An Ensuing Evil and Others

by Peter Tremayne

  “What sort of voices?”

  “Well, at first the sounds were more like the whispering of the sea. We lived by the sea, and so I was not troubled at first for the sounds of the sea have always been a constant companion. The sounds were not disturbing but gentle, kind sounds. They came to me more in my head, soft and sighing. Then they increased. Sometimes I could not stand it. My parents said they were voices from the Otherworld. A sign from God. They brought me here. The abbey treated me well, but the sounds increased. I was placed here to be looked after by Sister Slaine.”

  “I hear that these voices have become very strident of late.”

  “They became more articulate. I am not responsible for what they tell me to say or how they tell me to say it,” the girl added as if in defense.

  “Of course not,” Fidelma agreed. “But it seems there was a change. The voice became stronger. When did this change occur?”

  “When I came here to this cell. The voice became distinct. It spoke in words that I could understand.”

  “You mention voices in the plural and singular. How many voices spoke to you?”

  The girl thought carefully. “Well, I can only identify one.”

  “Male or female?”

  “Impossible to tell. It was all one whispering sound.”

  “How did it become so manifest?”

  “It was as if I woke up and they were whispering in a corner of the room.” The girl smiled. “The first and second time it happened, I lit a candle and peered round the cell, but there was no one there. Eventually I realized that as strong as the voices were, they must be in my head. I resigned myself to being the messenger on their behalf.”

  “And the voice instructed you to do what?”

  “It told me to stand in the refectory and pronounce their messages of doom.”

  Abbot Laisran leaned forward in a confiding fashion. “Sometimes these messages were of violence against the whole community, and at other times violence against individuals. But it was the one against Brother Sioda that was the most specific and named events.”

  Fidelma nodded. She had not taken her eyes from the girl’s face. “Why do you believe this voice came from the Otherworld?”

  The girl regarded her with a puzzled frown. “Where else would it be from? I am a good Christian and say my prayers at night. But still the voice haunts me.”

  “Have you heard it since the warning you were to deliver to Brother Sioda?”

  The girl shook her head. “Not in the same specific way.”

  “Then in what way?”

  “It has gone back to the same whispering inconsistency, the sound of the sea.”

  Fidelma glanced around the cell. “Is this place where you usually have your bed?”

  The girl looked surprised for a moment. “This is where I normally sleep.”

  Fidelma was examining the walls of the cell with keen eyes. “Who occupied the cells on either side?”

  “On that side is Sister Slaine who looks after this poor girl. To the other side is the chamber occupied by Brother Cruinn, my steward.”

  “But there is a floor above this one?”

  “The chamber immediately above this is occupied by Brother Torchan, our gardener.”

  Fidelma turned to the lock on the door of the cell.

  Abbot Laisran saw her peering at the keyhole. “Her cell was locked, and the key on the inside when Brother Cruinn and I came to this cell after Brother Sioda had been found.”

  Fidelma nodded absently. “That is the one puzzling aspect,” she admitted.

  Abbot Laisran looked puzzled. “I would have thought it tied everything together. It is the proof that only Scathach could have brought the weapon and robe into her cell and therefore she is the culprit.”

  Fidelma did not answer. “How far is Brother Sioda’s cell from here?”

  “At the far end of this corridor.”

  “From the condition of the robe that you showed me, there must have been a trail of blood from Brother Sioda’s cell to this one?”

  “Perhaps the corridor had been cleaned,” he suggested. “One of the duties of our community is to clean the corridors each morning.”

  “And they cleaned it without reporting traces of the blood to you?” She was clearly unimpressed by the attempted explanation. Fidelma rose and glanced at the girl with a smile. “Don’t worry, Sister Scathach. I think that you are innocent of Brother Sioda’s death.” She turned from the cell, followed by a deeply bewildered Abbot Laisran. “Let us see Sister Slaine now.”

  At the next cell, Sister Slaine greeted them with a nervous bob of her head.

  Fidelma entered and glanced along the stone wall that separated the cell from that of Sister Scathachs. Then she turned to Sister Slaine, who was about twenty-one or — two, an attractive-looking girl.

  “Brother Sioda was a handsome man, wasn’t he?” she asked without preamble.

  The girl started in surprise. A blush tinged her cheeks. “I suppose he was.”

  “He had an eye for the ladies. I presume that you were in love with him, weren’t you?”

  The girl’s chin came up defiantly. “Who told you?”

  “It was a guess,” Fidelma admitted with a soft smile. “But since you have admitted it, let us proceed. Do you believe in these voices that Sister Scathach hears?”

  “Of course not. She’s mad and has now proved her madness.”

  “Do you not find it strange that this madness has only manifested itself since she was moved into this cell next to you?”

  The girl’s cheeks suddenly suffused with crimson. “Are you implying that-?”

  “Answer my question,” snapped Fidelma, cutting her short.

  The girl blinked at her cold voice. Then, seeing that Abbot Laisran was not interfering, she said: “Madness can alter, it can grow worse… It is a coincidence that she became worse after Abbot Laisran asked me to look after her. Just a coincidence.”

  “I am told that you work for the apothecary and look after sick people? In your experience, have you ever heard of a condition among people where they have a permanent hissing, or whistling in the ears?”

  Sister Slaine nodded slowly. “Of course. Many people have such a condition. Sometimes they hardly notice it while others are plagued by it and almost driven to madness. That is what we thought was wrong with Sister Scathach when she first came to our notice.”

  “Only at first?” queried Fidelma.

  “Until she starting to claim that she heard words being articulated, words that formed distinct messages which, she also claimed, were from the shadows of the Otherworld.”

  “Did Brother Sioda ever tell you about his affair with Gorm-flaith, and his child?”

  Fidelma changed the subject so abruptly that the girl blinked. It was clear from her reaction that Fidelma had hit on the truth.

  “Better speak the truth now, for it will become harder later,” Fidelma advised.

  Sister Slaine was silent for a moment, her eyes narrowed as she tried to penetrate behind Fidelma’s inquisitive scrutiny.

  “If you must know, I was in love with Sioda. We planned to leave here soon to find a farmstead where we could begin a new life together. We had no secrets from one another.”

  Fidelma smiled softly and nodded. “So he did tell you?”

  “Of course. He wanted to tell me all about his past life. He told me of this unfortunate girl and her baby. He was very young and foolish at the time. He was a penitent and sought forgiveness. That’s why he came here.”

  “So when you heard Sister Scathach denounce him in the refectory, naming Gormflaith and relating her death and that of her child, what exactly did you think?”

  “Do you mean, about how she came upon that knowledge?”

  “Exactly. Where did you think Sister Scathach obtained such knowledge if not from her messages from the Otherworld?”

  Sister Slaine pursed her lips. “As soon as I had taken Sister Scathach back to her cell and locked her in, I went
to find Brother Sioda. He was scared. I thought at first that he had told her or someone else apart from me. He swore that he had not. He was so scared that he went to see Abbot Laisran-”

  “Did you question Sister Scathach?”

  The girl laughed. “Little good that did. She simply said it was the voices. She had most people believing her.”

  “But you did not?”

  “Not even in the madness she is suffering can one make up such specific information. I can only believe that Sioda lied to me….” Her eyes suddenly glazed and she fell silent as if in some deep thought.

  “Cloistered in this abbey, and a conhospitae, a mixed house, there must be many opportunities for relationships to develop between the sexes?” Fidelma observed.

  “There is no rule against it,” returned the girl. “Those advocating celibacy and abstinence have not yet taken over this abbey. We still live a natural life here. But Sioda never mixed with the mad one, never with Scathach.”

  “But you have had more than one affair here?” Fidelma asked innocently.

  “Brother Sioda was my first and only love,” snapped the girl in anger.

  Fidelma raised her eyebrows. “No others?”

  The girls expression was pugnacious. “None.”

  “You had no close friends among the other members of the community?”

  “I do not get on with the women, if that is what you mean.”

  “It isn’t. But it is useful to know. How about male friends?…”

  “I’ve told you, I don’t-”

  Abbot Laisran coughed in embarrassment. “I had always thought that you and Brother Torchan were friends.”

  Sister Slaine blushed. “I get on well with Brother Torchan,” she admitted defensively.

  Fidelma suddenly rose and glanced along the wall once more, before turning with a smile to the girl. “You’ve been most helpful,” she said abruptly, turning for the door.

  Outside in the corridor, Abbot Laisran was regarding her with a puzzled expression. “What now?” he demanded. “I would have thought that you wanted to develop the question of her relationships?”

  “We shall go to see Brother Torchan,” she said firmly.

  Brother Torchan was out in the garden and had to be sent for so Fidelma could interview him in his cell. He was a thickset, muscular young man whose being spoke of a life spent in the open air.

  “Well, Brother, what do you think of Sister Scathach?”

  The burly gardener shook his head sadly. “I grieve for her as I grieve for Brother Sioda. I knew Brother Sioda slightly but the girl not at all. I doubt if I have seen her more than half a dozen times and never spoken to her but once. By all accounts, she was clearly demented.”

  “What do you think about her being driven to murder by voices from the Otherworld?”

  “It is clear that she must be placed in the care of a combination of priests and physicians to drive away the evilness that has compelled her.”

  “So you think that she is guilty of the murder?”

  “Can there be any other explanation?” asked the gardener in surprise.

  “You know Sister Slaine, of course. I am told she is a special friend of yours.”

  “Special? I would like to think so. We often talk together. We came from the same village.”

  “Has she ever discussed Sister Scathach with you?”

  Brother Torchan shifted uneasily. He looked suspiciously at Fidelma. “Once or twice. When the abbot first asked her to look after Sister Scathach, it was thought that it was simply a case of what the apothecaries call tinnitus. She heard sounds in her ears. But then Slaine said that the girl had become clearly demented, saying that she was being woken up by the sound of voices giving her messages and urging her to do things.”

  “Did you know that Slaine was having an affair with Sioda?” Fidelma suddenly said sharply.

  Torchan colored and, after a brief hesitation, nodded. “It was deeper than an affair. She told me that they planned to leave the abbey and set up home together. It is not forbidden by rule, you know.”

  “How did you feel about that?”

  Brother Torchan shrugged. “So long as Sioda treated her right, it had little to do with me.”

  “But you were her friend.”

  “I was a friend and advised her when she wanted advice. She is the kind of girl who attracts men. Sometimes the wrong men. She attracted Brother Sioda.”

  “Was Brother Sioda the wrong man?”

  “I thought so.”

  “Did she ever repeat to you anything Brother Sioda told her?”

  Torchan lowered his eyes. “You mean about Gormflaith and the child? Sister Slaine is not gifted with the wisdom of silence. She told me various pieces of gossip. Oh…” He hesitated. “I have never spoken to Scathach, if that is what you mean.”

  “But, if Slaine told you, then she might well have told others?”

  “I do not mean to imply that she gossiped to anyone. There was only Brother Cruinn and myself whom she normally confided in.”

  “Brother Cruinn, the steward, was also her friend?”

  “I think that he would have liked to have been something more until Brother Sioda took her fancy.”

  Fidelma smiled tightly. “That will be all, Torchan.”

  There was a silence as Abbot Laisran followed Fidelma down the stone steps to the floor below.

  Fidelma led the way back to Sister Scathachs cell, paused, and then pointed to the next door. “And this is Brother Cruinn’s cell?”

  Abbot Laisran nodded.

  Brother Cruinn, the steward of the abbey, was a thin, sallow man in his mid-twenties. He greeted Fidelma with a polite smile of welcome. “A sad business, a sad business,” he said. “The matter of Sister Scathach. I presume that is the reason for your wishing to see me?”

  “It is,” agreed Fidelma easily.

  “Of course, of course. A poor, demented girl. I have suggested to the abbot here that he should send to Ferna to summon the bishop. I believe that there is some exorcism ritual with which he is acquainted. That may help. We have lost a good man in Brother Sioda.”

  Fidelma sat down unbidden in the single chair that occupied the cell. “You were going to lose Brother Sioda anyway,” she said dryly.

  Brother Cruinn’s face was an example of perfect self-control. “I do not believe I follow you, Sister,” he said softly.

  “You were also losing Sister Slaine. How did you feel about that?”

  Brother Cruinn’s eyes narrowed, but he said nothing.

  “You loved her. You hated it when she and Brother Sioda became lovers.”

  Brother Cruinn was looking appalled at Abbot Laisran, as if appealing for help.

  Abbot Laisran wisely made no comment. He had witnessed too many of Fidelma’s interrogations to know when not to interfere.

  “It must have been tearing you apart,” went on Fidelma calmly. “But instead, you hid your feelings. You pretended to remain a friend, simply a friend to Sister Slaine. You listened carefully while she gossiped about her lover and especially when she confided what he had told her about his first affair and the baby.”

  “This is ridiculous!” snapped Brother Cruinn.

  “Is it?” replied Fidelma as if pondering the question. “What a godsend it was when poor Sister Scathach was put into the next cell to you. Sister Scathach was an unfortunate girl who was suffering, not from imagined whispering voices from the Otherworld, but from an advanced case of the sensation of noises in the ears. It is not an uncommon affliction, but some cases are worse than others. As a little child, when it developed, silly folk-her parents-told her that the whistling and hissing sounds were the voices of lost souls in the Otherworld trying to communicate with her and thus she was blessed.

  “Her parents brought her here. She probably noticed the affliction more in these conditions than she had when living by the sea, where the whispering was not so intrusive. Worried by the worsening affects, on the advice of the apothecary, Abbot
Laisran placed her in the cell with Sister Slaine, who knew something of the condition, to look after her.”

  Fidelma paused, eyes suddenly hardening on him.

  “That was your opportunity, eh, Brother Cruinn? A chance to be rid of Brother Sioda and with no questions asked. A strangely demented young woman who was compelled by voices from another world to do so would murder him.”

  “You are mad,” muttered Brother Cruinn.

  Fidelma smiled. “Madness can only be used as an excuse once. This is all logical. It was your voice that kept awakening poor Sister Scathach and giving her these messages that made her behave so. At first you told her to proclaim some general messages. That would cause people to accept her madness, as they saw it. Then, having had her generally accepted as mad, you gave her the message to prepare for Sioda’s death.”

  She walked to the head of his bed, her eye having observed what she had been seeking. She reached forward and withdrew from the wall a piece of loose stone. It revealed a small aperture, no more than a few fingers wide and high.

  “Abbot Laisran, go into the corridor and unlock Sister Scathach’s door, but do not open it nor enter. Wait outside.”

  Puzzled, the abbot obeyed her.

  Fidelma waited and then bent down to the hole.

  “Scathach! Scathach! Can you hear me, Scathach? All is now well. You will hear the voices no more. Go to the door and open it. Outside you will find Abbot Laisran. Tell him that all is now well. The voices are gone.”

  She rose up and faced Brother Cruinn, whose dark eyes were narrowed and angry.

  A moment later, they heard the door of the next room open and a girl’s voice speaking with Abbot Laisran.

  The abbot returned moments later. “She came to the door and told me that the voices were gone and all was well.”

  Fidelma smiled thinly. “Even as I told her to do so. Just as that poor influenced girl did what you told her to, Brother Cruinn. This hole goes through the wall into her cell and acts like a conduit for the voice.”

  “I did not tell her to stab Brother Sioda in the heart,” he said defensively.

  “Of course not. She did not stab anyone. You did that.”

  “Ridiculous! The bloodstained robes and weapon were in her cell-”