Deed of Murder (23 page)

The sun was strengthening in the sky now and its heat was comforting to her. She loved the sun, her olive skin soaking up the rays and turning brown in the very earliest days of summer. It gave her a feeling of well-being to sit there in the warmth and she decided to indulge herself a while longer. It was still early and she could afford to sit and doze for another a few minutes. She placed her folded arms on the flat surface of the rock in front of her, laid her head on to them. Just a few minutes, she promised herself.

When she woke the sun had moved. For a moment she hardly knew whether she had been asleep or whether she had actually experienced a journey – watching as an eagle does, from a great height, floating along but observing the creatures on the ground. A young man with dark curly hair and an earnest expression, a man with a mission, a man who was determined to prove himself.

Hastily she got to her feet. No time now for the leisurely, scholarly weighing of the evidence, balancing of the probabilities. Somehow she knew that she was right; the truth had lain with the disappearance of Fachtnan. Everything else now fell into place. She had to see Turlough. Hopefully he would still be at the harbour.

It took Mara quite some time to struggle up the steep and overgrown path. She wished that she had brought a rope or a leather lead to thread through Bran’s collar. His strength and agility would have helped to pull her up. The path was so narrow and so grown-in with bushes that there was no room for them to go side by side. He went ahead, turning his head from time to time to check that she was still following, and she struggled and panted behind him. She made a mental note to order that the path be cleared. The castle had staff who were probably quite idle during the long periods when the castle was not occupied. She made the note and firmly repressed the thought that it should have been noticed and dealt with long since. Now she had to turn all her energies to her task in hand.

No one was on the terrace in front of the castle when she arrived, but the gravel was churned up as if a dozen lively horses had pranced and wheeled there before turning and trotting down the gentle slope towards the sea. She went instantly to the stables, but no one was there. The stable staff had probably gone indoors to eat their breakfast. She would not bother to waste the time that it would take to summon them. Her beautiful mare, Brig, a present from the king before their marriage, stood there in her stall, ears pricked as she eyed her mistress. Rapidly, Mara got down the saddle and within a few minutes, with a quick command to Bran to go to his bed, she was galloping, as fast as the mare could go, down the road to the sea.

How long had she slept? Her common sense and her knowledge of the sun’s position in the sky told her that she had slept for at least an hour but she kept hoping that it was less. There was no one on the road in this early morning and she hoped that she was making much faster progress than the king and his companions had made. They would have gone slowly, exchanging jokes and comments over shoulders, those ahead waiting for those behind to catch up. Turlough would have been in no hurry. Though he enjoyed his visits to the islands, he hated the actual journey itself and invariably felt sick. With some luck, he would still be at Doolin bolstering his courage with a few glasses of wine or of the potent
uisce bheatha
– water of life brews – sold in those wayside inns.

But luck was not with her. And somehow she knew it as she thundered across the small stone bridge that spanned the River Aille before it made its way into the sea ahead. Somehow there was an absence of sound, a strange stillness and emptiness ahead of her.

But the sea was not empty. Its broad, heaving, dark-blue and white masses were dotted here and there with a couple of large-sailed ships, various familiar boats, such as cogs, hookers and caravals, as well as the fishermen’s curraghs. Quite near to shore was a
pucán
, but only one. Where was the other? As well as the fisherman a
pucán
could scarcely hold more than four or five men. It was a small boat, entirely open with no cabin or deck.

Mara touched her heels to the mare and in an instant the highly bred animal launched herself forward flying over the road to the sea as if she were about to rival the seabirds that flew overhead. In a few minutes they were at the harbour. The second
pucán
was still there tied up to a mooring post and gathered around it were Fergal and Conall, Turlough’s bodyguards, three men-at-arms and Ulick Burke.

Mara flung herself from her horse, hastily tossing her reins to a waiting hand. ‘I’m coming with you,’ she said firmly to what looked like the boat owner. ‘Set off instantly. I want you to catch up with the other
pucán
.’

He looked at her hesitantly and muttered something. He had a strange voice, husky and with an odd note in it. Something unfamiliar about it. She didn’t know whether he had understood her or not and in a raised and clear voice she repeated her command.

‘The boat has been holed, Brehon,’ said Ulick stepping forward and inserting his small neat frame between her and the boat owner.

‘What?’ she exclaimed.

‘That’s right,’ he said, and added soothingly, ‘Don’t worry about it. They will send back the other
pucán
for us once my lord and his family have landed. You look so upset. Now you mustn’t worry about us, Brehon,’ he went on with his usual mocking tone of faint amusement. ‘We’ll be in time for the feast this evening and that’s the reason why everyone visits, is it not?’

Mara stared in disbelief and then she rounded instantly on the guards. ‘And you allowed my lord to go without you, without any protection! Not a single one of you went with him.’

‘Sure, what protection could the man need, there he is with his loving family, his cousins and his sons, what more could a man want?’ Now Ulick was openly laughing at her and she fought a desire to slap his face.

‘A king, my lord,’ she said icily, ‘does not go without a guard. I cannot believe this of you,’ she added addressing herself to Fergal and Conall.

‘With respect, Brehon, the king himself ordered us to stay,’ said Fergal, flushing a deep red, though he spoke in a dignified manner. ‘His family wished to be with him on the first boat; none of them wanted to wait, and we could not go against our orders. We suggested that we should go with the king but he would have none of it.’

‘How long will it take you to mend that boat?’ Mara decided that this matter had to be left for the moment. The first priority had to be for her to talk to Turlough.

The man muttered something and Ulick obligingly translated. ‘He says that it could take a week, Brehon. No, there is nothing for it, but to wait with patience. Your presence will make the time so much more pleasant.’

Mara looked out to sea. The first
pucán
, despite its sail, was making very poor progress. It hardly seemed to be moving. There was a strong wind blowing from the west and there was a moment when the boat seemed to go backwards. She endured a moment’s panic when she wondered whether that boat, also, had been holed, but then realized that the problems were wind and waves. Even from where she stood, she could see that a strong springtime tide was flowing, bringing the water in so fast that the beach was visibly being lost, yard by yard, under its onslaught. She gazed around, wondering what to do. She had the fastest horse in the kingdom, but no horse could go through these enormous waves that seemed to be tossing the
pucán
around as if it were a toy boat. She narrowed her eyes trying to see whether anyone was looking towards the shore. The
pucán
must have made better progress earlier as it was now quite a distance out to sea, probably about halfway between Doolin and Aran, she reckoned. The figures on it, of Turlough, Conor, Donán and O’Brien of Arra were tiny. There was no possibility that any shriek or any signal could reach them.

There were no other boats around. All the fishermen of the port were out trailing nets through the incoming tide. These boats were nearer and Mara could see that every head was turned towards the shore. No doubt they had seen her dramatic ride down the road that led to the sea and were speculating about what had brought her.

And then one fisherman stood up in his boat, balancing carefully, legs wide apart, at one with the motion of the waves. He held one hand at his brow to shield his eyes against the glare of the morning sun. Something about the sturdy figure caught her attention and she knew who it was. It was Cliona’s husband-to-be, the fisherman Setanta O’Connor. He seemed to look at her for a while, as if wondering what brought her to the port but then his net caught his attention and he sat down again, turning his face away from the shore and towards the islands.

‘Setanta,’ she shrieked but then knew that there was no chance that her voice could reach him in the teeth of the roar of wind and water. There was only one thing to be done. Her experience as the only girl brought up in a schoolful of boys would stand her in good stead. She put two fingers into her mouth and blew hard. The whistle was loud enough to start all of the seagulls cawing wildly. Whether Setanta heard it, or whether he heard the birds, however it was, he turned around once more and this time she was ready for him, snatching the scarf from her neck and waving it frantically in the air and then beckoning to him with her spare hand. For a moment she wondered whether he had understood and then she saw him take a second oar from the bottom of the boat. In a minute he had turned the boat around, rowing with long strokes, his light boat riding the waves and allowing the tide to sweep him back to the shore.

‘Setanta, can you catch the
pucán
? I must speak to the king about a matter of urgency.’

His answer was to throw a rope ashore and in a moment Fergal caught it and tied it firmly to one of the mooring posts.

Mara stepped down into the boat and then she hesitated. Her own words came back to her. A king should not go unescorted. She looked at the tiny curragh made from a framework of hazel branches and covered with leather.

‘Setanta, can you take the king’s bodyguards as well?’ she asked. She could not quite see how as there were only two seats and the spaces between the seats were filled with squirming blue and silverfish, but she knew that they should go. Perhaps another fishing boat would come back to the harbour . . .

But in a moment Setanta had lifted the net of fish, tied its opening with a fine rope and without hesitation thrown it into the shallow water. One of the men-at-arms, with a rather shamefaced glance at Mara, came forward at his shouted request and tied the end of the rope to one of the mooring posts.

‘Sit on the floor and for God’s sake balance your weight.’ Setanta was a man of few words.

Mara wondered whether he should give one of the bodyguards an oar, but then decided not to interfere. It would horrify Setanta if she sat on the floor and she had no idea if either Conall or Fergal could row. Thomond was an inland kingdom; men from Corcomroe, like Setanta O’Connor, were out on the sea as soon as they could walk.

Mara shut her eyes to stop herself from obsessively measuring the distance between the
pucán
, which had set out over an hour ago, and the small, fragile shell in which she sat. After a while she cautiously opened them. Already they had left the harbour and were on the open sea. She turned her face towards Aran. The
pucán
had not appeared to have moved any nearer to the island, but she knew that on the sea distances were deceptive.

Setanta O’Connor was an expert with his curragh. He seemed to put very little effort into every stroke, but the boat leaped forward at each sweep of the oars. He used the wind and the tide cleverly, rowing hard when the wave came towards them and then allowing the boat to drift back as the wave retreated. What was it that Setanta had said about his boat?

‘
I have a boat that’s a match to any boat in the sea
,’ he had boasted. ‘
That boat can fly across the water with only one man rowing – not like those English boats
.’

‘The men in the
pucán
are taking down the sails, Brehon,’ said Conall after a few minutes. He spoke tentatively and she forced herself to smile at him. After all, it wasn’t their fault that Turlough had so little idea of what was due to him as king, so little suspicion that anyone would undermine him in any way.

‘That’s where we’re going then, is it?’ Setanta O’Connor glanced quickly over his shoulder. ‘Heavy, these things, unless the wind is with you. Still, better than one of those Galway hookers, though.’

‘More sails on a hooker, though,’ said Mara trying to make conversation. She had no need to think about anything now; she just needed to rejoin Turlough and to be by his side like any good wife. She thought of Gobnait and of Gobnait’s famous predecessor, the Abbess, who released a swarm of bees into the faces of the incoming army. She thought of Andraste, the female god of war, and of Maeve, Queen of Connaught, victor of battles, and then she straightened her back and gazed steadily out to sea as the small boat scrambled through the waves.

‘It will be a bit hair-raising for a while, Brehon, best hold on tight,’ shouted Setanta. ‘Don’t you worry, though. They say that an O’Connor of Doolin can never drown. Fishermen like us always bob up again.’

Not true, thought Mara. Many, many fishermen drowned every year. The Aran islands were full of widows and orphans. Still, she appreciated his spirit and hoped that her impulsive act had not taken him into a danger that he would normally have avoided. She gripped the wood of the board beneath her tightly and gazed steadily ahead.

An enormous wave, taller than any tower house, was approaching. It was a giant wall of translucent water, glinting in the morning sunshine. And yet not a wall, more like a giant slab of glistening blue glass. The bottom of this monstrous body of water seemed to be about twenty foot thick, but it tapered upwards to a thin curl of creamy white.

‘Now!’ shouted Setanta. Incredibly, he was laughing.

The wave slid under the tiny, frail boat, lifting it high in the air. For a moment they seemed to be suspended between sea and sky, like standing on a mountain top.