Deed of Murder (22 page)

‘There was no sport to be had,’ he said eventually. ‘We didn’t kill a single wolf.’

‘I suppose it was rather dull,’ she conceded. ‘You would have plenty of time to be looking around, scanning the mountainside for any sign of wolves. Turlough was telling me that you thought you saw a man. It wasn’t Seamus MacCraith, was it?’

‘No, everyone would recognize Seamus in that madder-red cloak of his. No chance of missing him.’ His voice was scornful.

‘Who do you think it was?’

‘I have no idea, Brehon. He was wearing a
bánín
cloak.’

Mara sighed. The fact was that most people of the kingdom wore the undyed wool cloaks unless it was a grand occasion when yellows, greens, reds and even purple cloaks made an appearance.

‘It couldn’t have been my scholar, Fachtnan, could it?’ She asked the question with little hope. ‘Would you know his appearance? He was here at the feast last Friday night.’

‘Was he the one with the pimples?’ asked Donán sounding bored.

‘No, that’s Aidan.’ Mara felt irritated with him. Donán was typical of a man with a grudge against life. He lived in a castle provided by Turlough, his servants and men-at-arms were Turlough’s, his children’s foster fees were paid by Turlough; not an enviable position for any man, but he did nothing to try to regain his own lost inheritance.

‘So there is nothing that you can help me with, nothing you saw or heard today?’

Donán crammed his mouth with honey cake and nodded languidly, his eyes on Ulick Burke. He had nothing to say and did nothing to entertain his hostess.

Mara turned to Turlough and he immediately bent his head towards her. ‘What is it?’ he asked and the concern in his voice almost brought tears to her eyes.

‘Nothing. I’m tired. I think we should all have an early night. You, Ulick, Donán, Conor and Brian Ruadh will be off early in the morning.’

‘That’s right,’ he said looking anxiously at her. ‘I’ve given orders that I am to be woken quietly. I won’t disturb you. We’ll go off very quietly and you have a good sleep in and a good rest. You’re looking tired.’

‘I’m all right,’ said Mara. She concealed a smile at the thought of Turlough doing anything quietly. On the other hand she might accept his offer. There was no point, really, in accompanying him and his companions to Doolin harbour and hanging around there waiting for the tide to turn and the boat to be ready. It would be a slow and tedious proceeding with plenty of drinking at the alehouse and silly jokes from Ulick. She would make her farewells to Turlough in private and stay in bed until they had moved away from Ballinalacken. Then she would get someone to saddle her horse and go straight over to the law school, and try to get this matter solved. In the meantime, there were a few other matters to uncover first from the house guests before she turned her attention to the inhabitants of Aillwee.

She looked around the table. O’Brien of Arra had finished his food and she smiled an invitation to him.

‘Come and sit by the fire with me,’ she said, standing up and moving close to him. ‘This has been a terrible day.’

‘Terrible,’ he echoed, following her. ‘Dreadful shame about that man, the farmer.’ He hesitated a moment, taking his seat and leaning forward to poke the fire before saying, ‘I wonder what he might have offered for the lease.’

‘I have no idea.’ Mara tried to make her voice sound soft and regretful, having suppressed her first instinct, which was to give him a tart reply.

‘Nothing we can do now.’ O’Brien of Arra heaved a sigh.

‘No, indeed.’ Mara decided to come quickly to the purpose of her interview before they were interrupted. ‘I saw that you had signed the document, and that Cathal had made his cross – no doubt in your presence.’

‘That’s right.’ O’Brien of Arra looked slightly embarrassed. ‘We should, of course, have waited for you, but you had gone off with young Seamus MacCraith and Cathal O’Halloran was very insistent. You can understand, after all that had happened before.’

‘Oh, don’t worry, it’s all perfectly legal. Your signature acts as witness that Cathal made his mark. I’ve countersigned it and will deliver it to the O’Hallorans to keep until next year. There is no problem with it at all.’ Mara hastened to assure him. It was interesting that Cathal, even with the alarming report of a dead man lying nearby, had taken the time to ensure that the deed was signed and witnessed.

‘I wanted to ask you whether you saw anyone that you didn’t know when you were on your journey up the mountain – that is apart from the men with the flock of sheep,’ she asked.

He started to shake his head and then paused. ‘I think I may have seen someone. A tall young man, dark, curly hair, wearing a
bánín
cloak. Do you know,’ he went on, ‘I have a feeling I might have seen this young fellow before – about this time last year. You sent your two eldest scholars to me with the flax garden deed for signature. I think it might have been one of these.’

‘Fachtnan and Enda,’ said Mara. ‘But Enda had blonde hair.’

‘That’s right. He’s the young man who works for the king, isn’t he? I’ve seen him recently. No, it’s the other one that I meant.’ He looked around the room. ‘I don’t see him here today. Is he back at the law school?’

‘No,’ said Mara. ‘Fachtnan has been missing since last Saturday. Do you think it was he that you saw?’

He shook his head. ‘Probably not,’ he said. ‘And yet . . .’ He looked up and narrowed his eyes. The door had opened and a tall, middle-aged man, well dressed in a blue woven cloak, had come in and stood hesitating at the door.

‘But that is my steward,’ he said. ‘There must be some business for me to attend to. Will you excuse me, Brehon?’

‘Ask him to have a meal and to stay the night,’ said Mara hospitably. ‘In fact, there is no reason why he should not stay here at the castle until you arrive back from Aran and then you can ride back together across the Shannon. I’ll send an order to our steward and he will arrange matters.’

When he left her she heaved a sigh. From time to time it appeared as if she were about to solve the mystery of the missing Fachtnan but hopes always ebbed away. Was it possible that he was still alive?

Seventeen

Bretha Déin Checht

(The Judgements of Dian Checht)

M
ara slept little that night and once dawn arrived she abandoned the effort and slipped out of bed, being careful not to disturb Turlough. She dressed quietly and then stole down the stairs, startling the night guards.

‘You’re never tempted to sleep?’ she asked them with a smile as they jumped alertly to attention, greeted her and then at her request undid the massive bolts of the huge oak front door of the castle.

They both looked shocked at the idea. ‘What, with O’Kelly just ten miles away?’ one exclaimed.

Mara tried to look shocked, too. She had been hearing about the threat from O’Kelly since the time that she had first invited Turlough to her house and the man had never materialized. No doubt he would marshal his men if the Great Earl, the Earl of Kildare, gave the order, but in the meantime he stayed peacefully in his good, fruitful limestone land east of Galway. She had begun to wonder whether she would ever see the man or whether he would remain as a distant bogeyman, used by mothers and foster mothers to frighten badly-behaved children.

The morning was still grey when she came out and the ocean was a sombre purple-blue. Turlough and his companions would have a calm day for their crossing to Aran, she thought as she went down the steep bank towards the kennels and stables. There were no lights in the cabins where the attendants slept and no sound from the stables. A dog barked as she approached the kennel door, but she spoke quietly to Bran, her own dog, and his whine of welcome reassured the other wolfhounds.

Bran was a beautiful dog. He was very large, a good three feet high at the shoulder with a noble head, small pricked ears, and a slim muscular body. Most wolfhounds were grey, or brindle, but Bran was pure white, his rough coat matching the limestone on the hills. He was the son of a dog that Mara had grown up with, her father’s dog, and he was a magnificent creature. He was utterly devoted to his mistress and so intelligent that he hardly needed a command to do her bidding.

Together they went down the steep hill from where the castle stood. Normally Mara walked on the seaward side, but the morning air was chilly and she turned almost instinctively towards the rising sun. The hill on this eastern side of the castle was almost perpendicular and the pathway little used, so until she and Bran got to the bottom of it, she did very little thinking.

At the end of the overgrown path there was a large flat stone, with a small, lower stone beside it, almost like a table and chair, or even a desk and a stool. The Burren was littered with these giant stones, seemingly flung down on the landscape in a random fashion. Giants’ stones, she had named them as a small girl reading old legends from her father’s precious collection of books. She seated herself on the lower of the two and turned her face to the warmth of the sun. There was a temptation to daydream, to think about her little Cormac, to make plans for his future, but she resisted this and turned her disciplined and well-trained mind towards her problem. Usually she found it easier to hammer out her ideas with the eager cooperation of her young scholars, but not this time. This murder of Eamon and especially the disappearance of Fachtnan touched them all too deeply. No, this was a matter that she had to solve herself and strangely she almost imagined another presence beside her – that of her father.

Mara had been the only child of Seamus O’Davoren, the Brehon of the Burren. Her mother had died when she was still very young and her father had not wanted to place her in fosterage so she had formed a habit of straying into the law school and listening to the scholars chant their lessons. She had learned to read with immense rapidity, took to Latin like a duck to water and was very soon outstripping scholars twice her age. Her father had always warned her that it would be hard for a woman to make her way in the law; she would only manage, he warned, if she were better than any of the male scholars, and he always insisted on logical thought as well as on the huge bank of knowledge that every lawyer had to possess.

Now, one by one, with her arm around the warm coat of her beloved dog, she took out her thoughts and laid them on the slab before her. She imagined them there, all the puzzles written down on vellum, rolled into neat scrolls, carefully labelled and tied with pink tape.

And the one that stood out was not labelled Eamon, or even Muiris, but had the word ‘Fachtnan’ written on it. Continually she had pushed the question of Fachtnan aside, feeling that the verified murder had to be solved before the disappearance, but now she allowed the matter to take her full attention and brain-power.

Intuition can come first if you wish
, she could hear her father say,
but it must be followed up by logic
. Her intuition was nudging her to consider the matter of Fachtnan but she must be careful to pin her thoughts to the facts available. Fachtnan had disappeared without a word or a line of writing. He had gone out last Saturday and since then there had been no message. That was so unlike him – and she had known him for over fourteen years – that she had to find a reason why he had neither returned nor sent word. Suppose that Nuala, who, after all, loved him very dearly, was correct. Suppose that Fachtnan went off to try to solve the murder of Eamon; and that seemed, knowing his character, to be the only reason for his sudden disappearance. But why had he not returned? The obvious answer was, as Nuala had speculated, that he was dead. But there was another answer and this had to be explored now. He might be imprisoned.

But why would a murderer imprison the young man? What would be the point? Mara stared fixedly into the distance. She had to stop asking herself questions, she thought severely. Let the answer float into her mind and then test her theory with rigorous logic.

There were some shouts from the top of the hill where the castle perched on the highest spot in the surrounding landscape. Doors were slammed, horses neighed, orders yelled. The sounds floated down to her from what almost seemed to be sky level.

It was a magnificent place for a castle, she thought. It was perched on top of a stony outcrop on the summit of a high, steep hill. The castle itself, with its new extension, took up almost the whole of the stone platform and beyond it the land fell away quite sharply making any form of moat or wall unnecessary. No enemy could capture that castle without terrible slaughter as they toiled up the almost perpendicular height from the base.

And, of course, the guards on the roof could see into the next kingdom. A battalion of soldiers from the Great Earl, or from the infamous O’Kelly, could be spotted while still miles away. Turlough was as safe in Ballinalacken as he was in Thomond, she thought. She wondered whether she should go back up to wish them goodbye and to send polite messages to his cousin the ruler of Aran, Brian the Spaniard, as he was known to distinguish him from the many other Brian O’Briens that were scattered over the three kingdoms and in Limerick as well. She decided against an undignified scramble up the steep hillside, though. The chances were that by the time she reached the top Turlough, his son Conor, son-in-law Donán, cousin Brian Ruadh O’Brien of Arra and friend Ulick Burke would all have moved off to ride the mile or so to the port. In any case, she rather disliked Brian the Spaniard and did not feel that she could be sincere in her wishes. Turlough would say what was necessary and the appearance of O’Brien of Arra, the man from Aran’s foster-brother, would be a great and welcome surprise to him.