Master of Souls

by Peter Tremayne

  ‘Buan was standing next to him when I asked,’ Conri recalled excitedly. ‘So that is what alerted her and she went off to eradicate the name of Uallach from it?’

  To his surprise Fidelma shook her head.

  ‘She had already eliminated it some time before. It was when Cinaed was beginning to suspect her that he had borrowed the genealogy. She had cut her name Uallach from the book. But what she did suspect was that Conr’s question meant that Olcán was boastful and could not be trusted. So she returned that night and stabbed him in his cell.’

  There was a silence. Then Brother Cú Mara asked: ‘If the name in the genealogy was deleted how could you tell the identity of the heir?’

  ‘Buan had told some truth about her background. Her mother ran off with a young man, and her father sent her away to be fostered by a chieftain of the Corco Duibhne. Who would that be but Slébéne? Cáeth, the smith, who had been fostered by Slébéne, told us that Slébéne had fostered a daughter of a noble from the east. Her name was Uallach.’

  Conr smiled apologetically to Sister Uallann.

  ‘I mistakenly thought that Uallach was you. The similarity of the name.’

  The physician cast a glance of dislike at him but made no comment.

  ‘I pointed out that anyone disguising his or her name would not simply change a syllable,’ Fidelma explained. ‘Anyway, although we heard that Uallach was arrogant, any ambition was killed by Eoganán’s rejection of her. So she came to Ard Fhearta and entered the abbey. After her father was killed and her brothers also, she realised that she could now claim to be a banchomarbae — a female heir — and strike out to claim the leadership of the Uí Fidgente. She sought and gained support from her brother’s right-hand man, Olcán, and from her foster father Slébéne.’

  ‘What I don’t understand is that if she was a princess of the Uí Fidgente,’ broke in the abbot, ‘why was she not acknowledged as such? Why did she enter this abbey under an assumed name.’

  ‘Uallach herself gave the answer. Her father rejected her when her mother left him, and sent her to fosterage with Slébéne. She had little to do with her father nor her half-brothers. Buan admitted the bitterness she felt when I first spoke to her. That bitterness now made her ambition the greater.’

  ‘But why did she marry the Venerable Cinaed?’ demanded Brother Cú Mara. ‘He was surely everything she detested both as a man and for his views about the Uí Fidgente.’

  Fidelma assumed a wry expression.

  ‘In that matter, we must accept she spoke the truth. She needed Cináed’s authority and protection within the abbey. It was Cinaed, of course, who helped her. And remember this was a few years before she began to develop her ambition. But it was Cinaed who eventually began to suspect his wife. She did not love him and he found romance with Sister Sinnchéne.’

  ‘He had not realised her connection—’ Eadulf suddenly saw the warning glance that Fidelma gave him. He had been going to mention that Olcán was her father, and he compressed his lips firmly.

  ‘Eadulf was going to say that Cinaed gave her a necklet.’

  Eadulf drew out the necklet that he had borrowed from Sister Sinnchéne and laid it on the table.

  ‘Cináed gave her this and told her to keep it safe, to let no one see it. It is evidence, he said. In fact, it was symbolic evidence because Buan had been travelling on behalf of the abbey selling the precious stones that were produced here. She had realised that this was the great source of wealth through which she could purchase, through Olcán and Slébéne, armed mercenaries to place her in power. The freedom to travel and to trade allowed her to maintain contact with Olcán.

  ‘Cináed had already begun to suspect that Uallach, or Buan as we know her, was involved in the precious stone business but for her own ends. I am not sure the exact evidence the necklet was to be but I am sure he found it among Buan’s things. That should have made me think about the book he had written on the sordid trade in local precious stones. He had handed that to Brother Faolchair to be copied.’

  ‘Ah, Cináed’s books,’ muttered Abbot Erc. ‘All his books were destroyed. What have you to say about that?’

  ‘Cináed had already written a book arguing against Eoganán’s reasons for making war on Cashel. It was destroyed in the Venerable Mac Faosma’s rooms. It was Buan who destroyed it because she realised that her husband had seen the genealogy and mentioned Eoganán’s third child. She found the genealogy in his rooms and so she cut her name from it

  ‘But Buan was unsure later whether Cinaed had made references in other books. That concern grew as I began to take an interest in his writings. I was talking to Buan when I realised that I had been concentrating on clues in the wrong book. I had thought the secrets lay in Cináed’s denouncement of Eoganán’s regime, the book she had destroyed in Mac Faosma’s chamber. It was much later that I came to realise that the book on the gem trade was more important. Eadulf and I had mentioned the title in front of Buan. A short time later we found that all Cináed’s books in the library had been burnt. That was to prevent our search. Buan was cunning enough to realise that if she burnt the book on the gems only, suspicion would have fallen on her. She burnt them all.

  ‘I believe that not everything had come together in the Venerable Cináed’s mind until Abbess Faife was murdered and the six gem polishers had been abducted. Then he knew Buan must have been involved. Buan also realised that he had made the connection. So he had to be killed. She lured him to the oratory with a false message from Sister Sinnchéne. She hoped that this would be evidence against Sinnchéne but Cinaed was astute enough to try to burn it. She handed the remains over to the abbot hoping for suspicion to fall on Sinnchéne. She went out of her way to incriminate Sinnchéne to Eadulf and me. Buan waited in the chapel and bludgeoned her husband to death.’

  Eadulf was nodding in agreement.

  ‘We did suspect Sister Sinnchéne for a while,’ he admitted. ‘Only she knew that we were going to be in the workroom where they polished the stones at the time the attempt on Fidelma’s life was made.’

  Abbot Erc was astonished.

  ‘How was this?’

  Fidelma quickly explained the circumstances.

  ‘I think that Buan was becoming increasingly fearful and knew that I suspected her. The previous evening she had asked me to come to her chamber on the pretext of discussing her rights, which she knew anyway. I think that she was going to arrange my death there. However, Eadulf arrived and she had to abandon her plan. So the next day she attempted to push a stone on my head as we were leaving the workroom.’

  ‘But if only Sister Sinnchéne knew you were going to be there, at the stone polishers’ workshop, how did Sister Buan find out?’ demanded Brother Cú Mara.

  ‘You told her,’ Fidelma smiled.

  The young steward’s eyes widened.

  ‘I told no one,’ he denied hotly.

  ‘Not directly,’ agreed Fidelma in a mild voice.

  ‘I remember that morning,’ interrupted Sister Uallann. ‘Sister Sinnchéne was delivering washing. I was standing with Brother Cú Mara and Sister Buan. Brother Cú Mara felt he had been too abrasive to you and felt he should apologise. He asked Sister Sinnchéné if she knew where you were. She told him. That’s how Sister Buan learnt the information and I remember that she left us immediately.’

  ‘So Buan was able to get through the dormitories to the roof of the workshop in a matter of moments, pry loose the block and make her second attempt on my life.’

  ‘Thankfully it failed,’ Eadulf added. ‘Ever since I first met Buan I kept thinking that I had met her before. Her features seemed so familiar to me. I mentioned it to Fidelma. But it was not until Buan made her final mistake that it all came together.’

  ‘A final mistake?’ Abbot Erc was shaking his head, perplexed. Fidelma looked appreciatively to Eadulf.

  ‘She was trapped into making that mistake by Eadulf.’

  All eyes turned to him and he shrugged modestly.

&
nbsp; ‘All along, Sister Buan had been pretending a lack of education. She claimed not to know a word of Latin, thus trying to assure us that she would not have had any knowledge of Cináed’s work. Had this been so, we would have had to accept that she must have been innocent of the book destruction and that would have been a fatal flaw in our argument. However, as the daughter of a chieftain, raised by a chieftain, she would naturally have learnt Latin.’

  Abbot Erc was still puzzled.

  ‘But I can vouch that she was no scholar. She had neither Latin nor Greek.’

  ‘No, she pretended not to, but made a fatal slip,’ contradicted Eadulf. ‘We were talking and I commented dura lex sed lex - the law is hard, but it is the law. And she turned and agreed with me without my needing to translate. And I knew then that she had been lying about her knowledge. Everything fell into place and I finally understood the significance of her resemblance to Uaman.’

  Sister Fidelma nodded appreciatively.

  ‘Thanks to Eadulf, that was the point when the evidence tied into the knot that sealed Buan’s fate.’

  ‘She was ambitious to the point of blind evil,’ Abbot Erc sighed deeply. ‘What profit a person, if they gain the whole world, and lose their own soul?’

  Fidelma nodded agreement at his quotation from scripture.

  ‘Publilius Syrus said …’ She paused, glanced to where Eadulf was waiting with a stoic expression for yet another of her many quotations from the moral sayings of her favourite Latin philosopher. Then she gave him one of her rare mischievous grins: ‘But that’s another story. Let’s make a start on the road for Cashel and little Alchú.’

  Bréanainn (which means ‘prince’) was the name

  of the sixth-century Irishman who founded the abbey of

  Ard Fhearta (Ardfert, Co. Clare). Revered as a saint,

  he has become more widely known by the Latinised

  forms of Brandanus and Brendanus of which the English form

  is Brendan and the modern Irish is Breandán.

  This story takes places in the month of Dubh-Luacran,

  the darkest days (January) of the year AD 668

  following the events narrated in

  The Leper’s Bell.

  PRINCIPAL CHARACTERS

  Sister Fidelma of Cashel, a dálaigh or advocate of the law courts of seventh-century Ireland

  Brother Eadulf of Seaxmund’s Ham in the land of the South Folk, her companion

  On the Sumerli

  Esumaro, captain

  Coros, his first mate

  At Inis

  Olcán, leader of the wreckers

  Abbess Faife of Ard Fhearta

  Sister Easdan

  At Ard Fhearta

  Conrí, warlord of the Uí Fidgente

  Socht, one of his warriors

  Abbot Erc

  Brother Cu Mara, the rechtaire or steward

  The Venerable Cináed, a scholar

  The Venerable Mac Faosma, a scholar

  Brother Benen, his student

  Sister Sinnchéne

  Sister Buan, wife to Cinaed

  Brother Feólaigid, the butcher

  Sister Uallann, the physician

  Brother Eolas, the leabhar coimedach or librarian

  Brother Faolchair, his assistant

  Brother Cillín, the stiúirtheóir canaid, or master of music

  Mugrón, a merchant

  Tadcán, lord of Baile Tadc

  At Daingean

  Slébéne, chief of the Corco Duibhne

  At Sliabh Mís

  Iobcar, son of Starn the Blacksmith

  Ganicca, an old man

  At Baile Gabhainn

  Gáeth, the smith

  Gaimredán, his assistant

  An té a bhfuil drochmeas aige ar a shaol féin, beigh sé ina mháistir ar shaol duine eile - fainic, éireoidh le’n a leithéid máistreacht a fháil ar anamacha.

  He who despises his own life is soon master of another’s - beware, for such a man can become master of souls.

  Brehon Morann

  Also by Peter Tremayne and featuring Sister Fidelma:

  Absolution by Murder

  Shroud for the Archbishop

  Suffer Little Children

  The Subtle Serpent

  The Spider’s Web

  Valley of the Shadow

  The Monk who Vanished

  Act of Mercy

  Hemlock at Vespers

  Our Lady of Darkness

  Smoke in the Wind

  The Haunted Abbot

  Badger’s Moon

  Whispers of the Dead

  The Leper’s Bell

  PRONUNCIATION GUIDE

  As the Fidelma series has become increasingly popular, many English-speaking fans have written wanting assurance about the way to pronounce the Irish names and words.

  Irish belongs to the Celtic branch of the Indo-European family of languages. It is closely related to Manx and Scottish Gaelic and a cousin of Welsh, Cornish and Breton. It is a very old European literary language. Professor Calvert Watkins of Harvard maintained it contains Europe’s oldest vernacular literature, Greek and Latin being a lingua franca. Surviving texts date from the seventh century AD.

  The Irish of Fidelma’s period is classed as Old Irish; after AD 950 the language entered a period known as Middle Irish. Therefore, in the Fidelma books, Old Irish forms are generally adhered to, whenever possible, in both names and words. This is like using Chaucer’s English compared to modern English. For example, a word such as aidche (‘night’) in Old Irish is now rendered oiche in modern Irish.

  There are only eighteen letters in the Irish alphabet. From earliest times there has been a literary standard but today four distinct spoken dialects are recognised. For our purposes, we will keep to Fidelma’s dialect of Munster.

  It is a general rule that stress is placed on the first syllable but, as in all languages, there are exceptions. In Munster the exceptions to the rule of initial stress are a) if the second syllable is long then it bears the stress; b) if the first two syllables are short and the third is long then the third syllable is stressed - such as in the word for fool, amadán, pronounced amad-awn; and c) where the second syllable contains ach and there is no long syllable, the second syllable bears the stress.

  There are five short vowels - a, e, i, o, u — and five long vowels - a, é, í, 6, ú. On the long vowels note the accent, like the French acute, which is called a fada (literally, ‘long’), and this is the only accent in Irish. It occurs on capitals as well as lower case.

  The accent is important for, depending on where it is placed, it changes the entire word. Seán (Shawn) = John. But sean (shan) = old and séan (she-an) = an omen. By leaving out the accent on his name, the actor Sean Connery has become ‘Old’ Connery!

  These short and long vowels are either ‘broad’ or ‘slender’. The six broad vowels are:

  a pronounced ‘o’ as in cot

  o pronounced ‘u’ as in cut

  u pronounced ‘u’ as in run

  á pronounced ‘aw’ as in law

  ó pronounced ‘o’ as in low

  ú pronounced ‘u’ as in rule

  The four slender vowels are:

  i pronounced ‘i’ as in hit

  e pronounced ‘e’ as in let

  í pronounced ‘ee’ as in see

  é pronounced ‘ay’ as in say

  There are double vowels, some of which are fairly easy because they compare to English pronunciation — such as ‘ae’ as say or ‘ui’ as in quit. However, some double and even triple vowels in Irish need to be learnt.

  ái pronounced like ‘aw’ in law (dálaigh = daw-lee)

  ia pronounced like ‘ea’ in near

  io pronounced like ‘o’ in come

  éa prounced like ‘ea’ in bear

  ei pronounced like ‘e’ in let

  aoi pronounced like the ‘ea’ in mean

  uai pronounced like the ‘ue’ in blue

  eoi pronounced like the
‘eo’ in yeoman

  iai pronounced like the ‘ee’ in see

  HIDDEN VOWELS

  Most people will have noticed that many Irish people pronounce the word film as fil-um. This is actually a transference of Irish pronunciation rules. When I, n or r is followed by b, bh, ch, g (not after n), m or mh, and is preceded by a short stressed vowel, an additional vowel is heard between them. So bolg (stomach) is pronounced bol-ag; garbh (rough) is gar-ev; dorcha (dark) is dor-ach-a; gorm (blue) is gor-um and ainm (name) is an-im.

  THE CONSONANTS

  b, d, f, h, l, m, n, p, r and t are said more or less as in English

  g is always hard like the ‘g’ in gate

  c is always hard like the ‘c’ in cat

  s is pronounced like the ‘s’ in said except before a

  slender vowel when it is pronounced ‘sh’ as in shin

  In Irish the letters j, k, q, w, x, y or z do not exist and v is formed by the combination of bh.

  Consonants can change their sound by aspiration or eclipse. Aspiration is caused by using the letter h after them.

  bh is like the ‘v’ in voice

  ch is a soft breath as in loch (not pronounced as lock!) or as in Bach