And what a sea! It stretched out in front of them, sapphire blue, the waves streaked across its ruffled surface like cream whipped to rough peaks. The colour was so intense that the sky itself paled before it and the limestone rocks were black and mirror-like against the continuously moving water. Far out towards the Aran Island two boats, white sails filled with the north-easterly wind, slid across its polished surface.
‘Fetch baby Cormac from Cliona for me, Fiona, would you? Bring him up to the hall. There will be no one there but ourselves and he loves to have all that space to crawl on.’
Unwillingly she admitted to herself that she did not wish to face Cliona alone, for a while. Not until she had time to talk the whole matter through with Turlough and make up her mind what to do.
However, when Fiona pushed open the door of the great hall with one shoulder, Mara saw that she had two children in her arms, not one.
They were so unlike one another, these two little boys. Mara never saw them together without a slight pang. Art, Cliona’s son, was so sturdy, a brown-haired, solid child with his mother’s dark eyes. Although he was only six weeks older than little Cormac he was so very much bigger that he seemed to be double in size.
Cormac is perfectly healthy, Mara said to herself, taking the slim, blue-eyed, fair-skinned little boy from Fiona’s arms and holding him close for a moment before putting him down on the floor.
‘I had to bring Art as well,’ said Fiona apologetically. ‘He screamed when I took Cormac to the door and then Cormac screamed as well when he realized that Art was going to be left behind.’
‘Much better to have the two,’ Mara assured her. ‘They will amuse each other.’ To herself she said silently, how can I ever separate them?
The two little boys were off immediately crawling rapidly down the flagstone floor. Cliona had made a little pair of breeches for each so that their knees didn’t get skinned by the hard floors, and they progressed with great rapidity to the far end of the room, turning around when they reached the chest there and coming back again like a pair of spirited racehorses.
Mara carefully erected a barrier of chairs and stools in front of the fire and then went to sit on the window seat. Fiona, she noticed, had taken a seat at some distance from her. She waited though, looking casually out of the window towards the sea. The two carracks were getting nearer to Aran and for a moment she wondered about them. They looked too large for sailing boats. Probably something to do with Brian the Spaniard, Turlough’s cousin, she thought. Guests arriving; traders from foreign parts, perhaps.
‘Cormac will be able to walk sooner than Art,’ said Fiona from across the room.
‘Don’t encourage me to be competitive,’ said Mara carelessly, but she watched with pleasure as the smaller, lighter boy pulled himself up and moved carefully along the line of chairs until he came to where Fiona was sitting. He placed a fervent wet kiss on her knee. Then he glimpsed his foster-brother moving back down the hall and in an instant he was after him, like a hound after a hare. Bran walked anxiously behind, keeping an eye on both babies. Fiona laughed and Mara was glad to hear the merry sound and even more glad when Fiona, of her own accord, came across the floor and seated herself beside Mara.
‘You’re a very popular young lady, you know,’ Mara said, scrubbing with a handkerchief at the wet stain on Fiona’s gown. ‘All the boys love you – even Cormac. I think that Fachtnan, if he did follow you the night before last, did it because he was fond of you and worried about you.’
‘A knight in armour,’ mused Fiona. She looked touched, but thoughtful.
‘It makes sense, doesn’t it? After all, whoever followed you did no harm to you. He rode behind you the whole way there. But did he return with you? That is the question.’
‘I thought I might have heard something for the first few miles, but I’m not sure,’ said Fiona. ‘I was a bit upset at Eamon behaving like that. I was crying.’
‘And then?’ asked Mara.
‘And then, once I was over the bridge, I started to gallop as hard as I could possibly go. My pony just went hurtling down the road. All I could hear was the noise of her hoofs against the stone.’
Mara sighed. The large ponies, bred on the barren hills of Connemara, were incredibly hardy with an immense amount of stamina – fast, heavily built animals. She kept a collection for the use of any of the law school scholars who did not have their own horses. Cumhal made sure that they were well fed and well shod. She could just imagine that if Fiona had given the pony its head, that she would hear nothing above the noise of drumming hoofs.
‘Fachtnan was in the schoolhouse this morning, according to Cumhal. He found him studying.’ Mara watched Fiona’s face carefully.
‘So it wasn’t him,’ she said, ‘but if it wasn’t him, who else followed us and followed me back over the bridge?’
‘It still could have been Fachtnan. The fact that he was in the schoolhouse this morning does not mean that he slept the night at Cahermacnaghten. Moylan and Aidan seem fairly sure that neither Eamon nor Fachtnan slept at Ballinalacken on Friday night.’
Art and Cormac caused a diversion then by bumping heads with each other and simultaneously setting up a loud roaring sound where each seemed to compete to make the most noise. Mara picked up Art, who was nearest to her and Fiona picked up Cormac. When both were kissed and comforted with a sweetmeat from a silver jar on the table, they set off on their race course again, with Bran, this time, moving in between them as if he wanted to keep them apart.
‘Before you parted from Eamon, while you were still on friendly terms with each other, did he say anything about when he planned to leave Cahermacnaghten to go to the MacEgan law school. Was he going to come back and leave at the end of the week or had he planned to do something else?’
‘He didn’t actually say anything about when he was going to leave,’ said Fiona. ‘But he did say that Muiris – is that the name of the man who had made the last bid for the flax garden? Well, he said that man had asked him to do some law work for him when he returned from Arra.’
Nine
Críth Gablach
(Ranks in Society)
An aire déso (high lord) is a man who is related to royalty. He has an honour price of fifteen séts, or seven and a half ounces of silver or eight milch cows.
He would normally have twenty clients, has a retinue of nine persons, has a wife of equal rank to his own and eight horses including a saddle horse with a silver bridle. His house should have twelve bed-cubicles.
Brian Ruadh O’Brien, Lord of Arra, was a man of about the same age as his second cousin, King Turlough Donn. Not a tall man, but immensely broad of shoulder with long arms and huge hands. His hair and square-cut beard were of that particular shade of iron grey which showed that in his youth he had been very dark-haired. But his eyes were blue – intensely blue – dark as the ocean.
‘Brehon, it’s lovely to meet you again,’ he said holding out his hand to Mara as she came to greet him.
‘And a great pleasure to me, also,’ returned Mara. She had no memory of encountering him before, but supposed that they must have met at some ceremony in Turlough’s castle in Thomond.
‘And I want to thank you very much for doing my legal business for me, year after year,’ he went on, still holding her hand as if it were something very precious.
‘Ah, the flax garden. Well, we must talk about that; perhaps I might trouble you on this matter before bringing you to meet the other guests.’ Mara managed to detach her hand and waited while he surveyed the landscape.
‘I had not imagined you so near to the sea,’ he said.
‘You are fond of the sea.’ There was a look on the man’s face that turned her observation from a question into a statement.
‘I love it,’ said Brian Ruadh softly. ‘I was fostered on Aran, you know. The man there was a true father to me and his wife was a mother.’
‘That would be the father and mother of Brian the Spaniard, would it?’ Mara made the que
ry mechanically. Her mind was very much on fosterage. Closer than brothers, where had she read that?
‘That’s right, we were brought up together, the two of us. The two Brians, they used to call us. His mother is a wonderful woman. She took us on walks, told us stories about mermen and magic seals. I spoke Spanish more than Irish in my early days.’ His eyes shone as they gazed hungrily at the restless ocean, sparkling in the April sunshine.
‘Well you will enjoy the trip to Aran, then,’ said Mara. She hoped that she had time to discuss the affair of Eamon’s death before bringing him indoors, but Turlough’s eldest son, Conor, had appeared at the door. She searched for words to turn the conversation, but found herself warming to this man. She did not care for many of the O’Briens. With the exception of Turlough and perhaps of his cousin and foster-brother Teige, the clan seemed to her to be very vainglorious and self-seeking, obsessed with their inheritance from Brian Boru who had been dead for five hundred years. Perhaps this Brian Ruadh might be of a more sensitive mould. There was a dark, yearning look on his face as he gazed out to sea. The look of someone who sees his dream and hopes that it is about to come true.
‘Conor’s looking better,’ said Brian Ruadh after a few moments. He glanced up at the young man. ‘A bit more meat on him! There was a time that I thought he would never make old bones and that the hope of the clan would rest on his brother Murrough. Where is Murrough now?’
‘I’m not sure,’ said Mara briefly. She hoped that Brian Ruadh was not going to bring up the subject of Murrough with Turlough. It was a source of such great sorrow to the king that his second son spent much of his time in London, dancing attendance on the Great Earl and paying court to King Henry VIII at Whitehall. It would spoil the planned excursion to Aran if this was harped upon.
‘I must ask you something before you go in,’ she said. ‘It concerns the young lawyer that I sent to you with the deed for the flax garden.’
Brian Ruadh gave an amused look. ‘Did you know that he brought a young lady with him – from your law school, also, I gather?’
‘I didn’t know at the time, nor that they set off at midnight,’ said Mara frankly. ‘Just a silly escapade. I suppose we have all done ridiculous things in our youth.’
‘I must say that I was shocked. Still, no harm done, I suppose. He seemed a nice lad, son of the old Brehon of Cloyne, in Cork, I believe. Between ourselves, not a very admirable character, his father. Great man to take bribes, so they said. Meddled in politics, too. No one trusted him. Still, I mustn’t speak ill of the dead. And this lad seemed a good fellow. I don’t think he goes back to Cork often. Seemed happily settled at the law school at Redwood. Alone in the world, now, I understand, neither mother nor father, not even an uncle, he was telling me.’
‘I’m afraid that he met with a tragic accident on the way back,’ said Mara.
‘No!’ The shock on the man’s face was huge. ‘What happened?’ he asked urgently.
‘He met his death on the side of the mountain in the centre of the Burren,’ said Mara gravely.
‘An accident? On the way back from Arra? Why?’ He thought for a moment, looking puzzled. She had nodded at his first two exclamations, but had not offered a comment on the third. ‘But why was he climbing a mountain? You’d think that he’d be exhausted. Did he deliver the signed deed back to you?’
Conor was lingering in the distance, hesitating on the threshold of the castle door. A sensitive young man, thought Mara. So different from his brother Murrough. Was he of kingship material, though, she wondered in the back of her mind, while simultaneously watching the man in front of her. And yet Turlough had been such a successful king, far better than either of his two dominating uncles.
‘No,’ she said aloud after allowing a few moments to pass. ‘No, he didn’t come back here first. He went north from Arra and then crossed the mountain pass, and came down by Aillwee and the flax garden.’ It was not quite an answer but it would do him for the moment.
He looked puzzled, didn’t know the land west of his own possessions very well, she thought. Never once, during her almost twenty years of office, had she known him to visit the flax garden.
‘But what about the girl?’ he asked suddenly. ‘Did she go with him? Surely she was with him.’ A shade of anger passed over his face. He must be quite strait-laced, she reflected in an amused fashion. The thought of Fiona had brought a look of hot indignation to his blue eyes.
‘No,’ she replied, ‘they quarrelled. They parted and Eamon rode north, while Fiona went south by the route of O’Briensbridge and through Thomond west and Corcomroe.’
‘I see,’ he said. Oddly, he seemed relieved about that. Perhaps his notions of propriety were such that he felt it was better for a girl to ride alone at night rather than with a young man who had lived in the same law school and worked side by side with her for the last few months.
‘I scolded Fiona for doing this,’ continued Mara. ‘I told her that you would have given her an escort.’
‘I certainly would have been very happy to do that.’ He said the words with great sincerity and Mara had no doubt that he was telling the truth.
‘There is another problem,’ she continued. ‘You signed the deed and gave it back to Eamon –’ she waited for his nod before continuing – ‘but unfortunately when the body was discovered, his satchel, which he would have worn strung across his body, was lying in a different place. It had been opened and it was empty.’
‘The deed had been stolen!’ The shock in his voice was almost as great as when he had heard the news that the young man had been killed.
‘Yes,’ said Mara briefly. She had said what she had planned to say and had observed his reactions. Shocked and horrified, was probably how she would have characterized them. Whatever mystery there was about Eamon’s death, it certainly had come as a surprise to this man. Of course, she reminded herself, her judgement was not infallible. Brian Ruadh could be just a good actor. It would have been easy for a man of his power to send a trusted man-of-arms after the young lawyer. Perhaps his surprise was about the location of the murder and the news that Fiona and Eamon had parted. And yet, why should Eamon be of interest to him? Even if he did dislike Eamon’s father, why harm the son? She thought about her colleague, Fergus MacClancy, Brehon of the kingdom of Corcomroe, a man thirty years older than she. He would know all the gossip about the Brehon of Cloyne. She resolved to have a word with him as soon as possible. Perhaps on the day that the party set out for Aran she would ride with them to the coast and call into the MacClancy law school on the way back.
‘And since the deed is missing and therefore no longer valid,’ she continued smoothly, ‘I was wondering whether we should take advantage of your presence and hold the auction again tomorrow, if you could spare the time to ride with me up to the flax garden in the afternoon.’
There was something hesitant about the way in which he promised. She handed him over to Conor and went back to her room for a few minutes before facing the dinner party again. She felt tired and discouraged and torn into too many pieces. This murder, if it was a murder and not just an unfortunate accident, was proving puzzling and she felt that she wasn’t tackling it systematically.
Perhaps, thought Mara, she was really not able to cope with anything extra outside her daily routine. Perhaps she should not have insisted on keeping on the law school and her appointment as Brehon of the Burren when she got married. Perhaps it was all getting too much for her – and then there was Cormac. If only she could be like one of the women in the farms around, going about her daily duties with a baby tucked snugly into a sling on her back. If only she could spare the time to be with him more often. Brigid had reported proudly that Cormac had said his first word – it was only a two-letter word – a loud and explosive ‘No’ apparently, but it felt sad that his mother had not been there to hear it.
‘So, had the O’Brien of Arra anything of interest to say about the death of your young lawyer?’ enquired Ulick, coming to join
Mara as she stood watching the servants scurry to and fro, spreading the dinner feast on the huge table in the hall. This would be the last ceremonial meal for most of the guests; only Ulick, Donán, Conor and Brian Ruadh would be left behind to escort Turlough on his annual visit to Aran. The rest would depart for Thomond after a quick breakfast.
‘Not much,’ said Mara briefly. The wretched little man had probably been looking out of his window and observed all of her conversation with the Lord of Arra.
‘That’s his trouble, poor man,’ said Ulick with a sigh. ‘He never does have much of interest to say. It makes him a very boring person. No friends, you know. Watch Teige trying to get away from him!’
‘I thought him charming! So sincere!’ retorted Mara. ‘It makes quite a change for me.’
‘Dear Brehon. So sharp.’ He smiled at her benignly before adding, ‘It’s a wonderful thing, this legal training, is it not? Sharpens the wits – and the tongue.’
‘Allows a man to talk his way into and out of every situation, wouldn’t you say, Ulick?’ said Mara sweetly and added, ‘Remind me, Ulick, which was the law school where you studied?’
‘Not me, Brehon. I just pick up pieces of knowledge here and there from acquaintances and friends; just a crumb from the medical profession, another crumb from the lawyers. Used to haunt the house of my father’s Brehon at one stage; got quite a few crumbs from him.’ Ulick put his head to one side, observing her from one eye, looking quite like a little bird himself. ‘But let’s not talk of me, Brehon,’ he went on, ‘let’s talk of you and your new scholar. How charming it is to see the female sex taking over the profession.’ Ulick’s eyes went across the room to where Fiona was merrily shaking her curls as Seamus the poet read from a manuscript.
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