I could have prevented this, thought Mara, bending down to look closely at the disfigured eye. I should have made more time to talk to him. I should have known that he came back from Aran for a purpose, that he wanted to investigate his nephew’s death, that perhaps he guessed the murderer. Why didn’t I insist that he came back with me to Cahermacnaghten? I must do my job properly. Just because I was tired, I didn’t press him on where he was going to spend the night and now this has happened. I must not allow my marriage and my pregnancy to get in the way of the position that I hold. The law must be upheld in this kingdom.
And now there had been another killing beside Balor’s Cave. More rumours would be spreading, more superstitious unease and more half-recollected stories about the evil god. Ardal would find it hard to get men to work for him here at this spot after these two murders.
Wearily Mara straightened her back, using one of the roots of the upturned willow to assist her. She had to do her best now for Becan and for Iarla. The truth of these deaths had to be uncovered and the murderer exposed as soon as possible for everybody’s sake. Slaughter could not be allowed to happen here on the Burren. She turned to go back, her mind sorting through the tasks ahead of her. She would have to find a few messengers – it was lucky that Dalagh and his industrious children were working so close by.
It was strange though, thought Mara, thinking of the basket maker as she picked her way down the muddy lane. Why had Dalagh not shown any curiosity about the behaviour of the ravens? Even now, as Mara moved away from the body, they were flocking back, shrieking and circling just above her head. Mara bent down and automatically turned to throw a stone at them, but her mind was still busily considering the problem of Dalagh. He was not a farmer; but he would, doubtless, have been the son of a farmer, have lived amongst farmers all of his life. Even the carefully brought up daughter of a physician had immediately thought to turn aside from her path once she saw the ravens hovering. Too many young lambs and even calves had fallen victim to these blood-hungry birds.
The wind from the west was very strong and Mara had difficulty in forcing her way along the small lane, staggering against its invisible force. It seemed to her almost perverse the way that Dalagh continued to ignore her while still chopping against the willow rods with his long sharp knife. There was no point in calling to him until she got a little nearer; the force of the wind would just sweep her words away so she struggled on until she came near enough to attract his attention.
‘Dalagh,’ she shouted when she reached the stone wall just opposite to him.
For a moment he did not show any signs of hearing her and in exasperation she thought of throwing a stone at him. Then one of the boys timidly touched his shoulder and Dalagh swung around, a passing streak of sunshine glinting on the knife in his hand, and then he came across to her, moving with the sureness of long custom through the closely set willow rods. The boy followed and his brothers all ceased work and stood looking across at her.
‘Brehon?’ Dalagh’s voice sounded a query. He looked down at the knife in his hand and then hastily slotted it into its leather scabbard at his waist.
‘Dalagh, Becan, the uncle of the boy from Aran, is dead.’ Mara spoke the words firmly and unemotionally and for a moment he did not react. He just stared at her as if wondering what to say.
‘Jesus, Mary and Joseph,’ said the boy beside him. ‘Another one dead!’ He was a young boy, probably younger than Shane.
Mara was sorry for his distress, but at the same time she did not allow her eyes to move from Dalagh’s face. Why did the man not say something? Surely it was unnatural that he should just stand there eyeing her in that uncertain way as if he were in some social situation where he was unsure of the correct response.
‘May the Lord have mercy on his soul,’ he muttered eventually, rather as if he were attending the wake of the dead man.
‘What happened, Brehon?’ asked the boy. ‘Was he killed by Balor?’
Suddenly Dalagh seemed to come to life.
‘Another killing?’ he asked. Now there was a correct measure of horror in his eyes.
‘That’s right,’ said Mara evenly. ‘And I don’t think that Balor is responsible. Dalagh, could you send one of your older boys for Malachy the physician and another one of them for your taoiseach, the O’Lochlainn. We’ll need to move the body quickly before the storm breaks.’ She cast a quick, worried glance at the dark grey clouds.
‘I’ll do that, Brehon.’ Suddenly Dalagh was galvanized into action. ‘I’ll get my lads to bring our own cart over. That will save time a bit. We’ll be able to move the body to the church as soon as the physician is finished with it. I’ll go for the taoiseach myself. This lad here is a good shot with the stones. He’ll go back with you and keep those ravens off the body.’
‘My name is Dathi,’ said the boy chattily as they walked back side by side. From time to time, he picked up a stone and flung it with deadly accuracy at the ravens, causing a squawk and a flutter from amongst the bunch with his third stone. A cluster of black feathers floated down, whirling vigorously in the wind. The ravens flew off exclaiming loudly and the boy smiled with delight.
‘I told Father that they were up to no good!’ he shouted in her ear. Now that they had passed from beyond the shelter of the sally gardens the wind’s force was unchecked.
Mara held on to her cloak, wrapping it tightly around her body. She wished that the boy had something warm; the short leather jerkin that he wore over his léine seemed inadequate in a wind like this and his legs were bare apart from a pair of laced sandals. However, he seemed cheerful and unperturbed by the weather. Children do seem to have this ability, she thought, almost as if their own bodies regulated the heat for them, irrespective of clothing.
‘So you guessed that something was wrong when you saw the ravens?’ she asked as they turned into the comparative shelter of the old misshapen willows that lined the entrance to Balor’s Cave.
‘That’s right.’
He aimed a sharp-edged stone at the ravens and gave a victory shout as another few feathers tumbled down. The ravens, however, were now desperate for their prey. It had probably taken a long time before they had got up enough courage to actually attack and they were determined not to relinquish their booty. Mara began to be sorry that she had not taken a bigger boy with her. There was something very frightening and inhuman about the ravens’ determination; from time to time one of them flew near enough for her to see its cold, grey eye and she felt like joining Daithi in his assault against the birds.
Still, his father was right, Daithi was a good shot; she could leave it to him. In the meantime, there was something else to be ascertained before Dalagh came back. She had noticed how silent and inhibited all of the children were in front of their parents – perhaps this quelling of their natural talkativeness was an inevitable consequence of a large family who were all trained to work hard from an early age; a pity, thought Mara, but she didn’t feel that she could interfere. There was affection there and no cruelty as far as she could see. Dalagh could only make a good living out of basket-making if he had the assistance of all of his large family. It was nothing to do with her really. In the meantime, in Dalagh’s absence, she could use her opportunity to find out how long Becan’s body had been lying there.
‘When did you first notice the ravens?’ she asked after the boy had successfully dispersed the next assault from the swooping birds of prey.
‘Saw them in the morning, first thing, a few of them.’ He was searching around the ground for a well-shaped stone with the concentration of a craftsman selecting the right tool.
‘Just a few,’ she echoed.
‘Yes, just a few. They kept coming and flying over and then going away and flying back with a few friends and going off again.’
Mara nodded. It seemed as if Becan’s body had been there all day. It would have taken quite some time before the ravens had gathered enough courage to attack, especially as the body, like Iarla’s befo
re him, was half sheltered by the willow twigs. ‘Perhaps we’ll wait here,’ she said. ‘The ravens have attacked the body and you might not like to see it.’
‘Nah, I don’t care,’ he said nonchalantly. ‘I’d like to see it. I’ll be the first, after you and I can tell everyone about it. I didn’t see the other fellow from Aran and the others did.’
And then he strode out in front of her determinedly, waving a challenging stone-filled fist at the ravens. She followed him with a half smile lifting the corners of her lips. Boys will be boys, Brigid would say. She guessed that he wouldn’t like the sight of Becan’s body, on the other hand, these country children were realistic and they lived with death. It might actually be better for him to see the body, than to imagine what might have happened to it.
They had come to the body now and the child gulped a little, averted his eyes and then looked back with as nonchalant an air as he could assume.
‘Made a fine mess of him, didn’t they?’ He frowned, came a little nearer and peered down into the disfigured face.
‘Do you believe in Balor?’ he asked then, trying to steady his young voice.
‘No,’ said Mara. She didn’t add any reasons. He had not asked for that and she was interested to know what he would say.
‘Neither do I,’ he said surprisingly. ‘My father and mother do, but sometimes we, us boys, think they are just putting it on, trying to keep us away from the cave.’
‘Why would they want to do that?’ Mara watched his face with amusement.
‘They might think it’s dangerous for us,’ he replied shrewdly. ‘You can’t trust caves, you know. They collapse on top of you, or else they can flood and drown you. We went in there once, three of us, it goes back a long way. And then we heard a weird sort of noise. The others were frightened and they ran. I wasn’t scared,’ he boasted, ‘but I thought I might as well go back too. My sandals were in a mess with the clay. Listen to that wind! We’ll have some more trees down tonight.’
‘See if Malachy the physician is coming, will, you, Daithi? I’ll be all right here for a few minutes. I think that you’ve frightened the ravens away for good now.’
‘They’ll be back,’ he said wisely, and then he was off, running energetically down the road.
Mara moved forward once he was out of sight. The cave entrance was small and low, but she thought she would just be able to fit into it. The boy’s conversation had awakened her curiosity. Were they murdered, both uncle and nephew, at this spot? And if so, what had attracted them here?
‘Mara!’ The clear voice rose high against the noise of the wind and Mara turned around guiltily. It was a silly idea anyway, she thought; the clay was wet and slippery and she might fall and damage her baby. Carefully she moved back and went down the path to meet Nuala accompanied by the basket maker’s boy.
‘Father’s not in, he’s gone to Galway,’ said Nuala when she came within earshot. ‘I thought I would come straight away. I think it will rain soon. You shouldn’t be out in this weather in your condition,’ she scolded with a grin.
‘Don’t you start. Brigid is bad enough.’ Mara returned the grin and then sobered. ‘Have you heard the details?’ She looked at the tall boy, the eldest son of the basket maker who was surveying the body with feigned indifference.
Nuala nodded. She had her medical bag with her and now she advanced and knelt beside what was left of Becan the blacksmith from Aran.
‘Could you two go back and tell us when the taoiseach is coming? I think the ravens are keeping their distance now.’ Mara didn’t want to have the two boys around while she was talking to Nuala.
‘Come on, Daithi.’ The eldest boy took him by the shoulder and hauled him away.
‘We’ll keep pelting them with stones as we go along, Brehon,’ shouted back Daithi, wriggling free from his brother’s grasp.
Mara nodded, but her eyes were on Nuala. What a piece of luck that Malachy was out, she thought. There was no doubt in her mind that Nuala, despite her age, was the better physician of the two. Her knowledge was probably, after all the intense study that she had undertaken, superior to Malachy’s and she was definitely far more intelligent.
‘What do you think?’ Mara could distinguish the deep rumble of a cart’s wheels from below the high whining of willow branches bending and creaking in the wind. The sky was getting so black that it felt as if nightfall would soon occur. The quicker this body was placed in Kilcorney church and she and Nuala indoors, the better.
‘I think that you have the very same situation here as we had last week,’ replied Nuala briefly. ‘To my mind this man, Becan, was killed at around the same time as Iarla. They were both killed in the same way, by being struck on the back of the head and their skull smashed inwards. I would say a very heavy stick or something like that. Both had a knife poked into the eye, and in this case, as in the last, the eye was mutilated after death. Probably the murder was done by the same person.’
‘I suspected it would prove to be a copy of the first murder,’ said Mara thoughtfully. ‘Done by the same person, why do you say that?’
Nuala hesitated. ‘I just think it was,’ she said eventually. ‘It feels as if it were the same hand behind both murders. I remember once hearing a shepherd saying to another one, “It was you that put the mark on those sheered sheep belonging to Donogh O’Lochlainn, wasn’t it?” He knew by the way the mark was pressed on, the position on the sheep’s back and probably a few other things too. When a man strikes a blow like this, a blow that is meant to kill, then the probability is that the second blow will land in the very same place as the first blow.’
‘And that is the case here?’ Mara made the query, but she understood very well what Nuala was telling her.
‘That’s it,’ asserted Nuala. She hesitated for a minute. ‘There’s another thing too, I didn’t like to push it too much the last time as Father was there and I don’t want to set myself up against him too much – we always seem to be fighting these days . . .’ She heaved a sigh.
‘Tell me now,’ said Mara. She cast an anxious eye down the road. The cart was coming, but luckily there was no sign of Ardal yet.
‘I think I could swear that the man was not killed here. And neither was the other man, Iarla. There just isn’t enough blood on the ground. Any man in the world would fall instantly after a blow like that and the blood would have poured out from that wound. But you can see for yourself.’ Nuala bent down again, and half lifted the body. The back of the cloak was stained with yellow clay, but the neck and shoulders clearly showed the dark patches of blood. ‘There you are,’ she said, replacing the body on the ground, ‘though there is blood on the clothing, there is none on the ground. Any head wound bleeds profusely, even the slightest scratch; a blow like this would have felled the man to ground, but the blood would have continued pouring out for a couple of minutes at least.’
‘So what you are saying is that Becan and Iarla were probably killed by the same man and that both were killed elsewhere and their bodies carried, in some way, perhaps on some sort of barrow or cart and laid down in this spot just by Balor’s Cave.’ Ardal was coming now, following the heavy cart led by the basket maker. Mara could see both he and Liam riding down the road.
‘Yes, outside Balor’s Cave,’ repeated Nuala. ‘And in each case, someone cut out the right eye after death.’
Liam’s face bore its usual look of avid curiosity, lightly overlaid by a placid exterior, Ardal’s face showed intense gravity with perhaps an edge of anger below the surface: a conventional veneer of horror at the offence and sorrow for the two murdered men, but why the anger?
‘This is a terrible affair, Brehon. It seems as if the world has gone mad. What on earth can be the reason for this?’
Mara left this unanswered. It was fairly obvious, she thought, that Becan had been murdered, because he was on the trail of Iarla’s killer. Or else was it because both of them knew a secret which put them both at risk – however, Ardal couldn’t be expected to know
about this.
And what part did Iarla’s dubious paternity play in the tragic affairs of the week?
‘We had better get the body moved to the church as quickly as possible, Ardal,’ said Nuala impatiently. ‘The ravens have been attacking it and it’s going to rain at any minute.’
Ardal gave her an irritated look which Mara noticed. Her mind went back to her conversation with Malachy and she resolved to do something about Nuala as soon as possible. Moving her from Malachy and Caireen and sending her to Ardal would solve nothing. Ardal disliked the idea of Nuala becoming a physician and would want to arrange a suitable marriage for her as soon as possible. Uncle and niece clashed too often to make Ardal’s offer of a home and a dowry to be a suitable one for the child without some conditions being agreed first of all. Nuala would have to be assured that her future as a physician would be safeguarded and that any marriage arranged had to be one that she wished for.
‘Yes, you can move him now,’ she said. ‘Nuala has finished her examination and has told me all that I need to know.’
Mara noticed the half-smile on Liam’s face at her words, which pointed to her belief in Nuala’s medical knowledge. He was a clever man, she had often thought. He was certainly picking up on all the undercurrents in these few brief exchanges. Quickly and efficiently, he now began to give orders to the basket maker and his sons; the body was lifted on to the cart which went trundling down the road. Ardal, Malachy had said to her once, could never have achieved so much with his lands and his animals if he hadn’t had Liam as his right-hand man. ‘The first to rise and the last to go to bed’ was the way that Malachy had put it and Mara had heard the same praise from others. Now she could see that he was glancing around the scene, thinking of the next task to be done.
‘I’ll go and inform the priest, my lord,’ he said to Ardal, and then he went cantering after the cart, his horse snorting and flicking his tail.
‘Thunder in the air,’ said Nuala knowledgeably. ‘You’d better get home, Mara, before it starts to rain. You don’t want to catch a cold.’
Eye of the Law Page 13