The two baby goats were curled up beside their mother in the cave. They were sleeping peacefully while she chewed on the dark green leaves of the ivy that hung like a curtain over the entrance to the cave. Mara admired them, while in the background Dinan chanted the lay of the Morrigan. ‘This is the way the story goes,’ he said. ‘“The cry of the Morrigan is terrible and fearful to the ears …”’
‘You have a great view from here,’ said Mara to Pat, trying to ignore some gory details about the horse of the Morrigan which had one leg, one eye, and one ear and the pole of the chariot passing right through his body so that the peg in front met the halter passing through its forehead.
‘We have, indeed, Brehon,’ said Pat.
‘So when you came out to the entrance of the cave, you could see that there was something wrong back in Oughtdara?’
‘It was the crows,’ said Pat in a slightly defensive fashion. ‘I could see them all hovering around. And one big black crow came and perched on the … on the head …’
‘On top of the stone pillar, is that what you mean?’ said Mara.
‘That’s right, Brehon.’ He sounded uncomfortable and his eyes slid across to Dinan.
‘She’s a shape-changer, so they say,’ observed Dinan. ‘In lots of the old tales, the Morrigan disappears, leaving only a crow in her place. Many have tried to kill her, so they say, but her soul will go into a passing crow and then she’ll be reborn again. It is told that this world will never be free of her, not until the time of the second coming.’
‘When did she first come; when was she first seen in this world, Dinan?’ asked Cian eagerly.
‘Well, you know all about the Fír Bolgs, the little dark men that came from across the sea, don’t you? They were here first of all and she was their chief god, the most important of them all and then the Tuatha Dé arrived from across the sea. In the old stories, the Morrigan appeared first in the great battle between the Tuatha Dé and the Fír Bolgs.’
‘And she’s been around ever since,’ stated Art.
‘She finds plenty of forms to hold her spirit,’ responded Dinan. His voice sounded dreamy, slightly dazed and Mara wasn’t surprised that the four younger scholars were hanging on his words. Slevin, however, had a twinkle of amusement in his eyes and Domhnall looked bored, until Dinan turned and pointed dramatically towards the small church in the distance.
‘And they say that when she is killed, a crow takes her spirit and flies with it to the cave of Sionnach MacDara and keeps it there until a new form has been woven and then it is released upon the world again.’
‘Have you ever been in that cave, Dinan, the cave of Sionnach MacDara?’ Domhnall’s eyes were suddenly sharp with interest. Fachtnan, who had been standing in the doorway looked back and Slevin moved a little closer towards his friend.
‘That’s something that I can never understand. How can a fox be a son of a priest and a saint?’ asked Cormac lightly and Domhnall gave him an exasperated look.
‘Ah, these were the old days; some very strange things went on in the old days; things that no mind could fathom or understanding could grasp.’ Dinan, Mara noticed, had answered Cormac’s question, but not Domhnall’s.
‘So how do you get into the cave of Sionnach MacDara, Dinan?’ she asked. ‘Or do you know, Pat?’
The two brothers looked at each other and then at Gobnait, and Gobnait was the one who replied, saying hastily, ‘You don’t want to be going down there, Brehon. That’s a terrible dangerous place. And you’d be torn to shreds before you got near to it. The blackthorn’s been let grow something shocking all around it. It’s only the foxes that get in and out of that place. They’ve got their own little tunnels, cute, they are, these fellas.’
‘You’ll have to get your goats on to it, Pat, if it’s that bad; they eat blackthorn, don’t they?’ The advantage of being a Brehon, thought Mara, was that one could offer advice on all kinds of subjects and no one was rude enough to advise you to mind your own business.
‘Well, you see, it’s by way of being church property, Brehon,’ said Pat apologetically.
‘So the entrance is quite near to the church, then, is it?’ Mara could see the purpose of Domhnall’s question. However, she thought that she might approach the subject slightly more obliquely.
‘I remember Brigid, my housekeeper, telling me that the whole land under here is like a honeycomb with caves and passageways going everywhere,’ she observed. She touched the fronds of luxuriantly cascading mass of maidenhair fern and murmured lightly, ‘How on earth does this grow so well with so little light.’ It was, she thought, significant that her observation about underground tunnels and passageways went unmarked whereas all three brothers hastened to tell her about different varieties of ferns that grew in the caves.
‘I suppose the Morrigan would have gone down this tunnel, wouldn’t she, Dinan?’ Slevin had cleverly brought the two halves of the conversation together and for a moment, even Dinan looked disconcerted.
‘That’s right, lad, she would have,’ he said and then the temptation was too much for him and he said in a whisper, ‘You know about the Morrigan, don’t you? When she made water it flowed down and through the earth, carving out passageways wherever it went.’
‘Oh, blessed Jesus!’ muttered Cormac, rather inappropriately, thought Mara.
‘Are there any underground tunnels, leading from this cave?’ she asked.
‘Not from this one, that I could swear,’ said Pat so quickly that she was inclined to take his word for it. She looked around the cave and he added, ‘This is a good cave, Brehon. I wouldn’t put my nanny goats’ little kids in here if it had any passageways for them to get lost in.’
‘No, of course not; I’m sure you are very careful with them.’ It did not mean, though, that one of the other caves could not have afforded a means to get secretly back to Oughtdara without anyone seeing you. Pat was, she thought, the most uneasy of the three brothers, but then he was the eldest and perhaps used to taking responsibility.
‘I’m just trying to imagine yesterday morning, the morning when Clodagh was murdered and wondering whether it was possible for you to see anything of what happened, and, more importantly, whether you saw anyone near to the place where the crime was committed. It would be quite possible,’ she said, improvising fluently, ‘for you, for any of you, to have seen someone and then in the terrible shock of discovering the murdered body of your cousin, for that picture to have gone completely out of your head.’
Mara let the sound of her words die away. She had purposely spoken slowly, with pauses after key words. There was a slight echo in the cave, but she was a practised orator and echoes could be made to play their part in adding a weight to the words. She swept a glance around her scholars, her eyes warning them to say nothing. She didn’t want any more silly talk about the Morrigan or any facetious interruptions.
‘I’d like you to think back to that time yesterday morning, Pat. It would have been earlier than now, of course, it would have been about an hour about noon. You had been seeing to the nanny goat, had helped her to deliver her twins and then, the crisis was over, the mother was suckling the babies, you walk to the entrance of the cave, you were probably cramped and stiff, so you walk out and you see that the mist had begun to lift, that’s right, isn’t it, Pat?’
‘That’s right, Brehon.’ Without being asked he moved slowly to the cave outlet. Mara followed him, concentrating so hard that she was unaware of the others.
‘Yes, you’re right, Brehon, that’s what I did. I’d been kneeling down on the ground beside her and my knees were sore, and I’m a bit tall for that sort of work, so I straightened up, went outside, right outside …’ Pat moved forward so that he was on the edge of the cliff and Mara saw the slow sweep of his head, moving from the sight of the Atlantic breakers where he would have sniffed the salt wind, backwards and then she saw his head stop. ‘And I could see that there was a sort of glow there behind the clouds to the back of Ballinalacken Castle
.’ He was staring up at the hill and the stately stone building and she saw him give a small nod. ‘And I said to myself, the mist is going. And it was just then, Brehon,’ he said turning around to face her, ‘it was just then, that I saw the crows. I’d been hearing them, you see, I’m sure I’d heard them when I came out of the cave, because I’d been saying to myself: Thank God, they’re under shelter, the two little ones, because things are hard for them for the first few days – crows trying to peck their eyes out, foxes waiting for the mother’s eye to be off them for a few minutes, waiting to nip in and tear the throat of them. And then I saw them circling around and around the Fár Breige so I thought that I would go down and see what was happening.’
And risked leaving the newborn kids; the thought crossed Mara’s mind, but she said nothing. Pat, she thought, was telling his story well and it did seem, she thought, as though he were reliving the experience of standing up there on the cliff edge on that fateful Monday morning and gazing out, seeing the sun behind the clouds, and the mist rising from the valley floor and then becoming aware of the predatory crows.
‘And then when you were about halfway down, you hollered for me,’ put in Gobnait. ‘So me and Ug came across to join you.’
‘And what could you see?’ Mara turned swiftly to the younger brother.
‘I could see Pat.’
‘But not the crows; did you notice them?’
Gobnait turned that over in his mind, half-nodded, but then shook his head.
‘I couldn’t tell for sure, Brehon. I think the sight of her … the way she … I think all that put everything out of my head. I just don’t remember the crows, but Pat saw them so …’
‘I see,’ said Mara. ‘And where was Pat when he shouted for you.’
‘I was quite near the Fár Breige by then, Brehon,’ said Pat. Gobnait had looked at her helplessly and then at his dog so it was not surprising that his older brother had intervened. Nevertheless, she was slightly sorry that she hadn’t sent Gobnait off with Fachtnan while she was talking to Pat.
‘And then when we got down and we could see her there and we got nearer – yes, I remember the crows now!’ said Gobnait. ‘Ug went flying at them and scattered them and then he came back to us, and, you wouldn’t believe this, Brehon, but all the hair, all around his neck, all down his spine, every single hair, well, it was all standing on end. He knew she was dead, you see. He’s a clever fellow.’
‘So he is,’ said Mara. She looked down at the astute Ug who was staring at her with a look of sharp intelligence on his narrow face. What a shame that he couldn’t talk! Had Pat actually come down from the cave, climbed down from the cliffside, only realizing that Clodagh was dead when he came quite near to the stone pillar, or was there another explanation.
‘And Dinan,’ she said. ‘How did he come on the scene?’
‘Well, when we saw that—’ began Pat, but he was interrupted.
‘Not a bit of it, not a bit of it,’ said Dinan’s deep, melodious voice and every head turned to him with interest.
‘That dog wouldn’t turn a hair because of a dead body. He’s seen plenty of them in his time, plenty of his own killing, too. No, the dog knows the truth about what killed the woman, and what’s more, the crows knew it also.’
‘What did you think, Fachtnan?’ asked Mara as they went to collect their horses from Dunaunmore enclosure. She placed a hand on his arm to detain him for a moment. The three younger boys were arguing vociferously about whether the Morrigan had anything to do with the crows or not – Cormac and Art inclining towards the belief that the goddess was involved somehow or other, and Cian pouring ridicule on the whole matter. Cael was listening quietly to a low-voiced conversation between Slevin and Domhnall. It was a good moment for the Brehon and his assistant to confer in privacy, but Fachtnan looked taken aback, his eyes, going towards the gate.
‘What did you think?’ she repeated, suppressing a feeling of impatience. After all, it was good that a man loved his daughter. She just wished that he could detach his mind from her during working hours. He looked guilty and ill at ease, she thought and felt rather sorry for him.
‘I thought that Pat seemed like an honest man,’ he said with an effort. And then, with a note of sincerity in his voice, ‘I just felt all of the time that he was telling his story that it was the truth.’
Mara nodded. This was what she valued in Fachtnan. His judgement, even when he was just a boy, was always excellent. He had a mature understanding of people. She said nothing, though, and waited. There was a slight frown between his bushy eyebrows.
‘I thought that Dinan was uneasy and overanxious to keep turning the talk towards the Morrigan,’ he said and then continued rapidly, ‘that could mean something, or it could mean nothing. They are all uneasy, and it may be, that as yet, none of them have opened up to the others. They may still be all wondering whether a brother has done this deed.’
‘I agree with you,’ said Mara. She stood back and let him go. No point in detaining a man who has something else on his mind. In any case, she thought, I have nothing else to say at the moment. There are three men, three brothers, all of whom had something to gain from the death of this woman.
And all of whom, she realized as she walked her horse through the gate, might have been able to get to Sionnach MacDara’s cave, unseen. Without mounting, she crossed the roadway and joined Domhnall, Slevin and Cael as they stood in deep conversation in front of a seemingly impenetrable thicket of blackthorn.
‘Fox runs,’ Slevin was saying in a low voice as she came up.
‘Isn’t there some sort of proverb, or wise saying: “Where a fox may run, a wise man may pass”?’ enquired Domhnall.
‘Would want to be a very small, thin one,’ said six-foot-high Slevin, looking with disfavour at the thorny passageways.
‘Look,’ said Cael softly. While the boys had been bending down and peering at ground level, she had moved around the side of the thicket and was standing beside a twenty-foot-high rock face. The black thorny branches were flat against its pale grey surface, but Cael had reached across, leaning slightly down, and plucked something from a needle sharp blackthorn. She passed it to Mara.
‘I thought it was a piece of wool, first,’ she said, ‘but it’s not, is it?’
‘No,’ said Mara thoughtfully. ‘It’s a linen thread, come from someone’s léine.’
It pointed to the fact that someone had squeezed their way between the bushes and the rock face, but there would be no means of telling who.
Children and men wore them knee-length and women wore them full-length, but everyone in the kingdom possessed these garments woven from the linen threads harvested from the flax that grew high in a sheltered valley in the Aillwee Mountain.
Eight
Cis Fodhla Tíre?
(How Many Kinds of Land are there?)
Land is valued in cumals.
The value of a cumal of land ranges from twenty-four milch cows for best arable land, down to eight dry cows for bog land.
The area of a cumal is approximately thirty-four square acres.
That evening after Mara had finished her supper, she spent a long time thinking about the three brothers. How much did Dinan believe of those tales that he told with such admiration, she wondered. And would he allow his admiration to influence his deeds? The heroes of the legends became heroes because they rid their kingdom of an evil spirit such as the Morrigan, that demon woman who could urinate powerfully enough to carve passages and caves through the landscape. Would Dinan allow their heroic behaviour to influence him? There had been something odd, something childlike in his insistence on dwelling on the horrors and the suffering inflicted. Mara, though very fond of children, had few illusions about them. Children, she believed strongly, had to be trained in the way of the righteous, as Brigid would say. Left to themselves, they would undoubtedly always seek what profited them, would sweep aside whatsoever frustrated them in their desires, had to be encouraged on a daily basis to put
themselves in the place of others, not to give way to fury, to share with others, to work, to gain the esteem of others, ultimately self-esteem and above all to learn to live at peace in a community.
Brehon law, she thought with a half-smile, was an ideal training ground for the young: keep the rules, or pay the penalty. And then she thought back to Fachtnan and sighed. He wanted a school for Orla and there were two schools on the Burren, one for law, and one for medicine, but they were only for highly intelligent, highly motivated young people. Perhaps there should be a third, one that taught less exacting knowledge and skills. She had been reading a book that she had bought from a bookseller in Galway by an English lawyer called Thomas More about an ideal land called Utopia – the book itself was named Utopia and it had a few pages about an ideal school. Thomas More, like herself, would have been brought up with the relentlessly hard study of Latin – his book was written in Latin – and then of the law, but he wrote about a gentler school, a school where, not only did the children learn to read and write, but where the whole community took part in teaching the children, each one instructing in a particular skill, such as growing food, caring for animals, building houses and walls, fashioning articles from wood, weaving and sewing. Every neighbourhood of the Burren had its expert in these matters and could impart their knowledge to a schoolroom of children. Mara’s mind ranged over other possibilities: music, dance, making of pots, binding of books, even perhaps an understanding of the law that would govern their lives as adults. That would be her contribution.
Mara gave a sigh and a shrug of her shoulders and turned her mind back to the murder. Were those tales about the Morrigan just an effort to distract her from the fact that these three brothers had, by the death of their cousin, Clodagh, more than doubled the amount of land that they had previously held? She thought about that for a while, half wondering whether to have a word with her farm manager, Brigid’s husband, Cumhal, but there was another matter that had been nagging at her subconsciously and she decided to pay a visit to Ardal O’Lochlainn, instead.
A Fatal Inheritance Page 11