Deed of Murder (11 page)

‘Muiris had a poor start in life,’ she said eventually. ‘He worked for the O’Lochlainn, the father of Ardal O’Lochlainn – Nuala’s uncle. He was a very good worker and when he was a teenage boy he saved the life of a cow and her calf and the O’Lochlainn gave him a present of the two animals, saying that the stockman had given up all hope and without Muiris they both would have died. And when Muiris was about sixteen he gave him a few acres of land – nothing worth much.’

‘And that was the beginning of his good fortune.’ Fiona nodded thoughtfully.

‘That’s right. No one is sure how Muiris managed to do it, but everything went right for him. He bought more and more land. Built himself a house with the labour of his own hands – well, you’ve seen the house.’

‘And now he is a bóaire.’ Mara knew from Fiona’s thoughtful face that she was visualizing the large house, made from well-cut blocks of stone thatched with durable reeds, the cow cabins in the well-scrubbed yard whitewashed inside and out, the emerald-green fields around the house, grazed by fat contented cows and enclosed by well-built walls.

‘Everything he touches turns to gold, that’s what Cumhal says, and you know what a good farmer Cumhal, himself, is.’

‘And now Muiris wants to be a flax manager.’

‘That’s right – but I can’t for the life of me think why he asked that question about an honour price,’ said Mara. She always liked to be completely honest with her scholars. She turned to the girl at her side, reining in her lively mare who was trying to get ahead of Fiona’s pony. ‘Who do you think killed Eamon?’ she asked and then when she got no reply, added after a long minute, ‘Do you fear that it might have been Fachtnan?’

Now it was out in the open. Fiona gave a startled gasp and her pony shied, causing Mara’s high-bred Arabian mare to dance on her back legs for a moment. Bran moved neatly into the hedge to avoid both horses and after a minute all was under control again.

However, the words had been spoken and Mara waited for a reply. What would the girl say? Deny? Prevaricate? Feign innocence?

‘I think he might have,’ said Fiona in a low voice.

‘You think it was he that followed you?’

Fiona’s silence gave a good answer to that question. Mara looked back over her shoulder and saw her look ahead with a troubled expression on her face.

‘Why did he do it?’ she said eventually, and then added quickly, ‘I don’t mean why did he kill Eamon. I mean why did he follow us?’

Mara thought about this question, but decided not to answer it. The path was narrow and she had to ride ahead of Fiona. She would postpone this conversation, she decided.

‘There’s Ballinalacken,’ she said. ‘Let’s get in and stable our horses, then we can talk in peace. The visitors won’t be back from Kilfenora Cathedral for an hour or so. The bishop has promised them some refreshments after the service.’

A light wind was blowing as they scaled the steep path that wound up to the castle, which had been a wedding present to Mara from her husband King Turlough Donn. Ballinalacken Castle was built on a high crag, a dramatic shadow against the western sky on the road to Corcomroe, a place so high that you almost felt you could touch the stars from its turrets. Originally there had only been a dark, gloomy tower house, but a new extension had been added on shortly before their marriage. This had provided plenty of bedchambers and a great hall whose broad mullioned windows faced the sea.

And what a sea! It stretched out in front of them, sapphire blue, the waves streaked across its ruffled surface like cream whipped to rough peaks. The colour was so intense that the sky itself paled before it and the limestone rocks were black and mirror-like against the continuously moving water. Far out towards the Aran Island two boats, white sails filled with the north-easterly wind, slid across its polished surface.

‘Fetch baby Cormac from Cliona for me, Fiona, would you? Bring him up to the hall. There will be no one there but ourselves and he loves to have all that space to crawl on.’

Unwillingly she admitted to herself that she did not wish to face Cliona alone, for a while. Not until she had time to talk the whole matter through with Turlough and make up her mind what to do.

However, when Fiona pushed open the door of the great hall with one shoulder, Mara saw that she had two children in her arms, not one.

They were so unlike one another, these two little boys. Mara never saw them together without a slight pang. Art, Cliona’s son, was so sturdy, a brown-haired, solid child with his mother’s dark eyes. Although he was only six weeks older than little Cormac he was so very much bigger that he seemed to be double in size.

Cormac is perfectly healthy, Mara said to herself, taking the slim, blue-eyed, fair-skinned little boy from Fiona’s arms and holding him close for a moment before putting him down on the floor.

‘I had to bring Art as well,’ said Fiona apologetically. ‘He screamed when I took Cormac to the door and then Cormac screamed as well when he realized that Art was going to be left behind.’

‘Much better to have the two,’ Mara assured her. ‘They will amuse each other.’ To herself she said silently,
how can I ever separate them?

The two little boys were off immediately crawling rapidly down the flagstone floor. Cliona had made a little pair of breeches for each so that their knees didn’t get skinned by the hard floors, and they progressed with great rapidity to the far end of the room, turning around when they reached the chest there and coming back again like a pair of spirited racehorses.

Mara carefully erected a barrier of chairs and stools in front of the fire and then went to sit on the window seat. Fiona, she noticed, had taken a seat at some distance from her. She waited though, looking casually out of the window towards the sea. The two carracks were getting nearer to Aran and for a moment she wondered about them. They looked too large for sailing boats. Probably something to do with Brian the Spaniard, Turlough’s cousin, she thought. Guests arriving; traders from foreign parts, perhaps.

‘Cormac will be able to walk sooner than Art,’ said Fiona from across the room.

‘Don’t encourage me to be competitive,’ said Mara carelessly, but she watched with pleasure as the smaller, lighter boy pulled himself up and moved carefully along the line of chairs until he came to where Fiona was sitting. He placed a fervent wet kiss on her knee. Then he glimpsed his foster-brother moving back down the hall and in an instant he was after him, like a hound after a hare. Bran walked anxiously behind, keeping an eye on both babies. Fiona laughed and Mara was glad to hear the merry sound and even more glad when Fiona, of her own accord, came across the floor and seated herself beside Mara.

‘You’re a very popular young lady, you know,’ Mara said, scrubbing with a handkerchief at the wet stain on Fiona’s gown. ‘All the boys love you – even Cormac. I think that Fachtnan, if he did follow you the night before last, did it because he was fond of you and worried about you.’

‘A knight in armour,’ mused Fiona. She looked touched, but thoughtful.

‘It makes sense, doesn’t it? After all, whoever followed you did no harm to you. He rode behind you the whole way there. But did he return with you? That is the question.’

‘I thought I might have heard something for the first few miles, but I’m not sure,’ said Fiona. ‘I was a bit upset at Eamon behaving like that. I was crying.’

‘And then?’ asked Mara.

‘And then, once I was over the bridge, I started to gallop as hard as I could possibly go. My pony just went hurtling down the road. All I could hear was the noise of her hoofs against the stone.’

Mara sighed. The large ponies, bred on the barren hills of Connemara, were incredibly hardy with an immense amount of stamina – fast, heavily built animals. She kept a collection for the use of any of the law school scholars who did not have their own horses. Cumhal made sure that they were well fed and well shod. She could just imagine that if Fiona had given the pony its head, that she would hear nothing above the noise of drumming hoofs.

‘Fachtnan was in the schoolhouse this morning, according to Cumhal. He found him studying.’ Mara watched Fiona’s face carefully.

‘So it wasn’t him,’ she said, ‘but if it wasn’t him, who else followed us and followed me back over the bridge?’

‘It still could have been Fachtnan. The fact that he was in the schoolhouse this morning does not mean that he slept the night at Cahermacnaghten. Moylan and Aidan seem fairly sure that neither Eamon nor Fachtnan slept at Ballinalacken on Friday night.’

Art and Cormac caused a diversion then by bumping heads with each other and simultaneously setting up a loud roaring sound where each seemed to compete to make the most noise. Mara picked up Art, who was nearest to her and Fiona picked up Cormac. When both were kissed and comforted with a sweetmeat from a silver jar on the table, they set off on their race course again, with Bran, this time, moving in between them as if he wanted to keep them apart.

‘Before you parted from Eamon, while you were still on friendly terms with each other, did he say anything about when he planned to leave Cahermacnaghten to go to the MacEgan law school. Was he going to come back and leave at the end of the week or had he planned to do something else?’

‘He didn’t actually say anything about when he was going to leave,’ said Fiona. ‘But he did say that Muiris – is that the name of the man who had made the last bid for the flax garden? Well, he said that man had asked him to do some law work for him when he returned from Arra.’

Nine

Críth Gablach

(Ranks in Society)

B
rian Ruadh O’Brien, Lord of Arra, was a man of about the same age as his second cousin, King Turlough Donn. Not a tall man, but immensely broad of shoulder with long arms and huge hands. His hair and square-cut beard were of that particular shade of iron grey which showed that in his youth he had been very dark-haired. But his eyes were blue – intensely blue – dark as the ocean.

‘Brehon, it’s lovely to meet you again,’ he said holding out his hand to Mara as she came to greet him.

‘And a great pleasure to me, also,’ returned Mara. She had no memory of encountering him before, but supposed that they must have met at some ceremony in Turlough’s castle in Thomond.

‘And I want to thank you very much for doing my legal business for me, year after year,’ he went on, still holding her hand as if it were something very precious.

‘Ah, the flax garden. Well, we must talk about that; perhaps I might trouble you on this matter before bringing you to meet the other guests.’ Mara managed to detach her hand and waited while he surveyed the landscape.

‘I had not imagined you so near to the sea,’ he said.

‘You are fond of the sea.’ There was a look on the man’s face that turned her observation from a question into a statement.

‘I love it,’ said Brian Ruadh softly. ‘I was fostered on Aran, you know. The man there was a true father to me and his wife was a mother.’

‘That would be the father and mother of Brian the Spaniard, would it?’ Mara made the query mechanically. Her mind was very much on fosterage.
Closer than brothers
, where had she read that?

‘That’s right, we were brought up together, the two of us. The two Brians, they used to call us. His mother is a wonderful woman. She took us on walks, told us stories about mermen and magic seals. I spoke Spanish more than Irish in my early days.’ His eyes shone as they gazed hungrily at the restless ocean, sparkling in the April sunshine.

‘Well you will enjoy the trip to Aran, then,’ said Mara. She hoped that she had time to discuss the affair of Eamon’s death before bringing him indoors, but Turlough’s eldest son, Conor, had appeared at the door. She searched for words to turn the conversation, but found herself warming to this man. She did not care for many of the O’Briens. With the exception of Turlough and perhaps of his cousin and foster-brother Teige, the clan seemed to her to be very vainglorious and self-seeking, obsessed with their inheritance from Brian Boru who had been dead for five hundred years. Perhaps this Brian Ruadh might be of a more sensitive mould. There was a dark, yearning look on his face as he gazed out to sea. The look of someone who sees his dream and hopes that it is about to come true.

‘Conor’s looking better,’ said Brian Ruadh after a few moments. He glanced up at the young man. ‘A bit more meat on him! There was a time that I thought he would never make old bones and that the hope of the clan would rest on his brother Murrough. Where is Murrough now?’

‘I’m not sure,’ said Mara briefly. She hoped that Brian Ruadh was not going to bring up the subject of Murrough with Turlough. It was a source of such great sorrow to the king that his second son spent much of his time in London, dancing attendance on the Great Earl and paying court to King Henry VIII at Whitehall. It would spoil the planned excursion to Aran if this was harped upon.

‘I must ask you something before you go in,’ she said. ‘It concerns the young lawyer that I sent to you with the deed for the flax garden.’

Brian Ruadh gave an amused look. ‘Did you know that he brought a young lady with him – from your law school, also, I gather?’

‘I didn’t know at the time, nor that they set off at midnight,’ said Mara frankly. ‘Just a silly escapade. I suppose we have all done ridiculous things in our youth.’

‘I must say that I was shocked. Still, no harm done, I suppose. He seemed a nice lad, son of the old Brehon of Cloyne, in Cork, I believe. Between ourselves, not a very admirable character, his father. Great man to take bribes, so they said. Meddled in politics, too. No one trusted him. Still, I mustn’t speak ill of the dead. And this lad seemed a good fellow. I don’t think he goes back to Cork often. Seemed happily settled at the law school at Redwood. Alone in the world, now, I understand, neither mother nor father, not even an uncle, he was telling me.’