A Fatal Inheritance

by Cora Harrison

  ‘What about Aengus, could he have been in on it, too?’ queried Slevin. ‘After all, she had disgraced him even more than her cousins.’

  ‘Yes, but she was not of his blood,’ said Cael wisely. ‘Clodagh was a disgrace to the whole kin group. If he had minded so much, then Aengus could have come to the court for a divorce. The family could not get rid of her; once a member of the kin group, always a member of the kin group, but Aengus need not have anything to do with a divorced wife.’

  ‘In any case, Aengus had gone up the mountain, everyone saw him. And if he came back,’ added Cormac, ‘he would have had to pass Pat and he would have had to pass that place where Gobnait was dumping his seaweed and Dinan was around there also. And one of the other shepherds would have noticed that he had been gone for a long time.’

  ‘Where do we think that she was killed?’ asked Slevin suddenly. ‘I’ve been sort of imagining that she was killed in the house, weren’t you, Domhnall. We’d assumed that, didn’t we, when we were talking it over, but it occurs to me that there’s no reason why she shouldn’t have been killed just where we found her, standing up against the Fár Breige, pretending to, to … well, you know …’

  ‘And the murderer came behind and put his, or her hands around Clodagh’s neck and squeezed hard.’

  ‘And had a length of rope handy? Is that likely?’

  ‘People do, Cael,’ said Slevin. ‘Especially people with goats – it’s the easiest way to catch them, throw a noose over the horns. The noose might have been already tied so he or she just slipped it over Clodagh’s head.’

  ‘Took a terrible chance, didn’t he? I know it was very misty, but these valley mists can clear suddenly, or someone could have come over towards Dunaunmore and seen him tying the body. And what was the point, anyway, of tying the body, why not just leave it lying on the ground?’ Cian looked around at the others.

  ‘That’s a very good question,’ said Mara. ‘I’ve been wondering about that, myself.’

  ‘I don’t think that we need to speculate too much about that,’ said Cael. ‘The fact is that the body was bound to the Fár Breige. We should just deal with facts.’

  ‘I don’t agree,’ said Domhnall. ‘I think that at this stage in an enquiry we should speculate as much as possible. It’s important for us to enter into the mind of the murderer as far as we are able to go. Without knowing why, we can’t find who.’

  No one spoke for a short while after that. Domhnall had great influence over his fellow scholars. Cael, in particular, was not going to argue with him. But after a few moments, Art broke the silence, his voice low and embarrassed.

  ‘Do you remember that place in the Bible where it says: “God is not mocked”,’ he said hesitantly and then stopped.

  The bishop, thought Mara, would not be too pleased with the implied comparison, but she knew what Art meant. There was an odd sensation about this case, a feeling of evil forces at work.

  ‘So, why was Clodagh O’Lochlainn killed?’ she asked aloud, though speaking to herself.

  And Art answered quite simply, quite earnestly, almost as though she had asked him a routine question during the repetition drill at the law school.

  ‘She was killed, Brehon, because she was evil.’

  Nine

  Bretha Étgid

  (Judgements of Inadvertence)

  A man may open a mine if he has ownership of all the land around it. He may only dig one shaft and may not dig side shafts leading towards the lands of other men, but only beneath his own property. He must cause no harm to other property.

  If harm is caused, then a fine must be paid. This will be decided by the court and will take into account the damage caused.

  Mara woke early. Though normally someone who slept as soon as her head touched the pillow, she had lain awake for hours the night before, thinking about Clodagh. Was she truly evil as young Art, under the spell of Dinan’s mesmerizing storytelling, had said? Mara suspected not. Clodagh, she had thought, remembering Brigid’s picture of her as a young girl in a cloak of many colours, had been ambitious; clever and ambitious. She had wanted to stand out from the crowd, had wanted to make something of herself; had, perhaps rightly, felt that she had qualities which raised her above those around her. The liaison with the priest had been another step up and out of the position into which she had been born. However, being a woman meant that she had borne the consequences of the sexual act; while Father Eoin could walk away once the relationship became known to the bishop and his minions, Clodagh was left pregnant and facing the wrath of the males who were in command of her. The marriage with one of Ardal’s shepherds was hastily fixed up with the assistance of the clan taoiseach and that should have been the end of the matter, in the eyes of all.

  But it wasn’t. Clodagh was still Clodagh. That burning ambition might have appeared subdued into a sullen fury which erupted into abusing her unfortunate husband and tormenting her faithless lover, but, Mara suspected, the ambition was still there. The long-expected death of her father found her prepared to make a new life for herself. There was the puzzle of the derelict house that she proposed to renovate. And even more intriguing, the quest for men skilled in the use of pickaxe and crowbar. Had Clodagh proposed to open a stone quarry? Unlikely. Most people in the kingdom of the Burren mined their own stone, built their own houses with the help of relatives and neighbours, erected the miles of stone walls from rocks and boulders taken from their fields.

  And then suddenly Mara swung her legs over the side of the bed and lit the candle that stood on a small table beside her bed. She poured out a cupful of fresh spring water from the pitcher and drank it slowly, sitting very still and visualizing the landscape of the valley of Oughtdara in her mind’s eye. The morning spent scrambling around the lands belonging to Pat and his brothers had paid dividends. Today’s expedition would confirm her suspicions. The rain pattered against the glass in her window, but come what may she had to go to Ballyryan next morning. She replaced her mug, blew out her candle, resolutely shut her eyes and began to count the sheep, white blobs of wool, on the hillsides above the valley.

  When she woke in the morning everything seemed very quiet and when she opened the window shutters she could see why. The rain had stopped and the temperature had risen, but the land was drenched and a mist steamed upwards, obliterating all the familiar landscape, blotting out thatched roofs, chimneys, the wide spreading ash tree, even deadening the lowing of cows. She went to the kitchen to eat her usual frugal breakfast of milk and a slice of Brigid’s nutty bread, thickly spread with unsalted butter, but her mind was so busy that, minutes later, she was surprised to see an empty plate and pitcher in front of her. She exchanged her light shoes for a pair of substantial boots and took her woollen cloak from the back of the door. It had been made in the traditional way, in two layers, its outer surface felted and then treated with honey to render it waterproof.

  When Mara came out of her own gate, she could hardly see the hedge opposite and she almost had to feel her way along a road that she had walked several times a day for almost fifty years. For a moment she wondered whether to postpone her visit to the lead mine but she had sent a message to Finnegas yesterday and she was averse to wasting the time of a very busy man. She could send an excuse by one of Cumhal’s farmhands, but there was no reason why it should be easier for anyone else, rather than for her who knew the way so very well. In any case, she was driven by urgency to settle this case. The countryside was alive with rumours. Brigid had been full of lurid tales of terrible happenings in the past when the gods had been stirred and she was anxious to put a stop to these circulating, causing unrest and suspicion. A belief in the supernatural, she had found in the past, can be a cloak for man’s misdeeds. This murder of Clodagh O’Lochlainn had to be solved swiftly and the murderer brought to justice at Poulnabrone as soon as possible.

  There was a clanging of pots from the kitchen house as she groped her way through the tall iron gates that were set into the massive wall t
hat enclosed the buildings of the law school, but no sound of young voices.

  ‘You’re never going out in that fog.’ There was nothing wrong with Brigid’s ears, though she was nearly seventy years old. ‘And going all the way over to Ballyryan,’ she added, demonstrating that, as usual, she knew what was going on.

  ‘It’ll lift once the sun strengthens,’ said Mara with more optimism than she really felt. Still this had been a month of strong winds and perhaps one would blow in from the Atlantic as they made their journey towards the western coast. ‘Where are they all? Not still in bed, I hope.’

  Brigid snorted, implying ironically that they would have a chance while she was around.

  ‘All ready for you, Brehon,’ she said. ‘They’re over in the schoolhouse. Domhnall was saying something about looking at that map you made, long ago. Do you remember when Fachtnan was a boy, and Enda and Moylan and Aidan, and you had them out measuring and drawing on that big skin from the dun cow?’

  ‘I remember,’ said Mara. ‘That was clever of Domhnall to think of that.’

  She repeated her words to Domhnall himself when she went into the schoolhouse. He was calling out bends in the road and heads were nodded and words repeated. She sat and listened while scholar after scholar chanted the route from Cahermacnaghten to Ballyryan, but when Domhnall began to roll up the map again she stopped him.

  ‘It would be interesting to look on the map at the portions of land that the four brothers have inherited. Let’s look at Finnegas’s land first, since we are going to see him this morning.’

  ‘It’s almost in north-west Corcomroe, isn’t it, just on the border, just like Ballinalacken Castle,’ said Cian.

  ‘That’s right,’ said Mara. ‘In fact, the old part of Ballinalacken Castle, the old tower house, was deliberately built there by the O’Lochlainn clan to guard against the O’Connor clan of Corcomroe crossing the border into the Burren and stealing their cattle. Of course, as you know,’ she added, ‘the kingdom of the Burren was owned by the O’Lochlainn clan from time immemorial. The O’Brien clan only completely conquered it less than a hundred years ago.’ Unobtrusively, she looked at Cormac from under her eyelashes and was glad to see that he looked uninterested. There were already too many looking to be Turlough’s heir when his delicate eldest son, Conor, died, or perhaps even before. The clan had a right to choose a new tánaiste if they thought that the present man would not be equal to the task. Some sought favour with powerful members of the clan, while Turlough’s second son, Murrough, was openly in rebellion against his father and all that his father stood for. She did not want Cormac to take either of those paths.

  ‘I’d say that Finnegas’s portion from his father probably ends just there,’ said Domhnall calling back her attention by pointing at a spot on the map. ‘I remember Brigid talking about him building a road of a hundred paces, when he was only a boy, so as to connect on to the road leading down to Doolin Harbour.’

  ‘And isn’t it good that the three kingdoms are now united under one ruler; in the old days the O’Lochlainns of Burren and the O’Connors of Corcomroe were at daggers drawn and no one from the Burren would have dared to go to Doolin Harbour.’ Mara spoke absent-mindedly. Staring at the very detailed map, her suspicions of the night before seemed feasible. But how to prove it, she wondered.

  ‘And that King Turlough has ordered that there should be free movement between all three kingdoms: Thomond, Burren and Corcomroe,’ said King Turlough’s twelve-year-old son. Cormac sounded proud. As he grew older he was beginning to identify more with his father. Up to a couple of years ago, his birth parents had taken very much second place to his foster parents, Art’s mother and father.

  ‘Let me just look at that map again,’ said Mara, dismissing with an effort the thorny question of Cormac and his future. She studied it carefully. She would be able to tell better when she was in the actual place, she thought and gave a sigh. It would be so much quicker and easier to go by the road, but she thought it might be more fruitful of results if they walked across from Oughtdara. She wondered which of the brothers she would ask to accompany her and decided upon Gobnait. Pat was too anxious and Dinan, when he emerged from the cloud of legends, was sharp and quick-witted and might guess what she was doing.

  ‘I think on balance that we might just ride to Oughtdara and then walk across from there,’ she said and then, seeing their astonished and disappointed faces, she added hastily, ‘I know that you would all be able to find your way through the mist, after all the memorizing of the map, but I want to have a good look at the land which Finnegas has inherited from Clodagh and I don’t want Finnegas to realize what I am up to.’

  ‘Have you got an idea, Brehon?’ asked Cael.

  ‘But she doesn’t want to talk about it until she tests it out,’ said Cormac with a grin and Mara laughed.

  ‘I’ve a hard task in keeping my secrets from you people,’ she said and then added quickly, ‘Art, could you ask Cumhal if he could give you some of his measuring rods, the three-stride ones. Perhaps one for each of you if he can spare them.’

  ‘I’ll ask him to put them in a tarpaulin bag for us, shall I?’ suggested Art. ‘I can just take them myself, then. They’re very light.’

  ‘In-ter-es-ting,’ drawled Cormac, but Mara refused the invitation to divulge her plans. Fachtnan had not yet arrived from the home that he and Nuala shared at Rathborney, but she sent Slevin over to Brigid to leave instructions to tell him that they had gone to Oughtdara and he could follow. She was anxious not to delay and risk finding that Gobnait had already gone to the beach for seaweed, or to the mountains to tend his sheep. Then she folded up the large piece of skin and put it into her satchel.

  Oddly enough, although the mist had been thick on their journey, once they turned to go down to Oughtdara it began to clear and only the bottom of this hollowed-out dip in the hills was obscured. As they turned down into the road, they could see below them the slopes of the green valley with its soaked grass and then the cloud of mist that enveloped the valley floor, its few bent and twisted stark blackthorn trees looking as though they had sprung from a pale lake. Though there still hung a great silence and the thick soft clouds still capped the valley basin, there was now a slight freshness in the air, a coolness on the left cheek which showed that the wind from the sea was beginning to blow in, although the headlands and the cliffs between them and the Atlantic were still shrouded in mist.

  They were just in time to catch Gobnait who, booted and cloaked, was peering out of his front door. In the usual polite fashion of the neighbourhood, he declared himself delighted to escort the Brehon and her scholars over to Ballyryan and denied that he had any particular plans for the morning, and only regretted that he had left Ug guarding a lambing sheep, as otherwise the sagacious animal could have been sent over to warn Finnegas of his impending visitors. Anu came to the door to invite them in and Mara took the opportunity of showing the map to both of them.

  ‘Can’t make head nor tail of it,’ he said staring at the large piece of ox hide in a puzzled way.

  ‘It’s drawn as if you were looking down from the heavens on the fields and the roads,’ said Mara, using the explanations that she normally employed with young children. ‘Look—’ she seized a half-burned stick that poked from the bottom of the fire and drew on the hearthstone from memory a sketch of Dunaunmore enclosure with its buildings represented by circles and drawing a thick circular line around it to outline the wall and then a narrow oblong for the path leading away. After a moment’s thought, she added a small circle to show where the Fár Breige stood and then called on Cormac to interpret the whole, and to explain about scale.

  ‘It’s a pity Dinan isn’t here,’ said Gobnait. ‘He’s the boy who’d like to see a thing like that done in front of his own two eyes.’ He stared at the drawing in a respectful, but bemused manner.

  ‘I’ve made a mess of your lovely clean floor, Anu,’ said Mara apologetically. ‘If you’d give one of my scholars a damp
rag, they’d clean it up.’

  ‘Not at all, not at all,’ said Gobnait in alarm. ‘No, leave it there, Brehon. I was just thinking to myself that we’d have the neighbours around this evening and have a bit of a ceilidh. Everyone would love to see that.’

  ‘We’d make sure that no one would dance on it,’ Anu assured her earnestly.

  ‘Well, if you’re sure …’ Mara yielded gracefully. Gobnait would tell the story to Finnegas and then Finnegas would not question why the scholars were going around with measuring rods. Map-making would form an excuse and cover for her real purpose. She had the power to do what she wanted to do, to inspect any land in the kingdom, but she preferred to keep her thoughts to herself for the moment. At this stage in the enquiry, matters could change very rapidly and she had no intention of enlightening or alarming any one of her suspects.

  ‘Perhaps, Anu, you would tell Fachtnan where we are gone if you see him. Tell him that we are walking across to Finnegas’s place. May we leave the horses in the enclosure again, Gobnait?’ she asked.

  ‘Of course, you can and be very welcome.’ He had the grave courtesy of all the brothers. It was strange how well-mannered and almost courtly they were and how wild and uncouth their cousin Clodagh had been. Who was her mother, wondered Mara and decided that she must ask Ardal. He was an excellent taoiseach and knew all that was to be known about the members of his clan. The affairs and the honour of the clan were the whole life of that solitary, reserved man.

  In the meantime, she continued to talk to Gobnait about map-making and as they walked along together she explained to him that she hoped to mark in the boundaries on her map, and obligingly he pointed out boundary walls and boundary stones to her.