Deed of Murder (3 page)

‘Aidan woke me up and said that Fachtnan had gone, and so was his horse.’ Moylan had an amused look on his face.

‘And Eamon was missing too,’ mused Mara.

‘That’s right. As soon as I got the sleep out of my eyes, I saw he wasn’t there on the other side of the tent. And when we checked the stables we saw that Fiona’s pony was gone as well as their horses.’

‘Perhaps they’ve just gone for an early morning ride,’ said Mara. But it was no longer that early. And Brigid had confirmed that the trio had not visited the kitchen. They would be hungry now. And why Fachtnan? Surely he would be an unwelcome third if Eamon and Fiona had decided on an early morning ride. While she was pondering over this, Brigid came back. She shook her head as she came in.

‘Did she take anything with her?’ Mara began to get worried. Surely Fiona, with all the bright future ahead of her as a lawyer, even a Brehon, would not have done something silly like eloping with Eamon? And where did Fachtnan fit into the picture? He was hopelessly in love with Fiona, of course, but she seemed to be just sisterly towards him.

‘Not a thing – went in what she stood up in!’ said Brigid emphatically.

‘Eamon left his clothes, too – but he did take one of his satchels,’ said Moylan.

One of his satchels, and no clothes – but why take a satchel? Mara was preoccupied, trying to think back to the evening but could not recollect seeing any of the three after midnight.

‘I’m sure that I would have woken up if Eamon came in and Aidan says the same about Fachtnan. I’d say that they went off at midnight,’ said Moylan breaking into her thoughts.

‘What a stupid thing to do,’ scolded Brigid. ‘Dangerous, too!’

‘They’d have been quite safe riding by night – as bright as day it was. I was saying that to Aidan when we went back to the tents.’ Moylan still sounded amused. It was normally Aidan and he who were being scolded for doing stupid things. It was a change for him to have his seniors in trouble. ‘Aidan called out to me that Fachtnan had not come back from the castle and when I looked into my tent I could see that Eamon wasn’t there either. I was a bit surprised, because I hadn’t seen either of them for quite a time – nor Fiona, either.’

Nor did I, thought Mara. She had been concerned about Fiona only because she was a girl, and a beautiful girl, and she was responsible to her father for her welfare. But when she searched back into her mind she realized that she had seen neither of the boys after midnight, either.

But were the three young people from Cahermacnaghten law school, Eamon, Fachtnan and Fiona, present? Mara scanned her memory, hoping that one, at least, of the faces would appear.

Or had they all stolen away by then?

Brigid waited until the boys had gone back out to join some of the men-at-arms at a spot of sword fighting practice before voicing her opinion. She had been Mara’s nurse after the death of the small child’s mother and she had brought her up, adored her, scolded her, thought she was the cleverest, prettiest girl in the whole of Ireland while relentlessly enforcing good behaviour and hard work. Since Mara had qualified and taken on the whole business of the law school and, later, of the position of Brehon, or lawgiver, law-enforcer, over the whole kingdom of the Burren, Brigid had always been at her side, always working faster than a woman of half her age could do. Mara sometimes wondered what she would have done, how she could have possibly managed all of her affairs without Brigid and her husband Cumhal.

‘There’s never been a day’s peace in Cahermacnaghten since that Eamon arrived,’ Brigid was saying. ‘It’s a pity that you ever said “yes” to him, Brehon. None of our lads like him.’

‘Well, they have to get used to new scholars,’ pointed out Mara. ‘After all, Enda left last summer and I haven’t replaced him yet.’

‘Scholars are no problem,’ said Brigid. ‘Even Fiona is not a problem – a bit of a flirt, and she does make the boys silly, but she fits in. She’s not a problem in the way that Eamon is a problem.’

‘Well, he’ll be gone soon,’ began Mara, but Brigid interrupted her.

‘I think that he was just making use of you, Brehon, mark my words. He’s too sure of himself. You should have heard him about that auction up in the flax garden. “I’d have got a better price for it,” he says – just as though he knew it all. “I’d have set a new auction going and got the two of them bidding against each other. That’s what I would have done and O’Brien of Arra would have rewarded me with a nice piece of silver.” And then he turns and tries to give Fiona a squeeze and I could see that Fachtnan was full of black anger. I watched him, Brehon. He had his two fists clenched up as though for two pins he would have hit Eamon in the mouth.’

‘I’ll keep an eye on them all,’ promised Mara. She wished that Brigid had not told her all of this. It deepened her worries.

‘So you think that Fachtnan went off because he could not bear the situation between Fiona and Eamon?’ The question was out before Mara almost knew that she had formed it. But she regretted asking it when she saw the worried look on Brigid’s face. It enhanced her own fears.

‘I don’t know what to think, Brehon. I’ll tell you that without a word of a lie,’ said Brigid eventually. ‘All I know is that Eamon makes trouble wherever he goes. One of these days, mark my words, Fachtnan will not put up with it any longer. And then Master Eamon had better look out for himself.’

Three

Exodus 21:24

Thou shalt give life for life, tooth for tooth

Bretha Crólige

(Laws on Bloodletting)

‘
E
amon! Dead! He can’t be.’ Mara, conscious of the stupidity of her words, stared at Cumhal, her farm manager – a man who never opened his mouth before he was sure of his facts.

And yet it did seem impossible that all that liveliness, all that burning ambition, that handsome face, that clever brain, that it all should be dead.

‘That’s right,’ he nodded. ‘Muiris Hynes came to fetch me. He was the one that found the body. There it was lying in the flax garden – not a soul near it. And the place full of O’Halloran workers – none of them seeing a thing!’

‘Anything with him?’ asked Mara.

‘Just an empty satchel lying beside the body.’

‘Empty!’ she echoed. Why had Eamon taken an empty satchel with him?

‘It was open,’ said Cumhal watching her face. ‘Looked like someone might have taken something out of it . . .’

‘What about his horse?’ she asked.

‘Fachtnan is seeing to it, has taken it back to the stable at Cahermacnaghten. The poor beast had broken the skin on his knees.’

‘Fachtnan,’ echoed Mara. ‘But, but where did he come from? Is he back?’

Cumhal looked at her in a surprised way. ‘He’s been at the law school all day, Brehon. He’s been sitting in the schoolhouse studying. I’m not sure when he came back from Ballinalacken, from the castle.’

‘I see.’ But I don’t see, thought Mara. I had imagined that he was with Eamon. ‘And Fiona?’ she asked. Perhaps a sudden urge to study had come over both of her senior scholars.

‘Haven’t seen her,’ said Cumhal. ‘Fachtnan was the only one there.’ A man of few words, he didn’t question her, just stood waiting for orders.

‘Where is the body now?’ asked Mara.

‘Where it was found, Brehon,’ replied Cumhal. ‘Up in the flax garden. Muiris said he’d stay with it until I came back. I’ve got a couple of men waiting with a cart and a litter, but I wanted to tell you first.’

Mara reflected. The less said the better at the moment. Her guests were all on a hunting party up in the Aillwee Mountain. The weather was fine so they would probably spend a few vigorous hours pursuing wolves in the centre of the high Burren before returning for their evening meal to Ballinalacken Castle. She looked around and saw Nessa, Brigid’s helper in the kitchen back at the law school and brought here to supplement the efforts of the castle staff for this festive weekend. She beckoned to her.

‘Nessa,’ she said quietly, ‘would you just give a message to Brigid. Ask her to tell my lord, the king, if he returns before I do, that I have to go across to the Burren on important business.’

‘Yes, Brehon . . .’

Mara had already begun to turn away when she realized that Nessa was still standing, unmoving, her mouth slightly open and her vacant pale-blue eyes troubled.

‘What’s the matter, Nessa?’ she asked, trying to curb her impatience. Nessa was not too bright and liable to lose the first few wits that she possessed if you rushed her.

‘Brigid said to tell you, Brehon, that Fiona is asleep in her chamber.’ Nessa looked relieved that she had managed to deliver her message.

‘Thank you, Nessa,’ said Mara. How strange, she thought. Three of her scholars were missing this morning – and all three horses were gone as well, but now two of them were back – and presumably their horses, but the third was lying dead in a lonely valley at the side of a mountain in the Burren.

‘Well, don’t disturb her,’ she said aloud. ‘But tell my other scholars, Moylan, Aidan, Hugh and Shane, to saddle their horses and to come with me. And Nuala, too.’ Nuala was by now a more than competent physician. She would be able to estimate when death had occurred and . . .

‘What happened to him?’ she asked aloud as Nessa went running back towards the castle kitchen.

‘I couldn’t tell for sure, Brehon,’ said Cumhal in his usual reserved manner. This meant, of course, that he had a good idea, but she didn’t press him. Soon enough she would come face to face with the body of Eamon and then she would have to make up her mind. Was it an unfortunate accident – or something more serious?

Nuala was looking well, thought Mara, as she briefly told her the facts. She had always been tall for her age, but now, at only fifteen, she looked at least seventeen. The year at Thomond, where she had been working alongside the royal physician, Donough O’Hickey, a man whose writings were famous even in far-flung places such as Italy, had done Nuala an immense amount of good. Intelligent and knowledgeable she had always been, but now she was poised and confident. She said nothing; but unlike the four boys she did not appear worried or apprehensive, just rode along, busy with her own thoughts.

The air was crisp and cool as they turned to ride up the road that led up towards the flax garden. The road had been carefully made for laden carts as well as horses and it wound a leisurely way around and in between the sharply pointed hills of glittering limestone, the ditches on either side of the road filled with primroses and purple violets. The wind was from the north and it blew strongly, bringing a fine dust of bitter-tasting limestone down from the mountain with it.

They passed the flax workers’ settlement of small, circular, stone huts. Smoke drifted from some of these and a few curious elderly women, babies in arms, came out and then returned to their huts. The news had not reached them yet, surmised Mara, as she guided her horse to the centre of the track for the last steep climb.

The small hanging valley was sheltered from the wind. To Mara’s surprise only one figure stood near to the body – she had expected a crowd. An unceasing humming noise came from the spinning wheel shed and the rattle of looms from the weaving shed. Several men were dunking large hanks of woven flax into the dye tubs and draping them over a horizontal pole to dry. Others were in the scutching sheds, vigorously banging the plants with wooden mallets and then combing the flax fibres free from the pieces of stem which still clung to them. The O’Halloran clan were wasting no time. Every last ounce of the crop of 1510 had to be turned into linen before May Day – after that date all would belong to Muiris O’Hynes.

‘It’s here,’ said Cumhal.

The large field where the flax grew was completely enclosed by very thin flagstones, each as tall as a man. They had been hewn – perhaps thousands of years ago – from the limestone rock that surrounded the valley. Inside that sheltered space the flax grew tall, protected from the winds and exposed to the sunlight, its rays pouring heat straight down in the midday and in the early morning and late evening bouncing off the dazzling white of the limestone flags.

A pathway, just wide enough for a small cart, lay between the flagstones and the mountainside, and it was there that Eamon lay.

No flax grew here but fine, delicate grasses had sprung up, growing through the limestone. Scattered through the grass were thousands of tiny daffodils, turning their trumpets towards the sun’s warmth. Near to the pond the kingcups shone like small brass plates. The grass seemed to have grown inches since she had been here on the day of the auction, less than a week ago, and the tiny valley was like a symphony of green and yellow, the colours blending subtly against the dazzling white of the background.

Mara did not linger to look at the flowers. She and her companions tied their horses and ponies to the long bar outside it and then walked forward in silence. Her whole attention was on the figure stretched out on the hard, stony ground at the edge of the valley. She knelt beside him filled with a passionate anger – whatever few foibles and conceits he had, he did not deserve this.

The four young boys knelt too, awkwardly, overawed by death in one who, only a few days ago, had laughed and teased, worked and played alongside them.

Nuala, though, did not kneel. She stood very upright, looking all around her, at the hill above the pathway, at the tumbled stones on the ground amongst the grasses. After a long, appraising glance around, and upwards at the mountainside, she knelt beside the body and touched it with sure, unfaltering hands.

After a moment she looked up at Cumhal. ‘Broken his neck?’ she queried with a lift of her dark eyebrows.

‘That’s what I thought.’ Cumhal nodded and Mara drew in a breath of relief. This was just a tragic accident. The young man had probably been thrown from his horse, had tumbled down the steep slope of the stony hill, had fallen awkwardly and then broken his neck. Looking upwards she could see the traces of a narrow pathway high above their heads. She was about to say something when she noticed Cumhal’s eyes were still resting on Nuala – almost as though he expected her to say something else.