Ardal did not look worried by her silence, she thought. He hadn’t answered her last remark, had just smiled. In fact, his eyes were on his flock of newly sheared sheep in the field on the other side of the lane and there was a look of complacent satisfaction on his handsome face. She would not press him now, she decided. She could always talk to him again. She cast around for a neutral subject with which to end the conversation.
‘The king was telling me that there is a new young king in England,’ she said, moving quickly into gossip mode. ‘He is only eighteen years old and he is the son of the old king, Henry VII. Henry VIII, this one will be known as. Funny the way they number their kings in England, isn’t it? I knew a man once who did that with his cows. He called his first cow Buttercup and all her daughters and granddaughters were Buttercup I, Buttercup II and so on. The next one was Daisy and he did the same thing. He was a man of little imagination,’ she added gaily.
He laughed politely and she was glad to see that the tension had gone from his eyes.
‘I was coming to see you,’ he repeated. ‘I just wanted to tell you that Colman had a good wake on Saturday and a good burial on Sunday morning. Everyone was there. The bishop himself conducted the burial Mass at St Nicholas’s Church.’
Can you have a good wake and a good burial when you are only nineteen? thought Mara. Aloud she said, ‘That’s good,’ and then she waited. There would be more, she knew. Ardal O’Lochlainn would not have been coming to see her unless there was more.
‘They’re upset, of course, the parents.’
‘Of course,’ agreed Mara.
‘They want justice.’
Mara nodded. The Lynch family came from a long line of merchants. The fine would be important, no matter how genuine the grief. ‘I’ve already begun my investigation,’ she said smoothly. ‘When I find the guilty person, then the fine will be paid.’
‘The word is,’ said Ardal cautiously, ‘that it will not be the full fine.’
She smiled. ‘You’ve picked up the news quickly.’
‘It’s true?’
‘It’s true. If the murder was the result of blackmail, then the fine will be just the normal éraic. The victim bears some responsibility.’
‘I don’t think the Lynch family will be too happy about that,’ warned Ardal.
Mara shrugged. It was of no consequence to her. The Lynch family could think what they liked. She had confidence in her own judgement and her knowledge of the law. The crime was committed on the kingdom of the Burren; Brehon law would prevail.
She noted with amusement that the Lynch family had not asked for the death penalty. That was the interesting thing about a lot of people that lived under English law. They tended to pick and choose between the two laws according to whichever would serve their interests best. Nothing could bring back their son, so the Lynch family had decided that a fine would be better than another death. There had been a murder case recently in Kildare, right in the heart of the territory that England still held on to, where the family had turned their back on the English judge and had brought in a Brehon from Ossary to sort out the compensation.
Ardal, she noticed, now that he had made his observation about the Lynch family, was quite relaxed in her company and unworried by her silence. He took his knife from his pouch, sharpened it vigorously on a stone and then inserted the tip of it into the loop of the bridle, dislodging some minute piece of mud. It was a plain, serviceable knife, she observed, not at all like the elaborate jewelled affair that Cian had presented to his son Hugh. This one just had a long, sharp blade and a well-moulded wooden handle. It did the job for which it was designed and made no show of wealth or status. It was like Ardal himself, she thought: handsome, well built and without pretension.
How characteristic of him it was to leave his servants and followers to enjoy the bonfire and go quietly back to Lissylisheen to care for his horses. He would not be like the MacNamara, who needed to be constantly surrounded by flatterers and subordinates. The O’Lochlainns had been kings on the Burren in the old days and Ardal retained that serene, unselfconscious air of confidence in himself.
‘We’ll see how it turns out,’ said Mara. She smiled at Ardal, but her manner conveyed that she did not want to discuss the Lynch claim any further. He smiled back, returned his knife to his pouch and mounted his horse again.
‘Well, I won’t delay you any more, Brehon,’ he said courteously. ‘If there is anything at all I can do for you, please call on me. You have a busy time ahead of you.’
‘Yes, I do,’ said Mara. ‘I have to talk to everyone I can find. Sooner or later someone will remember something of importance from that night.’
She looked at him closely as she said this, but his handsome face was serene and unconcerned. As he trotted away on his fine bay horse, she heard him humming a tune. She knew herself to be a shrewd observer of people and there was nothing in his manner that conveyed any uneasiness, except for that one moment of ill ease when she asked him about the lighting of the bonfire. Well, she would keep him in mind, but he didn’t seem a likely culprit to her.
She would go home across the fields to Cahermacnaghten, Mara decided as she pushed her way through a hedge hung with the tiny pale pink buds of the coming field roses. The lane would be an easier route, but it led past many cottages and Mara did not want to talk to anyone for a little while. She needed time to think. The sight of Ardal’s knife had made her think about Muiris, and about another man, also.
The bell for vespers was ringing when Mara returned to Cahermacnaghten. Brigid had spread a meal in the garden of the Brehon’s house. There were baskets of oatcakes, baskets of honey cakes, platters of golden-brown sausages, big hunks of ham, balls of goat’s cheese, flagons of ale, jugs of buttermilk and dozens of hard-boiled brown eggs lying in a willow pottle, all spread out on a few trestle tables in the shade of the hazel trees.
‘They’re coming,’ said Brigid as Mara came through the gate. ‘I heard the noise of the hoofs up the mountain a while ago. I thought I’d set everything up here as the day is so hot.’
‘You did the right thing,’ said Mara approvingly. This outdoor supper would round off the day well for everyone. ‘It sounds as if you might need some more cups,’ she added. She walked down the road, shading her eyes against the western sun to catch the first glimpse of them.
They glowed with sun and fun, and laughter, and they smelled of fresh brine. They galloped down the hill, infusing the tired ponies with their own youth and energy. The crowd had swollen to double its original size; young people from all over the Burren, boys and girls, had joined in.
‘Had a good day?’ called Mara. Her eyes went to Hugh immediately. He looked well, she thought happily. He was covered in freckles and his small nose was pink from the sun, but his eyes were clear and shining.
‘Oh, yes!’ said Nuala.
‘Yes, thank you, Brehon,’ chorused the scholars.
‘You’d better put some buttermilk on your nose, Hugh, after you have seen to your pony,’ said Mara. ‘Supper is ready – yes, you are all invited. Give your ponies a drink and a rub-down here in the yard and then come over to the Brehon’s house.’
‘I’ll do some more eggs and get some more oatcakes,’ said Brigid, joining her. ‘What did you lot do with my poor husband?’
‘Oh, the cart was too slow, he’s back somewhere over there,’ said Fachtnan with a careless wave in the direction of Slieve Elva. He seized a handful of grass from the roadside and started to rub down his pony.
‘He told us we could go ahead once we were through the pass,’ said Shane, busily pumping water from the well in the yard of the law school. ‘Once we were at Gragan’s Castle, he said that we could go on. He had to get down and walk up the hill, the cart was so heavy with fish and seaweed.’
‘I’ll rub down your pony, Aoife,’ said Rory, noticing that Roderic was already rubbing down Emer’s.
‘Perhaps you two girls would help Brigid,’ said Mara. She stood for a while
watching them all and then called Rory over.
‘You don’t want to play chess with me, do you?’ said Rory.
‘You know I’m no good at the best of times, and now I’m so exhausted that you’d beat me in ten moves.’ He spoke lightly but his eyes were wary and he followed her meekly down the road and over to the stone bench in her garden.
‘There’s a lot of talk about you and Aoife,’ she said bluntly, once he was seated beside her.
He moved restlessly. ‘Too many people with too little to do,’ he said with a half-mocking smile on his lips.
She ignored that. ‘Muiris and Áine will want a good match for their daughter,’ she said.
‘What about Roderic? Why don’t you lecture him, also?’
‘I think Roderic is serious; I think you are amusing yourself,’ she said severely. ‘He has his roots here. You don’t. Another six months or a year and you will move on. All the clans have their own bard and none of them is old. There is no place for you here. You will get tired of this hand-to-mouth life and you will be looking for a permanent position, a seat at the board and a bed by the fire. Roderic and Emer may eventually wed — I hope so — but I am concerned for Aoife. You will ruin her reputation if you go on like this.’
He plucked an early flower from the woodbine behind the bench and shredded it savagely.
‘It’s that priest, that Father Conglach,’ he said between his teeth. ‘I suppose he is the one that has been telling you tales. We’ve seen him hiding by that cairn watching us. He’s just a pathetic old man; you wouldn’t want to believe everything that he tells you. I wouldn’t have thought you were a woman to listen to gossip.’
‘I listen to everything that brings me knowledge,’ said Mara, eyeing him coldly. ‘Don’t you lecture me, young man. If you want to marry Aoife, do the right thing. Go and see Muiris and offer a bride price. If you don’t want to marry her, if you can’t marry her, then don’t spoil her chances with anyone else.’ She got up from the bench and strode off. She wasn’t angry, just amused; but it wouldn’t do him any harm to imagine that she was.
It was only a little while later that she realized the full significance of what he had said.
The supper lasted for hours. Brigid made several trips to the kitchen for more cakes, more light ale, more buttermilk. Then, when the cups and platters and baskets were all cleared away and the trestles and boards carried back into the barn, Roderic produced his horn and began to play it quietly. Rory strummed his lute; and then Fachtnan sang the song of the lover going to the fair; Hugh and Shane combined their high sweet treble voices in a springtime carol; and Emer, blushing under Roderic’s adoring gaze, sang ‘Eibhlín a Rúin’, ‘Eileen, my love’. The O’Lochlainn boys roared out a rhythmic drummer’s song to the accompaniment of their own hard hands slapping the stone bench and Brigid hitched up her léine and danced a sprightly jig on the clints.
‘When the moon is over that ash tree, then it will be bed, everyone,’ said Mara. ‘We’ve all got work to do in the morning.’ She herself felt quite sleepy after her day in the open air. For a moment she sat and allowed herself to enjoy their pleasure, but then she roused herself and walked through the scented garden, plucking a rose as she went. She stood for a moment, looking back, thinking that her garden had never looked so beautiful as it did that night. The candles burned steadily in the still air and lit up the brightly coloured léinte of the boys and girls. They looked like clusters of orchids in the fields, she thought, as she walked down the road to the law school with her small horn-paned lantern in her hand.
The schoolhouse smelled stuffy when she pushed the door open, but she ignored that and went straight to the wall where the map of Mullaghmore was sketched. She gazed at it steadily for some time and added a few new names. It was all beginning to make sense and it was all beginning to point to one person. She didn’t like her conclusions, but never in her life had she shirked her duty or withdrawn from the truth once it was manifest. She went to the bookshelf. Her memory was excellent but she had been trained always to check a theory against facts. The book she was looking for was at the back of the shelf and she had to brush the dust off to read the words: Bretha Déin Chécht. She studied it intently, then sighed and blew out the small candle inside her lantern. She would need its light later on and the moon above the big ash tree across the road was bright enough for her to find her way back.
‘Home, everyone, and bed,’ she called firmly when she returned. She could ensure that her own scholars went to bed, but she doubted that the others would. They seemed to have paired off very neatly and there were entwined figures on every seat and in every corner of the garden. Fachtnan went around lighting some covered lanterns and then blowing out the candles and Brigid started to usher the younger boys across to the scholars’ house. They would sleep well tonight, thought Mara. The shadow of Colman’s death had been lifted from them all. She stood and waited while the other young people mounted their ponies and went off, some going south down the road to Lissylisheen, some going north to Baur and others going across the stone clints towards Kilcorney.
‘Take Nuala home, Fachtnan, will you?’ she asked. ‘Bran will go with you. He’ll enjoy the run now. It’s probably been too hot for him all day. Will that be all right, Nuala?’
‘Oh, yes,’ said Nuala, her green eyes shining with delight.
She’s still very young, thought Mara, amused. She’s too young to hide the fact that she worships Fachtnan. Well, he’s a nice boy and, yes, it would be a good match in a few years’ time when he is qualified and she is old enough to know her own mind. There’s no reason why she should not be a physician as well as a wife and mother: the one would help with the other. The Burren badly needs a physician who can save the lives of all those young girls who now die in childbirth and those babies who are lost before they can be named and baptized.
Mara watched until they had disappeared across the clints with Bran loping effortlessly behind them. She was surprised that Malachy had not come over. He was normally so worried about Nuala that she had expected him to arrive as soon as dusk came. She was glad that he hadn’t come, though. She needed some more thinking time. She crossed the garden and went to sit on the chamomile bench, breathing in deeply, inhaling the sweet apple smell of the foliage. The candles in the windows of the scholars’ house were like golden spots of moving light, making the starlight seem blue by contrast. Then, one by one, the lights went out and everything became very still and very quiet. A few clouds had drifted across from the Atlantic and Mara felt a light breeze at the back of her head. The wind had turned to the west. It would probably rain again tomorrow, but this day would stay in the minds of the young people and when they were old they would look back and think that all summers were like that: golden days of sun and sea, and evenings filled with the scent of roses and the music of softly singing voices.
The moon had disappeared now, hidden behind the clouds. The garden was very dark: the deep blue and the pale blue gentian flowers had darkened and dimmed with the fading of the light, and the whole complexity and blending of colours in her lovely garden were reduced to a white glimmer of cloud-pale orchids in front of the holly hedge in the far corner.
Night simplifies everything, thought Mara; just two colours: white and black. Life is not like that, though. There is some evil and some good in every person; just the proportion varies. In actions, also, love can be the wellspring of evil.
With a sigh, she rose to her feet and lit the candle inside her little lantern. Her mind had cut through all the conflicting and confusing aspects to the death of Colman on Mullaghmore Mountain and now she had an inner certainty that she knew the truth. She had to hear it confessed, though. The truth had to be established, the fine had to be paid, and the community had to know who had done wrong. She would wait until Fachtnan returned, she decided, but she could not wait another day. She would confront the murderer this very night.
TWENTY-TWO
CÓRUS BÉSCNAI (REGULATION OF PROPE
R BEHAVIOUR)
There is a contract between the church and the people of the kingdom. The people must give offerings to the church.
For the contract to be valid, the priests must be devout, honest, properly qualified and must administer the sacraments of baptism, communion and requiem for the dead.
The stone CIRCLE WAS lit up when Mara arrived. A candle, stuck by its own grease, had been placed on the top of each of the thirteen stones: white light and black shadows etched sharply on the bleached grass. They had been singing softly; she had heard them the whole way as she crossed the flat tableland of the High Burren and she had smiled to herself. They did not realize how far sounds carried on a still night.
It was amazing that neither Daniel nor Muiris had come storming down to order their daughters home. The singing had stopped now and she could guess that they were kissing and cuddling. At least, she hoped that it would be confined to that! She hesitated for a moment and then moved quietly behind a small lone hawthorn tree. She hated to play the part of the unseen spy, but she had to prove something.
She waited silently, her eyes fixed on the stone cairn opposite. Could she see some movement from it? She wasn’t sure, but she thought she had seen a flash, perhaps light, reflected from an eye or a brooch.
‘We’d better go.’ That was certainly Rory’s voice. ‘We’d better get you girls home. Aoife’s father will probably have heard the O’Lochlainn boys clattering past and he will be looking out for her. Anyway, Her High and Mightiness has been lecturing me. I told her not to listen to gossip but she said, “Don’t you lecture me, young man,” and I had to say, “Yes, Brehon; no, Brehon”.’
Mara grinned to herself in the darkness. That had been a fair imitation of her authoritative tones. Perhaps Rory would be better at satire than at his usual sentimental poems, she thought.
My Lady Judge Page 26