A MASS FOR THE DEAD

by Susan McDuffie

  I think my uncle was relieved when Angus slowly sheathed his dirk, and lumbered to his feet. I know I was.

  We made a makeshift stretcher from a brat and two branches of rowan growing nearby, and carried my stepmother—for such in a sense she was, although she was but a few years older than myself—back to her cottage. Seamus told me that Mariota had taken the bairns away with Aorig, to her house. I was glad I did not have to look in the face of my half-sister and brothers as I carried the dead body of their mother over the threshold of the cottage.

  But perhaps the children knew something of this—at least who their mother had been going to meet that morning when she had gone out to pick her rush flowers. Or perhaps the man had visited the cottage before that. So it was that, after we had placed the corpse on the mound of bracken that had served as Sheena’s mattress, I went, all unwillingly, in search of my brothers and sister, while the Beaton remained with Angus and Alasdair, to wait for the women from Scalasaig who would come to lay out the body.

  * * * * *

  I found them at Aorig’s, as Seamus had told me I would. Maire, her little face pinched, was looking after the baby while her brother ran wildly around the cottage, scaring Aorig’s chickens and terrorizing the hen. Aorig seemed but a little flustered.

  “Och, I had forgotten what banshees the little ones can be,” she said easily. “Mind you, do not be scaring my hen so that she will not be laying,” she called to my half-brother. “Maire, you can put the bairn down, now. He will be safe enough, sleeping here.”

  Maire did not answer, but sat rocking her baby brother back and forth in front of the hearth.

  “Do they know?” I asked Aorig in an undertone.

  “Eh, we have told them nothing, the poor lambs, but Maire is knowing that something is amiss.”

  “Well, who is going to be telling them?” I asked peevishly. I knew I did not want to be the one to do it. “And where is Mariota?”

  Aorig gave me a shrewd glance. “Mariota left the bairns here with me. She said she had something to see to. She did not tell me what it was.”

  “And as to who will be telling the poor bairns,” she continued, “that I do not know.” Her face looked worried underneath her white kerch. “Mayhap Angus and Alasdair? Or Gillespic? He is their uncle also.” She looked at me a little accusingly. “You are their half-brother, after all, Muirteach. Mayhap you should tell them. You are here, after all.”

  “I do not think so,” I said quickly. “But I would like to be speaking with Maire.”

  Aorig shrugged, and motioned me towards the hearth. I sat down on the three-legged stool next to my half-sister. “Maire,” I said. “Maire, it is just Muirteach. Will you speak with me?”

  “Where is Mother?”

  I could not lie to her, but I could not tell her what had happened. “Your mother has had an accident, white love,” I finally managed to say.

  I was somewhat relieved when Maire did not ask any more, but the dejected slump of her head as she bent over her baby brother, crooning some nonsense song to him, led me to think I would not be needing to tell her the rest.

  “Maire,” I finally asked, “did your mother speak of meeting with anyone today, this morning, when she left to get her rush flowers? Or did anyone visit in the last few days, anyone unusual at all?”

  Maire bit her lip. “No, she was going to get the plants, that was all.” I watched her little teeth gnaw on her thin lower lip a little. “For dyeing the wool,” she added, as if she thought a man like myself would not know what it was for. “I wish she would come home,” she suddenly said. “My brother is aye fretful, now. Herself,” she pointed her chin in Aorig’s direction, “was giving him some cow’s milk to drink but it will be giving him the colic.”

  “And no one visited?” I persisted, not wanting to be the one to tell her that her mother would not be coming home.

  “No one,” she said, her little jaw snapping shut tight.

  I sighed and rose up from the stool, starting to leave.

  “What happened to your leg?” my half-sister suddenly asked.

  I flushed like a maid. I hate to be asked about my leg, and I hated it even more in those days. “I had a fever,” I said shortly, “when I was about the age of your brother outside. It stopped growing, and when it did grow, it grew twisted. That was the way of it.”

  She gave me a searching look, then went back to crooning her lullaby without saying anything more. I left the cottage, feeling oddly nonplussed.

  Outside I found that Mariota had returned. “And where were you?” I asked, sounding perhaps surlier than I truly felt. But somehow I had wanted her here, taking care of my brothers and sisters, so that I would not be worried by it.

  “Away to your aunt’s to get a poppet for the child and some remedy for the colic for your baby brother,” she replied, the silver of her voice as even as the still waters of Loch Fada on a calm day. “Maire is not a grown woman. She should have a poppet, or something. Now that one,” she said, indicating my other brother, who had not stopped his efforts at upsetting Aorig’s homestead, “knows how to play far too well.”

  I shrugged in agreement, for by now my younger brother had gotten Aorig’s spindle and was charging at the dun cow with it, pretending it was a spear and the cow a stag. It took some time for Aorig to reclaim her spindle, swat my half-brother on his bum, and sit down again at her work. After all was calm again, I gestured to Mariota.

  “Walk with me.”

  “Oh?”

  “I need to speak with you, where those ones cannot be hearing.”

  She smiled, unruffled by my bad humor, and we set out to walk up the path towards Brigit’s well.

  “So Angus and Alasdair could not have done this,” I said.

  “And it is clear that Sheena did not kill your father,” Mariota added, when I had told her about the cord mark on Sheena’s neck, “for whoever killed him, killed her. Yet not so violently. Or,” she continued, her white brow furrowed a little in thought, “it could well have been someone who knew how your father was killed, and tried to imitate that.”

  “Perhaps.”

  “What of the canons?”

  I supposed one of the canons could have killed Sheena. But would he have lain with her first? I thought of my father and shrugged. Why not? Sheena had not scrupled to sleep with those in Holy Orders, as my three half-brothers and sisters proved.

  I wondered if Brother Donal had found anything else at the Priory. Sure it did not seem that Columbanus would murder his sister, but what of Gillecristus? If he had murdered my father, in hopes of becoming the next Prior, and somehow Sheena had known of it, might he have killed her to keep his secret?

  And Columbanus did not know yet of his sister’s death. Perhaps I should go tell him of it.

  Mariota agreed that sounded a fine idea.

  We neared the well, with its fine view towards the North. You could see almost to the golden sands of Kiloran, and Dun Nan Nighean, where the chief’s wives were sent to give birth. I pointed out these sites to Mariota, by way of hoping to impress her a bit.

  “A fine thing, that,” she said, “to have your wife climb up there to give birth, up in that Dun.”

  “It is not so bad,” I pointed out, “at least my aunt has done well by it. All her bairns have been healthy, at least.” I thought of my leg, suddenly, and flushed.

  We stopped at the spring. There were some rags tied to the branches of the nearby gorse bush, gifts to the saint, and in the pool formed by the spring was the glint of silver and copper coins thrown there by the devout.

  Mariota knelt, and I listened to her sweet voice repeat the old blessing of Brigit, while I tried to pray myself.

  Brigit of the mantles,

  Brigit of the peat-heap,

  Brigit of the shining hair,

  Brigit of the augury,

  Nor fire shall burn me.

  Nor sun shall burn me

  Nor moon shall blanch me

  Nor water shall drown me


  Nor flood shall drown me

  Nor brine shall drown me

  Nor seed of fairy host shall lift me

  Nor seed of airy host shall lift me

  Nor earthly being destroy me.

  Mariota took a ribbon from her bag and tied it on one of the branches of the shrub growing near the well. Then she plunged her hands into the water welling from the crevice in the rocks, and drank deeply.

  She looked so lovely kneeling there, the sweet, sweet form of her, with her long hair in plaits down her back, hanging heavily like chains of white gold. I made my own wish, hopeless as it seemed at the time, and reached into my pouch for something to offer the saint. I touched the round stone within and fancied my fingers tingled as they felt it.

  I found a bit of copper to offer the saint and flung it into the pool. It sank to the bottom of the peat-stained water, disappearing into a crevice in the rocks. Then I took my own draught from the blessed spring; the water cooled my parched throat after the steep climb.

  “And what did you ask Brigit for?” Mariota said to me, as we turned back towards Scalasaig. But I did not tell her.

  Chapter 9

  I took my uncle’s small boat and returned to the Priory, but the afternoon was far gone before I arrived there. The sun that had shone so weakly earlier in the day had vanished, and fog had rolled in, making the Priory look almost like just another pile of wet rocks heaped up on the coast. The mist muffled most of the noises of the masons, finishing their day’s work on the north range. There had always been some few culdees on Oronsay, but it was only since the days of His Lordship that the Augustinian Priory had been built.

  Perhaps the Lord of the Isles intended his gifts to the Priory to pave his way into heaven, I thought sourly to myself, but all the noise of the masons seemed to place Oronsay squarely in the mundane world. In the evening, however, the masons returned to their cottages nearby, and the Priory became more peaceful.

  Word had evidently not reached them of Sheena’s death. The tide had been in, and the monastery cut off from the main island except by boat, and word was that no boats had docked there that day.

  The canons were just leaving the refectory after their evening meal and I sought out Brother Donal, after first speaking briefly with Gillecristus. I did not tell him of Sheena’s death, but merely said I needed to ask some of the brothers a few more questions.

  “Now?” questioned Gillecristus. “It will soon be time for Vespers.”

  “Yes,” I said shortly.

  Gillecristus shrugged, his face sour, and left me to find Brother Donal. We strolled down towards the cove, where there was little chance of being overheard, while the sun, finding its way through the clouds, broke through the dispersing fog and began to descend in the western sky.

  “So have you discovered anything?” I asked Donal bluntly.

  “Och, Muirteach,” he said, wrapping his habit a little more tightly around him as the wind blew against his thin body, “Well, they are saying this; that Gillecristus will be our new Prior.”

  “So he could have had a reason to kill my father.”

  Donal shrugged, his face glowing in the sunset.

  I told him about what had happened to Sheena, and my suspicions. “So suppose Gillecristus murdered Sheena because she knew what he had done. Perhaps she walked down after my father to the Strand that night, and saw Gillecristus kill him, and then she had to die.”

  “But then why would he have lain with her? Or she with him?” said Donal, and I had to admit that that did not fit. Gillecristus was a dried up stick, not a lusty man as my father had been. I simply could not picture him following Sheena to Dun Cholla and her submitting to him, for there had been no signs of violence except that last done there.

  “Where was Gillecristus this morning?” I asked.

  “I did not see him this morning, Muirteach,” Donal replied, looking troubled. “He had left word he was fasting and doing penance in his chamber this morning. He does so frequently, and I thought little of it at the time.”

  “And Columbanus?”

  “In his bake-house I suppose. Although young Blaise is ill in the infirmary, and he helps with the baking most times. So it may be that Columbanus was there alone, with none to vouch for him, either.”

  “It is unlikely to be Columbanus, though,” I added. “He would not lie with his sister.”

  “Pray to God he would not,” returned Donal. “Such as sin as that would be. But men have done worse, even than that, in this world.”

  I agreed that they had.

  The rays of the sinking sun glimmered crimson on the waves and we turned our steps back to the Priory. I now had the unpleasant task of telling Columbanus about his sister. I wondered that Angus and Alasdair had not done so, but realized they were probably too far-gone with drink to be going anywhere or telling anyone anything by now.

  Donal came with me, and I was glad of that. We found Columbanus in his bake-house, stirring down some proofing yeast in a large pottery bowl. His face reddened with anger when he saw me.

  “And what brings you back here,” he said. “Be away from here, you will sour my yeast.”

  “No, now,” Donal put in. “Calm yourself, Columbanus. Muirteach is bringing some sad news indeed from the main island.”

  “It is your sister, Columbanus. Sheena. She is dead.” I spoke abruptly for I did not know how else to tell him.

  I had feared Columbanus would be as demonstrative in his grief as his brothers had been. But instead he stood dumbly, like a cow, and stared at me.

  “Dead?”

  “Aye. You were not knowing of it?”

  “How did she die?”

  “She was murdered, Columbanus. Like my father. At Dun Cholla.”

  He lunged at me, and I was glad there were no weapons in the bake-house.

  “But who would murder Sheena?” he asked, after Brother Donal and I had succeeded in quieting him. He had proved not so different from his brothers after all. “What had she ever done to anyone?”

  “I do not know,” I answered carefully. “But could it not be the same person who killed my father? Perhaps she saw something of the first murder, perhaps she had gone down to the Strand after him for something, and then saw it, and so the murdered had to kill her.”

  “Your father was a bastard, Muirteach, as you yourself are. And now, in his death, he has killed my sister.”

  I bit my lip so hard that I tasted blood, as I tried to control myself from lunging at Columbanus in my turn.

  “It is the shock talking, Muirteach,” said Donal soothingly to me. “Sure, you are not meaning this, Columbanus, not about our own dead Prior, may God grant him eternal rest.”

  “And am I not meaning it?” roared Columbanus. “The black heart of him. He will rot in Hell for what he has done. All those years he took what he wanted from our family, leaving only wreckage in his wake. And now, you are telling me he has killed my sister—”

  “Whist, no, now, Columbanus,” said Donal. “He was not killing your sister, the man is already dead, and Prior or no, the good Lord himself is deciding where he will rest, in Heaven or in Hell. But he did not kill your sister. Someone else must answer for that crime.”

  “But if she died because of what she had seen—”

  “You still cannot be holding the Prior responsible for that. You must have faith, faith in the mercy and justice of Our Lord.”

  “And what justice was there for her?” Columbanus asked challengingly, but neither Donal nor myself could answer that question for him.

  Columbanus went back with me, to see to his sister. As I rowed back to Colonsay through the darkness, for the sun had finally set, I said, in a manner of preparing him, as it were, “Sheena was strangled, Columbanus. With a cord. It could have been a bowstring. Are you knowing anyone who would have such a cord? Do your brothers?”

  I asked this because I wondered if he knew anything more. The cord Sheena was strangled with could have been any string, I suppo
sed, but it would have had to be strong to do that hellish work, for it had cut horribly into her flesh. I could not drive the image from my mind. It leapt and tumbled in my brain, mixed with images of my father’s corpse, with every stroke of the oars.

  Columbanus snorted in disgust. “Who on the islands does not have a bow, Muirteach? What kind of amadan asks that question? When last I heard, both Angus and Alasdair had fine bows, but so did all the other men on Colonsay.”

  He was right. Every man on the islands had a bow, for hunting the red deer, and even coneys for the stew pot. And so, as I beached the boat and we climbed the path leading to Sheena’s cottage by moonlight, I still had no clue as to who had killed her.

  The house was crowded although the hour was now late. The women had finished the laying out and now the wake was on in earnest, the women keening and the men drinking, for the most part. The body lay on a trestle table surrounded by candles, while pitch torches burned, set in holders on the stone walls. The flames leapt and danced in the glowering darkness of the hut, casting glinting lights on the silver coins that covered Sheena’s eyes and flickering shadows of the mourners, like the hosts of the sìthichean, against the walls of the house.

  I watched as Columbanus found and embraced his brothers, and the three, looking oddly alike despite the tonsure and robes of Columbanus, stood together looking at the corpse of their sister. Little Maire was there too, along with my older half-brother, and I wondered who it was that had finally told them what I had been too cowardly to tell them—that their mother was dead. The women sang their keening song over the corpse:

  You are going home this night to your home of winter,

  To your home of autumn, of spring, of summer,

  You are going home this night to your lasting home,

  To your unending rest, to your lasting bed.

  Maire’s eyes were red as she listened, she would have been crying, of course, but her face was white as the linen shroud that wrapped her mother. Her brother stood by her side, wide eyed, uncharacteristically solemn and quiet, with snot and tears mixed together running down his cheek. I did not see the baby, or Aorig, and I guessed that she had kept him at her house.