An Unjust Judge

by Cora Harrison

  As soon as the soldiers returned to the beach she beckoned to them and they came over quickly.

  ‘I want that boy brought up to the Brehon’s house at Knockfinn,’ she said, pointing across to Niall. She had little sympathy for him. Ríanne, at least, had redeemed herself by her efforts to save Gobnait, but Niall had done nothing, had not come to Art’s assistance, had even not helped Cian, nor had he come across to see whether Gobnait lived or died. She turned back to the soldiers.

  ‘But first of all, I want you to search those cracks and puddles in the rocks. The woman dropped two canvas pouches somewhere there. I saw her and I saw the splash of water. And search the cave behind. I have a feeling that there might be more of these pouches in there.’

  There had been a flash of colour on the side of one of the canvas pouches and she thought that it had looked familiar. A search of the cave would verify her guess so she waited patiently, noting that Niall had twisted his head sharply as though alarmed when he saw the soldiers tramping across the rocks. He did not move, however, but sat there. She wondered what was going through his head and then began, despite her feelings of anger, to be rather sorry for him. He was, after all, only a child. His happy life at the MacEgan law school had been disrupted by his father’s ambition for a cleverer younger brother. He had lost his friends, lost his position in the family, lost, perhaps, his view of himself and his hopes for the future when he had been bundled off with this man, a Brehon, yes, but a stranger to him and not, thought Mara, seeing before her the pompous, merciless figure of Gaibrial O’Doran, a man to take charge of a vulnerable boy of that age. She kept a careful eye on Niall, ready to alert one of the soldiers if he made a move, but he sat as though frozen. She wondered what was going through his head. Fear, perhaps, regrets, almost certainly, and, perhaps, given his age, a certain wild and unfounded spring of optimism that somehow things might work out eventually in his favour.

  Hope must have died, however, when one soldier found the two pouches, lifting them out of their watery hiding place, holding them aloft and allowing them to drip. It was hardly a minute later when another two emerged from the cave. This time the men were holding quite a burden in each hand. Mara could see that by noting how the hands hung down as each clutched its find. They crossed the stones and slabs very quickly and were by her side in an instant. She rose to meet them.

  ‘This is what we found, Brehon,’ said the leader of the little troop. He held up his own find and nodded towards the hands of his comrades.

  All in all, there were nine pouches and now that they were under her eye, Mara verified their origin immediately. Each one of the pouches bore the shield of the O’Brien clan embroidered onto it, the white arm holding up the silver sword against the background of blue and saffron. The O’Brien crest. And, of course, she recognized it instantly. She herself, as Brehon of the Burren, received a pouch like this on every quarter day: Imbolc, Bealtaine, Lammas and Samhain, as her stipend for keeping law and order in the king’s kingdom. She gazed at the pouches with a lump in her throat. Her own practice was always to empty the silver into her locked chest and then to return, immediately, the empty pouch to the messenger. Fergus, however, had not done that. Probably far earlier than she had suspected, his brain had begun to soften. He had hoarded his money, had felt it to be insecure in his house and then had taken the decision to hide it in the cave beside the sea. He had always been a walker, of course. Even back in her youth, she remembered the tall figure striding the cliffs, blackthorn stick in hand. He made his own sticks, had quite a collection of them, instructing her on how year after year he watched a branch, growing up straight in the shelter of the wall and then slanting away from the Atlantic gales, and telling her how he kept an eye on a branch until the handle was the right size and then he cut it off just near to the root and had stick and handle all in one piece. The people of Doolin and its surrounding townlands were used to him walking across cliffs and rocks. No one would have thought to follow him, to wonder what he was doing.

  Until recently.

  Mara opened her satchel. ‘Put these in there,’ she said and waited until the nine small pouches were stored within it. They would be quite a weight to carry, but she did not want to expose anyone else to temptation. There was more than two years of a Brehon’s stipend in there and there would, she surmised, have been more. Her mind went to Gobnait’s snug and shining little house and to the display of plate. She, who had once been among the poorest of the poor, had not been able to resist the temptation of showing off to her neighbours.

  But Gobnait had not been the only person who penetrated the secret hoard of Fergus.

  ‘They’ll be heavy for you, Brehon,’ said one of the men tentatively, but he did not offer to carry the satchel. Glances had been exchanged between them and they probably, from the weight of the pouches, had a good estimate of the value of their find.

  Mara smiled at them. ‘I’ll manage,’ she said. ‘I’m used to carrying law books.’ She looked across at the figure on the rocks and her glance hardened. She had called to him repeatedly, had given him the opportunity of coming to her and of making full confession of all that he knew. He had not responded and now she would have to compel him.

  ‘Two of you fetch that boy and bring him to me at the Brehon’s house; you three please come with me,’ she said. She wondered for a moment about Ríanne, but then decided to leave her. She, Cael, Art and Cian would all have been frozen to the bone. Let them sit by a fire, sip hot drinks and relive the successful rescue of Gobnait from the jaws of the ferocious conger eel.

  Niall, she thought, needed to do some talking now.

  She allowed them to go ahead of her. Each one of the men had a grip on Niall’s arms and they marched him along. He had protested when they came to arrest him. Childish of him. He should have known that a half-grown boy like himself would be no match for this pair of sinewy and experienced men-at-arms. He had tried to cling to the rock, but they had jerked him to his feet and hauled across the limestone slabs and pulled him until he was on the road. He appeared stiff; cold and frightened, probably, she told herself, and a little sympathy softened her.

  The house smelled of good soup and of roasting meat when she pulled open the door and she had a moment’s compunction for Brigid still keeping the supper warm. She ignored the boy and hastened to make her apologies.

  ‘Oh, Brigid, I’m sorry, but something terrible happened. Gobnait, the woman who is looking after Brehon MacClancy, has had an accident; she fell into a deep pool by the sea and was attacked by a giant-sized conger eel,’ she explained as she opened the kitchen door. ‘Art and the MacMahon twins rescued her, well, Brigid, you would have been so proud of them,’ she added knowing that while these young people were scholars to her, to Brigid they were almost like her own children. ‘But they got soaking wet, of course,’ she went on, ‘so, I wonder, Brigid, could you put together some dry clothes for them. Three of you,’ she addressed the soldiers, ‘could take the bundles and three ponies so that they can get back quickly into the warmth. And one of you, please go to find out news of Gobnait from the physician. You other two bring the boy into the parlour and then wait in the kitchen in case I have need of you,’ she said clearly, with her eye on Niall. He appeared subdued, but he was a boy who did not show all that was going on in his mind and she remembered that his pony was still tied up in the small blackthorn-lined lane.

  She allowed Niall to wait for a while as she approved the clothing for the four young people, rejecting Brigid’s suggestion of blankets, but applauding the choice of a fur-lined mantle that one of Brigid’s girls found in Ríanne’s room. A wedding present, she thought. It would keep the girl warm on her return journey. She would not have had as adventurous a childhood as Cael and Cian. The twins had been quite neglected and allowed to live out-of-doors when they were young. Cael had led the life of a boy until fairly recently. Ríanne would be the one of the four most likely to suffer ill-effects from her exposure to the Atlantic chill in the mont
h of October.

  ‘It was Ríanne,’ said Niall as soon as she had closed the parlour door behind her.

  Mara took her time. She selected a comfortable seat beside the fire, put her satchel on her knee and then looked up at the boy. He was standing just where the soldiers had left him at her command, standing stiffly erect, his young face was very white, the adolescent blemishes standing out vividly against the pallor.

  ‘What was Ríanne?’ she queried after she had allowed a minute to elapse. And then when he said nothing, just looked sullen, she added, ‘Do you mean that Ríanne authorized the death of her husband or that she actually cut his throat herself?’

  ‘I know nothing about the death of Brehon O’Doran,’ he said stiffly. ‘I didn’t do it.’

  ‘Take down that cup from the shelf,’ she said. A row of well-cleaned pewter cups and ewers now decorated the shelf above the fireplace. The boy came across hesitantly, reached up, took the cup in his left hand, and then, when she made no move to take it, he placed it on the table.

  ‘I see you are left-handed,’ she said. She had previously noted this, but she was anxious to see now how he might react to her words. It was difficult to tell. The light from the candle fell upon his face but then he turned it slightly aside, bending down and studying the floor.

  ‘You don’t ask me why I remark on your left-handedness,’ she said. He was very tense, she thought.

  He did an odd thing then. He picked up the cup in his right hand, this time, and he ran his left forefinger across the rim, tracing a line from the right-hand side to the left-hand side of the vessel. And then he did it again, more quickly then, making the movement into almost a slashing gesture. He replaced the cup onto the table and then he looked back at her. His face was even whiter.

  She nodded. ‘I see that you can guess the way the investigation is going. Yes, the physician from the Burren thinks that the cut in Brehon O’Doran’s neck was made by a left-handed person.’

  This time he used his right hand, rather awkwardly, she noticed. The movement now went from the left-hand side of the cup to the right-hand side. He turned back and looked at her with a spark of interest in his eyes.

  ‘I think I get it,’ he said speaking with more animation than his usual reluctant and surly response. ‘I suppose that if a left-handed person slashed the Brehon’s throat, then the wound would probably be deeper on the right-hand side of the man’s throat.’

  Mara half-smiled, despite her worries. She did love to watch clever young minds working out a puzzle. Nevertheless, she told herself to be cautious and careful. This was a bright boy and bright boys often lie easily, often guess what is in the interrogator’s mind, and forestall a question. She frowned a little. That gesture miming the stroke of the knife had looked familiar. Niall, she thought, must be made to tell all that he knew.

  ‘What were you doing in that cave?’ she asked.

  His eyes went to the satchel on her knee, but he said nothing.

  ‘You went to steal Brehon MacClancy’s silver,’ she said bluntly. ‘You knew that it was there, didn’t you?’

  ‘I followed Brehon O’Doran, there,’ he said stiffly. ‘I was wondering what he was doing. I saw him. It was on the morning of the day before judgement day and he was on the cliff and he was staring down. I wondered what he was doing and why he was not moving, so I went into that little laneway and I kept an eye on him. He was not looking out to sea. He was looking down. After a minute, he even lay down on the grass, so that he wouldn’t be seen. He had crawled forward and he was staring down onto the rocks beneath. And then, I saw him sit up. He wasn’t looking down any more. His head was turned towards the village. And then I saw her. I saw Gobnait. She was climbing up those limestone flags. She had something in her left hand. I could see how it was clenched up. I was wondering what it was, but I didn’t move. I guessed that my master was wondering, too. He was a man who always wanted to know what was going on. I had watched him with people. He wormed secrets out of them.’

  ‘And so you waited there, in hiding.’

  ‘I’d have been a fool to do anything else, wouldn’t I? And he wasn’t a man to excuse you for spying on him. A word out of place and the stick appeared.’

  ‘And what did Brehon O’Doran do next?’ It crossed Mara’s mind that Niall was making a long story out of this. Was he giving himself time to think? Time to put forward other suspects. Nevertheless, let him tell his story in his own way.

  ‘As soon as the woman had gone out of sight, he crept down the pathway. I couldn’t see him for a while, but I guessed where he was going. I heard his boots on the rocks when he got down, but I didn’t risk going anywhere near. I just went back, went back into the house so that I was busy studying when he arrived.’

  ‘But you went to the cave, afterwards.’

  ‘I told Ríanne about it. I wanted her to see it. I thought that we might get a chance in the afternoon. He was so pleased with himself when we were eating our dinner at noon that I knew that he had found something. He couldn’t stop smiling to himself. But he had a lot of preparation to do during the afternoon for the judgement day. He knew that the king was going to be there and he had all his law books out. I thought that he might want me to copy out sections, but he didn’t. He was making sure that he had memorized them, wanted to show off how learned he was, how he could speak without any notes, and so he sent me off. He told Ríanne to get out, too, because she was singing upstairs and stopping him concentrating. He said that he didn’t want to see us before suppertime.’

  ‘I’m surprised that you told Ríanne about the discovery. I thought you two were not very friendly.’

  Niall hesitated for a moment. He looked slightly awkward. ‘We were great friends back in Ossory,’ he said after a minute.

  Mara allowed this to pass. There were more important issues than whether or why the boy and girl had, for some reason, pretended to be at loggerheads. It was fairly obvious that Niall had decided Ríanne would be a more credible witness to his presence in the house through the night hours if she appeared to be hostile to him.

  ‘So you and Ríanne went off together.’

  Niall nodded. ‘We pretended to go towards Craggy, just in case he was peering out of the window after us, but then we cut across and went down the little laneway with the blackthorn bushes and when we were sure that no one was around we climbed down the cliff and went onto the beach. The tide was out,’ he added.

  ‘And then?’

  Niall frowned. ‘And then the old man, the Brehon MacClancy, came along. He didn’t see us because we hid behind one of those big boulders. But he was looking all around him, looking to see whether anyone was there. And then he climbed up the rocks and he went into a cave. We heard his boots echo, just as I heard Brehon O’Doran’s boots that morning. We were whispering to each other and wondering what he was doing. And then he came out again. And Ríanne said that her grandfather went soft in the head when he was old and he used to hide things in the cellar. Any little bit of silver that he could lay his hands on, he used to take it down and put it in a chest. And then he started to take the plate from the buffet and bring that down too and his steward had to go down every night when the old man was in bed and bring it back up again.’

  ‘So when Brehon MacClancy came out again and went back to his house, you and Ríanne went in and discovered his secret?’

  Niall nodded a little shamefacedly. ‘We had a bit of trouble finding it. And then we remembered how tall he was and we started looking high above our heads. There was a streak of silver quartz on the left-hand side of the cave, a couple of fathoms high and under it was a broken section of rock, almost like one of those little cubby holes beside fireplaces. I made a step for Ríanne with my hands and she climbed up and found the little pouches, all lined up there. We opened one of them and we could not believe it when we saw the silver. I wanted us to take one of them. I thought that the old man wouldn’t miss one bag. Everyone knew that he had lost his wits. Silver was no good t
o him. He wouldn’t know what to do with it. I was saying that to Ríanne. But she didn’t want it touched. She was sorry for him. Anyway, she said that it was no good to us, either. We were both stuck with Brehon O’Doran. She was married to him and I was apprenticed to him. Anything we got, he would take away from us. So we just left the bags there, just where the old man had put them and we sat on the beach, just talking.’

  ‘Talking about what?’ asked Mara.

  Niall gave a half shrug and then stopped himself. He was, thought Mara, anxious not to offend her in any way now.

  ‘We were just fooling, deciding what we would do if the money were ours, just fooling,’ he repeated, looking at her with a tentative, uncertain expression on his face.

  Mara sat back on her chair. ‘But there was only one thing stopping you from putting those dreams into practice,’ she said. ‘And that one thing was the life of a man who is now dead. What do you say to that?’

  ‘It wasn’t us?’ said Niall. ‘It was nothing to do with us.’

  ‘I think,’ said Mara, ‘that you should start telling me the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. Don’t make up anything, don’t try to make things sound good for you. Just tell me the whole truth and allow me to be the judge. Of course, if you are guilty, you might think that you should lie, but sooner or later I will find out the truth and you will have lost any grace that you might have gained now by owning up to the crime. What did you mean by saying that it was Ríanne?’