Eye of the Law

by Cora Harrison

  ‘Do you know what those brown things are on that dish over there?’ asked Shane eagerly. ‘They are dates and they come from Spain. They preserve them in sugar. The taoiseach gave us one each to thank us for helping with the tables. Do you want to taste one?’

  ‘I think I’ll wait . . .’ began Mara, but then stopped as a very beautiful woman entered by the door from the back of the hall.

  The woman was not young; her dark hair was streaked with white, but her eyes were dazzling, huge eyes of the darkest brown, as dark as pools in a peat bog with specks of amber, like sunshine, warming their depths. Her face was beautifully formed with a delicate aquiline nose, high cheekbones, a rounded chin and perfectly moulded mouth with full lips.

  ‘My mother,’ explained Brian, leading her forward. ‘She speaks no Gaelic,’ he added to Mara as Turlough bowed courteously but silently over the stately lady’s hand.

  After all those years, thought Mara. Her son, however, spoke to his mother in fluent Spanish and presumably her dead husband, Brian’s father, the descendent of Teige the bonesplitter, had also spoken Spanish. Mara listened carefully as Brian explained the reason for the visit of the king and the bishop. She could make out the name of Iarla and of Becan. Then there seemed to be something about the priest. Both sets of dark-brown eyes moved towards the dapper red-headed figure at the bottom of the hall where the priest was engaging Fachtnan and Nuala in conversation. Mara had a good ability with languages; she could speak fluent English, French, Latin and when her father had returned from his journey to Italy he had taught her Italian. Spanish did not seem too difficult; some of what had been said was comprehensible.

  ‘You’ll have to teach me to speak Spanish,’ she said to the dark-eyed lady. Her words were a mangled mixture of Spanish, Italian and Latin, but they brought a smile to the woman’s face and at the sight of that smile, with the still-white teeth just showing through the exquisite curve of the lips, Mara understood why Brian’s father had wanted this woman for his own and perhaps why the son of this marriage of the fourth degree was the one chosen to succeed him as lord of the isles.

  ‘Come and sit down.’ Brian ushered both women to their places on the elaborately cushioned chairs at the top of the table. Turlough was on one side of him and Mara on the other. The priest came forward and Brian introduced him as Father Petrus. He had acquired that name in Rome, or in some monastery, guessed Mara, smiling politely and then joining her hands as Father Petrus blessed the feast laid out before them.

  Enda only arrived as Mara was helping herself from a chicken pie with almonds. She had chosen that over a dish of porpoise – something she had never eaten and felt that she would probably not like – when he sauntered in, holding a large lump of marzipan in his hand and then ostentatiously licking his fingers as his fellow scholars eyed him enviously. He smirked at them and then looked up the table. His face changed when he caught Mara’s eye. She knew him well and knew that expression that he wore. Enda had something to tell her, something that he found hard to keep to himself.

  Mara thought about it for a moment and then curiosity got the better of her. She raised one finger and beckoned.

  Enda was by her side in a moment, kneeling gracefully on the floor by her chair. Turlough was talking loudly about old times with Brian and the noise of their laughter was enough to drown out even normal speech. Others watching would simply think that Mara was reproving the boy for his late arrival.

  ‘Yes, Enda.’ Mara bent her head until it was near to his ear.

  ‘Sorry for being late, Brehon,’ said the quick-witted Enda in his usual tone and then he lowered his voice. ‘I’ve been in the kitchen, Brehon, and the cook told me something interesting.’

  ‘Oh, yes.’ Mara reached down and picked up her linen napkin from her lap and opened it with a flourish, dabbing her mouth delicately as she bent a little nearer to Enda.

  ‘Apparently his reverence over there is the brother of Iarla.’

  ‘Really!’ Mara’s voice rose slightly with amazement. She took good care not to look over at the priest, but glanced under her eyelashes at her companions at the upper table. Neither Turlough nor Brian looked at her, though, and the Spanish mother was immersed in her roasted porpoise.

  ‘That’s right. He’s the brother of Iarla; Étain was his mother,’ whispered Enda.

  ‘So how did he get to be a priest?’ hissed Mara. The education and profession of a priest would have been a long and expensive business and the family would have not been able to afford the training. ‘I wouldn’t think that the father could earn much as a blacksmith,’ she continued. There was no iron here on these islands and probably not much demand for iron, she guessed.

  Enda smiled and took another bite of his piece of marzipan. He rose to his full height and then bent down towards her ear. ‘According to the cook, the blacksmith wasn’t his father,’ he whispered, and with that he sauntered back to his place beside Fachtnan.

  Mara looked after him with exasperation. She was dying to know the full story. She looked across at the young priest. Of course that was where the resemblance lay. He was not like Iarla, but he was like the pale-faced girls that she had seen at the funeral, like Iarla’s sisters and presumably Iarla’s mother. He would be older than Iarla, probably nearer to thirty than to twenty – an older brother then, but not mentioned by anyone before now. Hopefully, Enda had obtained the full story and she would be able to get it out of him before the end of the day. With a shrug she pushed the matter to the back of her mind and concentrated on her food and on learning Spanish from the lady beside her.

  By the end of the meal Mara had begun to make excellent progress. It had occurred to her that the lady of the house, the beautiful Spaniard, would doubtless know the whole story of this young priest. Quickly she learned the terms for man, woman, boy, girl, king and then priest. As she had suspected, her knowledge of Italian and Latin was proving very helpful and the Signora as everyone seemed to call her was excited at the prospect of being able to communicate properly with one of her son’s guests and she bent all of her energies to the task.

  ‘Mater,’ queried Mara pointing first to her hostess and then to Brian.

  ‘Madre,’ was the immediate response.

  ‘Padre,’ Mara outlined a moustache and beard and was rewarded with a vigorous nod and a hearty laugh.

  ‘Who?’ she asked tapping herself on the chest.

  That took a minute, but then the Signora responded: ‘Brehon Mara’ and then supplied the word.

  Mara went all around the table asking the simple question, ‘Who is . . .?’ and receiving answers which included extra information such as relationships, by inserting questions using padre or madre – by now she was reasonably sure of understanding her hostess, but to her disappointment, the priest was only named for his office with no other details added and a shrug and a shaking of the head was the only response to a question about paternity. It was, she silently conceded, quite possible that the Signora did not actually know any of the details. If she had not bothered to learn Gaelic, then she probably had no interest in her neighbours. Oh, for Brigid, she thought longingly; if she had only brought her housekeeper with her by now she would know all of the gossip. Her eyes went to the bottom of the table where Enda was joking with one of the waiting women who were starting to serve the sweet course. Hopefully he had all the details; he had spent quite a while in the kitchen before the meal was served and she could see that he was on very friendly terms, indeed, with the dark-haired girl who was serving the dishes of sweetmeats. He was holding up his platter with a pleading look and making kissing motions with his lips. However, the sweet course was obviously just meant for the chief guests and the girl passed the scholars with an apologetic glance as well as a few appreciative giggles.

  ‘You’ll enjoy this, I hope,’ said Brian to Mara as the elaborate silver dish approached the top of the table.

  It was the first sentence that he had addressed to her and she gave him a half nod. She would bide
her time, she thought grimly, but she planned to enjoy herself even more, after the meal, cross-questioning him about affairs in this watery kingdom of his.

  It was not surprising that this course would be considered too good for any except the special guests at the top table. The dish was covered with ridges of blue marzipan, each topped with a white foam of spun sugar. On this sea was set numerous boats, everyone of them made from differently dyed pieces of pliable marzipan and at the side, the tower house of Brian the Spaniard rose up, built from blocks of marzipan and decorated by windows of spun sugar marked into diamond shapes by strips of marzipan. On the cobbled yard in front of the tower were various little figures also made from marzipan.

  ‘Very good,’ she said in what she hoped was Spanish and the Signora nodded silently while packing a huge piece of marzipan shaped like a Spanish ship into her mouth.

  Mara took a little, but she was not very keen on sweet food and this tasted overwhelmingly sweet. Soon the meal would be over, she hoped.

  ‘Come with me to my solar,’ said the Signora, signalling to the door at the back of the hall.

  ‘I must see to my boys,’ said Mara in a mixture of Spanish and Latin. She gestured towards the six at the bottom of the table.

  ‘Your sons?’ The Signora’s very black eyebrows rose as she looked from nineteen-year-old Fachtnan to ten-year-old Shane.

  ‘No.’ Mara smiled. ‘Scholars,’ she added in Latin.

  ‘Give them some,’ said the Signora generously, pointing to the sweetmeats. She crammed another large boat into her mouth and then rose to her feet, acknowledging the bows of the rest of the guests who all got to their feet while she was making her way in a stately manner towards her own quarters.

  Mara did not stand, but took the opportunity to remove some of the waves, seven of the boats and all of the figures from the scene in front of her. By the time that everyone had sat down again she was sauntering, platter in hand, down the room towards where the boys were sitting.

  ‘One boat each and one figure each and then we’ll divide up the rest,’ she said as Fachtnan made room for her between Nuala and Enda. He immediately went to the top of the room and carried her chair down. She smiled her thanks and gave a sidelong glance at Brian, but he did not appear to notice the action. In any case the room was beginning to empty out now. The priest, she noticed with annoyance, had moved his position so that now he had become part of the conversation between Brian and Turlough. However, this meant that he was completely out of earshot as Mara turned expectantly towards Enda.

  ‘So, the priest, what did you find out?’ she asked in Latin. The maidservants and the steward were busy around the table so she took this precaution. Even the youngest of her scholars were fluent in that tongue so the conversation could be carried out with ease. Nuala had also learned Latin, although she would not have the same opportunities as the law-school boys to practise the language.

  ‘The cook is a relation of Étain’s – a cousin, I think,’ mumbled Enda, chewing vigorously on a ship’s sail made from marzipan coated with spun sugar. He swallowed it down and then said more clearly and with the beginnings of a grin lifting the corners of his mouth, ‘The cook says that Étain was always wild. She was very pretty as a child and the priest here on this island apparently took quite a fancy to her. He even brought her some stuff for a cloak from Galway when she was about ten.’

  ‘How old was the priest?’ asked Moylan, popping one of the little figures into his mouth.

  ‘Quite old,’ said Enda impatiently. ‘Anyway, that’s nothing to do with the story.’

  ‘Yes, it is,’ contradicted Fachtnan mildly. ‘The Brehon always tells us to find out as much as possible about every person connected with the case.’

  ‘Vae.’ Enda had been impressed by Fachtnan’s uncharacteristic intervention so he shrugged his shoulders and continued. ‘Yes, he was an old man and a very jolly one, according to the cook – liked his mead and playing jokes and that sort of thing. Anyway, when Étain was thirteen years old she became pregnant and he, the priest, immediately admitted that he was the father. When the baby was born he took the little boy away and told her that the boy was going to be dedicated to God. He brought it to a monastery – the cook didn’t know where the monastery was – and the boy was brought up there and when he was a priest he came back to the island as an assistant to the old priest.’

  ‘And did everyone know who he was?’ Mara was fairly sure of the answer to this question.

  ‘They guessed immediately. Apparently he was the image of Étain herself. And of course, once they had counted up the years it made sense. Apparently, also, Étain was very proud of him and couldn’t stop whispering the secret to various people.’

  ‘What a girl, that Étain!’ whistled Aidan. ‘The priest, her husband and then Ardal, or whoever was the father of Iarla. She certainly did put . . .’ He stopped, unsure of his Latin, and contented himself with repeating, ‘What a girl!’

  ‘Would you like to borrow my knife to divide up the waves, Brehon?’ asked Hugh politely, more interested in the sweetmeats than in the long-ago tale of romance and loss.

  ‘So the elderly, jolly priest died,’ guessed Mara, giving Hugh’s knife a quick wipe with her napkin and slicing up the waves into fairly equal pieces.

  ‘Yes, he died and before he died he arranged with the bishop that this Father Petrus would be appointed in his place to administer the parish and to receive all the dues.’ Enda’s Latin, as usual, was concise, fluent and well constructed.

  ‘I wonder what Étain would have called her first-born child if she had been allowed to keep him. Not Petrus, I’m sure.’

  Mara’s mind was full of pity for the dead woman as her eyes watched the young priest nodding vigorously as Brian the Spaniard held forth in loud, harsh tones. Turlough was pushing a piece of marzipan around on his plate, a sure sign that he felt uneasy as Turlough was a man who loved his food, especially sweetmeats. I must go back and join them, thought Mara, but first she had to find out the end of the story.

  ‘And what was Father Petrus’s attitude towards Étain and her family?’ she asked. ‘Did he help to support them? Did they get anything from him? Contribute to his half-sisters’ dowries? Lend a hand to Iarla to set himself up in the fishing business?’

  Enda shrugged his shoulders. ‘Nihil,’ he said succinctly and helped himself to another slice of marzipan wave.

  Mara gave a satisfied nod. ‘Fachtnan,’ she said, ‘would you bring my chair back up to the top of the table? No, place it beside the fire,’ she amended with an eye on the priest who was still holding forth fluently. ‘Ask the king would he and his cousin join me when they have finished their conversation.’ That, she thought, was quite neatly planned. Turlough, at any rate, would now understand that she did not wish the priest to be present during their discussion. She got to her feet and followed Fachtnan as he carried her chair in stately fashion up the hall, bowing his head graciously at the servants and the few remaining guests who stood back to allow them to go through.

  Mara stood by the fireside for a moment, warming her hands from the glowing sods of peat while Fachtnan went to deliver her message to Turlough. The heat of the fire was welcome as the wind from the Atlantic swept through the mullions of the unshuttered windows and lowered the temperature of the hall. Turlough, she noticed, gave her a startled glance and, waiting for him to understand the meaning of her request, she tapped her foot impatiently. There was a slight booming sound from beneath her foot and then another as she repeated the action. The floor was hollow here, she realised – like the alehouse where the beautiful Étain danced alone that night over twenty years ago, this flagstone in front of the fireplace had probably been laid over a damaged iron cauldron. She was beginning to understand Étain and she could guess what had led to the naming of Ardal as the father of Iarla. Her first son had been totally supported by his father, the jolly priest, so it was time that the father of her second son took care of the young man’s welfare. D
id she speak the truth on her deathbed, though, or was she persuaded by her priestly son, and possibly by Becan, her brother-in-law, to name a different man?

  ‘Nice and warm here by the fire.’ Turlough gave a quick glance at her determined face and then moved closer to the fire, rubbing his hands vigorously. He looked a little nervous so Mara gave him a reassuring smile.

  Brian the Spaniard escorted Father Petrus to the door and then turned back towards them, beckoning to a servant to bring forward chairs and position them around the fire.

  ‘I wanted to consult you, Brian, about addressing the people of the island tomorrow.’ Mara had decided against talking about piracy. After all, her only evidence came from Turlough’s unguarded speech and she couldn’t betray her husband to his cousin.

  ‘About the killing?’ His tone was guarded.

  ‘About the two cases of secret and unlawful killing,’ contradicted Mara, smiling sweetly at him. ‘I think it is important that I, as the king’s Brehon, should talk to the people about what has happened and what steps I am taking to solve these deaths and how the fine will be paid and to whom – matters like that.’

  ‘I see.’ His Gaelic was perfect, but sometimes it seemed as if he were a man of few words, almost as if he hesitated to commit himself in a language that was foreign to him. Perhaps as a child he had spoken Spanish with his parents and had kept that slight hesitancy through to adulthood.

  ‘So I wondered whether you have a chosen place where the people of the island would meet for judgement day. On the sands, by the harbour, perhaps?’

  ‘No.’ The word was abrupt and he seemed conscious of that as he immediately rushed into an explanation. ‘These days we normally meet on the courtyard in front of the castle. It’s easier for everyone like that – the noise of the waves can drown voices down there.’