A Secret and Unlawful Killing

by Cora Harrison

  ‘Shall we do the same trick about the swallows?’ whispered Hugh.

  ‘Good idea,’ said Mara, her attention on the fields to the side of the castle. One of them was full of young stallions, but, in the field beside it, a solitary horse neighed unhappily. He was a striking-looking horse, white with black smudges on his sides.

  ‘Could you fetch Donal O’Brien to speak to me,’ she said to the man from the gatehouse, who came running up when he saw visitors at the side gate.

  ‘Won’t you come in, Brehon?’ The steward joined them; no doubt he had seen them from the window.

  ‘No, I won’t, Barra,’ she said. ‘I hear that the king is at Lemeanah so I don’t want to interrupt his talk with the O’Brien. Just ask Donal O‘Brien to come out here and talk to me for a few minutes.’

  As soon as he had gone in, she nodded to Shane and Hugh and they tied up their ponies and went into the yard, asking loud questions about the dyeing process. She hoped that they would not soil their white léinte; that black dye made from iron and dried bearberry leaves would stain any surface and was almost impossible to remove. However, she had more important things on her mind, so she tied the mare’s reins to the pole, picked a red apple from the heavily laden tree above it and walked over to the gate of the field. The black and white horse looked at her hopefully; the grass of the field seemed to be cropped low and turning into the bleached pale fawn colour of winter months. The horse would not find much to eat there and he was a big horse.

  ‘Here, boy,’ she said, leaning over the gate and holding out the sweet-smelling apple.

  He came trotting up immediately and she retained the apple for a minute while she carefully examined the broad sides of the animal and then looked into its eyes. From behind she heard the light footsteps of a young man running up. The horse lifted its head in an alarmed way, but then turned its attention back to the juicy apple. Mara handed over the apple, heard the horse crunch it, wiped her hands on a piece of linen from her pouch and then turned around.

  ‘You’ve ruined that horse, Donal,’ she said. ‘The dye won’t come off until he sheds his coat in the spring. Maeve could have got a good price for him if you had left him alone. He’s much too big for her to ride; he’ll have to be sold.’

  Donal stopped abruptly and flinched almost as if she had hit him across the face. For a moment he looked as young as one of her own scholars.

  ‘It’s no good trying to wash him, and if you clip the dyed patches, he’ll only look strange and perhaps catch cold.’ She kept her face serious and her manner casual as she turned back to the horse again.

  There was a moment’s uncertain pause and then he rallied. ‘I don’t know what you are talking about,’ he said belligerently, ‘that horse is a new piebald, bought by my father.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Mara, turning back to face him. ‘Perhaps I’d better have a word with your father, then. Let’s hope that he didn’t pay too much for this horse; those splodges of black look very strange to me. I never saw a piebald look like him before.’

  Donal cast a quick involuntary glance at the windows on the third floor of the tower house. And her eyes followed his.

  ‘Yes, of course, he is talking to the king up in the hall, isn’t he?’ She now looked at him steadily and challengingly and his eyes dropped before hers.

  ‘You’d better tell me the truth,’ she said, leaning back against the gate. ‘It’s Ragnall’s horse, isn’t it?’

  He thought for a minute and she did not hurry him.

  ‘The horse came back to Shesmore while I was with Maeve on the evening of Michaelmas Day,’ he said eventually. ‘It came running down the lane from Noughaval. I caught it and I put it into the stable.’

  ‘What time was this?’ asked Mara sharply.

  ‘It must have been soon after sundown.’

  ‘And you didn’t think to look for Ragnall?’

  He didn’t answer and she allowed her voice to sound shocked.

  ‘Surely that would have been the normal thing to do. The man was not young. He could have had a fit or something. Or it could have been an accident.’

  He bowed his head. ‘I suppose you’re right,’ he said and then added awkwardly, ‘Brehon.’

  ‘So why didn’t you?’ she asked.

  He shrugged. ‘Well, you know what things were like. Old Ragnall wouldn’t allow me near Maeve. I had to sneak every opportunity that I could. We, neither of us, wanted to see her father arrive; I thought he must be having a few drinks and had forgotten to tie up his horse …’ His voice tailed away and he gave an embarrassed cough.

  ‘So you put the horse into the stable and then you went home, is that right?’

  ‘Well, a bit later,’ confessed Donal.

  ‘How much later?’

  ‘I’m not sure, Brehon, I can’t tell,’ said Donal. ‘A couple of hours, I suppose. Fionnuala came out and told me that I had better go.’

  ‘And why didn’t Maeve tell me that the horse had returned?’ asked Mara.

  ‘Once we heard the news, once she heard that Ragnall had been killed, she was afraid that you might think that I had something to do with the murder. If the horse had been missing, then it would seem more likely that some thief had killed him.’

  ‘And she had no interest in catching her father’s murderer?’ Mara watched his face carefully. He looked indifferent. He didn’t care, and probably she didn’t care either. There seemed to have been little affection between father and daughter. She waited for a minute before adding: ‘Perhaps her father’s murderer is you. Is that why Maeve had no interest in finding out the truth about his death?’

  He looked shocked. ‘She wouldn’t think that of me!’

  ‘And why was the horse moved down here to Lemeanah?’

  ‘Liam was chatting to Maeve about your visit to Lissylisheen. You know what an old gossip he is; he always likes to show that he knows all the news. He said to Maeve that you would be looking for it, and then we thought we would be in trouble because we didn’t tell you about it earlier,’ he said awkwardly, obviously concocting a story as he spoke. He looked at her appraisingly and then continued. ‘I thought of taking it to Lemeanah. Then I got the idea of disguising it.’ He cast a disgusted look at the white horse and kicked the gate moodily. ‘I seem to have made a mess of everything.’

  ‘Yes, you have,’ she said robustly. ‘You’ve certainly given me strong cause to suspect you. There have been two murders here in this kingdom and the thread of my enquiries seems to lead, in each case, to your name. Perhaps you killed Aengus on Sunday night, on the eve of Michaelmas — it may have been as the result of a drunken fight, but the crime was not acknowledged so therefore it is still classified as duinethaoide, a secret and unlawful killing. And then next day you killed Ragnall. Again the crime was not acknowledged, so again it was a duinethaoide. What do you say to that, Donal O’Brien?’

  ‘All I can say is that I am not guilty of these two murders,’ he replied with a steady courage that surprised and impressed her. ‘There were people other than me who might have wished the death of either of these men,’ he went on after a moment, speaking slowly and carefully and looking at her earnestly. ‘I had no real quarrel with Aengus; I was drunk, but then I cooled down after I left the alehouse. As for Ragnall, he was the father of the girl that I love. Why should I kill him? Sooner or later, he would have seen that it was a good match for his daughter and he would have realized that she wanted the marriage. I would have got my father to talk to the king and the king would have talked to the MacNamara. It would have worked out in the end.’

  He was fluent, articulate, brave and quick thinking. He was also a man very much in love and a man born and bred of a warrior race, a man who would kill without compunction. She wanted to believe him, but there remained a doubt.

  ‘Go and fetch my two boys,’ she said after a minute. ‘They are poking around your barns and stables looking for baby swallows. Tell them they won’t find any swallows in October. It’s a mistake to
spend too long searching for something that doesn’t exist.’

  He turned to do her bidding, looking bewildered, but wary of asking for an explanation. He had reached the gate to the yard when she called after him.

  ‘Donal, did you see Niall MacNamara today? Did he come here to Lemeanah?’

  He looked surprised, but answered readily. ‘No, I didn’t. You could ask Barra, but I’ve been around most of the morning and I certainly didn’t see him.’

  SIXTEEN

  CÁIN LÁNAMNA (THE LAW OF COUPLES)

  A chief wife must be under the law of her husband unless he fails to carry out the obligations of marriage.

  However, a wife of the fourth degree may choose whether to be under the law of her husband, or the law of her kin.

  The wife of an infertile husband may leave him temporarily (if she does not choose to exercise her right to divorce him) so that she may become pregnant by another man.

  ‘SO YOU SEE, thAt if Conor … well, if anything happened to Conor, then the clan might want Teige’ O’Brien as the tánaiste, as my heir,’ said Turlough gravely.

  ‘I see,’ said Mara, leaning forward to poke the fire. The small chunky sods of turf had collapsed into a pile of softly glowing, copper-coloured ash. She reached in the basket and threw a few more lumps on top. Logs gave a hotter, brighter fire, but on a wet night in early October she loved the strong, sweet, pungent smell of peat. She watched for a moment until the dark brown fibres began to blaze up into bright red sparks and then she sat back.

  ‘No, I don’t see,’ she said energetically. ‘If Conor is your tánaiste now and there is a worry about his health, then why not Murrough after him: Murrough is your son, also. Why won’t the clan be happy with him?’

  Turlough sighed. He stirred impatiently, walked across to the table, poured himself another cup of wine and then sat down again opposite to her, moodily sipping the wine and looking steadily out through the undraped window. She glanced around, following the direction of his gaze. There was a faint watery gleam of moonlight; the rain was over now, blown eastwards by the fresh winds from the Atlantic. The day would be fine tomorrow. That was the way it went on this western seaboard, one day wet, one day fine: the weather and the sky and the landscape continually changing and shifting between light and dark. She sometimes thought that it made for a quick-witted, alert and flexible people, used to taking each day as it came, without bothering themselves by too much fruitless planning.

  Mara looked back at Turlough. She could sense the trouble behind his eyes. Murrough was the son that looked like him, the son that was brave, warlike and handsome; Turlough would have liked Murrough to succeed him, but Turlough was a man of principle. He would keep to the ancient ways. It would be for the clan, and, above all, for the derbhfine, to elect the tánaiste if Conor died. He poked the fire and then turned to her.

  ‘The clan don’t like him,’ he said bluntly. ‘I’m not surprised. He is too English for them. They would be afraid that if he became taoiseach the O’Briens would end up, like the Kildares, in the pocket of this young king, Henry VIII, as he calls himself. The derbhfine won’t go outside the wishes of the clan.’

  ‘The Kildares were originally English,’ pointed out Mara. ‘It’s quite different with the O’Briens. They are Irish: breed, seed and generation. Murrough is young; he’ll get over all this English nonsense. He can’t be a true O‘Brien and not feel the pride in his lineage. What is Kildare to him? Or even this Henry Tudor? Murrough is the descendant of Brian Boru. The laws and the traditions of the Gael must be important to him. If I were you, I would say nothing now. Leave matters alone. With the help of God, Conor will live and prosper and the question about the new tánaiste will only come up when you are in your gravemound.’

  Unlikely, she thought, as she was saying the words. Conor seemed to waste away daily. There was little that the physicians could do for him. However, she hated to see Turlough so filled with gloom and disappointment, and people did sometimes recover from the wasting sickness.

  He roused himself at her words. ‘Now if we got married and had a son,’ he said, smiling affectionately at her, ‘then he would be quite perfect, the apple of his father’s eye, and if I live for another twenty years, he could be my heir.’

  ‘I’m too old for sons,’ said Mara.

  ‘Nonsense, lots of women have sons at thirty-six. He could have my looks and your brains and then he would be a very fine young man.’

  Mara smiled. For a moment the thought was sweet. Perhaps the maternal emotions aroused by Hugh and Shane yesterday had lingered with her and had made her feel that it would be a wonderful thing to have a son. Did the wise female judge, Brig, famed in the wisdom texts — she who reprimanded the young male judge for expecting a woman to behave like a man when taking possession of her lawful dues — did Brig have children? she wondered.

  ‘I’ve had my child,’ she said lightly. ‘Sorcha is twenty-one now, would you believe it!’

  ‘And you were managing a law school when she was only two years old,’ pointed out Turlough.

  ‘I had Brigid,’ said Mara. ‘And of course, she was a good little girl, Sorcha.’ This child, this son, would be of royal blood, descended from the great Brian Boru himself, she thought.

  ‘I could rebuild Ballinalacken Castle,’ he said eagerly. ‘That’s an O’Brien possession and it’s within an arrow’s flight of Cahermacnaghten. We could live there for half the year and you would have only a short ride to the law school every morning.’

  She thought about that for a moment. Ballinalacken Castle was familiar to her, built on a high crag, a dramatic shadow against the western sky on the road to Corcomroe. A wonderful place to live, she thought. Up on the turrets, there, you would feel as if you could touch the stars. Perhaps a marriage of the fourth degree where each retained independence could suit them both well. She had mentioned it once, but Turlough had been horrified. He had felt that such a marriage would demean her high office. Perhaps she could bring it up again some time.

  ‘We’re straying off the point,’ she said with an effort. ‘You’ve been talking with Teige O’Brien about the possibility of becoming tánaiste if anything, God forbid, happens to Conor. What did Teige have to say about this?’

  The gloomy look returned to his face. ‘Of course, he wasn’t surprised. There had been a few approaches made to him already. He’s a good man,’ he admitted. ‘He would be an excellent choice. It’s just that with a strong, healthy, brave son of twenty-two, and being in good health myself, I would have liked Murrough to be chosen if anything happened to Conor.’

  ‘And Teige was pleased? Of course, he has a grown son, also, so it would be likely that young Donal would be his tánaiste after you are gone. It would be a great prospect for him.’

  ‘Actually we didn’t talk too much about that. He could probably see that it was painful to me. We were talking about young Donal. Teige wanted to know whether the marriage with Maeve MacNamara would be approved and I told him that it was in your hands.’

  ‘Oh, yes,’ said Mara sceptically. ‘And I suppose you told him that I was bound to approve.’

  ‘Well, I did say that I didn’t think there would be a problem,’ admitted Turlough. ‘There won’t be, will there? I can’t believe that that boy had anything to do with Ragnall’s death. It’s nonsense. Why should he? All he had to do was to make enough of a nuisance of himself to his father and his father would have come to me and then the whole matter would have been worked out.’

  Mara considered this. He had almost repeated Donal’s words to her earlier. Of course, there was a lot of truth in it. Perhaps the young man had nothing to do with those two deaths. She felt her spirits rise. She had liked Donal O’Brien. He was probably over-indulged by his father, but there was something very appealing about him. After all, that brooch she had found had a piece of grey woollen cloth attached, and Donal had undoubtedly been wearing a purple, not a grey, mantle on Michaelmas Day.

  ‘At the same time, I do
n’t think Maeve should rush into this marriage,’ she said aloud. ‘It will do neither of them any harm to wait a little while and to be sure of their feelings. Maeve has led a strange life cooped up there in Shesmore. I was telling her that, at seventeen, I divorced the man that I adored when I was fourteen.’

  ‘You didn’t tell her all the details, did you?’ teased Turlough. ‘You didn’t tell her how you stood up before the people at Poulnabrone and calmly told how he had gossiped in the alehouse about the details of your love-making in his bed.’

  ‘No, I didn’t tell her that,’ admitted Mara serenely. ‘I might do, though. To tell you the truth, I just used that as an excuse. Of course, there is a law that says the husband who tells what went on between his wife and himself between the sheets may be divorced, but the fact was that I was sick of him. He was an idle braggart and no match for me.’

  ‘You should have married again,’ said Turlough with conviction. His eyes were on her and she felt her face flush. She leaned forward to poke the fire again and then went over and opened the window to cool her cheeks.

  ‘We were talking about Donal O’Brien, and the possible marriage between himself and Maeve,’ she said with a smile, walking back to her seat.

  ‘I’ll leave all that to you,’ said Turlough impatiently, ‘now let’s talk about something more …’

  ‘Would you like anything else to eat, my lord?’ queried Brigid, pushing open the door after a perfunctory knock. Outside was Cumhal with a covered lantern and Turlough’s two bodyguards, obviously keen to get their king into the guesthouse inside the high wall of the law school enclosure.

  ‘No thank you, Brigid,’ said Turlough, rising to his feet obediently.

  ‘The king will be out presently,’ said Mara serenely. She shut the door in their faces. It annoyed her sometimes that Brigid and Cumhal were so against any closer link between their mistress and the king that they seemed to be acting as bodyguards to a young virgin’s virtue. The decision was going to be hers, and hers only, she thought. In any case, the sight of Cumhal had reminded her of something.