As usual he was working, and as usual he made a polite pretence of being just about to finish as soon as he saw her. She salved her conscience about interrupting him with the thought that he worked too hard, anyway, and allowed him to escort her up to the room on the top of the tower house, making light conversation about the preparations at Ballinalacken for her fiftieth birthday party. It was only when the wine had been poured into the cups and they were alone that she turned the conversation back to the murder case.
‘I’ve been walking around the lands of Pat and his brothers this afternoon,’ she said, ‘and I’ve come to you for information. You inspected those lands closely so you should be able to give me an answer on judgement day about the case that Clodagh brought about laying claim to her land. Now I’d like to ask you a slightly different question. How well did the brothers profit from the death of Clodagh?’
He looked slightly taken aback at her plain speaking. She knew that she could trust him, though, and she knew that he would give an accurate and a well-considered answer. She knew, also, that he would be turning over in his mind the opinion that he had given at Poulnabrone that the whole of the portion owned by Clodagh’s father, Danu of Dunaunmore, was merely ‘land fit to graze seven cows’. And in fact, when he spoke, it was to that verdict that he referred, though he approached the matter obliquely.
‘Land is a strange thing,’ he said, taking a thoughtful sip from the wine in his cup. ‘You, Brehon, could come here to my lands and you could look at one of my best fields and to you it would only be useful as a place where your scholars could play at hurling. You would consider, perhaps, how well it would drain in the winter so that they did not get too muddy, you would look to see how level a surface it had so that none of your scholars could trip and break a leg; now I could look at the same field and I would look to see the quality of the grass; I would estimate how well it could feed many of my horses throughout the winter and whether it would still produce new grass for the foals in the spring and then go on to have a crop of hay in the summer, I would be concerned with the depth of the soil, with its fertility and whether it drains well; and so, Brehon,’ he concluded lightly, ‘this field in my mind’s eye is more valuable to me than it would be to you.’
‘So, what you’re saying is that land which you valued as only sufficient to graze seven cows, would in fact, be infinitely more valuable for someone who wanted to graze goats and sheep on it. Is that right?’
Ardal gave her an approving nod and swallowed some of his wine before answering. ‘As always, Brehon, you put the matter in a nutshell. Goats don’t take any notice of rocks and stones; boulders that might break the legs of my racing horses, would be as nothing to goats, just an amusement and source of food, they don’t require rich grass as they will nibble the herbs that grow under and beside the clumps of stone through the winter in the warmth of the limestone, and the growing shoots of the hazel will nourish them in spring and the ivy on the walls of the rocks and the caves will keep them healthy all the year around. And the young kids will just strengthen their legs leaping from rock to rock, and, of course, our mountain sheep are like goats.’
‘So the brothers got land of value to them?’ It was interesting, thought Mara, how Brehon law always used a cow, a milch cow, as a unit of value, equating it with a piece of silver. And yet pigs, sheep and goats were also of value to a farming community. Perhaps some changes should be made in this law.
‘Three of them; three of the brothers,’ corrected Ardal. ‘Finnegas’s share was probably of little value to him, but there is a strong bond between the brothers and he would do what he could for them.’
‘And what about Dinan’s share, the bawns?’
‘Not worth at all as much as his two elder brothers’ shares,’ said Ardal and added, ‘though it seemed to me that, on the day when I was valuing it, that he was the one that seemed the most worried about the prospect of losing it, the most upset of all the brothers. It appeared that he was much attached to that piece of land because it was a battle site between the Tuatha Dé and Fír Bolgs. He was almost hysterical, crying out to Clodagh that the old people would be revenged upon her, rather as he did on judgement day at Poulnabrone. In fact, Dinan was so set on owning the bawns that when it came to the division of the land – as you know, Finnegas, the youngest divided it, and then before the brothers picked in order of age, apparently, according to my steward, Dinan had asked for that piece of land. It’s possible,’ said Ardal in the tone of a man who is inured to the eccentricities of his fellow creatures, ‘that he may have set particular value on these lands because of the tales connected to them.’
‘Do you think that he truly believes all of these old stories?’ Mara thought back to the legends that Dinan had told them. Though intensely sceptical herself, she could see how her scholars, even Fachtnan, had been disturbed by the horrors of the tales. Dinan had seemed, she thought, frowning slightly, almost to confuse his cousin, Clodagh, with the goddess Morrigan. Did Morrigan really have ten bright red tresses, or was that a memory of Clodagh’s hair before it turned grey?
‘I feel that it would be dangerous to assume that he does not,’ was Ardal’s reply and she nodded her agreement. Instinctively she felt that there was something rather odd about Dinan’s intensity and she had learned over the years never to dismiss any such feelings but to subject them to a rigorous analysis. If the man truly believed that Clodagh was a reincarnation of the goddess Morrigan, who was so known for her shape-changing abilities, then he would have felt justified, felt a hero, if he had killed her. During her short walk back to her house, Mara thought back to the stories that Dinan had told, visualizing the ominous figure of the Fár Breige.
‘There is one other matter that I wanted to talk to you about, Ardal,’ she said. She would have to be careful, here, she knew. Ardal was an extremely religious man and the older he grew, the more important church matters and churchmen seemed to be to him. ‘Brigid was talking to me about Clodagh as a girl and said that she worked as the priest’s housekeeper.’ She waited, but his face was blank and so she was forced to continue. ‘She mentioned the bishop to me,’ she continued, wondering how to approach the matter obliquely. She saw him stiffen, wince slightly and she guessed that he would not be willing to betray anything that the bishop may have said to him. ‘She mentioned she had heard that the bishop and you got together and made up a marriage between your shepherd, Aengus, and Clodagh so as to remove her from the young priest’s household.’
‘Sin sceal é,’ said Ardal lightly, quoting the old country proverb. He smiled, but his smile was forced and Mara guessed that Brigid, as usual, had the true story. It had been a poor match for that pretty girl, the daughter of a craftsman and a landowner. It wrecked three lives, and to no purpose, but the bishop would have had great influence over Ardal.
‘Funny how these old stories linger in the minds of some; now I myself don’t have much of a memory for the past,’ he said and there was a stern note in his voice. She would get no more out of him, she thought, as she rose to her feet to take her leave. He had not denied it, and that was enough for her.
But it was not of Father O’Lochlainn, but of Dinan that she thought as she walked down the moonlit road towards her house. She had asked whether the man took these legends seriously and he had replied instantly to her question. ‘It would be dangerous to assume that he did not’, had said Ardal and his words reverberated in her mind during her short walk back to her own house. She got to her gate, put her hand down to open it and then changed her mind.
There was a candle lantern burning in the schoolhouse a hundred and fifty yards down the road. Someone was working late. She wondered whether Fachtnan had stayed behind to make notes. It would have been something that he would have done in the past, but these days he seemed to be lacking interest and to be preoccupied with his younger daughter. Orla was a problem, or at least Fachtnan was making her to be a problem, she thought with a sigh of exasperation that this matter kept intruding
upon more important affairs of the kingdom. Left to herself, the child would play happily under the care of her nursemaid. However, Fachtnan seemed to feel that Orla should be studying for a profession, if not medicine, then the law. Perhaps she should talk it over with him, give him her honest opinion of the little girl’s ability. It would be a cruel thing to impose rigorous study on a child whose intellect or temperament was not able for that burden.
But when Mara pushed open the door of the schoolhouse there was no sign of her assistant, but all of the scholars were there from twelve-year-old Cormac to eighteen-year-old Domhnall. They were, once again, spending their free time working on the case.
Domhnall was standing at the whitewashed board on the wall with a stick of charcoal in his hand. Down one side were written five names: of the four brothers and of Deirdre and across the top Domhnall was writing the headings: MEANS. OPPORTUNITY. MOTIVE.
‘I don’t know why there has to be means and opportunity. They mean the same thing, don’t they?’ Cian was a good person to have in the law school; he challenged everything, argued with everyone.
‘No, they’re not, birdbrain,’ said his sister. ‘You could say that little Orla had the opportunity to murder Clodagh, but she wouldn’t have the means as Clodagh was killed by a pair of hands squeezing the life out of her and Orla would not have the strength to do that.’
‘What about Deirdre; would she have been strong enough?’ asked Domhnall. He had already put a tick under opportunity opposite her name.
‘I’d say yes,’ said Mara decisively. ‘She does a lot of churning and that must strengthen the hands and arms.’
They all nodded. All had tried their hand at this from time to time, more for the tastiness of a piece of new butter than from a desire to be helpful. Domhnall put a neat tick under ‘means’.
‘Yes, she’d have to have strong wrists,’ agreed Cormac, ‘and she did have the opportunity, didn’t she? She was in the house quite near to Fár Breige. I agree with your ticks, Domhnall,’ he finished condescendingly.
‘Hm,’ said Cael, ‘I wouldn’t be too keen on her motive, myself. Why would she do it?’
‘To get more land for her husband like any good wife,’ said Cian.
‘She probably didn’t want it; if they have more land, they have to have more goats, and that would make more work for Deirdre, churning all that milk and making all those cheeses,’ said Cael vigorously.
‘Cael’s right, in a way,’ said Slevin, ‘but I was thinking when we were up there this afternoon that all of those caves are on the land that Clodagh had before she was killed; the only one that Pat has on his own land was the Cave of the One Cow. Now they have about four or five, don’t they; the Thieves’ Cave, the Bones Cave, the Daghda’s Cave, Moonmilk Cave and the Through and Through Cave, so that means that they’ll have plenty of nice dry, warm places for the kids when they’re young, and they’re probably safer from foxes, too, as the mother goat can easily guard the entrance.’
‘You’re probably right, so her motive will be the same as the men – greed.’ Cael nodded at Domhnall as he added ticks to the names.
‘It’s a bit of a boring list, isn’t it,’ complained Cormac. ‘They’ve all got opportunity, except for Finnegas; they’ve all got motives and they’re the same motives; and they’ve all got means; they would all be able to strangle someone. And that mist made everything so easy for the murderer. We might as well stick a pin in and choose by that.’
‘Let’s agree on the least likely one out of Pat, Deirdre, Gobnait and Dinan,’ suggested Domhnall.
‘Deirdre,’ said Cael. ‘She looks too sensible to commit murder just because she wants to have more cheese to make.’
‘Dinan,’ said Cormac. ‘He’s not the type.’
‘Yes, he is,’ said Slevin. ‘Dinan gets himself very worked up. People like that are more inclined to lose their temper and there’s many a death caused by a loss of temper.’
‘He might have killed her because he thought that she was the Morrigan come to life again,’ said Art in a low voice. ‘I know that sounds stupid,’ he added quickly.
‘Not to me,’ said Mara. ‘It was interesting listening to him this afternoon, wasn’t it?’
‘He did sound quite creepy, didn’t he?’ said Cormac to Art. If Cian had said such a thing, Cormac would have poured scorn on him, but Art was Cormac’s best friend; they were reared in the same bed, were fed by the same woman and the relationship was very strong. Cormac would never ridicule his rather sensitive and shy foster brother.
‘I’m debating whether we were right to rule out Finnegas completely,’ put in Slevin. ‘After all, with a fast horse, he could perhaps take the coast road and then cut across the fields, down into the valley.’
‘There’s a lot against it,’ said Cael. ‘You heard him say that he was in sight of his workers almost all of the time, he’s not too likely to say that unless it were true. He’d know that the Brehon could check on that.’
‘A horse wouldn’t help too much, anyway. That’s a birdbrain idea. It’s the rocks and the cliffs that make it slow. Art and me were climbing around there last summer, during the holidays, and it takes for ever.’
‘Well, we’ll go over there tomorrow, but I must say that I think it is unlikely that Finnegas would come over. He’d have to be sure of finding Clodagh and then there is the point that he hasn’t got much of a motive as, according to Ardal O’Lochlainn, Finnegas had the very worst piece of land. It’s not limestone land; just waterlogged clay.’
‘Perhaps, though, Brehon, he might have hoped to find another lead mine on that land since it’s near to his own land. In fact, he might have found signs. My father says that lead sells for almost the price of gold in Galway as there is so much demand for it with everyone putting in new windows and building new houses with slate roofs,’ said Domhnall.
‘It’s a possibility,’ said Mara. ‘Well, we’ll see it tomorrow and we can make up our mind then. I think, though, that I would have heard if there was any talk of the seam of lead running out. King Turlough sent his steward to purchase some for bullet making not long ago and I think that he would have reported if there were any problems. In fact, I seem to remember him remarking on what excellent lead it was.’
She was about to suggest that they left the problems for a moment and had a game of chess or read a book before going to bed, but Domhnall said hesitantly, ‘What about Father O’Lochlainn, Brehon? What did you make of him? Or would you prefer not to say?’
I would, thought Mara, but she could not justify excluding her scholars from part of the investigation. She had her long-accustomed and most successful methods of training young people to become lawyers, law professors or even Brehons and these included making them part of the legal work of the kingdom, making the dry laws of the texts come to life by witnessing their practical application. At the beginning of each Michaelmas term in September they all swore an oath to be discreet and never to reveal confidential matters talked about in the course of their work and she reminded them of that oath from time to time. There were grave reasons to suspect Father O’Lochlainn in this murder case and she would have to confide them to her scholars. None of them had been sheltered from knowledge of ordinary sexual relationships among men and women, but there was something so odd, so perverted and so very ugly about that strange link between the priest and Clodagh that, for a moment, she wished that she could say nothing.
However, she had to tell them so she did as well as she could, adopting a dry, matter-of-fact manner and emphasizing that she thought there might be a streak of madness in both of them.
‘God, so she used to go out and pretend that she was, you know, doing it with the Fár Breige! No wonder that Dinan thought that she was the goddess Morrigan brought back to life again. Do you remember that bit about Morrigan doing it with one of the other gods across a river, one foot on either bank – must have had legs the length of a forrach.’ Cormac, perhaps because he was the youngest, or perhaps because
of his temperament, seemed to be the least embarrassed.
‘Well, you’ve got your wish, Cormac,’ said Cael dryly. ‘We’ve certainly now got a different motive, a very different motive. I would say, Brehon, that the motive would be anger, in the case of Father O’Lochlainn, would you? Rage would, perhaps, be a better word.’
‘Yes, I agree, Cael, rage would be a good word and rage can be the cause of a killing.’ Mara kept her face very serious but she was amused at the elderly tone that fifteen-year-old Cael adopted. ‘What would you think, the rest of you?’ She was anxious to keep the conversation going for a few minutes. Art was crimson with embarrassment and she wanted to give him time to recover.
‘I’d like to borrow your copy of the Táin Bó Cullinge to read tonight, if I may, Brehon,’ said Domhnall. ‘I think that these old tales might hold some of the answers to this mystery.’
‘I haven’t read any of those legends for such a long time,’ confessed Mara. ‘They sit and gather dust, but I do think that you’re right, Domhnall. We may be meeting something more complex here than we usually encounter. It just crossed my mind, as you spoke, that many of those early legends have four brothers in them, brothers who have such strong bonds between them that make a brother’s welfare come above all other things. And then there is the introduction of the Morrigan, the goddess of battle and, of course, of sexuality.’
‘And she has certainly got this case looking very much more interesting; Morrigan and his reverence the priest, both of them,’ said Cormac, his eyes sparkling with a touch of mischief.
‘It could have been the priest, but I’ve got another idea,’ said Cian, his half-broken voice rising uncontrollably. ‘What if it is the whole family, the whole kin group, who decided that she had disgraced her kin by going on like that in public and that she was doomed to die, to redeem their honour. They could have all had something to do with it. One brother to strangle her, one to move the body out from the house and another, no, you might need two for this – two to tie her up against the Fár Breige so that she looked like she was doing what she did when she was alive. What do you think of that for an idea, Brehon?’
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