‘I think he would try to be careful and not hurt you,’ she said. ‘He is a kind young man. He is good and gentle with animals.’ She paused, trying to find the right words, words that would not alarm Nessa, but would elicit the truth. ’So he wasn’t the one that hurt you?’ she asked carelessly, still continuing to water the tiny plants. Soon she would flood them herself, and they might rot, but they would be a sacrifice to the truth.
Nessa shook her head. ‘No,’ she whispered with a quick look around her. ‘The lawyer, Colman, told me to say that. He told my mother and my father. Colman promised that Rory would marry me if I said that and I thought I would like to be married to Rory. It would make Emer and Aoife very jealous.’
‘But who was the man who hurt you, Nessa?’ she asked.
‘I don’t know,’ said Nessa simply. ‘But I think it was God …’ Her voice died away. She scuffed the wet soil with the toe of her boot.
Mara put down the leather bucket and turned around to face her.
‘Don’t be silly, Nessa,’ she said bracingly. ‘You’re too old for nonsense like that. Of course it wasn’t God.’
‘Well, he did it to Mary, the mother of Jesus, didn’t he?’ said Nessa sulkily.
Oh dear, thought Mara. ‘Well, that was a long time ago,’ she said vaguely. It was an inadequate response, but it seemed to satisfy Nessa.
‘Oh,’ she said, nodding her head. She thought for a moment, her young face puzzled and concentrated.
‘But what did he look like, Nessa? Was it a stranger?
‘I don’t know what he looked like,’ said Nessa. ‘He threw a cloak over my head and dragged me into a cave and then he left me there afterwards. I was crying. And then I got up and I went home.’
Mara drew in a deep breath. If I get my hands on this man I’ll leave him stripped of everything he possesses. I’ll drive him out of the kingdom, she thought. She could feel her stormy temper rising rapidly, but with the ability born of long training she thrust it down.
‘So how do you know it wasn’t Rory,’ she asked softly, ‘if you couldn’t see?’
‘It wasn’t Rory,’ said Nessa decidedly. ‘It wasn’t Roderic either. They were with Emer and Aoife. It was the night after Samhain. I was hiding. I was watching them kissing and … and all sorts of things. Then they went away.’
‘So you’re sure that it wasn’t Rory?’
Nessa nodded. ‘He smelled funny,’ she said unexpectedly. ‘He didn’t smell like a young man … and his hands …’ She stopped and shuddered slightly. ‘His hands were sort of hard and dry.’
An older man? wondered Mara. The smell would not be firm evidence, and the hard, dry feel of the hands? That wouldn’t necessarily rule out a young man, merely indicate a man who worked with his hands: Rory and Roderic, and, of course, the law scholars, were among the few young men on the Burren who did not work with their hands; their hands would be smooth and well tended. And yet, rape was usually a young man’s crime. Then, quite suddenly, the strange face of Feirdin MacNamara came into Mara’s mind. Could he have had anything to do with this crime? Ordinary girls of his age would have little to do with him. If he had been the perpetrator, then the Brehon, who had allowed him his freedom against the wishes of the taoiseach of his clan, would bear a heavy moral responsibility.
‘And you can’t think of anyone that it might have been?’ she asked, watching the small face carefully. Nessa seemed very childish, but she probably wasn’t as stupid as she tried to appear. She had probably found that to appear stupid was the easiest way of keeping out of trouble with her parents.
‘No,’ said Nessa. ‘I don’t want to think about it,’ she whimpered.
‘Well, if ever you get any suspicions, or remember something else, then you must let me know, Nessa,’ said Mara, going towards the gate. ‘You know, if we manage to catch the man that did this, the fine will be the twenty-three cows. That’s a lot of cows. But you must be sure, so if you do think of a name, say nothing to anyone except to me. Will you do that?’
‘If I had all those cows, would Rory marry me?’ asked Nessa, blushing again.
‘Perhaps,’ said Mara. Stranger things have happened, she thought. Rory, she judged, was a fairly cynical young man. It’s amazing what such young men will do for money and a house. ‘Of course, the money would go to your father,’ she added, ‘but I’m sure that he would want you to be well settled in life.’
I could do with just one problem to solve at a time, she muttered as she went down the road. Still, this matter is probably more serious than the murder. Colman is dead and his sins are buried with him. Nothing will bring him back. But this affair of poor little Nessa needs to be settled. Rape followed by marriage was not unknown on the Burren. In fact, in some cases in the past, Mara secretly suspected that the girl had been a willing party to the alleged ‘rape’ in order to gain her parents’ acquiescence to a marriage with the man she loved. However, Nessa’s rape was a different matter; there was something deeply shocking and abhorrent about that blindfolding and violation of a girl only just past childhood.
The man who did that was a man whose mind was sick — a madman? Once again she thought of Feirdin and she frowned. She realized that part of the reason why she did not want to admit he was a likely suspect was because she did not want to be wrong. With a sigh she turned and took the road towards Baur South. She would have to go and see Feirdin and his poor mother, Gráinne.
There was no sign of Feirdin when Mara arrived at the small wayside cottage where the widowed Gráinne MacNamara lived with her son. Despite the heat, Gráinne was busily engaged in weeding the stony earth of her onion patch, but as soon as she saw Mara, she hastily threw down her rake and came to the wall, blessings and greetings pouring eagerly from her smiling mouth.
‘Come into the house, Brehon, come in,’ she pleaded. ‘I have some cowslip wine that you will like. They say that you like wine. I’ve never really thanked you for standing up to the MacNamara for me. I was so frightened that Feirdin would be taken away from me. That would have been the end for him. I tried to explain that to the taoiseach, but he wouldn’t listen to me.’
She picked up the rake again and placed it carefully in the small whitewashed cabin beside her house before saying emphatically, ‘Feirdin’s a good boy if you know how to handle him, that’s what I kept telling himself, but he told me that I couldn’t judge what was best for my own son. I knew that Feirdin wouldn’t be happy with Eoin MacNamara, but he just wouldn’t listen to me …’
She walked towards the door and threw it wide open, hospitably. ‘Come in, Brehon,’ she repeated.
‘No, no, Gráinne,’ said Mara. ‘I must get back to the law school soon. All my scholars have been to the beach at Fanore and I must be back to greet them when they arrive.’ That’s true, anyway, she thought, and a good excuse to avoid the cowslip wine. These homemade wines were not to her taste.
‘I only called in to see how Feirdin is getting on,’ she continued. ‘Did he enjoy the Bealtaine evening?’
Gráinne’s cheeks flushed. No doubt there had been some covert whispering going on. She would be very aware that suspicion would fall readily on her son.
‘He did, indeed, Brehon,’ she said with dignity.
‘One of my lads thought that he might have been a bit nervous of the bonfire; that he went down before it was lit,’ said Mara gently.
Gráinne stiffened and then nodded.
‘You weren’t with him at the time? You stayed down on the lower terrace?’
‘Yes, I did, Brehon, but I kept him in my sight all of the time.’
‘Did he have a torch with him?’ asked Mara casually.
Gráinne shook her head. ‘No, he doesn’t like torches; they frighten him. He could see his way by the light of other people’s torches. In any case, he is used to going out at night. He sees in the dark as well as any badger.’
It would be very unlikely, in that case, that Gráinne could have kept her son in sight all of the time, thought
Mara. She could just picture the scene on the mountainside with the faces illuminated here and there by the sudden flare of the pitch torches. That was the only way her scholars had been able to pick out those that they knew.
‘It must be very difficult for you,’ she said sympathetically. ‘You must never know what will upset him or not.’
Gráinne’s face softened. ‘That’s the truth, Brehon, I never know with him. Sometimes he’ll go through the worst storm with the thunder crashing overhead and the lightning flashing through the window and he’ll just sit there singing a song and not even noticing it and then on another day just a rumble of thunder in the distance will set him running for the house, crying like a child.’
‘What upset him about the bonfire?’ asked Mara.
‘Well, the young fellow that brought him down said that Feirdin had been thinking that there was a man inside the pile of wood,’ explained Gráinne. ‘Feirdin was frightened that someone was going to be burned.’
‘Young fellow?’ queried Mara. Suddenly there flashed into her mind Fachtnan’s observation on that Sunday morning. What was it he had said? Something about Feirdin going down with someone …
‘Yes, a young fellow … I don’t know who he was,’ explained Gráinne, ‘but he told me that he and Feirdin had been talking about rocks and stones. He was very kind to Feirdin. He told Feirdin that he would come and see him sometime and that he would bring him a present of some stones from Corcomroe – sandstone, I think he said.’
‘Oscar O’Connor!’ exclaimed Mara. ‘Was he a tall young man with very black hair, Gráinne?’
‘That’s him, Brehon,’ said Gráinne. ‘He was a stranger, not from the Burren, but he was a very kind, nice young fellow, all the same.’
‘And do you think he’d been with Feirdin for a little while before they came down the mountain?’
‘I’d say they had been together for quite a while,’ said Gráinne. ‘You see, Feirdin had his satchel full of all sorts of stones and to quieten him after the young fellow had gone away – he was a bit upset when he left – I asked him to show them to me. He kept picking out stones and saying, “My friend found this one” and “My friend found that one”. You see,’ she finished simply, ‘he’s never had a friend before.’
Mara felt tears prick at her eyelids. What a terrible thing it must be to have a handicapped child and to suffer with every rejection of him. She thought of her little grandson in Galway and of Sorcha’s pride in his cleverness and popularity. One part of her mind hated the role that she was playing, trying to extract information from this unfortunate woman, but the other part insisted that these crimes be solved. She took a deep breath and continued steadily with her questions. ‘So Feirdin stayed with you for the rest of the night, after Oscar left, did he?’
Gráinne nodded. ‘Yes, he stayed until the light began to come and everyone was putting their torches out and then he wandered up the mountain again. He was quite happy once the torches were out and the bonfire had died down. I knew what he would be doing. He would be watching all the people coming down and listening to them talking. He was in a great mood when he climbed down again. He was chatting away as we walked home afterwards. He said that his friend was going to get him work carrying heavy stones. He was delighted about that, poor fellow. He would love to do some work like the other lads of his age. He’s very strong. He just needs someone to understand him.’
‘That would be wonderful,’ agreed Mara. ‘That was very kind of Oscar.’
She would talk to Oisín about Oscar O’Connor, she thought. Perhaps her son-in-law would be able to help that young man to re-establish his business in Galway, or even direct customers to the quarry at Doolin.
‘And which way did Oscar go when he left you?’ she asked. ‘He got on his horse and he went towards the west,’ said Gráinne. ‘We watched him go for a while, Feirdin and myself, and then the bonfire was lit and we were watching that. The young fellow was probably out of sight by then, anyway.’
‘So they both started to come down before the bonfire was lit?’ questioned Mara. She had to be certain, but already she was fairly sure that two people could be crossed off her list.
Gráinne nodded. ‘Oh, yes,’ she said. ‘It hadn’t been long blazing by the time that they reached me.’ She looked a little uncomfortable and then she confided, ‘When Feirdin gets worried like that it’s often hard to get him moving. I’d say that Oscar O’Connor had a hard job to get him down. It would take some time. It was lucky for Feirdin that he was there that night.’
‘Lucky for Oscar, also,’ said Mara gravely. ‘What is it that the Bible says? A man’s good deed shall be returned unto him tenfold.’
TWENTY-ONE
LÁNAMNA (THE LAW OF MARRIAGE)
There are seven forms of marriage:
1. Marriage of First Degree: the union of joint property
2. Marriage of Second Degree: the union of a woman on man’s property
3. Marriage of Third Degree: the union of a man on woman’s property
4. Marriage of Fourth Degree: the union of a man visiting a woman with her kin’s consent
5. Marriage of Fifth Degree: the union where a woman goes away openly with a man, but without her kin’s consent
6. . Marriage of Sixth Degree: the union where the woman allows herself to be abducted without her kin’s consent
7. . Marriage of Seventh Degree: the union where a woman is secretly visited without her kin’s consent
The sun WAS BEGINNING to move out of the south and towards the western sea by the time that Mara returned from Baur South, but the day was still very hot and she strolled along enjoying the walk. The stony lane was white with limestone dust and on either side of it the lime-loving orchids grew, massed so thickly that even the grass itself was smothered by their profusion. Every colour of orchid was here: the dark red, the pure white, the pink and the spotted purple all gathered under the hedge of May blossom. Thousands of butter-yellow cowslips studded the field beyond and a lark was singing just above her head.
Mara narrowed her eyes against the sun to try to see the little bird and then she shielded her eyes with her hand. There was someone coming on a horse and he seemed as if he were making directly for her. She stood, smiling with pleasure at the sight of him. He certainly made a fine figure of a man on his handsome bay horse.
‘I was just coming to see you, Brehon,’ said Ardal O’Lochlainn, ‘and then I thought I saw your head above the hedge’.
‘And I was just thinking about you, too, Ardal,’ lied Mara with her usual easy fluency. ‘I was thinking that I must come and thank you for all that you did for me on Saturday.’ Hopefully he had not heard about the episode with the O’Kellys.
‘It is a pleasure to serve you in any way, Brehon,’ he said. ‘I had business in Galway that day, so it was no trouble to me.’
And I hope your business was a pleasure to you afterwards, thought Mara wickedly. He had a glossy, well-satisfied look, his copper-coloured hair glowed in the sunlight and his blue eyes were contented and relaxed. Possibly this marriage of the fourth degree, as Brehon law named it, with the fisherman’s daughter suited him well. It could be that this arrangement was a good one for many people. Marriage brought its own stresses and its own demands.
‘I was going to look for your help again,’ she continued, bringing herself out of her reverie. ‘I just want to get the events on Bealtaine Eve clear in my mind. I understand that you lit the bonfire at midnight.’
‘Yes,’ he said. Was it her imagination or did the blue eyes become a little wary, the upright, graceful form a little tense? He dismounted from his horse with an easy swing of his long leg and stood with the bridle in his hand. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘It’s expected of me. I didn’t stay once the bonfire was lit, that’s what I meant when you asked me before. I thought afterwards that I might have misunderstood your question. I apologize, Brehon. I didn’t mean to mislead you.’
‘No, I don’t suppose that you did,’ said M
ara soothingly, and then, very quickly, she added, ‘Which way down the mountain did you take?’
She expected him to look surprised at that question but he didn’t. If anything he looked a little more wary.
‘I came down on the eastern side, Brehon.’
‘So nowhere near to Wolf’s Lair, then?’
‘No, I’m afraid not, Brehon,’ he said with his usual courtesy, but the warmth had gone out of his voice.
‘And did you see anyone to remember as you were coming down?’ asked Mara.
He frowned. ‘I’m afraid I don’t remember, Brehon. I had a lot on my mind. One of my mares, one of my most valuable ones, was due to drop a foal. I wanted to get back and see to her.’
It might be true. His horses were very important to him. He bred and sold horses and much of his wealth came from this trade. He even exported many to England and to Spain. The worry about his mare would have filled his mind that night. In any case, he may not have noticed whom he passed on the way down even if he were not preoccupied. He was the sort of man who took very little interest in those around him, lacking the humanity of King Turlough Donn. Or was there another reason? Did he come down by Wolf’s Lair, meet Colman and be forced to listen to what the young man had to say? She frowned slightly, thinking of that case listed in Colman’s neat, small handwriting. I wonder whether Ardal had anything to do with this murder, her busy mind speculated, or was that matter too trivial?
‘What a beautiful horse, she has some Arab blood in her, I’m sure,’ she said aloud, patting the mare and making a pretext of feeling her legs and examining the small, neat ears, while all the time her active mind was working.
The big surprise about this killing was that no one had admitted to the crime. But if Ardal O’Lochlainn decided to silence this evil on his territory then he would not want to admit that he, the most powerful taoiseach of the region, second only to the king himself, had committed murder. It would undoubtedly lower him in the eyes of his followers to commit a secret murder.
My Lady Judge Page 25