‘Tell your brother at Cashel, and tell the bishop of Imleach, that Gleann Geis is not yet ready to accept a closer relationship with the new Faith. We have seen too much of Christian concerns for our welfare.’
He and Orla were gone abruptly through the door.
‘Ingratitude!’ muttered Eadulf, offended. ‘How can you take such insults from these pagans?’
Fidelma was smiling, not in the least perturbed.
‘Hardly insults, Eadulf. A man must speak as he finds. He is right. The Christianity of Mael Dúin, Brother Solin and, if he is truly part of this terrible plot, the Christianity of Ultan of Armagh, leaves one yearning for the old morality of the beliefs of our people.’
Eadulf was scandalised. He did not have time to reprimand her before Murgal approached her also with a grave expression on his face.
‘We have, indeed, much to thank you for, Fidelma of Cashel. I have seen the true worth of a moral advocate of the laws of the five kingdoms. It is something to aspire to.’
‘You do not have to aspire, Murgal, for you have achieved it. You are a brave and honest Brehon. We may be religions apart but morality often transcends differences in Faith.’
‘It is heartening that you recognise that.’
Fidelma bowed her head.
‘It is something one is taught when one studies the ancient law. Intolerance is made up of the shells of lies. No natural disaster has cost as many human lives as man’s intolerance towards the beliefs of his fellow men.’
‘Truly said. Will you stay in Gleann Geis a while as our guests, or, like Ibor of Muirthemne, will you leave for Cashel immediately?’
Fidelma glanced through the window at the sky.
‘We still have the best part of a day before us. There is no other reason to stay in Gleann Geis. Maybe one day I might be able to return here and discuss how Christianity might truly be brought here. But not now. We will start our journey home immediately. First to Imleach, to consult with Bishop Ségdae, and then on to Cashel. The sooner Muman is fully aware about the plot that was devised here, the sooner we can be on our guard against Ailech and any similar plots against the peace of this kingdom.’
Two men were carrying the body of Laisre out of the council chamber.
Fidelma observed them quietly and then said rhetorically: ‘What shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?’
Murgal looked impressed.
‘Now that is a wise sentiment. Is it a quotation from one of the teachings of the Brehon Morann of Tara? I do not know it.’
Eadulf sniffed sardonically.
‘No: that was from the Gospel of the Blessed Mark. Even we Christians have books of philosophy.’
Principal Characters
Sister Fidelma of Cashel, a dálaigh or advocate of the law courts of seventh-century Ireland
Brother Eadulf of Seaxmund’s Ham, a Saxon monk from the land of the South Folk
At Cashel
Colgú of Cashel, king of Muman and Fidelma’s brother
Ségdae, bishop of Imleach, Comarb of Ailbe
At Gleann Geis
Laisre, chieftain of Gleann Geis
Colla, tanist or heir-apparent to Laisre
Murgal, Laisre’s Druid and Brehon
Mel, Murgal’s scribe
Orla, sister to Laisre and wife to Colla
Esnad, daughter of Orla and Colla
Artgal, a warrior/blacksmith of Gleann Geis
Rudgal, a warrior/wagon-maker of Gleann Geis
Marga, an apothecary
Cruinn, the hostel keeper at Gleann Geis
Ronan, a warrior/farmer of Gleann Geis
Bairsech, his wife
Nemon, a prostitute
Brother Solin, a cleric from Armagh
Brother Dianach, his young scribe
Ibor of Muirthemne
Mer, a messenger
Elsewhere
Mael Dúin of the northern Uí Néill, king of Ailech
Ultan, bishop of Armagh, Comarb of Patrick
Sechnassuch of the southern Uí Néill, High King at Tara
HISTORICAL NOTE
The Sister Fidelma mysteries are set during the mid-seventh century A.D.
Sister Fidelma is not simply a religieuse, formerly a member of the community of St Brigid of Kildare. She is also a qualified dálaigh, or advocate of the ancient law courts of Ireland. As this background will not be familiar to many readers, this foreword provides a few essential points of reference designed to make the stories more readily appreciated.
Ireland, in the seventh century A.D., consisted of five main provincial kingdoms: indeed, the modern Irish word for a province is still cúige, literally ‘a fifth’. Four provincial kings – of Ulaidh (Ulster), of Connacht, of Muman (Munster) and of Laigin (Leinster) – gave their qualified allegiance to the Ard Rí or High King, who ruled from Tara, in the ‘royal’ fifth province of Midhe (Meath), which means the ‘middle province’. Even among these provincial kingdoms, there was a decentralisation of power to petty-kingdoms and clan territories.
The law of primogeniture, the inheritance by the eldest son or daughter, was an alien concept in Ireland. Kingship, from the lowliest clan chieftain to the High King, was only partially hereditary and mainly electoral. Each ruler had to prove himself or herself worthy of office and was elected by the derbfhine of their family – a minimum of three generations gathered in conclave. If a ruler did not pursue the commonwealth of the people, they were impeached and removed from office. Therefore the monarchial system of ancient Ireland had more in common with a modern-day republic than with the feudal monarchies of medieval Europe.
Ireland, in the seventh century A.D., was governed by a system of sophisticated laws called the Laws of the Fénechas, or land-tillers, which became more popularly known as the Brehon Laws, deriving from the word breitheamh – a judge. Tradition has it that these laws were first gathered in 714 B.C. by the order of the High King, Ollamh Fódhla. But it was in A.D. 438 that the High King, Laoghaire, appointed a commission of nine learned people to study, revise, and commit the laws to the new writing in Latin characters. One of those serving on the commission was Patrick, eventually to become patron saint of Ireland. After three years, the commission produced a written text of the laws, the first known codification.
The first complete surviving texts of the ancient laws of Ireland are preserved in an eleventh-century manuscript book. It was not until the seventeenth century that the English colonial administration in Ireland finally suppressed the use of the Brehon Law system. To even possess a copy of the law books was punishable, often by death or transportation.
The law system was not static and every three years at the Féis Temhrach (Festival of Tara) the lawyers and administrators gathered to consider and revise the laws in the light of changing society and its needs.
Under these laws, women occupied a unique place. The Irish laws gave more rights and protection to women than any other western law code at that time or since. Women could, and did, aspire to all offices and professions as the coequal with men. They could be political leaders, command their people in battle as warriors, be physicians, local magistrates, poets, artisans, lawyers, and judges. We know the name of many female judges of Fidelma’s period – Bríg Briugaid, Áine Ingine Iugaire and Darí among many others. Darí, for example, was not only a judge but the author of a noted law text written in the sixth century A.D. Women were protected by the laws against sexual harassment; against discrimination; from rape; they had the right of divorce on equal terms from their husbands with equitable separation laws and could demand part of their husband’s property as a divorce settlement; they had the right of inheritance of personal property and the right of sickness benefits. Seen from today’s perspective, the Brehon Laws provided for an almost feminist paradise.
This background, and its strong contrast with Ireland’s neighbours, should be understood to appreciate Fidelma’s role in these stories.
Fidelm
a was born at Cashel, capital of the kingdom of Muman (Munster) in south-west Ireland, in A.D. 636. She was the youngest daughter of Faílbe Fland, the king, who died the year after her birth, and was raised under the guidance of a distant cousin, Abbot Laisran of Durrow. When she reached the ‘Age of Choice’ (fourteen years), she went to study at the bardic school of the Brehon Morann of Tara, as many other young Irish girls did. Eight years of study resulted in Fidelma obtaining the degree of anruth, only one degree below the highest offered at either bardic or ecclesiastical universities in ancient Ireland. The highest degree was ollamh, still the modern Irish word for a professor. Fidelma’s studies were in law, both in the criminal code of the Senchus Mór and the civil code of the Leabhar Acaill. She therefore became a dálaigh or advocate of the courts.
Her role could be likened to a modern Scottish sheriff-substitute, whose job is to gather and assess the evidence, independent of the police, to see if there is a case to be answered. The modern French juge d’instruction holds a similar role.
In those days, most of the professional or intellectual classes were members of the new Christian religious houses, just as, in previous centuries, all members of professions and intellectuals were Druids. Fidelma became a member of the religious community of Kildare founded in the late fifth century A.D. by St Brigid.
While the seventh century A.D. was considered part of the European ‘Dark Ages’, for Ireland it was a period of ‘Golden Enlightenment’. Students from every corner of Europe flocked to Irish universities to receive their education, including the sons of the Anglo-Saxon kings. At the great ecclesiastical university of Durrow, at this time, it is recorded that no less than eighteen different nations were represented among the students. At the same time, Irish male and female missionaries were setting out to reconvert a pagan Europe to Christianity, establishing churches, monasteries, and centres of learning throughout Europe as far east as Kiev, in the Ukraine; as far north as the Faroes, and as far south as Taranto in southern Italy. Ireland was a by-word for literacy and learning.
However, the Celtic Church of Ireland was in constant dispute with Rome on matters of liturgy and ritual. Rome had begun to reform itself in the fourth century, changing its dating of Easter and aspects of its liturgy. The Celtic Church and the Eastern Orthodox Church refused to follow Rome, but the Celtic Church was gradually absorbed by Rome between the ninth and eleventh centuries while the Eastern Orthodox Churches have continued to remain independent of Rome. The Celtic Church of Ireland, during Fidelma’s time, was much concerned with this conflict.
One thing that marked both the Celtic Church and Rome in the seventh century was that the concept of celibacy was not universal. While there were always ascetics in both Churches who sublimated physical love in a dedication to the deity, it was not until the Council of Nicea in A.D. 325 that clerical marriages were condemned but not banned. The concept of celibacy in the Roman Church arose from the customs practised by the pagan priestesses of Vesta and the priests of Diana. By the fifth century Rome had forbidden clerics from the rank of abbot and bishop to sleep with their wives and, shortly after, even to marry at all. The general clergy were discouraged from marrying by Rome but not forbidden to do so. Indeed, it was not until the reforming papacy of Leo IX (A.D. 1049 – 1054) that a serious attempt was made to force the western clergy to accept universal celibacy. In the Eastern Orthodox Church, priests below the rank of abbot and bishop have retained their right to marry until this day.
The condemnation of the ‘sin of the flesh’ remained alien to the Celtic Church for a long time after Rome’s attitude became a dogma. In Fidelma’s world, both sexes inhabited abbeys and monastic foundations which were known as conhospitae, or double houses, where men and women lived raising their children in Christ’s service.
Fidelma’s own house of St Brigid of Kildare was one such community of both sexes in Fidelma’s time. When Brigid established her community at Kildare (Cill-Dara = the church of oaks) she invited a bishop named Conlaed to join her. Her first biography, written in A.D. 650, in Fidelma’s time, was written by a monk of Kildare named Cogitosus, who makes it clear that it was a mixed community.
It should also be pointed out that, showing women’s co-equal role with men, women were priests of the Celtic Church at this time. Brigid herself was ordained a bishop by Patrick’s nephew, Mel, and her case was not unique. Rome actually wrote a protest in the sixth century at the Celtic practice of allowing women to celebrate the divine sacrifice of Mass.
To help readers locate themselves in Fidelma’s Ireland of the seventh century, where its geo-political divisions will be mainly unfamiliar, I have provided a sketch map and, to help them more readily identify personal names, a list of principal characters is also given.
I have generally refused to use anachronistic place names for obvious reasons although I have bowed to a few modern usages, eg: Tara, rather than Teamhair; and Cashel, rather than Caiseal Muman; and Armagh in place of Ard Macha. However, I have cleaved to the name of Muman rather than the prolepsis form ‘Munster’, formed when the Norse stadr (place) was added to the Irish name Muman in the ninth century A.D. and eventually anglicised. Similarly, I have maintained the original Laigin, rather than the anglicised form of Laigin-stadr which is now Leinster.
Armed with this background knowledge, we may now enter Fidelma’s world. The events of this story occur in the month known to the Irish of the seventh century as Boidhmhís, the month of knowledge, which later calendars would rename Iúil, or July, after the Latin fashion from Julius Caesar who reformed the Roman calendar. The year is A.D. 666.
Finally, in chapter two there is an oblique reference to Fidelma’s lack of respect for Abbess Ita of Kildare. The reason why can be found in the short story ‘Hemlock at Vespers’, first published in Midwinter Mysteries 3, edited by Hilary Hale (Little, Brown & Co., London, 1993), reprinted in Hemlock at Vespers: Fifteen Sister Fidelma Mysteries (St. Martin’s Minotaur, New York, 2000).
Celtic Mysteries featuring Sister Fidelma
by Peter Tremayne
Absolution by Murder
Shroud for the Archbishop
Suffer Little Children
The Subtle Serpent
The Spider’s Web
Valley of the Shadow
Hemlock at Vespers
The Monk Who Vanished (forthcoming)
VALLEY OF THE SHADOW. Copyright © 1998 by Peter Tremayne.
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eISBN 9781466814066
First eBook Edition : March 2012
ISBN 0-312-20939-8
First published in Great Britain under the title Valley of the
Shadow: A Sister Fidelma Mystery by Headline Book Publishing, a
division of Hodder Headline PLC
First U.S. Edition: March 2000
Valley of the Shadow Page 33