An Unjust Judge

by Cora Harrison

  ‘You’re happy where you are, Fergus, are you?’ Mara moved her thoughts from the murder. That could wait. The poor old man, her father’s friend, had to be reassured.

  ‘Yes, I am.’ He watched her anxiously. ‘I heard Boetius though. He said that I should be locked up.’

  ‘Boetius will have no say in the matter. I can promise you that, Fergus. The king is the one who gives the orders and he wants you to be happy and comfortable. You will stay in that little house by the sea for as long as you want to.’ She would ask Nuala to come and see him, she thought. Nuala would be able to predict the future and see what was needed. ‘It would be nice, though, wouldn’t it, if you had someone to go around with you when you go on walks, someone who would talk to you and then you could get that person to remember things for you. That would be useful, wouldn’t it?’ She had thought that she put it rather well, but he looked offended.

  ‘There’s nothing really wrong with my memory, Mara,’ he said. ‘And I remember now who it was that I saw with the knife. I just can’t think of his name. I don’t think that I ever knew it. It was that lad who was with the new Brehon.’

  Twelve

  Do Brethaib Gaire

  (On Judgements of Maintenance)

  It is the duty of the kin group in particular, and of the people of the kingdom in general, to care for its incapacitated members. The aged, the blind, the deaf and the sick have all to be cherished as do the insane. With reference to the insane, there is also a duty of care to the people around so that none may be injured.

  Mara found it a little difficult to tackle Gobnait. They were alone together in the neat and tidy room, but Gobnait kept jumping up and attending to various household tasks. Cian had good-humouredly walked down to the harbour with Fergus at her murmured request, but they would be back soon and in the meantime Gobnait seemed to want to avoid any discussion of her charge. There was no doubt that the woman’s position was a hard one. She would have an ingrained respect for the Brehon MacClancy whom she had known for her entire life. It would be hard for her to gainsay him in any way. Added to that, she was, it appeared from the well-polished flagstones and the gleaming furniture, a very good housewife. The house that the king had bestowed on Gobnait and her husband in exchange for taking care of Fergus seemed to be her pride and joy. It must be tempting for her to allow the old man to wander around the cliffs while she scrubbed and polished and, of course, prepared tasty meals for him, thought Mara.

  ‘So, I was thinking that there might perhaps be some boy who could be employed to go on walks with him. Perhaps somebody who enjoys the countryside, just as Brehon MacClancy does, someone who could pick herbs with him, and perhaps catch a fish, but above all keep him company. The king will pay him a wage,’ finished Mara.

  ‘Well, he did take very much to the little lady,’ said Gobnait dubiously. ‘But I don’t know about a boy.’

  ‘Ríanne will be returning to her kingdom,’ said Mara briskly. ‘I think a boy, a strong boy, not too young, someone who could manage him if he wanted to do something dangerous, could restrain him if necessary. I would worry about those caves and the broken cliffs over there near Doon MacFelim.’ It was, she felt, a little below her dignity, to refer to the place as ‘Hell’ but after a momentarily puzzled look, Gobnait nodded wisely.

  ‘Just what I was saying to Pat,’ she said. ‘I do be worrying about him sometimes, but you know what it’s like, Brehon, there’s the fire roaring away and pots boiling on it and his food to make and the drinks for him and all that sort of thing …’

  ‘That’s right,’ said Mara. ‘So if you had a good strong boy who would be a companion to him on his walks, then you wouldn’t worry, would you?’

  ‘Would this boy have to live in the house?’ Gobnait cast a glance down at the shining pale grey of her flagstones, seeming to envisage them covered with muddy footprints.

  ‘No, that wouldn’t be necessary. Just a local boy who would live in his own house, but come over here a couple of times a day and go for a walk with him. The days are getting very short now, so two walks would be enough and, of course, Brehon MacClancy wouldn’t go out at night, would he?’ Mara said the words carelessly, but kept her eyes on the woman’s face.

  ‘Oh, no, no, I’d stop him doing that,’ said Gobnait hastily.

  Mara waited. It had crossed her mind that the whole story might have been a figment of Fergus’s imagination, but the detail of the knife blade flashing in the moonlight had had a ring of truth about it. She looked across at Gobnait interrogatively.

  ‘Of course it must be very difficult to keep an eye on him all the time. I suppose that he would just slip out when your back is turned, is that right?’

  Gobnait flushed guiltily. ‘Well, he has got out once or twice. And, of course, on that night of all nights. Perhaps you heard that … Here comes Pat. He’ll tell you.’

  Pat was a slow-moving, thoughtful man, a fisherman without a boat who made a living by fishing along the shore with lines and nets. To Mara’s relief, he was enthusiastic about the idea of a boy and could immediately think of a couple of names.

  ‘Don’t suppose that he’d settle to watching anyone fish, though, Brehon,’ he said decidedly. ‘I tried it a few times, but he’s restless-like. He’d want to be off in five minutes and that’s no good with fish. You have to wait for them. They’re cautious creatures.’

  ‘I was saying to Gobnait that I’d worry about him going out when it gets dark,’ said Mara. ‘Could you lock the door once the light goes?’

  ‘The very thing that I was saying to Gobnait. In fact, we’ve done it during the last few evenings. Once we have our supper, we just lock up. I was that worried about him last Friday night. And when I heard about the murder, Saturday, it was, when I was coming home for my dinner, I heard the news, well, as soon as I got in the door, I said to Gobnait that we’d lock up every night from then on. It gave me the fright of my life to think of him around the cliffs and someone with a knife up there across the way.’

  ‘Not that anyone would hurt him, the poor, misfortunate man,’ said Gobnait hastily.

  ‘They might do if he saw something,’ said Pat. ‘Feelings were running very high on that Friday, Brehon. Everyone was hit, one way or another, by those judgements. Even people like us who haven’t much, well, young Seán is Gobnait’s sister’s boy and we would have been asked for something just to pay that fine. We’d have been the first she’d turn to. We’ve got the name of being well-off now, you know.’

  ‘Did Fergus go anywhere near Doon MacFelim on that Friday night?’ queried Mara.

  ‘No, thank God,’ said Pat readily. ‘I was in the alehouse, just having a drink and seeing what the word was about those judgements and when I came home, Gobnait sent me straight out to find him. I tried the Pooka Road, first, because he’s got a great grá for the Pooka Road. Gives people a fright sometimes, sitting up there on one of those rocks, for all the world like one of the Pooka himself, so that’s where I went, but then I found him down on the beach, just sitting on a rock and looking out to sea.’

  ‘And when you were up on the Pooka Road, did you see anything over on the other cliff, over near to Doon MacFelim?’

  Pat shook his head. ‘No, I didn’t, Brehon. Next day when I heard about the killing, Gobnait was asking me that very same question and I told her that I hadn’t seen a soul or a sinner.’ He looked straight across at Mara and she thought, I wonder if he is lying? The community, she thought, would close ranks if they imagined that one of their own, one of the five young men who had been sentenced on that night, had murdered this stranger, this unjust judge who had imposed such harsh sentences on their young men. In any case, her question had been answered. Even if Fergus was not on the Pooka Road when Pat discovered him, there was a likelihood that he had been there earlier, perhaps even minutes before.

  ‘Was busy with looking for himself, making sure that he hadn’t slipped and fallen and then when I found him down on the beach, well, I was chatting to him, yo
u know, keeping him in good humour.’ Pat seemed to find her silence troubling. He had added the words in a careless manner, but his face was anxious.

  ‘Of course,’ said Mara. She rose to her feet. They were coming back, she could hear the click of the gate and the shuffle of feet on the path of sea pebbles.

  Cian’s voice rose up: ‘No, I’m Cian, Brehon MacClancy,’ he was saying. ‘I think Moylan was a boy who was at the law school a very long time ago. Perhaps I look a bit like him, do I?’

  God preserve me from becoming like that, thought Mara, like a small child to be humoured and to be coaxed along, and yet it wasn’t like that either. Children took such things for granted, took them as their due. Fergus, she was sure, suffered. He was like a man lost in a thick fog, trying to grope his way to an understanding of his position, trying desperately to identify some landmarks which would help to orientate himself.

  ‘So I’ll leave it to you, then,’ she said addressing both husband and wife. ‘You find someone who will go for walks with him and keep an eye on him. You agree a fair price and I’ll have a word with the king and he’ll be happy to do this for such a valued old friend of both of us. And we are very grateful to all that you do in order to keep him safe and happy.’ She laid a slight emphasis on the word ‘safe’ and hoped that she had said enough.

  And yet, she thought, as she went outside, was it any real kindness to keep Fergus safe? She thought of Turlough’s words about going over the cliff if he got into that state and in her heart she agreed with them. If she were honest, she told herself, there would be little sorrow in news of the death of Fergus, only relief that he had been saved worse disintegration.

  But in the meantime, she told herself, there was a murder that had to be solved and although Fergus was in a muddle a lot of the time, there were other times when he was quite clear and lucid. He looked calm and clear-eyed, she thought as she went outside and his mistake of confusing Cian with her long-gone scholar, Moylan, was a natural one. They were, she herself had thought from time to time, quite alike physically and in manner. In the meantime, though, she had to consider his statement and bear in mind that, although his feeling that he had witnessed the murder might be a delusion, nevertheless it was possible that he might well be remembering something that really happened.

  ‘So when you were up on that boulder, Fergus, you could see where the water was spouting out of the cliff, couldn’t you? Did it go up very high?’

  ‘Very high,’ said Fergus eagerly. ‘It must have been high tide, Brehon.’

  Mara looked around. There was no one on the roadway so she chanced a question.

  ‘And that was when you saw the knife?’

  Fergus nodded, but there was a slight hesitation in his manner.

  ‘And the man, you saw the man.’

  Fergus seemed to think about this for a moment, but then he shook his head.

  ‘No, you’re wrong, Mara. I didn’t see the man. No, I didn’t see him,’ he repeated creasing his forehead in a puzzled way. And then, quite formally, he nodded to her. ‘Thank you for your help, Mara, but I think we’ll leave this matter, now. It was a lawful killing; I’ve decided that. The man deserved to die.’

  And then he walked past her and pushed open the door. Mara heard him making eager enquiries about dinner.

  ‘What do you think, Cian?’ she asked as they walked back up the roadway.

  ‘I think, to be honest, Brehon, that the old man is cuckoo, completely, well, I don’t mean that exactly …’

  ‘I know what you mean,’ said Mara with a sigh. ‘But, you know, for just a while, I thought that he might be making sense, I still have an uneasy feeling that he did see a knife; that just seemed a very clear image in his poor old mind.’

  ‘Yes, but he would probably have heard that the man had his throat cut. He’d be trying to visualize it, so he would see someone …’ Cian broke off. ‘And yet,’ he said dubiously. ‘Yes, I remember the way that he said it. Yes, he did seem much more clear-minded then, didn’t he? You could be right, you know,’ he said more enthusiastically. ‘Yes, I think you are right. I think that he did see someone. It would be great, wouldn’t it, if he did see someone and somehow we managed to get it out of him. He’s funny, you know. Sometimes he seems to remember something and sometimes he doesn’t.’

  Mara nodded in agreement. ‘After all, Fergus was out there, that night. At least we know that. Gobnait sent her husband, Pat, after him. It definitely was dark, was moonlight when Pat went out. Unfortunately Pat didn’t see anything, but that says nothing. The person with the knife, well he wouldn’t stay too long, would he? And he would have the sense to move into the shadow of the hedge as quickly as possible, especially if he heard voices from the other side and on a quiet night voices would carry for a long distance. And Fergus did seem very sure, when we met him first, that he had seen who killed Gaibrial O’Doran.’

  ‘Just a pity that he didn’t stick to one person,’ mused Cian. ‘But he was very confused, later on, wasn’t he?’

  ‘What do you think, Cian? You heard Fergus? What did you make of it all?’ She would not normally have used the elderly man’s first name to one of her young scholars, but there seemed to be too many ‘Brehons’ in this case and this was beginning to irritate her.

  ‘I think it was probably Niall that he saw,’ said Cian promptly. ‘And I’m not saying that because I don’t like him much, but it does make sense, Brehon, think about it! It wasn’t really likely to be Donal. He’s not the type to use violence. And although he was fined heavily, I’d say that he’d have wriggled out of it some way, packed his pipe and wandered off, not committed a murder. And then there’s the old man’s nephew, Boetius from London. Somehow I don’t see that fat fellow wandering around the cliffs in the dark. He’d probably trip and fall over and hit his head against a rock. And all the others that he mentioned, no, I don’t think so. I think by then he had forgotten who he had seen and he was getting so muddled that he was just mentioning anyone that he could think of or that he caught sight of. I half expected him to accuse me of the murder. But Donal was his first choice. And, you know, Brehon, Donal is not unlike Niall in appearance so it might be easy to muddle them if your mind is confused. I think he saw Donal, up there on the cliff, and he thought, there’s the man who cut the throat of the new Brehon and then after a while he began to be unsure and he started throwing out names.’

  Mara thought about it. It did seem to make sense. The sight of Donal at that fatal spot had roused a memory, a recollection of seeing a slight, dark-haired youth with a knife in his hand. Fergus would know young Donal very well, but wouldn’t be too sure about Niall who had only come into the kingdom so recently.

  ‘You have a point, Cian. But you know, Niall has a very poor motive for murder. After all, to cut a man’s throat just because you want to get home to Ossory doesn’t really make sense, does it?’

  ‘You never know with someone like him,’ said Cian in an elderly fashion. ‘He’s a strange fellow.’

  ‘And he has an alibi,’ Mara pointed out.

  ‘Ríanne? Well, she’s just a girl. She would have been in a dream. Or, just telling a lie.’ And then Cian stopped abruptly in the middle of the roadway.

  ‘What do you think of this, Brehon? They plan it between them. Niall goes out to see what has become of Brehon O’Doran. He doesn’t drop the lantern, or anything like that. In any case, it was the night of the full moon. So he goes on, right up to the cliff, it isn’t too far, after all. He goes up there and he finds his master tied up in the lobster pot and he comes back and he tells Ríanne.’

  ‘Why didn’t he release him?’

  ‘Because he was scared of him,’ said Cian without hesitation. ‘Brehon O’Doran was the sort of a man who would kick the dog if he were in a bad humour. He would definitely have taken his fury out on Niall. He’d be angry and he’d be humiliated, wouldn’t he? Anyway, Niall probably thought that it served the man right. He crept back and told Ríanne and they got to hopin
g that he would never come back, perhaps hoping that he would fall over the cliff or down the blowhole. And while they were talking about how wonderful that would be …’

  ‘I see what you mean, Cian.’ Mara nodded. ‘The wish became the father to the action.’

  ‘Perhaps the plan was to push him over the cliff while he was tied up, but Niall is the type who might lose his nerve. In any case, Brehon O’Doran was a heavy man. And Niall is a lightweight. It might have been too difficult for him to haul him over. After all, it took all of my strength and of Art’s to drag him away from the water and we’re both heavier and stronger than Niall is. And so I think that he lost his nerve, panicked, pulled out a knife and slit the man’s throat. It doesn’t take much strength to do that.’

  ‘And then he went back …’

  ‘And told Ríanne what he had done, told her that they would both be free of Brehon O’Doran, that they could both go back to Ossory and he warned her to say nothing. And then they probably talked it over, planned that Niall would go out in the morning, find the body and then go straight over to fetch you.

  ‘And it never really made sense, did it, that he wouldn’t take the trouble to go back and tell Ríanne that he had found the body of her husband. What was the terrible rush to get to you? He would have practically passed the doorway of the house at Knockfinn.’

  ‘I wonder why pretend that she didn’t know?’ asked Mara. Cian, she thought, had made the case very well. Though not an academic like his sister, he had a shrewd and logical brain and he could put his thoughts into words very well. He would make an excellent lawyer for defence or for prosecution when his time came.

  ‘That was probably her idea.’ Cian pursed his lips with a disdainful expression. ‘She probably liked the thought of a bit of drama, and all the accusations that Niall hadn’t bothered to come and tell her that he had found the body distracted any suspicion from her. If you come to think of it, Brehon, it all did add up to the impression that they did not like each other, that they had nothing much to say to each other. And, of course, that made it unlikely that they were partners in a crime.’