Verdict of the Court: A mystery set in sixteenth-century Ireland (A Burren Mystery)

by Cora Harrison

  Shona’s face was invisible under the sheltering roof of the boathouse, but her voice was steady and practical. ‘Take my cloak; strip everything off or you will be ill. I’ll go up to your room and get you something to wear. If I meet your husband I’ll tell him that a clumsy boy spilt wine all over you. I’ll be back as soon as I can.’

  ‘I can’t take your cloak – you’ll freeze,’ protested Mara endeavouring to stop her teeth chattering.

  ‘You have to,’ said Shona firmly. ‘I’ll be all right. I’ll manage. I never feel the cold. In any case, think of the scandal if anyone comes to the boathouse and finds the King’s wife standing there, quite naked.’

  And with that she was off and despite her chattering teeth Mara smiled to herself. Who would have thought that the shy, silent daughter of Maccon MacMahon would have so much spirit and enterprise in her? And so much good sense, also. Quickly she stripped off her clothes and seizing a handful of netting scrubbed herself with it and then put on Shona’s cloak, bending down over the water to allow her hair to drip as she combed it through with her fingers.

  Shona was back by the time that Mara had begun to braid her hair. She had brought nothing complicated – just a thick léine, a pair of boots and a very warm, fur-lined cloak with a large hood. She had also brought a square of linen so that Mara could tie it over her head to save soiling the fur with the river water.

  ‘There’s a good fire in my bedroom; you can come and change there. I met Enda. He has told my father that I am not well and he will see us safely into the room,’ she said, once Mara was dressed.

  So Enda was going to be in on this matter, thought Mara, but she did not mind. Her suspicions of Enda had begun to seem ridiculous. After all she knew this boy so well. Could he really have killed Brehon MacClancy just to have inherited the position of Brehon at the court of King Turlough? Murder for a situation was the act of an evil, ruthless person and that was not Enda. And this attack on her had, she felt, made suspicions of him seem impossible. She could not possibly imagine that Enda would try to kill the woman who was his teacher for ten years. Meekly she followed Shona from the boathouse and noted how the girl knew her way so well, going by a path heavily cloaked with a dense hedge of holly to shelter the winter-time vegetables.

  Enda was standing by the drawbridge when they edged around the corner. He was apparently gazing nonchalantly into the mist. He raised one hand as Shona gave a light whistle and Mara quickened her pace. Once he saw them he went back into the castle and they could hear his footsteps ahead of them as they hesitated and then at a low whistle, they hurried up the staircase. There was no sign of him, however, when they reached the door to Shona’s bedroom and once inside the girl turned the key in the lock. Spread across the bed were a few piles of Mara’s clothes, taken from her clothes chest, and there was a large linen towel warming by the fire and a bowl of rose-scented water ready on the wash stand. Shona had efficiently organized everything in the time that it had taken Mara to remove her wet clothes in boathouse.

  ‘Wonderful,’ said Mara, shedding the cloak and seizing the towel. Back home at the law school she had a bathhouse, where the water in the iron tub came from a deep well and a charcoal burner heated the water. She longed for it now but did her best with the small basin of water provided. At least, she hoped, it would enable her to get rid of the fishy river smell from her skin and hair.

  ‘Take your time,’ said Shona. ‘No one will come.’

  ‘What if your father comes?’ asked Mara. ‘Perhaps we should have some story ready for him.’

  ‘My father is under armed guard,’ said Shona grimly. ‘In any case he won’t press me on any point at this moment. He knows that it would be dangerous to do that.’

  Mara raised her eyebrows with a smile, while her mind worked fast. ‘You’ve got him well under control, then,’ she said lightly. She did not look at Shona but kept her head bowed down to the heat of the fire as she scrubbed her hair with the thick linen towel. There was a long silence after the remark and when she lifted her head and reached for the comb she cast a quick glance at Shona.

  There was a very strange expression on the girl’s face. Not the smug expression of a well-loved daughter who could wind her father around her thumb, but a bitter expression of fury combined with sadness. Mara’s heart was moved with pity for her.

  ‘What is it?’ she asked softly.

  There was a long pause. Mara could see that Shona was unsure. She opened her mouth as though about to speak and then closed it again. Her eyes looked down and she fidgeted with her fingers, sliding a ring of silver to and fro.

  ‘I can’t say,’ she said eventually. And then quite suddenly her eyes looked straight into Mara’s and there was an expression almost of terror in them.

  ‘I hate being a girl; I feel so powerless. I wish that I didn’t have a family. Cael thinks that she can escape by pretending to be a boy, but as soon as she starts to look attractive then all of that will stop and she’ll have to do what she is told, she’ll be at the mercy of any filthy beast that desires her,’ she said, the words tumbling over each other.

  Mara nodded. ‘There are some men like that,’ she said softly. ‘Men that like to get a woman in their power. The law gives protection against such men; punishes them.’ She watched Shona intently.

  ‘The law can’t restore a reputation once lost,’ said Shona bitterly. ‘A girl …’ She hesitated and then went on, with an attempt at sounding indifferent and detached, ‘If a girl, as a child, has been raped and has had a child, then she is damaged goods if her secret gets out. No amount of silver can compensate for that.’

  ‘True,’ said Mara. She bent her head over the stone hearth and allowed her hair to hang down as she combed it in the warmth of the fire. ‘What happened to the baby,’ she said without looking around.

  ‘It died,’ said Shona in a dull voice.

  The mother was too young to bear a child, thought Mara, her heart filled with such fury against a man who would do this to a girl placed under his protection that she felt she could gladly have murdered him herself. A lot was now explained. Cael’s insistence on being a boy, her incessant practice with her throwing knives, her hatred of Brehon MacClancy, all this now made bleak sense.

  ‘And your father?’ she questioned. What kind of man would allow this to go on; would still leave his two younger children in that man’s care? She got up from her kneeling position and went across to the mirror and began to braid her hair.

  ‘I hate him,’ said Shona bitterly.

  ‘Did you try to tell him …’ Mara paused and then added casually, ‘about Brehon MacClancy.’

  ‘He believed him; he told my father that I had disgraced myself with a cú glas, with a man of the roads.’

  ‘I think that you should have tried to tell your father the truth,’ said Mara decisively. ‘I think …’ But then she stopped as Shona said slowly and bitterly:

  ‘And have the same thing happen to Cael – that’s what he threatened. He said that it was all my fault, anyway, that I had enticed him, worn pretty dresses, that I was a … a …’

  Shona stopped and Mara looked at her with pity. Probably there was no real relationship with her father – in any case she may have been very young, very young, pregnant and bewildered – shamed by the baby that she was carrying. And the threat to Cael may have been a real one and not one that the sister, who would have been returned to her father and probably married by the time that Cael became attractive to Brehon MacClancy’s perverted taste, could have prevented. Mara decided to move away from the subject. Nothing could be done about the past; the future was what counted. The girl had been stiff with apprehension for the whole of the visit and it had not diminished after the death of Brehon MacClancy two days ago.

  ‘What’s worrying you, just now?’ she asked gently. And then when Shona was silent, she added, ‘Would you like me to talk to your father?’

  A look of alarm sprang into the girl’s eyes.

  ‘No, don’
t do that, whatever you do. He’d kill me if he knew that I had been talking to you.’

  And then, in a low voice, she added. ‘I’m scared of him; that’s the trouble. I dare not go against him. I have to do what I am told. He has threatened me. He’ll tell everyone … tell everyone something about me … I’ll be shamed in front of the world. I’ll kill myself if he does that. I have to carry out his bidding.’

  Mara smiled reassuringly. ‘If you need protection against … against anyone that is threatening you, King Turlough will help. Just tell me and I’ll talk to him.’

  Shona shook her head violently. ‘I can’t,’ she said. ‘My own father; I can’t betray him. I can’t do it. He would be cut down and slaughtered. I’ve seen that done. But he would shame me first and then I would be fatherless and without an honour price and then I would kill myself,’ she added with a brooding look.

  Mara bit her lip. She was puzzled as to what to say next. The young are so intense, she thought and regretted that Shona, despite being in the foster care of a Brehon, had grown up with such a poor opinion of herself that her reliance was on her father, not herself.

  ‘Enda,’ she began tentatively and was rewarded by a quick blush that spread over Shona’s face.

  Don’t worry,’ she said. ‘I can keep a secret. Tell me if you think I can help you in any way.’

  But the moment, she sensed, had passed. The blush had faded. The huge dark eyes filled with tears. The girl had a brooding look on her face. She picked up Mara’s wet clothes and deposited them in a wicker basket and then went around the room, straightening objects, emptying the water from the bowl into the garderobe beyond the bedroom. Mara said no more. Shona now seemed to be distressed and anxious to speed her visitor on her way and after renewed and very sincere thanks, Mara left her.

  As she descended the stairs her mind turned over the possible reasons why Shona should have used the word ‘betray’ and the even more revealing ‘cut down and slaughtered’. Why should she be guarding a secret, a secret which she held over her father’s head, and which he held over her head – a secret which she feared would alienate Enda from her.

  ‘He told you about Shona then; he swore not to mention it to anyone, but I suppose he thought that he could trust your discretion …’ These had been Donogh O’Hickey’s words.

  What, she had wondered then, was Shona’s secret? Now she knew that secret, but there was another one, also. Not the matter of the pregnancy and the birth – her father knew all about that, even if he didn’t know the full truth. But what was on her mind now? What was her father forcing her to do or what was the matter that he wanted to keep secret?

  Her anger grew again at the thought that a father would use that terrible event in his daughter’s life in order to buy her silence and acquiescence through fear of disclosure.

  And then as she mounted the stairs to the solar, an idea suddenly occurred to her and it was so outrageous that she stopped and almost returned to Shona’s room. But then she decided to carry on up to the solar.

  There was more than one source of information available to her.

  Twelve

  Cáin Íarraith and Cain Machslechta

  (Law of children)

  A child under the age of fourteen has no legal responsibility for any misdeed.

  Liability for a child’s offence is borne by his father or by his foster-father if he is in fosterage.

  A dependent child is classed as a ‘táid aithgena’ (thief of restitution) from the age of twelve to seventeen. If he steals something it has to be restored and no penalty need be paid.

  ‘I’m sorry that I am so late seeing you all. I overslept and then had to see the captain of the guard,’ she said apologetically to her scholars when she came into the solar to find them all chatting. No one seemed to know anything about her peril-filled morning. Domhnall politely made some reference to her anxieties. She hardly listened though. Her mind was busy. And if her surmise was correct, there was no time to be lost.

  ‘Has anyone seen Cael and Cian this morning?’ she asked.

  ‘They’re not allowed out of their tower,’ said Cormac casually. ‘There’s an armed guard on the door. They came across to ask me to bring them food and drink before they starved to death.’

  Mara raised her eyebrows. Though she had given orders that nobody was to be allowed to leave the castle grounds, she had no reason to suppose that there was a guard put on the whole of the south-eastern tower where the MacMahons slept. Shona had no difficulty in coming out, and she had not encountered any guards when she went up to the girl’s bedroom. She guessed that the MacMahon twins loved to dramatize.

  ‘So how did you see the twins if they are not allowed out of the south-eastern tower?’ she asked.

  ‘They came across the roof,’ said Cormac with his mouth full and Mara smiled to think of the fun they were having, slipping and sliding among the slates and sheets of lead between the towers and pretending that their lives were in danger and that starvation threatened unless they could get hold of a friendly ally.

  ‘Do you think that you could go back that way and get them for me, tell them that I have something belonging to them?’ she asked, salving her conscience by reflecting that months ago, during holidays and the weekend in October, Cormac and the twins had been climbing all over that roof when she was far away in the Burren. If they hadn’t fallen then, they would be unlikely to fall now. She looked around at the other boys when Cormac had disappeared and Domhnall, reading her mind, said hastily: ‘We’ve just finished, Brehon. We’ll leave you in peace.’

  But not in peace, thought Mara, as they went off, debating whether to help Rosta in the kitchen or to go and try out the swing that one of the stable men had made in the barn. No, she thought, I am not at peace. I am uneasy. What secret does Shona MacMahon hide and is Enda aware of it? And why did Maccon send for his daughter? Why was he so anxious to leave two days after Christmas? A suspicion had come into her mind and she would have no peace until she had found the truth. She left the solar and went to stand at the bottom of the staircase, looking up anxiously.

  It seemed forever before there was a movement from above. She stood and listened. There was none of the usual jokes and laughter and play-fighting that normally went on when the twins were present. The footsteps came down quite slowly and when they arrived beneath the candle on the landing outside the solar, Mara could see that her son’s face looked puzzled.

  ‘Thank you, Cormac,’ she said and he took her words for the dismissal that she intended and made his way towards the kitchen where his fellow scholars were holding a shouted conversation with Rosta about the dinner menu.

  ‘Come into my solar,’ said Mara to the two silent MacMahon children. They followed her in and, as she had intended, their eyes went instantly to the small pile of silver that she had left conspicuously on the table.

  She saw them exchange a look and had an impression that a question had been asked by Cian and answered by Cael. She hoped that it meant they were willing to give her information. They had hesitated near to the door, but then came further into the solar and perched on the edge of the hearth. She offered them a cushion each and they took them in silence, seating themselves without moving their eyes from her face. They had a cautiously, elderly expression and Mara felt sorry for them. However, if her idea proved to be true then the lives of all in the castle might depend on her ability to extract information from the pair. She seated herself at the table and turned to face them.

  ‘Have you had any breakfast?’ she asked and they both nodded silently. She had never known them to be so quiet and she thought that there was an air of apprehension about both of them. I’m right, she thought. Her sudden fear had been confirmed. Her heart started to beat uncomfortably. It was imperative to be careful, to proceed cautiously and cleverly; the consequences could be terrible if the information could not be obtained quickly.

  ‘Do you know why your father is so anxious to leave the castle?’ she asked bluntly. ‘I
imagine that not much escapes you two,’ she added. Flattery was, she thought, a very valuable weapon when used judiciously with the young.

  Again there was that glance between them.

  ‘Guess,’ said Cael after a minute.

  ‘Hm,’ said Mara, ‘now that’s a challenge that I never refuse. Let me see …’ She pretended to consider, went across and put some light, very well-dried birch logs on the fire. They flared up instantly and illuminated the two young faces.

  ‘Of course it is nonsense to imagine he just wants to do some business. I don’t believe that. At Christmastime pleasure comes before business. Why should he make an arrangement to leave a week before all of the other guests?’

  There was a slight smile on Cael’s face and Cian almost nodded. Mara thought that she could proceed more quickly.

  ‘It was not so much because he wanted to go home, was it,’ she said trying to make her words sound impulsive, almost careless. ‘It was because he didn’t want to be here today, that’s right, isn’t it?’

  There was no need for the extra light from the fire – both faces had swung around to look at her and there was a tautness and a tension about the two thin figures which told her that her guess had hit the mark.

  ‘And why didn’t he want to be here today?’ she said thoughtfully. ‘It couldn’t be anything to do with the murder of Brehon MacClancy, could it? Did he want to escape my investigation? But that would have been stupid,’ she said in a friendly, chatty manner and was pleased to see grins on their faces. ‘Your father would have been very brainless to have virtually declared his guilt by a hasty flight,’ she declared. ‘After all, he is one of the King’s tenants, someone sworn to loyalty. If anything was discovered which pinned the guilt on him the King would send an armed guard for him. Unless, of course, that he had changed his alliance and found another, just as powerful as the King … another protector …’

  They looked at each other again, but did not contradict her. There was a flash of interest in Cael’s eyes and Cian just gazed straight ahead of him. Neither showed much affection for their father, Mara thought, but then, perhaps he had never given them much affection. They may have been fostered from babyhood, may, in fact, as often was the custom, have had two or three foster homes.