But the matter would have to be settled. Murder could not remain unsolved, or else the fabric of justice in the kingdom would suffer. The people of north-west Corcomroe would have to be told the truth about what happened on that Friday night after judgement day. Mara’s face, when she went out to greet her husband, was very grave.
‘What is it?’ As always he was very sensitive to her mood.
‘Come and eat first, and then we’ll go for a walk and I’ll tell you.’
‘Not another murder?’ he queried as he threw his reins to his steward.
‘No, nothing like that!’ For a moment, though, her heart skipped a beat. What if there were to be another murder? It was not, she thought, outside the bounds of a probability. Not all murders were done with a knife. There were other ways of killing. A man or a woman can be choked until the breath leaves the body, can be poisoned with a mixture of herbs, can be pushed into the sea and drowned, can be bludgeoned to death with a blackthorn cudgel. She felt a wave of relief come over her to know that she could share her burden of responsibility. She watched Turlough eat, listened absentmindedly as he teased Brigid with accusations that she was in the pay of his enemy, the Earl of Kildare, and was trying to make him fat so that he could not fight, threw ridiculous questions at Art and the twins about fictional and absurd law cases, talked with Niall and Ríanne about the arrangements for their journey back to Ossory and then got to his feet, declaring that he needed to walk off all that food.
‘I think I know who killed Brehon Gaibrial O’Doran,’ she said when they were alone together and walking towards the cliffs.
Turlough turned an interested face towards her. ‘You’re a great woman,’ he said. ‘I was thinking about it last night and I could not for the life of me make up my mind about who was the murderer. I suppose it was Boetius MacClancy, was it? And yet, you know, he’s not the sort of man that would get his own hands dirty. I’d have said that if he wanted to kill a man he would get someone else to do it, perhaps one of those silly lads.’
‘You’re probably right,’ she said humbly. Turlough laughed at his own lack of brains, deprecated his scholastic achievements, but he had a great shrewdness and judged his fellow men with an accuracy which often surprised her. She had wasted a lot of time investigating men who were unlikely to murder and had overlooked one possibility.
‘Priests talk about the soul, and poets talk about the heart, but, of course, when it comes down to it, I suppose man is ruled by the brain,’ she said aloud and saw him look at her with a puzzled air.
‘The brain,’ he echoed. His brow was creased with a slight frown. She wondered whether he was beginning to guess. ‘What has the brain to do with murder?’
She could not avoid the issue any longer. ‘Turlough,’ she said quietly, ‘I believe that Fergus killed Brehon O’Doran. I don’t want to use the word murder,’ she added. ‘He killed because, perhaps, he thought that he should, perhaps he felt that the man deserved death, perhaps he didn’t really know what he was doing, perhaps even to put what he imagined was a dying creature out of his misery.’ Her mind went back to the words of the boy Conn about how Fergus wanted fish and lobsters killed quickly. ‘I don’t know, Turlough,’ she continued. ‘I think none of us can have much insight into what is going on in Fergus’s brain now.’
He stopped. And she stopped, too, looking up at him. Turlough’s weather-beaten face was dark red in colour. The wind from the Atlantic was blowing strongly in their faces. She could taste the salt on her lips and feel the sting on her cheeks, but Turlough, she knew, had flushed with rage and his pale green eyes were angry. This was not going to be easy; she had known that and had rehearsed her arguments again and again. Turlough had a great affection for Fergus and, as a young king, had looked up to him because of his knowledge, learning and his kindness.
‘I’ll never believe that.’ The words burst out from him and he began to walk again, walking swiftly. She allowed him to go ahead of her. He needed a few moments alone. When he reached the blackthorn lane he turned and came slowly back towards her.
‘I’ll never believe it,’ he said again, but this time his voice lacked its positive assurance.
She said nothing. He had to find his own way through his thoughts.
‘I know he’s old and forgetful and that he imagines things sometimes,’ he said after a moment, ‘and I suppose he does do strange things sometimes. But Fergus. He was so gentle, so controlled. You’d never hear him shout at the scholars. He was so patient with the stupid ones. I’ve only once seen him strike one of them and that was when he was driven out of his mind by the lad’s defiance.’
It was a good phrase, thought Mara. Cumhal and Brigid used it often. You’ll drive me out of my mind! Brigid would yell at a girl who had not remembered to scald the milk pans, or had allowed the hens to walk upon the spotless kitchen floor. But, of course, neither Cumhal nor Brigid were ever really driven out of their minds. Control, she thought, remembering the babyhood of her own strong-willed son, was learned gradually, starting at about the age of three and strengthening all of the time with most people until adulthood was reached. But it was the brain that controlled actions.
And when the brain went; when all of the learned norms of behaviour gradually seeped from the mind …
‘I just can’t believe it,’ said Turlough and there was a break in his voice. Mara slipped her arm through his, but still said nothing.
‘What made you think of Fergus,’ he said when they reached the edge of the cliff. ‘Why on earth should Fergus kill a man who had done him no harm? I know that I told you that he was upset, but he probably forgot about these judgements an hour later,’ he added.
‘Nuala thought that whoever slit the man’s throat was left-handed,’ said Mara. ‘She wasn’t quite sure, but thought the wound looked like that. Of course, this wasn’t that helpful because it turned out that there were a lot of left-handed people involved in this case: two of the five young men who were sentenced so unjustly are left-handed. Niall, the apprentice is left-handed and so, of course, is Fergus. Fergus, himself, told me, oh, long ago, that there were an unusual number of left-handed people in this part of Corcomroe. He had a theory that some powerful chieftain had sired a lot of left-handers and it got handed down through the generations. And, of course, because he was left-handed he was very good at teaching left-handed scholars to write a neat script and I used to ask for his help from time to time.’
‘There you are,’ said Turlough more cheerfully. ‘Could have been anyone, then, couldn’t it?’
‘And then there was this knife found on the beach, left there by Fergus, or perhaps thrown over the cliff; I don’t know; though it does look as though the blood was cleaned from the hilt with wet sand.’ Mara reached into her pouch and took out the knife, pointing with her finger to the dark line between handle and blade. ‘His housekeeper, Orlaith, and Gobnait, both identified it as belonging to Fergus. You recognize it, too,’ she said quickly as she saw his expression.
‘I gave it to Fergus,’ he said reluctantly. ‘He had a terrible old knife. I gave him a new one, a silver one and he thanked me politely and left it on the shelf above his fireplace. He said it was too grand for him, so then I gave him this one.’ Turlough stared at the knife for a moment, at the shaft of alder wood and the well-honed blade. The wind from the ocean stirred his grey hair and he smoothed it down impatiently. ‘Proves nothing though,’ he said. ‘He could have lost it. He’s just absent-minded, doddery, I suppose you could say, but I can’t believe that he would hurt anyone.’
‘He was out that night, Turlough. Gobnait’s husband, Pat, found him down on the beach, but he had already told me himself that he was out that night, a night of the full moon. He said that he was up on the Pooka Road over there.’ Mara cast a quick look at the expanse of white limestone on the other side of the bay. The year was dying and the days were shorter. The sun had sunk down below a swathe of black cloud in the south west and the golden light had warmed the silvery she
en of the stone and the enormous boulders that littered the surface had each a black shadow etched beneath its rounded base. There was something eerie about the place even in daylight and Turlough grimaced.
‘They shouldn’t let him out by himself at night,’ he muttered.
‘I’ve had a word with them about that,’ said Mara and then she waited. Turlough’s lips were compressed and his eyes had an angry, baffled look about them. For a moment she half-wished that she could have left this murder unsolved and not given him such pain, but she knew that her office required her to solve the crime and communicate her results to the people of the kingdom. Turlough was a just man and when he had recovered from the shock he would be the first to say that justice must be seen to be done.
‘What did Fergus say?’ he asked after a moment where she could see that he struggled to control his fury.
‘He told me that he had seen someone cut the new Brehon’s throat; he even mimed the gesture; he was quite confused, thought it might have been Donal, the young musician, then thought it might have been Boetius and then Niall, who does look quite like Donal, but afterwards he denied having seen anyone. The image that seemed strongest in his mind was that of a hand holding a knife. It was, I think, his own hand.’
‘That’s nonsense,’ he said angrily. ‘He would have heard talk, picked up snatches of conversations, and it all became muddled in his poor old brain.’
‘Do you remember saying that Fergus had been gathering sloes, on the day of the murder, you said that Gobnait was making sloe wine with them?’
Turlough nodded. His large hands, she noticed, were clenched tightly closed and he had a baffled look on his face.
‘I think, but, of course, I cannot prove this, nevertheless, I think that Fergus went wandering along that lane that evening in order to pick more sloes – he had probably enjoyed the wine-making and wanted to relive the experience. I noticed that there were a number of sloes lying around on the laneway, not as if they had just dropped one by one from a branch, but as though handfuls were spilled out of a bag or a basket. I noticed them when I walked along it with Niall on the following morning. Fergus may even have seen the five lads tie up Gaibrial O’Doran and leave him under the waterspout. And who knows what came into his head at that moment, Turlough? It could have been an impulse of pity, a desire to put a creature out of pain, or it could have been something else, some confused notion about justice, but I think that Fergus killed O’Doran quite soon after he was tied up, perhaps within minutes. The five young men said that the body was stone cold when they returned.’
‘The water would have cooled it,’ said Turlough shortly. ‘I’ve no knowledge of medicine, but I know that much. A corpse left out in the rain becomes stone cold very quickly, they stiffen in the sun.’
‘You’re right,’ said Mara. ‘But fishermen and farmers too know these things. They, all of them, when they came back later on to release him, thought he had been dead for hours.’
And then she waited while he gnawed the edge of his moustache, his eyes staring out at the foam-ridged waves of the turbulent sea. She would give him time. His was the ultimate decision.
‘Have you asked him about it?’ When Turlough broke the silence he spoke in a low voice.
Mara shook her head. ‘It would serve no purpose, merely distress him.’
‘No point, I suppose,’ admitted Turlough. ‘Can’t we just leave it at that? There are no witnesses, are there? Nothing to prove it beyond doubt. I think we should say no more. Don’t worry about the girl, Ríanne. I’ll see that she is compensated.’
Mara’s mind went to one of the triads that her young scholars chanted on a daily basis and she recited it to herself.
There are three doors through which truth is recognized: a patient answer, a firm pleading, appealing to witnesses.
She could not appeal to witnesses. None had seen this killing of the unjust judge. She had tried the patient answers. Now was the moment for firmness.
‘No, Turlough,’ she said decisively. ‘The people of the kingdom must know the truth. I can’t allow this matter to fester beneath the surface, allow surmises, false accusations. I want to put the facts before them, tell them of my conclusions.’ She looked at his sorrowful face – there was, she thought, a hint of a tear glistening in one eye, but he said no more and did not try to move her from her decision.
Mara delayed judgement day until the festival of Samhain, the last day of the Celtic year. Fergus, she thought, was sinking more and more into an oblivion of all cares and he enjoyed himself like a child, fishing in rock pools, gathering the last blackberries, watching the birds and gently brushing the silky hair of young Conn’s goat. There was little danger that he would understand what was going on, but she suggested to Turlough that he take the old man and his companion on a three-day visit to the Aran Islands. They would stay at the castle there; eat good meals; walk by the sea; do the things which the once-learned Brehon of Corcomroe now enjoyed above all other.
And then Mara prepared for judgement day.
The morning dawned with a violently red sky, a sign of a storm to come and by four o’clock the heavens were filled with smoke-grey clouds. The Samhain fire had been lit on the highest point of Knockfinn and there was an odd atmosphere of apprehension and excitement among those who congregated around it. Samhain was a time of year when the sun had descended into the realms of the underworld and the dark forces were in the ascendency. Several people on the outskirts of the crowd wore masks as it was believed that creatures from the abode of the dead, unfettered from the control of the sun, walked the earth on that evening and that the living had to hide their identity from the undead. There was an eerie undercurrent of sound among the people, voices hushed by the howl of the wind and by the moan from the nearby ocean. They surged towards her, huddling together, almost as though banding against the evil spirits. Mara moved forward and stood in front of them.
‘This is a sad moment for me,’ she said and noted the sudden shock and surprise on faces near to her when the traditional solemn greeting and announcements were omitted. Mara took a long breath and raised her voice to be heard over the wail of wind and water. ‘It feels to me like the ending of much that I have cherished and believed in. Thirty years ago Brehon Fergus MacClancy stood beside me as I faced the king and swore to be faithful and unswerving in the administration of the ancient laws of Ireland and in my pursuit of justice and truth. And now I have to stand here before you all who have been served so well and so faithfully by that man for over fifty years and I have to tell you that I believe that it was he who committed the murder which has torn your community and cast suspicion on many. Under our law no blame can be attached to Fergus MacClancy, who has lost his wits due to old age and is under the protection of the court, but the truth has to be known by the people of the kingdom.’ There was, she thought, compassion and understanding on the faces nearest to her as she endeavoured to explain the old man’s state of mind and described what had happened at this place two weeks previously. And then she was silent, waiting, but no one spoke. No questions, no comments. She had not expected either.
The howling wind had now strengthened in ferocity and the flames from the Samhain fire rose higher. There was a clap of thunder from out on the Atlantic and then a flash of lightning zigzagged over the silver-white boulders on the cliff above. A few large and heavy drops of rain splashed on the rock before her. She remembered the priest’s words at last Sunday’s Mass: ‘Ita, missa est.’
‘Go,’ said Mara. ‘It is ended.’
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An Unjust Judge Page 24