Cross of Vengeance (A Burren Mystery)

by Harrison, Cora

  But when Mara arrived back from her talk with Nuala she found him in an exasperated state. Cormac had been in one of his wild, silly moods and had translated a piece of Caesar’s wars in France into stupid schoolboy nonsense. Fachtnan did not offer to show it to her and said, when she enquired, that he had told Cormac to put it into the fire. She guessed that it might have had something about her in it because Fachtnan pretended that he had forgotten.

  He was, however, quite adamant that Cormac should repeat the work, and Cormac was equally adamant that he had done his best and that the translation was too hard for him. Mara glanced at the Latin just to satisfy Fachtnan, but knew that his knowledge of what the boys could or could not achieve would be as accurate as her own. If anything, he was inclined to be a little more lenient.

  No, there was no getting away from it, Cormac had to be punished, and as there was no corporal punishment in her school, then he had to be deprived of a treat. Cliona’s words – ‘I suppose it’s difficult for him, too’ – were in her mind, but she could not help it. Fachtnan’s authority had to be backed up; Cormac had to be disciplined for his insolence and bad behaviour, as well as for his idleness.

  There was an odd look of almost satisfaction from him when she told him that he would have to stay behind tomorrow and do the work that he had failed to do the day before. He said nothing, just bowed in a formal way, almost as though aping Domhnall, and then went off to bed in the scholars’ house.

  ‘Ah, poor little fellow,’ said Brigid. ‘Sure, he’s only young. Likes to have a joke, doesn’t he? He’s like the King, God bless him. He’s going to be sorry afterwards, but he won’t admit it. Not he, he’s too proud! Still, I’ll get him something nice for his lunch and Cumhal thinks that you’ll all be back by midday. He’s taking everyone on the farm, just leaving young Seánie with me in case there’s any problem with the cows. With that crowd the turf will be soon loaded on the carts. You enjoy yourself, Brehon. You have enough to worry you at the moment. You always did love the bog – even when you were only two or three years old. I can remember myself and Cumhal taking you and you insisted on serving the food to all of the workers. You had your little basket full of cakes and you walked up and down the line of them when they sat on the wall for their lunch. Shame Cormac has to miss it.’

  Mara concealed her exasperation. Brigid had looked after her when she was little, and then afterwards had been nurse to Sorcha, her daughter, was devoted to both of them, but now Cormac was the darling and could do no wrong.

  ‘What do you think about this murder, Brigid?’ She said the words in an effort to avoid an argument about Cormac’s punishment, but then found herself interested in Brigid’s ideas about the affair at Kilnaboy.

  ‘Struck down by God, they say; not that I believe that. Why would God give the satisfaction to that pagan of appearing like his beloved son? I ask you, Brehon, would that be right? No, you mark my words, Brehon, God didn’t do that. Some godless man did it and took the name of the Lord in vain,’ was Brigid’s viewpoint, and it interested Mara. Brigid had a great fund of common sense and could see to the heart of the matter very quickly.

  And, of course, she was right. It was, the ancient saints thought, a privilege and a sign of sanctity to have the marks of the crucifixion on your body. Would Father Miguel, whose knowledge of biblical matters must be as good as Brigid’s, have given the honour of – what was the name for it? – the stigmata, that was it, bearing the five marks of the crucified Christ to a man whom he described as an anti-Christ? The answer to that, in the case of a very literate priest, was, she thought, in the negative.

  But when it came to a man like Sorley, well, then she was not sure. And what about a lay person – might that not have occurred to him, or to her?

  ‘You put it out of your head for the moment and have a good day at the bog tomorrow morning, Brehon,’ said Brigid firmly. ‘You’ll come up with a name in a day or so. I was saying that to Eileen from Kilnaboy – came out here to know did I want to borrow her new cream skimmer; just to gossip, though, I’d say myself. So I said to her; “You don’t need to worry, Eileen; not you, nor anyone else in the parish. The Brehon, God bless her, she’ll know all about it in a couple of days. She puts all the facts into her brain, just like you and me put the cream into the churn. She gives them all a good stir, and out she comes with the solution.” That’s what I said to her, Brehon, and not a word of a lie!’ finished Brigid triumphantly.

  ‘I hope you are right,’ said Mara lightly, but she was touched by Brigid’s faith in her. Perhaps the air on the bog would work like the paddle in her brain, and the solution to this puzzling murder would surface just like a pound of the best butter.

  ‘I suppose that the people of Kilnaboy are very upset about the loss of the relic of the true cross, are they?’ she enquired. It was that more than the death of an unknown man which had sent Eileen over to garner some information from Brigid, she guessed.

  Brigid sniffed. ‘Very puffed up they were about that; Kilnaboy people always think that they are something special. And of course they’ve got that wishing hole – you’ve heard about that hole – you put your arm in if you have rheumatics or anything like that, or else you put your leg in, you say three Our Fathers and three Hail Marys and you wouldn’t credit it, but within a week, or a month or so, well, you’d be as good as new. Well, that’s what the people of Kilnaboy say, and it would be a brave person would give them the lie.’

  ‘I’m not sure that I’ve heard about that hole,’ said Mara idly, half-listening and half-meditating on her problems.

  But then she stiffened as Brigid said: ‘It’s a long time since I’ve been over there, but it was outside the church – at the side of one of these old tombs. There was a loose stone – a stone that fitted into another stone – Cumhal will remember – but it was just beyond the churchyard. Funny little circular place – they used to gather the sheep there.’

  ‘I know where you mean, Brigid,’ said Mara. She was ominously still. Then she moved towards the stable yard and without a word, and avoiding the gaze of her dear old mare, Brig, but giving her an apologetic pat on the shoulder, she took the cob – the cob who was everyone’s horse and who was used for all of the odd jobs and errands on a busy farm like her own. Quickly she saddled it herself and rode out of the law school yard.

  She was not going to be able to sleep until she verified her suspicions that this ancient hole, suddenly recollected by Brigid, was hiding a recent secret.

  The sun had sunken down behind the mountain range to the west of the Burren by the time she reached Kilnaboy. The lights were on in the priest’s house and a couple of candles from within the church cast pools of light and shade on to the path around it. The tower house where Nechtan and his wife Narait lived in childless misery was illuminated in every window. The inn also had a cheerful blaze.

  Mara did not go near to the stables, but rode the placid cob into the churchyard and urged him along the path that led to the gorse-enclosed circle. It was getting dark now, but luckily the moon was waxing and its light fell along the path. Mara went steadily ahead, noting how the tall white flowers of the marsh maidens reflected and enhanced the light, whereas the crimson cranesbills were almost black.

  This reminded her of the altar carpet and the blood that had been spilled on it, and she set her lips and went steadily on until she reached the tomb.

  Without its deadly burden of the corpse of the false pilgrim, the tomb was just part of the landscape, one of the many hundreds that were dotted all over the kingdom of the Burren. But did it still hold a secret? Mara went first to one side and then to the other. And on the eastern flank she glimpsed what Brigid had reminded her of.

  The large stone that formed the side of the wedge tomb had a flaw. Somehow the porous limestone had crumbled away with the acidity of the rainwater and had left a large, irregular oval-shaped hole in its side. And someone, in the dim and distant past, someone with infinite patience and skill, had carved a stone, a l
ump of limestone, so that it fitted almost exactly into the boulder.

  And that was what was removed when the people of the parish, crippled with rheumatism, or possessing a withered arm, or broken leg, or an ankle that refused to heal, came here to this enclosed spot, took out the stone and thrust a limb into the gap left exposed.

  Mara went down on her knees and carefully worked the limestone plug loose from its socket. Yes, there was the hole. And within the hole there was a gleam of white. Mara glanced back at the moon in the eastern sky and then leaned forward and reached in. Her fingers met fibre – soft, fine, well-woven wool. She drew the article from its hiding place. It was a doublet woven from the finest weavings. She put it aside and reached in again. This time she found linen, a shirt – full sleeves, but crumpled and smelling slightly of sweat – a pair of hose, braies and last of all two sturdy leather boots.

  Mara held up to the light of the moon the braies and then the shirt – both were gleaming white and there was not a drop of blood on them. So whosoever murdered Hans Kaufmann in the church had murdered him when he was naked and had then carried his clothes out and hidden them inside this place sacred to the people of Kilnaboy when suffering from strains and aches of the limbs. But on their way they had dropped the codpiece worn by this fashionable young man.

  Carefully Mara replaced all of the articles within their hiding place and then she picked up the stone. It took a little effort, but after some twisting and manoeuvring it fitted back into its hole. After it was replaced Mara sat very still for a moment.

  That morning the five remaining pilgrims; Nechtan O’Quinn, who had lived here at Kilnaboy Castle all of his life, and his wife Narait who had been with him for two years; Father MacMahon; his sexton, Sorley; Blad; his daughter Mór – all had stood there while she showed them the naked body of the murdered man and not one of them had drawn her attention to the fact that there was a gap in the side stone of the tomb.

  Did they think it didn’t matter?

  Was the sight of the dead body so overwhelming that they forgot?

  Or was there another more sinister reason?

  Thirteen

  Cis Lir Fodla Tire?

  (How Many Kinds of Land Are There?)

  1. Best arable land suitable for corn, milk, flax, woad, honey, madder and fruit. It should be weed-free and not require manure.

  2. Hill arable land. Can grow good ash trees and has water nearby.

  3. Woodland that can be cleared by the axe and turned into arable land.

  4. Rough land covered with a mixture of rushes and grasses – suitable for the grazing of young bullocks.

  5. Mountain pasture – only suitable for sheep and goats.

  6. Wet land: marsh and bog land.

  The sun was a dark red ball above the mountains to the east when the party from the law school set out for the bog. The night had been much cooler and the air felt more like September than had the preceding days when it seemed as though the sultriness of August would never come to an end. Mara’s old mare whinnied energetically and surged out in front of the boys’ ponies as though to show that she was as young as any of them.

  The bog was part of common land for the inhabitants of the six townlands that lay around Cahermacnaghten. It was situated, oddly enough, halfway up the side of a mountain, apparently built up on one of those flat limestone tablelands – perhaps where an old lake had quickly filled with trees and other vegetation. Even now, huge, gnarled stone-hard tree trunks were dug out from time to time.

  The sun was showing its rays by the time they arrived and the surface of the bog glistened a deep brown-black and smelled pungently of fresh peat. The view up there was extraordinary – to the west was the brilliantly sparkling pale blue sea, with its white-capped waves, on which seemed to float the Aran Islands; to the north was the rounded summit of Slieve Elva, and behind and below them was the valley land. Mara drew in a breath of satisfaction looking at the fluffy white heads of the cotton flowers and the myriad of bees that haunted the purple ling. Overhead a hen harrier flew with great beats of her wings and in the centre of the bog small piles of dried sods were warmed by the early-morning sun into a golden brown.

  Although the party from the law school arrived by six o’clock, dozens of people from the surrounding farms were already hard at work.

  Mara walked around exchanging the traditional greeting of ‘God bless the work’, and somehow it felt very soothing to be greeted so warmly by all. It would have been tempting to have spent the morning at her desk, or even pursuing her enquiries in Kilnaboy, but she had always gone to the bog every September since she was a child, and if she had missed this year there would have been enquiries about her absence. It was in any case, she always felt, an important part of her work to be a member of the community. After all, Brehon law only worked if the community willed it to work. She had a friend who was a lawyer in the English tradition, working in the city of Galway, and he could never understand how they managed without the threat of prison or the hangman’s noose, never could understand how pride in family and clan could ensure the good behaviour of each and every member of this close-knit society.

  The turf on their patch was ready to be taken home – Mara could see instantly that the colour of their winter fuel was now a pale brown, very different from the rather black-looking sods that Nechtan’s men had been stacking the day before. Cumhal was an excellent farm manager and Mara lived in fear that he and Brigid, both of whom had served her father before her, would decide to retire. With that in mind she continually insisted on them employing adequate staff. If only Cumhal would go on supervising she would not ask any work of him, but, as usual, despite being a man in his sixties, he was the most active of all, effortlessly swinging himself up on to the back of the cart and unloading the turf barrows that were heaped up there and handing them over to his workers with many instructions about how to stack the turf and avoid breaking the sods.

  Finbar shot past her with one of the turf barrows, narrowly missing entangling her gown and shouting out, ‘Sorry, Brehon, did I hit your knee?’ And suddenly Mara realized something.

  Knee-high! she said to herself. The turf barrows were all knee-high, light and long – broad enough and long enough to carry the body of a man. She had been considering Sorley, whose muscles were toughened by forty years of gravedigging, when thinking about Nuala’s suggestion of lifting the corpse on to a horse, but a long, low, light, two-wheeled turf barrow was a different matter. A weight could be pushed on that with little effort – and it would certainly be narrow enough to be wheeled in through the church door to the lowest step that led up to the altar.

  She gazed at the clumps of rushes and tufts of purple moor grass beside the path, but her mind was seeing the churchyard at Kilnaboy. Nechtan’s men had been stacking the turf. There had been three or four turf barrows coming and going from the piled-up cart. No doubt, though this was something which she could check, they may have been left accessible during the night – the work was still going on the following morning. This meant that the murderer could have wheeled one into the church. With their handles and their two props at the back to keep them level during loading, these turf barrows were ideal for moving a heavy weight with relatively little effort.

  Any able-bodied man – Father Miguel, Brother Cosimo, Father MacMahon, Blad or Sorley – could easily have rolled Hans Kaufmann from the altar steps to the barrow and from the barrow to the top of the wedge tomb. But what about women?

  Mara went on mechanically greeting, admiring the quality of the turf, enquiring about family members – one very small portion of her mind was all that was needed for these familiar courtesies. The rest of her mind was furiously active – churning the evidence, she thought to herself with a small smile, as she remembered Brigid’s words.

  Hans Kaufmann was a man with a mission. He had not only wanted to destroy the faith in relics and other such miracles, but also to expose corruption within the Roman Church. He had found out about Brother Cosimo
’s theft of a valuable crucifix. Had he found out some other guilty secrets? The reaction of the prioress, Mara thought, as she looked back, had been over-done – as good as a play, Slevin had said, and he was right. It had been a bit of play-acting. So had Hans Kaufmann known of a guilty secret of the prioress? Ardal had been talking to Father MacMahon about this Martin Luther and how he had loved to expose sins like sodomy, indecent living or illicit pregnancies among the priests and nuns, in their parishes, monasteries, abbeys and convents.

  An illegitimate daughter! Perhaps the prioress had an illegitimate daughter. Mara’s mind went to the letter K – K for kind – the German word for child. It might have referred to one of the other nuns, but could have meant the prioress herself. The huge age difference between the girl Grace and her supposed sisters – what if the prioress had slipped, had a secret love affair, had given birth to a daughter and then her family had rallied around; her mother had taken the baby, and with the help of Bess, had reared her. But if Grace herself knew the secret, she might have betrayed it to Hans Kaufmann. There was little doubt in Mara’s mind that the girl had been attracted to the handsome young pilgrim.

  Hans Kaufmann was a fanatic, Mara told herself. Fanatics always feel that the end justifies the means. The young girl’s murmured confession of her secret and illegitimate birth would only be grist to his mill. What would he have done? Well, he would have confronted the prioress, possibly taken money from her, threatened to expose her, certainly left her anxious and vulnerable. She would have confided in Bess.

  Together they could have disposed of this false pilgrim.

  Was the girl Grace involved?

  Mara thought not. Her sensitivity, and her fondness for the German pilgrim might have caused trouble for the other two more practical ladies.

  The prioress and her sister the widow could have visited the church after Mór had brought supper to the pilgrim. Hans would, according to Nuala, have been quite drunk at the time, might have mocked their request for clemency, for silence. And then one of them, the delicate-minded prioress or the tough-minded widow, stuck a knife in him.