Cross of Vengeance (A Burren Mystery)

by Harrison, Cora

  So far, so good.

  But before the knife was stuck into him, he had been stripped. The evidence of the clothes was quite unmistakable. These garments which she had discovered in the wishing hole bore not even a drop of blood, and they had definitely been those worn by Hans Kaufmann when he had sought sanctuary in the church earlier that day.

  So how had he been stripped? Mara’s mind went back to Cormac’s suggestion that he might have done it for a dare. Or perhaps out of fear. What if a man or a woman held a knife to his throat, or to another part of his anatomy – and Mara’s mind went to the earthy Bess – and threatened to kill him if he did not strip?

  But how could they have stabbed the man to death? He was far too strong for one to hold while the other killed. It just didn’t make sense.

  Or was it Sorley, a man whose whole life was bound up in his worship of the relic entrusted to his care, in the round tower that he and his father had built, in the round tower which had been desecrated by the German pilgrim?

  Or could it have been a group of people? If that was the way, then the whole ghastly simulation of a crucified Christ had been planned from the beginning. And that meant, thought Mara, her eyes fixed intently on a grey furry butterfly quivering on the tiny pink cups of the heather flowers, that meant that some sort of perverted religious motive must have been at the back of the murder. ‘God is not mocked’ were the words on the scroll inserted into the crown of thorns, and perhaps that was a message to others that might come to this sacred place at Kilnaboy, where the double-armed cross built into the gable of the stone church proclaimed the resting place of the venerated relic of the Holy Cross. She stared for a moment at the four round eyes marked on the butterfly wings, giving the insect an owl-like look of wisdom. There is something in this case that I am not seeing, she thought impatiently. Perhaps now that I am forty-six years old my brain is not as keen as it used to be. The thought was a depressing one.

  ‘Thinking about the case, are you, Brehon?’ Fachtnan came over and stood beside her.

  ‘An excuse for idleness,’ said Mara, watching the busy figures everywhere, backs bent, and hands busily picking up and tossing the light, well-dried sods. ‘Still, coming to the bog has triggered some ideas in me,’ she added. ‘It suddenly occurred to me that Nechtan’s men were using a couple of turf barrows to unload the cart on the day that the German was killed. They would have been ideal for taking the body from the church to the tomb – long enough and broad enough for the body, but narrow enough and light enough to take into the church – the weather was so dry up to then that they could have left no marks.’

  ‘You’re sure that he was murdered in the church?’

  ‘Not sure about anything,’ said Mara honestly. ‘And now I’ve found the clothes and they were neatly under the body – inside the tomb. Would you believe that—’

  ‘The wishing hole!’ he interrupted. ‘Of course, I’d forgotten that. It’s under the capstone, isn’t it? There’s a stone that fits into the hole at the side of one of the upright slabs. I remember one of the young O’Lochlainns, one of Ardal O’Lochlainn’s nephews, telling me about that. His dogs followed a fox and the fox got himself into the churchyard – some old woman had just taken her sore arm out of the sacred wishing hole and the fox jumped in and lay down. She said that he had found sanctuary, that he was God’s creature, and she put the stone back and there he was as snug as anything and the hounds raging outside and going around and around the tomb until they were dizzy. The O’Lochlainn lads were furious about it but she wouldn’t let them touch the stone. She was as old as the hills, old Brídín, you know – must have been about eighty at least – but she stood up to them and told them they should be ashamed of themselves and to take themselves and their dogs out of God’s acre. So off they all went with their tails between their legs, men and hounds!’

  Mara smiled at the story. Forty-six years old, she thought – that’s nothing! Think of Brídín, as sharp as a knife. I’m at the height of my powers, she told herself firmly. Hard work and careful step-by-step thinking will solve this problem.

  ‘This finding of the clothes there was strange, though,’ she said aloud. ‘I didn’t know about the wishing hole, though Brigid did, and so do you, now that I have recalled it to your mind. But who else, other than the people of the parish know of it? And it doesn’t sound the sort of thing that Father MacMahon would approve of. After all, the tomb is a pagan object, not a Christian one. I doubt that he would boast of it to any visitors. It almost puts all of the pilgrims out of my mind,’ said Mara. ‘I don’t think that any of them could have known that story, do you?’

  ‘I’m not sure,’ said Fachtnan. Conscious of being idle among a mountainside of busy people, he went and secured an empty turf barrow and began to throw the dried sods into it, bending and swinging with the rhythm and vigour of a young man. Mara decided against helping him, though she wondered if the physical exertion would clear her mind. The people of the Burren had a strong notion of what was due to her status as the King’s wife as well as his representative, and would be shocked at her doing such heavy work.

  ‘Remember, the pilgrims arrived a couple of days before the feast of the Holy Cross,’ said Fachtnan, continuing to load with such rapidity that the barrow was now a quarter full. ‘They could have been speaking to someone in the churchyard – could even have seen someone put an arm or a leg in through the wishing hole.’

  ‘That’s true,’ said Mara. ‘And, of course, they had been to supper with Nechtan and his wife the evening before – they could have heard the story there. I’ll ask him about that. We are going to visit him today and to stay with him overnight – it will save my poor old mare a double journey. He’s asked the boys too, but you won’t want to come. Nuala needs your company. She’s upset about Aoife’s death. You ride over in the morning.’

  ‘I know,’ said Fachtnan thoughtfully. He threw a few more sods in and then paused in his loading, straightened his back and moved a step nearer to her. ‘This is a strange case, Brehon,’ he said meditatively. ‘Usually there is some real reason for murder, some intense fear, some intense greed; this time it seems as though this murder has most likely been committed as a religious protest or some form of revenge and that does not seem to be a strong enough motive.’

  ‘You’re forgetting Brother Cosimo.’

  ‘He could always deny it. Once Hans Kaufmann accepted money from him, Brother Cosimo probably thought that he could silence him easily enough.’

  ‘True,’ said Mara. ‘In any case, according to Ardal O’Lochlainn, the followers of Luther are saying such terrible things about the Church of Rome, and the followers of the Church of Rome are saying such terrible things about the followers of Luther, that in the end sensible people may start to shrug their shoulders and believe little of what they hear.’

  ‘So we come back to religious revenge.’ Fachtnan fastened up the sides of the turf barrow and continued to lob the light sods over the top of the nearest one.

  ‘And a burning belief in being God’s agent – like the angel in the Bible, the one with a flaming sword.’

  ‘You are thinking of Father Miguel; I could imagine him with a flaming sword,’ said Fachtnan, pausing in his work to wave a greeting to a man leading a donkey heavily burdened with a basket full of turf suspended from each shoulder. ‘How’s the leg, Micheál?’ he shouted.

  ‘Never better, thanks be to God,’ came the reply and Fachtnan grinned.

  ‘Thanks to Nuala,’ he said in a low voice. ‘That’s a man that could tell you all about the wishing hole of Kilnaboy, Brehon. He was sticking his leg in there for years and nothing happened. Then he came to see Nuala and she found that when he broke his leg years earlier, a bit of bone was left in the flesh and that was causing the ulcers. She dug it out and he hasn’t known himself since.’

  ‘That’s another thing!’ exclaimed Mara. ‘I was talking to Blad, the innkeeper, about how pilgrims might still come to Kilnaboy even if the relic of
the true cross no longer existed. I was trying to cheer him up and I was saying that they might come to see the sacred well of the daughter of Baoith – so why didn’t he say that Kilnaboy has a wishing hole? After all, that must be fairly unusual. I’ve never heard of one before now.’

  ‘You don’t suspect Blad, do you?’ Fachtnan stopped his work for an instant and looked at her with surprise. ‘I don’t see Blad murdering anyone,’ he said, resuming the rhythmic tossing of the sods. ‘He’s a fisherman and fishermen don’t do anything on impulse. There would be no point in murdering Hans Kaufmann. The deed was done and the piece of the cross was burned. Nothing could be done about that. If the German was murdered because of that, he was murdered for revenge and that would hardly be worth it – that wouldn’t give a man back his livelihood.’

  That was an interesting idea about fishermen, thought Mara. She supposed that it might be correct. Fishermen had to be quiet, slow-moving, meditative, and above all optimistic. The person who killed Hans Kaufmann was probably impulsive, quick-thinking, filled with self-righteous anger – someone who felt that they were the instrument of God, the angel with the flaming sword.

  ‘Father Miguel,’ said Fachtnan, echoing her thoughts. He moved to another small mound of turf sods. Using both hands he began firing them two at a time into the barrow. ‘What would you think of him, Brehon?’

  ‘He has the anger, the courage, probably the ability to think fast.’ Mara spoke slowly and judiciously, but she could hear a note of doubt in her own voice.

  ‘And the desire to let the world know about what happened to a man who questioned the sanctity of relics – to an anti-Christ and a blasphemer,’ queried Fachtnan, and Mara nodded with approval.

  ‘That’s a very important point, Fachtnan,’ she said. ‘After all, if Hans Kaufmann had been killed and his body left in the church, that would be enough for someone like Brother Cosimo to silence a man who could do him harm. By dragging the body from the church, wheeling it out to the tomb, laying it out there, spreadeagled on the capstone, in the shape of the crucifix and sticking a knife into the hands and the feet – as well as the knife thrust into the left side – all that seems to show a man who was willing to run the risk of being seen in order that the world should hear about this death and should regard it as miraculous. I wouldn’t be surprised if the name of Hans Kaufmann were to be known throughout the world as the man who was struck down by the wrath of God.’

  ‘So we tentatively cross Brother Cosimo from our list,’ said Fachtnan.

  ‘I think so,’ said Mara. And the same applies to the prioress, she thought. If it were true that Grace was the prioress’s daughter, and if Hans Kaufmann had discovered the secret and was threatening to reveal the truth, well, the prioress, just like Brother Cosimo, would have been interested solely in silencing the man, not in making a public show of his dead and naked body or in marking hands and feet with the stigmata – all of which added hugely to the risk of the murder being uncovered.

  ‘And Blad,’ she said aloud. ‘He might have been fearful that his livelihood would be threatened by the loss of the relic, but I’m not sure that he had anything to gain by murdering him in that strange way, stripping the man before death and then wheeling the dead and naked body through the churchyard, up the path and then positioning it on the tomb with the clothes hidden underneath it. Surely nobody would go to that trouble just in order to dispose of a man who was a threat to your security of office – or even who had perhaps ruined your business? Though I suppose it might be a sort of double bluff – make the murder look as though it were done for religious reasons …’

  Fachtnan nodded. ‘I think that seems to be complicated, given that it added so much to the danger of the proceedings.’ Mara nodded. He had echoed her thoughts.

  ‘So we are left with a motive of revenge for religious reasons. And that leaves Father Miguel, Father MacMahon, and, I think, Sorley. Though I had discounted that, your notion of it warning others not to do such a thing has made me change my mind.’

  ‘And what’s the next step?’ Fachtnan dusted his hands and stood back from the barrow.

  ‘The next step is to find out where everyone was at the time of death – about an hour after his supper, according to Nuala.’

  ‘Will everyone remember?’

  ‘I think,’ said Mara, ‘this might be quite easy to remember. That heavy shower of rain came at about nine o’clock in the evening. It lasted less than an hour and I was thinking that might be a time when our murderer might have been able to dispose of the body and rely on the downpour to wash away a lot of the blood.’

  ‘Yes, you’re right – I remember it. And it didn’t last too long, did it? Nuala and I went out into the herb garden for a few minutes after the rain stopped, just before going to bed. Everything smelled very sweet there. It seems terrible to think that at that time, on the other side of the Burren, someone was being murdered for a stupid reason like disagreeing about relics and their significance.’

  Mara glanced across the bog; the workers from Cahermacnaghten law school had worked with immense rapidity and energy. Their two high-sided carts on the road were virtually full, and one of Cumhal’s men was walking the horses over to be harnessed to the shafts. Cumhal himself was wreathed with smiles. This was the successful ending to a process that had begun last May when Cumhal and his farm workers, armed with those long-bladed spades known as sléans, would have sliced the mud-like sods from the wet bog and heaved them on to the bank above. Slice, lop … thud. Slice, lop … thud. Mara had often watched the process when she was a child. It would have gone on for hours, and then later on the sods would have been stacked, five or six leaning against each other and then a final sod placed on the top to hold all in place. Two or three times during the summer the piles would have been undone and then rebuilt again. There was heartbreak, some wet summers, when rain fell almost continuously and thick mists swept in, day after day, from the Atlantic – summers when natives said to visitors: ‘If you can see the Aran Islands, it’s a sign that it is going to rain; and if you can’t see them, well, it’s already raining.’ On years like that the small stacks of soft, wet, slimy sods might just have to be abandoned to sink back into the bog again. But this summer there had been lots of fine days and strong drying winds; this year the crop looked good.

  No wonder Cumhal was smiling – now all of the hard work had come to a successful conclusion. Tonight there would be a special supper for the Cahermacnaghten workers to celebrate what was known as ‘the drawing home’. Hay is carried; turf is drawn – Mara remembered Cumhal teaching her that when she was a small child; it was something to commit solemnly to memory at the same time that, in the schoolroom, she was chanting the value of different types of land and its significance for inheritance.

  Mara bent down and picked up the last two sods of turf lying on the ground, feeling their dry, uneven surface and noting the small traces of hardened twigs and desiccated tree knots in their structure. She waited until the contents of Fachtnan’s barrow had been unloaded on to the second cart. Then she walked over, placed the last two sods, one on the top of each cart, and said in clear, loud tones: ‘Thanks be to God; the turf is saved.’

  And then she forgot about murder for the moment as her scholars and workers cheered this successful conclusion of an annual task. The turf would be drawn home and then built up into an enormous stack, thatched and allowed to dry still further. They would be burning this harvest in the year of 1520 or even 1521.

  Would the memory of the dead man, stretched out in a ghastly imitation of the crucified Christ, have faded from the memories of the people of Kilnaboy by then?

  Fourteen

  Liability for the offences of a child under the age of seventeen is normally borne by his father, or by his foster father during fosterage.

  Heptad 34

  There are seven fathers who are not considered to be liable for their children’s offences:

  A king.

  A bishop.

>   A poet.

  A hermit.

  A man without property.

  A person of unsound mind.

  A slave.

  Cormac was very cold with his mother. He presented a beautifully written, excellently worded translation of the Latin that he had declared to Fachtnan that he could not understand, looked indifferent when she praised it, fixed his eyes on a spot above her head when she explained why courteous behaviour was important for all of the scholars at the law school, and then slid out of the room as soon as possible.

  On the ride across the Burren to Kilnaboy, he and Finbar were noisy and silly, exchanging jokes and laughing immoderately at them. Cliona had sent over a message to Brigid to say that Art’s fever had gone, but that she would keep him for another couple of days to make sure that he did not pass on any illness to the other boys. Mara had sent back a message saying to tell Art that they were all missing him. However, Finbar, although more than three years the elder, seemed to be enjoying Cormac’s company and that, thought Mara, was good.

  She moved her mare up to ride beside the two older boys and was amused to find that they were discussing religion.

  ‘It makes you do some extraordinary things, like fasting until you are almost dead, or whipping yourself with a scourge, or allowing yourself to be killed,’ said Slevin.

  ‘And do extraordinary things to people who don’t agree with you,’ pointed out Domhnall in the judicial tones of an elderly judge. ‘Look at what happened to the poor old Jews and Muslims out in Spain. My father has a friend, a Jew, a merchant from Normandy, and he gets the shakes when he sees a Spanish ship and he’ll run a mile from the Dominicans.’