Now Sorley, she thought, had an odd look – not too upset, almost glumly satisfied.
Blad, well, he crossed himself in the conventional manner of people seeing a dead body. But shocked? No, not really, she thought. More like a man putting on some show of sorrow when attending the traditional wake of a long-term enemy. Mór was very white, but had herself well in hand – not stunned by the nakedness of the corpse, just looking slightly to the left of it.
Nechtan – calm, dignified, not at all like the gossipy, friendly Nechtan that she had known for so long. Perhaps, she thought with interest, the revival of the old traditions had lent him this new gravity, a new solemnity. He was, after all, the coarb, the inheritor of the lands, possessions, and, to a certain extent, the revenues of those monks of old who had come to settle on the banks of the River Fergus, and who had built their magnificent stone church with its inlaid stone cross in the gable.
And Narait, Nechtan’s wife? Bewildered … bewildered at first, amended Mara. And then? And then – well, terrified would be the only word for her expression. Terrified and eyeing her husband with fearful mistrust. After one frightened glance, her eyes avoided the figure of the naked man.
And the clerics? Well, Brother Cosimo had a look of grim satisfaction, almost as though he were thinking that the false pilgrim had been satisfactorily punished – or was it that he felt a satisfaction at the sight of his handiwork?
Father MacMahon was very pale, immediately and mechanically crossing himself and muttering a prayer.
And Father Miguel. Now that was interesting, thought Mara. Father Miguel’s fine Spanish profile, viewed in the light of the morning sun, silhouetted against the western sky, had a look of fury – lips compressed, two patches of red on the high cheekbones, dark brows slightly raised, black eyes burning. He had the appearance of a man baulked of his prey. Or was it just that the very sight of the German pilgrim reminded him of the terrible sin committed when the relic of the true cross had been destroyed?
Mara stepped forward. ‘As you can see …’ she said, pitching her voice to a level where it smothered the hysterical sobs of the prioress. ‘As you see,’ she repeated when there was a cessation in the frenzied noises, ‘someone has desecrated the sacredness of the sanctuary evoked by Herr Hans Kaufmann. The man threw himself upon the mercy of the church and this God-given protection was profaned.’
And that, she thought, was a masterly way of putting things. The clerics of three countries – Ireland, Spain and Italy – were looking at her guiltily, and even old Sorley, dour and gruff from long years of gravedigging, eyed her with a certain measure of shame. Nechtan tightened his lips and looked straight ahead of him and his wife gazed up at him with that unusual air of timidity. Blad, the innkeeper, gave a quick, impatient snort, and Mór, his daughter, shook her head sadly and mopped her eyes with a snowy, well-laundered handkerchief. Only the prioress ignored her words and continued to shudder and sob artistically.
Mara gave them a minute to think about this and then changed her tone to a more business-like one. ‘Who saw Hans Kaufmann since the hour when I left Kilnaboy yesterday?’ she asked.
‘I brought him supper at about an hour after sunset,’ said Mór after a pause during which all looked at each other and then at the ground beneath their feet – anywhere except at the body on the slab.
‘Yes, I remember it was agreed that the pilgrim should have supper,’ said Mara with a nod. ‘So just take us through it, Mór.’
‘Well, I went over with some food in a basket, in a couple of baskets, Brehon,’ said Mór. Her voice was hesitant. Mara waited. She could see that Mór was wondering whether to tell her something or not.
‘And was all as you expected to find it?’ she queried in a matter-of-fact way.
‘Well, no, Brehon.’ Mór seemed relieved to be asked that question. ‘The church was locked, Brehon, and I didn’t expect that. I thought that it had been agreed that the church would be left open.’ She looked across at Nechtan and he frowned but said nothing.
‘So you had to go over to Father MacMahon and fetch the key?’ Mara wondered whether the Spaniard had locked the church. Father Miguel certainly looked pleased with himself when he heard Mór’s words, but then perhaps that was his normal expression.
Mór and her father exchanged looks and Father MacMahon flushed a patchily red colour and stared so fixedly and with such a heavy frown at the gorse bush that Mara turned her head to see what he was looking at. Cormac, she noticed, had his right hand half-raised as though he were in the school room asking permission to speak and wore a slight grin on his face. The pale green eyes that he had inherited from his father were alight with amusement. Mara frowned slightly and Domhnall nudged him hard in the ribs. Mara turned her attention back to Father MacMahon and raised her black eyebrows at him. He continued to look uncomfortable and she waited.
‘She fetched it herself,’ he said eventually, the words spurting out. His eyes had an embarrassed look.
‘Fetched it herself,’ repeated Mara. She was beginning to understand. She should have guessed. Now she knew what Cormac wanted to tell her. He knew Kilnaboy far better than she did. His father, King Turlough, was a man who loved to linger over his food, and while he sipped a post-meal brandy with Blad, his youngest son was probably down by the river or climbing trees in the churchyard. Since no one else seemed about to volunteer any information, she turned to Cormac.
‘You have some information for me, Cormac?’ she queried.
‘Just that the key is usually kept in a hollow behind the … behind the statue above the south door,’ he said, biting his lips while his eyes slid sideways to look at Slevin’s flushed face.
Mara sighed. She knew what was amusing them. In fact, that statue that he spoke of – a sheela-na-gig it was called – she had always thought was an amazing thing to have above a church door, though Turlough had assured her that there were many of them in churches all over the kingdom of Thomond. It was a carved figure of a woman displaying her enormous genitals and was, according to Turlough, supposed to show that lust was a terrible thing. She was surprised that Father MacMahon would place the key above that figure.
‘I suppose,’ she said aloud, ‘that from time immemorial, the church key has been placed in that spot.’ That would, she thought, have been the only reason for such a bizarre choice. Custom, in the kingdom of the Burren, was a hallowed thing.
‘That’s right, Brehon,’ said Blad, looking uncomfortable. He shot a quick glance at his daughter and then looked at the ground again.
‘And you found the door locked, looked up, found the key, and then unlocked it. Is that right, Mór?’
‘That’s right, Brehon,’ said Mór demurely.
‘And replaced the key.’
‘I thought it had probably been locked by mistake, Brehon,’ explained Mór.
‘Who would know that the key was placed there?’ Mara addressed herself to Sorley and he answered readily.
‘Everyone knows that, Brehon. Everyone in the parish.’
‘And the pilgrims?’ Mara switched quickly to Latin and her eyes went to the silent clerics. No one answered, but the moue of distaste on the prioress’s lips, the slight smile on the widow’s face, and the embarrassed blush on the cheeks of the youngest sister told her that the ladies, at least, had viewed this ‘sheela-na-gig’.
‘We saw the church being locked after the service of Benediction on the eve of the Feast of the Holy Cross,’ said Brother Cosimo eventually. Father Miguel, noted Mara, did not speak.
‘They stood around waiting for you to store the key?’ Mara switched back to Gaelic, addressing Sorley.
‘The ladies were there,’ he said. ‘That one,’ he nodded at the prioress with an annoyed air, ‘she made a sort of clicking with her tongue and I think that the brother and the priest came across then. They had been looking at the tomb slab with the bell and the crosier in the churchyard – the grave of the pilgrim of time long gone by.’
‘I did not noti
ce where the key was placed,’ said Brother Cosimo stiffly. So he has picked up a little Gaelic, thought Mara – interesting.
‘Did you see it, Father Miguel?’ Mara looked across at the Spanish priest, but translated the question into Latin.
‘I think I may have. Yes, I did – an interesting old carving.’ The words were dismissive but the eyes were keen. He was eyeing her with a look of dislike and Mara returned his gaze, holding it steadily until eventually he looked away.
No Spanish Inquisition here, Father, she thought triumphantly. No burning, no torture. Nevertheless, I am in charge and everything, from now until the moment when the murderer is convicted and punished, must go according to my word and my directions.
‘I apologise, Father MacMahon,’ she said, looking towards the priest, ‘but even the church is under my authority until the crime is solved.’
‘But, Brehon,’ stuttered Father MacMahon, now speaking Gaelic, ‘I wasn’t the one that locked the church; I didn’t go near the place.’
‘It wasn’t the Father,’ confirmed Sorley. ‘He didn’t have a hand in it. It was that priest there, I guess. He was hanging around the churchyard and he seemed to be waiting until I went in for my supper.’ He, of course, also spoke in Gaelic, but his finger pointing directly at the Spaniard made his meaning obvious to all.
‘Did you lock the door, Father Miguel?’ asked Mara in Latin.
There was a moment’s silence, but then the Spanish priest nodded defiantly.
‘Yes, I did,’ he said. ‘I was not satisfied that sufficient arrangements had been made to keep the guilty man safe.’
Mara was not sure whether Ardal and Nechtan understood the heavily accented Latin, but she thought it wasn’t worth pursuing the point. Hans Kaufmann had been alive and well, and had eaten a good supper when Mór unlocked the door, so the locked door was not perhaps of significance at the moment.
Except so far as it showed the depths of Father Miguel’s feelings towards the dead man and his abhorrence of the crime committed when the relic was burned.
‘The question now,’ she said aloud, ‘is where are the clothes belonging to the dead man? They don’t seem to be here so they must be at the church, I think. Will you follow me? Domhnall, translate, please.’
Domhnall, at ease with English, Latin and Irish, and having a working knowledge of Spanish from a very early age when he had accompanied his merchant father, Oisín, to the busy docks of Galway city, translated with ease as she led the way towards the church. There was no sign of the clothes anywhere in the church itself, but behind the altar were the German pilgrim’s two leather satchels. Mara opened them and looked through the contents. Hans Kaufmann, she remembered, had been wearing a blue doublet, but only a green one was to be found and the linen was starched and the folds of ironing still sharply creased into the undergarments. Mara took out the small pile of shirts, shook them open and then handed them to Domhnall to refold. They had not been worn. The same with braies – they could never have been worn and still smelled of the laundry maid’s soap. The mystery of the missing clothes had still to be solved. The second satchel held no clothes, but a leather bag filled to the brim with coins – at a quick glance, Mara could see a mixture of German, Italian and English coins. But still no sign of the clothes that Hans Kaufmann had been wearing yesterday.
Who had violated the sanctuary of the church? Who had killed the German pilgrim? And how had his clothes been stripped from him? And when his body had been taken to that screened-off spot, not far from the church, but also not far from the tower house where Nechtan and his wife lived, and from the small house which was the residence of the priest – well, what had happened next? One by one, Mara methodically tabulated the questions to be answered in a corner of her mind and then turned her attention to the people who had been present in the vicinity of the church during the night when the German pilgrim was killed.
No one, she noticed as she came out from behind the altar and eyed them keenly, had asked any of the normal questions. How did the body come to be in the open, out just beyond the churchyard? Why was it placed on the capstone of the ancient tomb? What is the significance of the missing clothes? She would have expected these questions to have come tumbling out, but there was a strange and uneasy silence.
‘Can anyone suggest where the clothes of the dead man may be hidden?’ she asked. ‘My boys have already searched the ground around the tomb and the pathway that leads back to the church.’
A perfunctory effort was made by all to search the bare church, but no one seemed to be particularly interested and soon they were all back and gathered around her. The boys continued to root around the little loft where the choir would gather during a service, but they did so quietly and she allowed them to continue.
‘Did anyone else see Hans Kaufmann alive yesterday evening?’ she asked. ‘You left the church unlocked, didn’t you, Mór, once you had served him with his evening meal.’ She waited for Mór’s nod before continuing, ‘Therefore anyone could have gone into the church after she left, perhaps,’ she ended blandly, ‘in order to convince him of his wrong-doing by the aid of argument.’
They all started and moved their eyes from the ground towards her face and then looked at one another. Even the prioress was now silent and defiant.
‘I think that I was probably the last person to see him when I brought his supper,’ said Mór bravely. ‘He said that he was sleepy after he had eaten – he put his hands together like this and rested his head on them. He was teaching me some words in German.’ The memory brought a flush to her cheek and a tear to her eye. Domhnall translated the Gaelic rapidly into Latin and then English for the sake of the foreign pilgrims. Time I started that clever boy on learning Greek, thought Mara, admiring his fluency in languages, and then dismissed the irrelevance.
‘And what about breakfast?’ she enquired innocently.
A cloud came across Mór’s face. She put away her handkerchief and faced Mara defiantly. ‘He told me not to bring breakfast, Brehon,’ she said defiantly.
‘In what language?’ queried Mara with interest.
Mór’s eyes fell before hers, but then she lifted them. ‘In Latin, Brehon,’ she said. ‘I know something of the language – I have learned it so that I can talk with the pilgrims who come here.’
Easy to find out if that is true, thought Mara. I won’t press her now. She looked at the other pilgrims.
‘Have any of you, since the moment when he claimed sanctuary at this very spot, seen this man?’ Dramatically she pointed across at the altar steps and noted how the twelve people who had crowded into the small space between the altar and the front row of seats seemed to shrink back on themselves and avoid looking at her.
‘No one? No priest went to pray with him, to offer him spiritual guidance, to debate the precepts of Martin Luther with him? No one, except Mór, went to offer him hospitality – food, a drink, a blanket?’ Her eyes wandered across the faces, but all heads were being firmly shaken.
‘In that case,’ she continued, ‘I’d like you all to go back to where you are staying and to wait until I have time to question you all individually. I assure you that I will put everything into solving this murder as soon as possible and then only the guilty person will be detained.’ She spoke slowly, leaving a pause after every sentence to allow Domhnall to translate.
‘Guilty person!’ exclaimed the prioress, suddenly deciding to take part. ‘What can you mean, Madame?’
‘“Brehon” is what I am called,’ said Mara coldly. ‘I am the king’s representative in the kingdom of the Burren, just as a sergeant-at-law is in the kingdom of England. The guilty person will be the one that killed Hans Kaufmann.’
‘But what if he was struck down by God?’ The prioress asked the question shrilly.
Mara did not answer. She turned to Ardal and Nechtan. ‘I shall rely on you both to keep a guard around the perimeter of Kilnaboy, its houses, church and inn. No one is to go in or out without my permission. Now all
may go back to the inn.’
They went off, looking, to her eyes, more meditative than guilty. If she had to plump for someone at this moment, she thought, glad that her thoughts remained secret within her own head, she would plump for the Spaniard, Father Miguel. He was a fanatic and she distrusted fanatics. Someone killed Hans Kaufmann and she had little doubt that his death was due in some way to the burning of the relic of the true cross. Otherwise, why lay the corpse out like that in a ghastly simulacrum of the crucified Christ?
The four boys stayed still until the door shut behind them.
‘Brehon,’ said Finbar in her ear, and then more incessantly, ‘Brehon! I wanted to tell you something.’
‘Sorry, Finbar,’ she said, immediately conscious of feelings of compunction. ‘Weren’t you saying something to me just before the others came?’
‘I was just saying that I saw something funny when I was running back. I was going to tell you about it, but then you were all hiding and Domhnall—’
‘Brehon,’ said Cormac, ‘I can see where he was killed.’
‘What!’ she exclaimed.
He did not answer but went and picked up a candelabrum from the side of the altar steps, holding it high and stepping down on to the tiled floor. There was a look of triumph on his face and in a moment she saw why.
The church was full of shadows and the carpet on the steps leading up to the altar had looked almost black until Cormac held the tall, thick candles of beeswax above his head. Now the carpet glowed in its pristine crimson shade, all except one step – the bottom step. And that was dark – almost black in colour.
Cormac handed the candelabrum to Finbar and bent down, touching the carpet with his finger.
‘It’s wet!’ he said.
‘With blood,’ breathed Finbar, but he held the candles aloft and did not move. Domhnall pushed past him and he also bent down and touched the carpet.
‘It’s just wet,’ he said in disappointed tones.
‘Definitely not blood,’ confirmed Slevin. ‘It’s not sticky.’
Cross of Vengeance (A Burren Mystery) Page 9