Act of Mercy sf-8

by Peter Tremayne

  ‘The sea has splintered the planking of the hull,’ he shouted. ‘I’ll try to strengthen and caulk it as much as I can. It should hold for a while.’

  He had some pieces of wood under his arm and proceeded to hammer these over the damaged area. Then he plastered it with the soaked hazel leaves. The gush of the seawater died away to a tiny trickle.

  ‘That will have to do until the storm passes!’ Wenbrit had to shout again to make himself heard. ‘I’m afraid we will all be wet until then. The sea keeps breaking over the ship and everyone is soaked.’

  An hour after he had left, Fidelma gave in to her exhaustion and tried to doze on the sodden straw. Dimly aware of a loud ‘Miaow!’ she realised that Mouse Lord had been crouching, terrified, under the bunk all this time. Sleepily muttering encouragement, she felt the cat spring up onto the bunk beside her. His warm body curled up on her chest with a deep, contented purring sound. The cat was cosy and comforting on her saturated clothing and she eventually fell into fitful doze.

  The pain was sharp.

  The tiny needles in her chest were excruciating. Then there was the most appalling cry, almost human, a cry that Fidelma associated with the wail of the bean sidhe, the woman of the fairies, who shrills and moans when a death is imminent. It took a moment for Fidelma to realise that Mouse Lord was standing arched on her chest, fur standing straight out, claws digging deep in her flesh. He was emitting a piercing wail. Then he leapt from the bunk.

  Adrenalin caused Fidelma to swing quickly from the bunk, gasping in agony.

  She became aware of a figure at the door — a slight figure, framed for only a moment. Then the cabin door slammed shut. The shiplurched, sending Fidelma off-balance. She scrambled to her knees. A dark shadow, she presumed it was the cat, streaked under the bunk. She could hear his terrible wail. Then she grabbed for the door and swung it open.

  There was no one there. The figure had gone. Holding on with one hand, she closed the door and looked around, wondering what had happened.

  The cat had stopped its fearful cry. It was too dark to see anything, although she had a feeling that dawn was not far away. The ship was still pitching and bucking. She staggered back to the bunk and sat down.

  ‘Mouse Lord?’ she called coaxingly. ‘What is it?’

  There was no response from the cat. She knew he was there because she heard his movements and his breath coming in a strange rasping sound. She realised that she would have to wait for daylight to find out what was wrong with him. She sat on the bunk, unable to sleep, watching the skies lighten but without the wind abating. When she finally judged it light enough, she went down on her knees and peered under the bunk.

  Mouse Lord spat at her and struck out with a paw, talons extended. He had never behaved in such a manner to her before.

  She heard a movement at the door and swung round. Wenbrit entered carrying something covered in a small leather bucket.

  ‘I’ve brought some corma and some biscuit, lady,’ he said, not sure what she was doing on her knees. ‘There’ll be no meal today. It’s the best I can do. This storm will not blow itself out before this evening.’

  ‘Something is wrong with Mouse Lord,’ Fidelma explained. ‘He won’t let me near him.’

  Wenbrit put his bucket down and knelt alongside her. Then, glancing at her robe, he frowned and pointed to it.

  ‘You seem to have some blood on your robe, lady.’

  Fidelma raised a hand and felt the sticky substance on her chest.

  ‘I can’t see any scratches,’ Wenbrit observed. ‘If Mouse Lord has scratched you …’

  ‘Can you get the cat out from under the bunk? I think he must be hurt,’ she interrupted as she realised that the blood could not have come from the puncture marks the cat had made when he had been frightened during the night.

  Wenbrit went down on his knees. It took him some time before the cat allowed himself to be taken hold of. Wenbrit was finally able to get near the animal, having made sure that he held the front paws togetherto stop Mouse Lord scratching. Making soft reassuring sounds, the boy gently extracted Mouse Lord from underneath the bunk and laid him on the bedding. Something was obviously hurting the animal.

  ‘He’s been cut.’ The boy frowned as he examined the animal. ‘Deeply cut, too. There’s still blood on his hind flank. What happened?’

  Mouse Lord had calmed down as the animal realised that they meant him no harm.

  ‘I don’t know … oh!’

  Even as she spoke, Fidelma understood the meaning of her painful awakening during the night. She leant over the straw mattress of the bunk and saw what she was looking for immediately. It was the same knife which Sister Crella had given her; the one Crella claimed that Brother Guss had planted under her bunk. It was smeared with blood: Mouse Lord’s blood. Fidelma cursed herself for a fool. She had brought the knife from Crella’s cabin and put it in her baggage and it had disappeared before Toca Nia’s death.

  Wenbrit had finished his examination of the cat.

  ‘I need to take Mouse Lord down below where I can bathe and stitch this cut. I think the creature has been stabbed in the hind flank. Poor cat. He’s tried to lick it better.’

  Fidelma glanced at Mouse Lord in sympathy. Wenbrit was fussing over the cat, who was allowing the boy to stroke him under the chin. He began to purr softly.

  ‘How did this happen, lady?’ asked Wenbrit again.

  ‘I think Mouse Lord saved my life,’ she told him. ‘I was asleep with him curled up on my chest. Someone came to the cabin door. Perhaps Mouse Lord sprang up when the killer entered. They obviously didn’t see the cat. I must have been lucky for they threw the knife instead of moving to stab me as I lay. Whether the cat’s move deflected it, I am not sure, but poor Puss caught the blade in his flank. The cat’s reaction woke me and scared the attacker.’

  ‘Did you recognise the person?’ demanded the boy.

  ‘I am afraid not. It was too dark.’ Fidelma gave a shudder as she realised how close she had come to death for a second time. Then she pulled herself together.

  ‘Look after Mouse Lord, Wenbrit. Do your best. He saved my life. We’ll have some answers before long. Deo favente, this storm must moderate soon. I can’t concentrate with it.’

  But they were without God’s favour, for the storm did not moderate for another full day. The constant noise and heaving had dulled Fidelma’s senses; she became almost indifferent to her fate. She justwanted to sleep, to find some relief from the merciless battering of the weather. Now and then the ship would heel over to such an angle that Fidelma would ask herself whether it would right itself again. Then, after what seemed an age, The Barnade Goose would slowly swing back until another great wave came roaring out of the darkness.

  At times Fidelma believed the ship to be sinking, so completely immersed in seawater did it seem to be; she even had to fight for breath against the lung-bursting bitter saltwater that drenched her. Her body was bruised and assaulted by the constant tossing of the ship.

  It was dawn the next day when she drearily noticed that the wind was less keen than before and the rocking of the ship less violent. She made her way out of her cabin and looked around. The grey morning sky held a few tattered storm clouds, low and isolated, sweeping by amidst a layer of thin white cloud. She even saw the pale, white orb of the sun on the eastern horizon. Not a full-blooded dawn but with just a hint that the day might improve.

  To her surprise, she saw Murchad coming along the main deck towards her. He looked utterly exhausted after the two days of severe storm in which he had been mainly at the steering oar.

  ‘Are you all right, lady?’ he asked. ‘Wenbrit told me what happened and I asked Gurvan to keep a watch on you just in case you were attacked again.’

  ‘I have felt better,’ confessed Fidelma. She saw Wenbrit occupied further along the deck. ‘How is Mouse Lord?’

  Murchad smiled.

  ‘He might limp a little but he will continue to hunt mice for a while yet. Young
Wenbrit managed to stitch the wound together and he seems none the worse for the cut. I don’t suppose you saw who threw the knife at you?’

  ‘It was too dark.’ Then she changed the subject. ‘Are we through the storm?’

  ‘Through the worst of it, I think,’ he replied. ‘The wind has moved southerly and it will be easier for us to hoist the mainsail once again and keep to our original course. I think this is one voyage that I shall not be sorry to end. I’ll be glad to find myself in the arms of Aoife again.’

  ‘Aoife?’

  ‘My wife is called Aoife,’ Murchad smiled. ‘Even sailors have wives.’

  A thought nagged at Fidelma’s memory. Suddenly the words of an old song came into her mind.

  ‘You who loved us in the days now fled

  Down the whirlpool of hate, spite fed,

  You cast aside the love you bore,

  To make vengeance your only law!’

  Murchad frowned.

  ‘I was thinking of the jealous lust of Aoife, the wife of Lir, the god of the oceans, and how she destroyed those who loved him.’

  The captain sniffed disparagingly.

  ‘My wife Aoife is a wonderful woman,’ he said in a tone of protest.

  Fidelma smiled quickly.

  ‘I am sorry. It was merely the name which prompted the thought. I did not mean anything against your wife — but it has brought a useful memory back to me.’

  What was the Biblical verse that Muirgel had mentioned to Guss when she told him that she knew why she might be the next victim?

  … jealousy cruel as the grave;

  It blazes up like blazing fire

  Fiercer than any flame.

  She looked across to the sea. It was still white-capped but not quite so turbulent now, and the great waves were becoming smaller and fewer. At last it all made sense! She smiled in satisfaction and turned back to the weary Murchad.

  ‘I’m sorry, Captain,’ she said. ‘I was not concentrating.’

  It was then that Fidelma focused on the mess that the storm had created on the ship. The deck was strewn with splintered spars, the water-butt appeared to have shattered into pieces, ropes and rigging hung in profusion. Sailors seemed to have collapsed where they stood, in sheer exhaustion.

  ‘Was anyone hurt?’ Fidelma asked in wonder at the debris.

  ‘Some of my crew have a scratch or two,’ Murchad admitted.

  ‘And the rest of the passengers?’

  Murchad shook his head.

  ‘Not a hair of them was harmed, lady — this time.’

  To Fidelma it was a sheer miracle that in the two days the little ship had been tossed hither and thither on the rough seas, no one had been injured.

  ‘Tomorrow, or the day after, I expect to sight the Iberian coast, lady,’ he said quietly. ‘And if my navigation has been good, we shallbe in harbour soon after. From that harbour it is but a short journey inland to the Holy Shrine.’

  ‘I shan’t be sorry to escape from the confines of your ship, Murchad,’ Fidelma confessed.

  The captain gave her a bleak look.

  ‘What I was trying to say, lady, is that once we reach the harbour, there will no longer be an opportunity to bring the murderer of Muirgel nor Toca Nia to justice. That will be bad. The story will follow this vessel like a ghost, haunting it wherever it goes. My sailors have already called this a voyage of the damned.’

  ‘It shall be resolved, Murchad,’ Fidelma reassured him confidently. ‘The mention of your good wife’s name has just settled everything in my mind or, rather, it has clarified something for me.’

  He stared uncomprehendingly at her.

  ‘My wife’s name? Aoife’s name has caused you to realise who is responsible for these murders?’

  ‘I do not think that we need delay further before we identify the culprit,’ she replied optimistically. ‘But we will wait until all the pilgrims are gathered for the midday meal. Then we will discuss the matter with them. I’d like Gurvan and Wenbrit to be there, with yourself. I might need some physical help,’ she added.

  She smiled at his bewildered features and laid a friendly hand on his arm.

  ‘Don’t worry, Murchad. By this afternoon you shall know the identity of the person responsible for all these terrible crimes.’

  Chapter Twenty-one

  They had gathered as Fidelma had requested, seated on each side of the long table in the central cabin with Murchad lounging against the mast well. Gurvan was seated uncomfortably to one side while Wenbrit perched on the table at which he usually prepared the food, legs swinging, watching the proceedings with interest. Fidelma leaned back in her chair at the head of the table and met their expectant gazes.

  ‘I have been told,’ she began quietly, ‘that I am someone who knows all by a kind of instinct. I can assure you that this is not so. As a dalaigh, I ask questions and I listen. Sometimes, it is what people omit in their replies to me that reveals more than what they actually say. But I have to have information laid before me. I have to have facts, or even questions, to consider. I merely examine that information or ponder those questions, and only then can I make a deduction.

  ‘No, I do not have any secret knowledge, neither am I some prophet who can divine an answer to a mystery without knowledge. The art of detection is like playing fidchell or brandubh. Everything must be there, laid out on the board so that one can choose the solution to the problem. The eye must see, the ear must hear, the brain must function. Instincts can lie or be misleading. So instincts are not infallible as a means of getting to the truth, although sometimes they can be a good guide.’

  She paused. There was silence. The others continued to watch her expectantly, like rabbits watching a fox.

  ‘My mentor, Brehon Morann, used to warn us students to beware of the obvious because the obvious is sometimes deceiving. I was taking this into account until I realised that sometimes the obvious is the obvious because it is the reality.

  ‘If you meet someone running down the road with their hair wild, dishevelled eyes and contorted features, screaming with white froth on their lips, an upraised knife in their hand which is bloodstained and there is also blood on their clothes, how would you perceive such a person? It could be that they have contorted features and are screaming because they have been hurt; that they have the bloodstainedknife because they have just slaughtered meat for their meal and have been careless enough to get the blood on their clothes. There are many possible explanations, but the obvious one is that here is a homicidal maniac about to do injury to those who do not get out of his or her way. And sometimes the obvious explanation is the correct explanation.’

  She paused again but still there was no comment.

  ‘I am afraid that I was looking at the obvious for a long time and refusing to see it as the truth.

  ‘When I traced everything back, there seemed one person to whom all the events were linked — one common denominator who was there no matter which way I turned. Cian, here, was that common denominator.’

  Cian rose awkwardly to his feet, the rocking motion of the ship causing him to fall towards the table, saving himself from disaster by thrusting out a hand to steady himself.

  Gurvan had risen and moved behind him, and now put a hand on his shoulder.

  Cian shook it off angrily.

  ‘Bitch! I am no murderer! It is only your petty jealousy that makes you accuse me of it. Just because you were rejected-’

  ‘Sit down and be quiet or I will ask Gurvan to restrain you!’

  Fidelma’s cold tone cut through his outburst. Cian stood still, defiant, and she had to repeat herself.

  ‘Sit down and be silent, I said! I have not finished.’

  Brother Tola looked disapprovingly towards Fidelma.

  ‘Cum tacent clamant,’ he muttered. ‘Surely if you do not allow him to speak, his silence will condemn him?’

  ‘He can speak when I have finished and when he knows what there is to speak about,’ Fidelma assured Tola icily. �
�Better to speak from knowledge than to speak from ignorance.’ She turned back to the others. ‘As I was saying, once I realised that Cian was the common denominator in all these killings, then they began to make sense to me.’ She raised a hand to silence the new outburst from Cian. ‘I am not saying that Cian was the murderer, mark that. I have only said, so far, that he was the common denominator.’

  Cian was now clearly as puzzled as everyone else. He relaxed back in his seat.

  ‘If you do not accuse me of murder, what are you accusing me of?’ he demanded gruffly.

  She eyed him sourly.

  ‘There are many things that you can be accused of, Cian, but in this particular case, murder is not one of them. Whether or not youare the Butcher of Rath Bile is no longer my concern. The accusation died with Toca Nia.’

  She looked at the others, who now sat mesmerised, waiting for her to continue. She paused, examining their faces in turn. Cian stared back at her in defiance. Brother Tola and Sister Ainder shared a slightly sneering, cynical expression. Sister Crella and Sister Gorman sat with downcast looks. Brother Bairne’s expression was one of a caged animal, his eyes flickering here and there as if seeking a means of escape. Brother Dathal was leaning slightly forward, returning her gaze with an almost enthusiastic expression as if waiting with anticipatory pleasure for her revelation. His companion, Adamrae, was gazing at the table, impatiently drumming his fingers silently on it as if he were bored by the proceedings.

  ‘There is no need for me to tell you, of course, that a very dangerous killer sits among us.’

  ‘That much is logical,’ Brother Dathal agreed, nodding eagerly. ‘But who is it, if not Brother Cian? And why do you call him the common denominator?’

  ‘This killer has been known to you ever since you started out from the north on this pilgrimage,’ she went on, ignoring him. ‘The first victim of the murderer was Sister Canair.’

  Sister Ainder exhaled sharply.