Condemned to Death

by Cora Harrison

  ‘You’re right,’ said Slevin enthusiastically. ‘I’d say he’s right, wouldn’t you, Brehon. Old brainbox,’ he added affectionately, clouting Domhnall on the side of the head.

  ‘Well, let’s see what Domhnall’s father says when he sees the body,’ said Mara. ‘We mustn’t rush ahead until we are sure of our facts.’ Nevertheless, she packed her little map carefully in her satchel and felt sure that it would be of use on the beach of Fanore, once Oisín had confirmed that the body was, indeed, that of Niall Martin, the gold merchant from the city of Galway.

  Cumhal had been right when he told Mara about the likely time for the boats to embark. The beach was busy when they arrived, but everyone was still there. The boats were already loaded with nets and dragging hooks, but all of the fishermen and also the five younger scholars were still on the beach waiting for the high tide. Fernandez was in his big ship, but came off it and ran lightly up the pier and then across the sand once he saw her arrive.

  ‘I’m sorry to delay your departure, Fernandez,’ said Mara briskly after she had introduced Oisín to him, ‘but the body will need to be buried soon and many hands will make light work. Could you ask the men to bring spades to the churchyard and once Oisín has identified him, then the corpse should be buried as soon as possible.’

  ‘There’s plenty of odd pieces of timber lying around, Fernandez,’ said Etain in a businesslike way. ‘We could get them carried up and they can be nailed to that boat – that boat is useless anyway – and then the man will have a perfect coffin.’

  ‘That’s a good suggestion,’ said Mara appreciatively. She noted Etain’s use of the words ‘that boat’ and wondered whether there was any significance in them. She said nothing, however, and watched Etain organize her younger scholars, putting them into pairs – Cormac with Cael and Art with Cian to carry the boards – and giving Finbar a large hammer and some nails.

  ‘How are you, Finbar?’ asked Mara, going to walk beside him up the road to the church.

  He started at her words and looked taken aback and she guessed that he did not want to talk about his future at the moment, so she chatted about Brigid who was on the beach already with young Séanín to assist her in getting a good fire going in order to cook some of her splendid sausages. The younger children had been grouped around her when they left, but most of the older ones climbed the hill silently beside their parents. The words, ‘Say nothing!’ seemed to Mara to hang in the air and even her scholars, apart from Domhnall and Slevin, said little. Most waited outside in the churchyard or by the gate when they came to the little church on the hillside.

  It was one of the smallest churches that Mara had ever seen – not much bigger than an average kitchen. It had small plain altar made from a slab of the stone that lay outside. A candle was burning on it and the priest stood beside it, looking grim and unwelcoming. Already a faint smell of decomposing flesh made the warm air unpleasant and Mara hoped devoutly that there would be no further delay in getting this poor man underground. She walked steadily to the top of the church and stood for a moment gazing down at the elderly man. Already his features had changed subtly – the skin was almost translucent. She glanced at Oisín and he nodded.

  ‘Yes,’ he said loudly enough for all within the church to hear him, ‘yes, Brehon, that is the body of Niall Martin, the gold merchant from Galway City.’

  ‘In that case, Father,’ said Mara thankfully to the priest, ‘I think we should bury him here. My son-in-law, Oisín O’Davoren, is also a merchant from the city and he knows this man well and knows that he has no relatives in Galway.’

  ‘He was originally from Bristol in England, I seem to remember,’ said Oisín looking at the priest. ‘He told me once that he had no kin living that he knew of.’

  ‘I’ll say the prayers out by the graveside,’ said the priest hurriedly and he went off to allocate a space. He was quickly followed by everyone else and Mara was left alone with the dead man. ‘Their silver and their gold shall not be able to deliver them in the day of the wrath of the Lord,’ she quoted, saying the words from the Bible aloud within the empty echoing walls of the small church. Why had an elderly man without wife, child, or family of any sort bothered to leave his city home and to come over here to Fanore on the Burren? Surely he had enough silver and gold for his modest needs. Nevertheless, she told the silent corpse, I shall see you buried with dignity and then I shall find who hit the fatal blow and I promise you that I will not rest until I have avenged you. When she was a child she had a fanciful notion that a murdered person would not find their proper place in heaven until the facts of death were established by her father, the Brehon, and until the culprit had made open acknowledgement of the crime in front of the people of the kingdom.

  That, she swore a silent oath, she would endeavour to accomplish, even for a stranger.

  And then she left the church and walked towards the graveyard deep in thought.

  There were a large amount of men with spades available, and they were driven by the urgency in placing this unwanted corpse below ground and the soil of the graveyard was light and sandy – all of these must have contributed to the fact that the grave was ready by the time that she came out. Two men, with averted faces, were placing the boards across the top of the fragile boat while a third hastily hammered in nails attaching them to the gunwale. Once that was done, the makeshift coffin was soon lowered down with ropes into the grave, the priest rushing through the prayers and within five minutes the excavated earth was heaped up on top of the mortal remains of Niall Martin, the goldsmith from Galway who had come to an obscure beach on the north-western corner of the Gaelic Kingdom of the Burren, and who had been killed at that spot.

  Seven

  Muirbretha

  (Sea Judgements)

  Any goods found on the seashore belong to the owner of that shore unless it can be proved that they have come from beyond nine waves from the shore – in which case they will belong to the finder.

  ‘Brigid! Sausages! You’re an angel!’

  ‘Iontach!’

  ‘And how’s the old place getting on without us?’ queried Cormac with the air of a traveller newly returned from a long sea journey.

  ‘Terrible, terrible, the whole place is going to rack and ruin! You won’t know it when you see it again.’ Brigid entered into the game.

  ‘Cumhal got drunk and ploughed up the home meadow again?’

  ‘The pig’s lost weight!’

  ‘Rats in the storeroom!’ Cael gave Brigid a sly look at that. She and Brigid had many a tussle over how a young lady should behave.

  ‘Haycocks have fallen down!’

  ‘And built up again in the wrong place! At least one foot from the place they’ve been put in for the last five hundred years,’ Séanín adroitly turned a sausage while putting in this piece of exquisite humour.

  It was good to see them all in such good spirits, thought Mara. Even Cael had got over her annoyance at having to share a tent with Síle and was bandying jokes and sarcasms with the other scholars. Mara munched absent-mindedly at a sausage and gazed out to sea. Everyone was enjoying the change from fish. Brigid kept a supply of willow twigs which she always used when cooking sausages for the boys, so no plates were needed and they all enjoyed the informality. The fishing community, whose normal diet was almost entirely taken from their sea-catches, was praising Brigid’s cooking loudly and enthusiastically and the housekeeper’s cheeks were flushed with pleasure.

  ‘Brehon, who owns the shore grazing here at Fanore?’ asked Domhnall. He spoke in low tone and did not cease to eat, but his brown eyes were alert and thoughtful.

  Mara was taken aback. It was a very good question, and a question, she acknowledged to herself, that she should have asked herself before now.

  ‘To be honest, I’m not sure, Domhnall,’ she said immediately. Her mind went to Michelóg, and yet there was that case of the bull. Had Michelóg owned the shore grazing then the community would have been on more unsure ground when th
ey objected to the animal grazing there. Her mind went back to the case, sifting through the thousands of other cases with which she had dealt during her time as Brehon. It had not been a very noticeable, nor a very complicated case, she seemed to remember. The chances were small that it was Michelóg that traditionally owned the grazing. It had not been Fernandez; she was almost certain of that. And yet he above all men was one that would know the answer to this question. She half-rose to her feet, but then decided to leave her query until later on. She relaxed her back against one of the squared-off rocks and listened with amusement to the bantering between Brigid and her scholars.

  They had been glad to see the housekeeper; Mara had been pleased to observe that. There was a relationship between Cormac, Art, the MacMahon twins and her housekeeper which was a sort of mother/grandmother tie that made them feel at ease with her, made them accept her frequent scolding and her right to see after their food, their welfare, their donning of clean clothes, and their moods of depression or anxiety. Brigid, she noticed, was paying particular attention to young Finbar, teasing him, making sure that he ate his sausages and his slices of newly baked soda bread spread with newly salted butter and that he finished his portion of strawberry pie and telling him that young Eileen in the farm had been asking after him. Finbar moved from one-syllable answers to giggles and seemed to make a good meal and join Cormac and Cian in their teasing of Brigid.

  ‘That’s an interesting question that Domhnall asked, isn’t it?’ said Mara meditatively to Cael. After Domhnall the girl was probably the most promising of her scholars and so she was not surprised when Cael wrinkled her brow and said thoughtfully, ‘You’re thinking that the gold merchant came here for some reason, something to do with his trade, perhaps, aren’t you?’ She looked around her carefully, but the law-school crowd were seated at some distance from the fishermen and their families. Nevertheless, Mara noted with appreciation how Cael lowered her voice before saying: ‘Perhaps there’s a possibility that he heard that someone had found some gold and that’s why he came here; that’s what you and Domhnall are thinking, aren’t you? And I know that if something is swept in from the sea, from beyond the seventh wave, then it’s finders, keepers but if it’s not, then it’s the property of whoever owns the shore-grazing rights – so that’s why Domhnall asked you who owned the shore-grazing rights.’

  Mara gave her an approving nod. ‘It’s interesting that the Romans also had that as one of their laws – whether they took it from us, or we took it from them, I don’t know, or perhaps it just makes sense that there should be a law about that,’ she remarked, but she said no more as she saw Setanta, Art’s father, approach, walking down the beach towards her.

  ‘Is it all right if we go off now to catch an afternoon’s fishing, Brehon?’ he asked. ‘There should be a good moon tonight – I think that the weather is set to remain fair for a few days now.’

  ‘That should be all right, Setanta,’ said Mara. It would probably be at least midnight before the tide would be right for them to moor their boats against the pier. ‘I and my scholars will be busy here for the afternoon,’ she went on, ignoring the disappointed and dismayed looks from her pupils. They had been hoping to go out in the boats again, but by now they should know that law-school business had to come first. If ever they were to become Brehons, this lesson could not be learned early enough. ‘I will return tomorrow morning and then I may have some questions to ask. Hopefully this matter will soon be unravelled,’ she finished to Setanta and saw a tightening of his mouth and a flash of concern from his eyes.

  Mara waited until the fishermen departed and then called her scholars to her and walked across to where the Caher River entered the beach. Brigid had set Séanín to work in gathering various kinds of seaweed from the rocks and piling them onto one of the flat table-like stones so that the sea water could drip from the fronds. The housekeeper was a great believer in carrageen moss for sore throats and cough syrup and kelp was used in soups and in stewed mutton. The wives and children left behind were busy with their smoking fires, so that this corner of the beach was as private as the school house at Cahermacnaghten could be.

  ‘Domhnall and I were discussing this matter,’ she began and then stopped, momentarily disconcerted by a flash of irritation from the very green eyes of her son Cormac. Could he be jealous of Domhnall, she wondered – there had been no sign of it previously. Cormac had always accepted Domhnall as the head scholar of the school and had shown no signs of resenting a boy five years older than himself. However, the immediate concern now was to solve this murder so she hastily put the matter aside, telling them of the map of Fanore which Ardal O’Lochlainn had seen in the possession of the gold merchant and of how he had noticed that small pieces of jewellery, necklets, bracelets, brooches and rings were marked on various parts of the strand, on either side of the River Caher.

  ‘It may be that there has been a history of finding these objects on Fanore beach and that might be why it is named the as “the slope of the gold” – because, as you can see, the sand is not as golden as on other beaches along the coastline – that it is, in fact, rather more a dark orange colour than golden,’ she concluded.

  ‘A treasure hunt! Iontach!’ exclaimed Cael.

  ‘I was wondering whether some gold objects might have been washed in from the sea,’ said Slevin, ‘but Domhnall came up with the idea that it was more likely that they had tumbled down the hill when the river was in flood – and I must say that I think he is right. The gold would be too heavy to float. A cask might have been picked up the waves but the necklets and rings would have been more likely to be swept further out to sea, or to remain on the seabed.’

  ‘And it has to be just one or two every few years,’ put in Domhnall. ‘Otherwise, we’d have heard about it. Just something that a fisherman saw, picked up, took to the gold merchant in Galway, sold, and said nothing about. It makes sense that the gold merchant became suspicious and started to question the fishermen as to the exact spot where they had picked up the pieces of jewellery.’

  ‘Yes, and then he put two and two together.’ Cael was bubbling over with enthusiasm.

  ‘He would have had no right to it,’ said Finbar in a low voice and Mara gave him an encouraging smile.

  ‘But who does own the rights?’ said Domhnall coming back to the point with his usual pertinacity.

  ‘I should have asked Setanta.’ Mara felt annoyed with herself, though in the face of the hesitation shown by all of the fishermen, she had been very wary of disclosing anything.

  ‘I think I know.’ Art spoke out so seldom that all heads turned towards him immediately.

  ‘Not Fernandez,’ said Cormac.

  Art shook his head. ‘No, not Fernandez,’ he said. ‘He just bought that land. That Cathair Róis is just new. He comes from south of the Burren, not from around here.’ He looked across at Mara. ‘I believe that it is Brendan,’ he said, his voice steady and confident, though the words were tentative. He would be right, thought Mara. Art did not speak until he was sure of a matter, unlike her volatile son who chattered continuously and gave vent to a thousand theories every day.

  ‘Of course!’ she said. The fact that Brendan did not have a herd of cows had prevented her from thinking of his name. But, of course, Brendan and Etain’s father before them did have cattle. It was Etain, she thought, who had started the business of gathering samphire for sale in the nearby Galway City and this had proved so lucrative that Brendan had given up keeping the cows and had turned his attention towards getting a better boat and becoming a full-time trader. It suited his personality better, she thought. Both he and Etain were sociable, talkative people. The life of a cattle farmer was restrictive and solitary.

  ‘There’s Etain now; shall I run down and ask her,’ volunteered Cael.

  ‘Are you calling Art a liar?’ Cormac’s tone was angry and aggressive.

  ‘That’s a little unnecessary, Cormac,’ said Mara coldly. ‘Art himself said that he was not sure. But
I think we won’t say anything about rights to things found on the shoreline, yet, Cael. It’s just as well to keep our thoughts to ourselves at the moment, don’t you all agree? We don’t want to start people talking and speculating about this matter before we can solve it. A secret and unlawful death in the community always makes people feel deeply uneasy and the last thing we want is to set tongues wagging.’

  She had talked on at length in order to get over that awkward patch. She felt a little sorry for Cael. As the only girl, she had felt somewhat excluded from the others when she had been refused permission to camp with them and she had expressed her fury and, boy-like, the others, including her brother, had perhaps banded against her. It was the first sign of awkwardness that Mara had seen between Cael and her fellow scholars and she hoped that it would soon pass.

  ‘You see,’ Mara said earnestly, lowering her voice so that they had to lean a little towards her, ‘it looks as though we have a few mysteries to solve here. Niall Martin, the elderly gold merchant, would be most unlikely to visit this spot unless something attracted him. I wondered about a rumour of gold in the mountains here, but a long-buried treasure is a much more likely reason. But then we have the problem of who took him here, to search for gold. And, did he find the gold?’ She paused for a moment and Domhnall said seriously: