.
‘Was it God that struck him down?’ faltered Finbar, looking with shrinking fascination at the body.
‘I told you, birdbrain; God has enough to do without going around and stripping clothes off people and laying them out, stone dead, on a slab,’ said Slevin scornfully. There was a slight note of hysteria in his voice so Mara did not reprove him, though she tried to ban such expressions as ‘birdbrain’ when they were discussing legal matters.
‘Not suicide,’ said Domhnall. He seemed the only one of the boys to be unmoved by the sight of the naked and dead body. ‘There’s no sign of a knife anywhere – I’ve looked on the ground all around the tomb and I haven’t seen anything.’
‘Where are his clothes?’ asked Finbar in a voice that he strove to make sound steady.
‘God took them up to heaven,’ snapped Slevin.
‘Let’s do a thorough search, and for the knife,’ put in Domhnall. ‘I suppose it’s just barely possible still that it might have been suicide and that he might have had the strength to have thrown it away before he died. I was just thinking that he would have dropped it. Do you think that he pricked his hands and his feet, stuck himself in the ribs, then pulled the knife out and threw it away so as to make himself look like a crucified Christ? Not likely,’ he finished, answering his own question.
‘Not likely,’ agreed Mara, ‘but you are quite correct in considering the question, Domhnall. The law only gives a verdict after all possible aspects of the puzzle have been carefully examined. Let’s look for the clothes, too.’
She joined in the search with the boys, though she was fairly certain in her own mind that this was not a case of suicide. Herr Kaufmann was not overwhelmed by any guilt that he had burned the relic of the true cross. Everything in his bearing had demonstrated a satisfaction with himself. He had, perhaps, been alarmed for his own safety, especially with the threat of the Spanish Inquisition hanging over him. His demand for sanctuary had stemmed from that, but he had not, she was sure, felt that he had done anything wrong. A fanatic she had thought him to be, before she had known anything of his crime, and she guessed that she was right in that deduction. Fanatics, in her experience, never felt guilt but were invariably sure that they were right in what they did.
‘Well, the clothes are definitely not in the circle,’ said Domhnall eventually. His eyes went across the body on the tomb. He was a very steady-nerved, mature boy, thought Mara. Would have made a good physician as well as a lawyer – his face bore no emotion other than a slight exasperation that there was a puzzle which he could not solve.
‘Is the heart on the left or the right side, Brehon?’ asked Slevin, joining him and taking one more look at the body.
‘Feel your own heart,’ said Domhnall, lifting a hand to his ribs. ‘Remember the twelve doors to the soul. Remember what Nuala told us – nearer to the left – so that knife would have gone straight through the ribs and into the heart, I’d say.’
‘He must have been killed first and then stripped. His clothes will be soaked in blood. When you stick a pig,’ said Slevin, a farmer’s son, ‘there’s buckets and buckets of blood. It would be all down the stone and in the grass here, if he had been killed here, but there’s not a sign.’
‘True,’ said Mara, marvelling at how quickly all of the boys had got used to the sight of the dead body. ‘So you think that he was killed elsewhere and then carried here?’
‘And that puts suicide out – you’re right, Slevin,’ said Domhnall. ‘Still, let’s have a good search on the path between here and the church to make sure that the knife is not anywhere there – dropped by the murderer on his way back, or the clothes, either.’ He turned away and then turned back again. ‘He would be very heavy to carry,’ he said, wondering. ‘Look at the size of him! What do you think, Slevin?’
‘Could be as much as a couple of hundredweight,’ said Slevin, no doubt calling on his knowledge of dead pigs, thought Mara. ‘Take two men to carry him and they’d have to be strong.’
‘And then they stripped him and laid him out on top of that old tomb,’ said Finbar. He was always anxious to join in with the two older boys, but they just shrugged and moved off, going down the narrow pathway, bending over the grass and searching it thoroughly.
‘Or carried him here and then stripped him.’
‘We’ll probably find the knife first; it would glint in the sun,’ said Slevin. ‘Let’s start with the bushes.’
They were thorough in their search, Domhnall allocating to each an area of the path, and then they swapped areas and searched again, but nothing was to be found – neither the knife, nor the clothing.
‘Don’t search too hard for the knife,’ said Mara. ‘It doesn’t look like suicide, so the knife is probably still in the possession of its owner. Most people carry a knife in their pouch. One good wipe and it could be put back in. Concentrate on looking for clothing.’
The path to the ancient tomb was a short one, but the boys then extended the search, going right back to the churchyard, and then coming back to start rooting under the gorse bushes that blocked the circle around the ancient tomb; they searched around in front, behind and on both sides of the sheep-shearing enclosure; they even looked up into trees and bushes, but nowhere was there a sign of the man’s clothing.
Hans Kaufmann must have been naked when he was killed.
And then carried out here and laid on the capstone of the ancient wedge tomb, his arms and legs arranged in semblance of the crucified Christ.
Six
Díre
(Payments)
A man’s foster brother is nearer and dearer to him than his brother of the same blood, especially if he is a ‘foster brother of the blanket, cup and bed’; in other words, where they are reared together from infancy.
If a man is killed, not only must his nearest male relation be compensated, but a fine named an airer, consisting of one-seventh of his honour price, is paid to his foster brother.
Mara glanced up at the sun. She had noted its position when Fachtnan left and it would be, she reckoned, a good hour before he and Nuala came back. No time should be lost with the investigation into the murder. She looked again at the naked body on the limestone slab, noticing that it still had potential to shock even someone as used to violent death as she was. And she nodded her head. Shock was often a useful weapon when looking to uncover the truth.
‘Fetch me my satchel from the mare, Finbar,’ she said, and seated herself on a nearby boulder, directing him to open it and hold the inkhorn in his hand while she took a small scrap of vellum and a well-trimmed quill. ‘The advantage of living on the Burren, Finbar, is that you can always find a stone exactly of the size and s
hape that you need,’ she said as she picked up a small, flat piece from the ground. She talked on as she wrote a few lines. She was sorry for the boy. He was immature and not too clever; neither Domhnall nor Slevin, friends for the last six years when they entered the law school together, had too much time for him. Now they were busy looking into the gorse bushes, methodically searching them inch by inch. If she asked, Domhnall would give Finbar something to do also, but they did not naturally include him.
‘Take this to the priest’s house at Kilnaboy and give it to the O’Lochlainn,’ she said, rolling up the note and tying it firmly with a piece of pink tape from her satchel. ‘Make sure that you hand it to him and to no one else. If he is not there, go and find him, and if by chance he has returned to Lissylisheen, then bring this straight back to me. In any case, return as soon as you have handed over the note.’
‘I’ll run there and run back,’ promised Finbar. He cast a smug glance at where Domhnall and Slevin were still searching the undergrowth and set off at a tearing pace. It would only take him a few minutes to arrive at the priest’s house and after that she had to rely on Ardal’s quick wits and his obedience to her as the representative of his king.
Of course, by now, she thought, with another quick glance at the sun, it was very possible that the absence of the false pilgrim from his place of sanctuary at the church might have been discovered and the hunt might be on. In fact, Ardal might even now be on the road to Cahermacnaghten Law School – though it would be more like him to send one of his men to fetch her and to lead the hunt for Hans Kaufmann himself. She was sure that he and his men had kept a good watch overnight on the boundaries of the sanctuary land.
And that meant that Hans Kaufmann, the German pilgrim, had been killed by someone from the inn, or from Father MacMahon’s house, or from the house of the remaining coarb, or heir of the monks of Kilnaboy, Nechtan O’Quinn. No outsider could have easily got through the guard on the boundaries. Only one road led into and out of Kilnaboy.
‘Do you feel sorry for him, Brehon?’ That was Domhnall. Her grandson’s shrewd eyes were fixed on her as she stood meditatively looking at the naked body.
‘I think I do, Domhnall,’ she said honestly. ‘He didn’t go about things the right way – it would have been better if he tried to persuade rather than to destroy, but he should not have been killed. That is a crime and a crime that was committed in our kingdom, so it is something that must be solved.’ Yes, I do feel grief, she thought, looking at the magnificent specimen of manhood, stretched out as though on a butcher’s slab.
‘Yes,’ she said aloud, ‘yes, I am sorry for him – he had his life ahead of him – he is probably only in his late twenties and perhaps as he grew older he would grow more tolerant and allow people to have their own beliefs and not try to change them. It’s sad when anyone doesn’t get a choice to repent of the errors of their youth. He was a fanatic, I suppose, and he died because of that.’ She wasn’t sure whether Domhnall understood her or not, but he nodded in that sage, serious way of his and she did not insult him by explaining further.
Fanaticism – I was right to mistrust it, her thoughts went on, though who could have foreseen that this would have been the ending of the pomp and ceremony of yesterday?
‘It’s something that you should remember, both of you,’ she said aloud, ‘and it is especially important if you become Brehons; people’s beliefs are important and should always be respected and listened to. Now,’ she said, changing her tone, ‘I have planned a shock for everyone at Kilnaboy. I’ve asked the O’Lochlainn to bring everyone here, but I haven’t told him why. I would like to notice their reactions – where should we stand so that we are out of the way and can watch without them seeing us?’
‘That’s clever,’ said Slevin with an admiring glance and then he gasped. ‘But Brehon, what about the prioress, and the other two ladies, her sisters; won’t they drop dead with shock when they see a naked man?’ He giggled nervously and Domhnall clapped his hand over his mouth, his dark brown eyes wide with a mixture of shock and amusement.
‘I didn’t drop dead with shock,’ said Mara with a shrug, but she knew that they regarded her as ‘the Brehon’, not as a delicately nurtured lady. ‘Let’s find a place to stand,’ she went on.
‘Over there,’ said Slevin promptly, pointing to a large gorse bush on the south side of the small, grassy enclosure. ‘They’ll come up that path and they’ll see the body on the tomb and that will keep them looking that way – in fact, you could say that they won’t be able to tear their eyes away from it.’ He gave another quick nervous giggle.
‘Let’s try,’ said Domhnall. ‘Brehon, you and Slevin go and stand by the gorse bush and I’ll come along the path and see whether I notice you.’
‘Better still, that sounds like Finbar coming – quick, let’s get over there and see whether he notices,’ said Slevin.
Finbar was running fast, judging by the pounding of his feet, and they barely had time to get over beside the exuberantly flowering gorse bush before he burst in, gasping, ‘Brehon!’
Not something else! thought Mara, but Finbar didn’t look distressed, just puzzled at their absence as he drew to a halt. Although he had already seen the marble-like figure on the slab, it drew his eye instantly and he stayed there for a long minute, eyeing it with an expression of uneasy fascination on his face. Yes, thought Mara, Slevin has chosen well. I’ll be able to see as well as listen. Hopefully, Ardal, who was quick-witted, would lead them all well into the enclosure. She had not told him what they had found, but if the absence of Hans Kaufmann from his sanctuary had been discovered, then he would have a shrewd idea of why she had sent for him to bring everyone to this spot.
‘Psst!’ exclaimed Domhnall and Finbar jumped – much to the amusement of the other two.
‘The púca are here,’ wailed Slevin.
‘That’s enough,’ said Mara. Her ear was caught by the sound of horse hoofs from Roughan Hill – someone was riding at breakneck speed towards them. It couldn’t be Nuala already. In any case, Nuala was a cool, calm, collected young woman who would never ride like that. She listened with half an ear to Finbar telling her that he had given her note to Ardal O’Lochlainn and then assuring Domhnall and Slevin that he had known it was they all the time and that he didn’t believe in ghosts or the púca, but her mind was on that horse getting nearer by the minute. She climbed on a tall boulder at the edge of the enclosure and then sighed with a mixture of annoyance and relief.
‘Cormac,’ she said with exasperation. ‘What on earth are you doing back here?’
‘Art didn’t want to go back to Brigid; he wanted Mama. He said he was sick and he started to cry so Fachtnan dropped him off at Dat’s place.’
‘And you?’ Fachtnan had probably made the right decision about Art, to bring him back to his mother, but she was surprised that he had allowed Cormac to come back. He would surely have guessed that she was only too pleased to get both nine-year-old boys away from this gruesome murder. She would have expected that Fachtnan would either have left him with his foster mother or else returned him to Brigid at the law school.
Cormac’s eyes fell before hers. ‘Well, I stayed with Art for a while, but then I told Mam that you … then I said that I had to get back … that you would need me.’
‘I see,’ said Mara, repressing strongly the slight feelings of jealousy that always arose when Cormac referred to his foster mother by the affectionate familiar name of Mam and his foster father as Dat. He had, after all, spent his first five years of life with them, she told herself. It was reasonable that he had a strong affection for them, but reason didn’t always shut out jealousy.
‘Stand over there, Cormac, behind me, and don’t breathe a word,’ said Domhnall sternly. Cormac was, in fact, Domhnall’s uncle, but Domhnall kept an effortless authority over the younger boys and Cormac meekly did as he was told. Mara promised herself to have a stern word with her son afterwards, but in the meantime there were more important matter
s to be dealt with. This murder had to be solved and solved quickly. The pilgrims could not be detained for long. They had a right to be allowed to proceed on their pilgrimage to Aran and to celebrate the feast day of the saint that they had come to honour.
‘They’re coming,’ said Domhnall in a low murmur.
It took a minute, but then Mara heard them – the high-pitched tones of the prioress, the sibilant Latin of Father Miguel, Father MacMahon agitated and appealing to Ardal to tell him why the church was empty, Sorley grumbling, Nechtan explaining that he, Ardal, Ardal’s steward and his men had patrolled the boundaries of the termon all night and that the German’s horse was still in the stable; there was a confused medley of voices and languages. She stayed very still and was pleased to note that the truant Cormac was solemn-faced and standing meekly behind Domhnall.
It was unfortunate, but perhaps inevitable that the prioress was first. The men had all conceded precedence to the ladies, and, just as Slevin had predicted, she threw a fit.
Mara made no move to step forward and allowed her two sisters to console her and to block the terrible sight from her chaste eyes. The exclamations and broken sobs sounded over-done, but then she would have expected someone like the prioress to react like that and Mara did not think that it was significant. She did not really suspect the prioress or her sisters. She could not imagine how they could have stripped the man, killed him and then carried him to this spot and hoisted him on to the slab.
In any case, she thought, the most likely reason why Hans Kaufmann had been killed was to punish him for his sin of sacrilege – the sacrilege of burning the sacred relic. The women pilgrims had not struck her as particularly religious. Probably they enjoyed the travel, and visiting holy shrines gave a perfectly respectable reason for journeying from country to country.
Cross of Vengeance (A Burren Mystery) Page 8