Smoke in the Wind

 
 
 

 
Smoke In The Wind

 

 
PETER TREMAYNE

 
 
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Copyright © 2001 Peter Tremayne

 

 
The right of Peter Tremayne to be identified as the Author of the Work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

 

 
Apart from any use permitted under UK copyright law, this publication may only be reproduced, stored, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means, with prior permission in writing ot the publishers or, in the case of reprographie production, in accordance with the terms of licences issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency.

 

 
First published as an Ebook by Headline Publishing Group in 2010

 

 
All characters in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

 

eISBN : 978 0 7553 7268 3

 

 
This Ebook produced by Jouve Digitalisation des Informations

 

 
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Table of Contents

 

 

 

Peter Tremayne is the fiction pseudonym of a well-known authority on the ancient Celts, who utilises his knowledge of the Brehon law system and seventh-century Irish society to create a new concept in detective fiction.

Peter Tremayne’s nine previous Sister Fidelma novels, most recently
The Monk who Vanished
,
Act of Mercy
and
Our Lady of Darkness
, are also available from Headline, as is a Sister Fidelma short story collection,
Hemlock at Vespers
.

‘The background detail is brilliantly defined . . . Wonderfully evocative’
The Times

‘The Sister Fidelma books give the readers a rattling good yarn. But more than that, they bring vividly and viscerally to life the fascinating lost world of the Celtic Irish. I put down
The Spider’s Web
with a sense of satisfaction at a good story well told, but also speculating on what modern life might have been like had that civilisation survived’ Ronan Bennett

‘An Ellis Peter competitor . . . the background detail is marvellous’
Evening Standard

‘A brilliant and beguiling heroine. Immensely appealing’
Publishers Weekly

‘A treasure trove of small gems for historical mystery fans’
Booklist

To discover more about the world of Sister Fidelma, visit her own website at
www.sisterfidelma.com

For David R. Wooton of Arkansas, USA

 

webmaster of the Sister Fidelma Mysteries -
Official Website
www.sisterfidelma.com

 

with gratitude for your support and encouragement

God arises and his enemies are scattered; those who hate him flee before him, driven away like smoke in the wind . . .

Psalm 68

The Sister Fidelma mysteries are set mainly in Ireland during the mid-seventh century AD.

This story, however, takes place while Fidelma and her companion in adventure, the Saxon Brother Eadulf, are en route to Canterbury, the primacy of the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms. They have been forced ashore by a storm in the kingdom of Dyfed, in the south-west of what is now modern Wales.

Sister Fidelma is not simply a religieuse, a former member of the community of St Brigid of Kildare. She is also a qualified
dálaigh
, or advocate of the ancient law courts of Ireland. As this background will not be familiar to many readers, my Historical Note is designed to provide a few essential points of reference to enable the stories to be better appreciated.

The Ireland of Fidelma’s day consisted of five main provincial kingdoms; indeed, the modern Irish word for a province is still
cúige
, literally ‘a fifth’. Four provincial kings - of Ulaidh (Ulster), of Connacht, of Muman (Munster) and of Laigin (Leinster) - gave their qualified allegiance to the Ard Rí or High King, who ruled from Tara, in the ‘royal’ fifth province of Midhe (Meath), which means the ‘middle province’. Even among the provincial kingdoms, there was a decentralisation of power to petty-kingdoms and clan territories.

But in this story we also encounter the emergent Welsh kingdoms, still in a state of flux, as the original Britons, whom the Saxons called
Welisc
(foreigners), were pushed westward from the territories they had occupied for nearly fifteen hundred years by the invading Jutes, Angles and Saxons. In Fidelma’s day, Devon (Dumnonia) and Cornwall (Curnow) were still Celtic, as was Cumberland (Rheged). North Wales was divided between two main kingdoms, Gwynedd and Powys; but south Wales was divided between eight smaller kingdoms of which Dyfed and Ceredigion were in conflict over who should be dominant.

Dyfed, the home of the famous abbey of the patron saint of Wales, St David (Dewi Sant), had actually been settled by the Irish of the Dési. Its early kings bore Irish names. The Welsh King Lists show that the famous Hywel Dda (AD 905-950) descended from King Eochaid of Dyfed who ruled c. AD 400. Hywel Dda was arguably the greatest of Welsh kings whose authority extended over all Wales. It was Hywel Dda who called a great conference in Dyfed which lasted for six weeks during which representatives of all the territories of Wales, under the chairmanship of a lawyer called Blegywryd, set forth the laws of the country in their first known codified form. These law books were popularly known as ‘The Laws of Hywel Dda’. However, they represented an ancient legal tradition among the Celtic peoples so that comparisons between the Brehon Laws of Ireland and the Laws of Hywel Dda can clearly be made.

It was this common legal tradition that catches the interest of Fidelma in the current story.

However, we should remind ourselves of Fidelma’s own culture, from which she views this kingdom of Dyfed, and discover how she could be an advocate of her country’s legal system.

The law of primogeniture, the inheritance by the eldest son or daughter, was an alien concept in Ireland. Kingship, from the lowliest clan chieftain to the High King, was only partially hereditary and mainly electoral. Each ruler had to prove himself or herself worthy of office and was elected by the
derbhfine
of their family - a minimum of three generations from a common ancestor gathered in conclave. If a ruler did not pursue the commonwealth of the people, they were impeached and removed from office. Therefore the monarchical system of ancient Ireland had more in common with a modern-day republic than with the feudal monarchies which had developed in medieval Europe.

Ireland, in the seventh century AD, was governed by a system of sophisticated laws called the Laws of the Fénechus, or land-tillers, which became more popularly known as the Brehon Laws, deriving from the word
breitheamh
- a judge. Tradition has it that these laws were first gathered in 714 BC by order of the High King, Ollamh Fódhla. Over a thousand years later, in AD 438, the High King, Laoghaire, appointed a commission of nine learned people to study, revise and commit the laws to the new writing in Latin characters. One of those serving on the commission was Patrick, eventually to become patron saint of Ireland. After three years, the commission produced a written text of the laws which is the first known codification.

It will be seen that the Welsh law system was not codified, so far as is known, for another five hundred years but, nevertheless, like the Irish system, it was the result of a sophisticated oral tradition or of a manuscript codification long since lost. Certainly, influences by the Roman occupation and then by contact with the Roman Church coloured the Welsh law. Yet still the vibrant Celtic origin shows through.

The first complete surviving texts of the ancient laws of Ireland are preserved in an eleventh-century manuscript book in the Royal Irish Academy, Dublin. It was not until the seventeenth century that the English colonial administration in Ireland finally suppressed the use of the Brehon law system. To even possess a copy of the Irish law books was punishable often by death or transportation.

Welsh law survived until the Acts annexing Wales into England which also enforced English language, law and custom there in 1536 and 1542. Some eighty law manuscripts in Welsh and Latin survive, mainly from the twelfth to sixteenth centuries.

In Ireland, the law system was not static, and every three years at the Féis Temhrach (Festival of Tara) the lawyers and administrators gathered to consider and revise the laws in the light of a changing society and its needs.

Under these laws, women occupied a unique place. The Irish laws gave more rights and protection to women than any other Western law code at that time or until recent times. Women could, and did, aspire to all offices and professions as co-equals with men. They could command their people in battle as warriors, be political leaders, local magistrates, poets, artisans, physicians, lawyers and judges. We know the names of many female judges of Fidelma’s period - Bríg Briugaid, Áine Ingine Iugaire and Darí among others. Darí, for example, was not only a judge but the author of a noted law text written in the sixth century AD.

Women were protected by law against sexual harassment, against discrimination, against rape. They had the right of divorce on equal terms from their husbands, with equitable separation laws, and could demand part of their husband’s property as a divorce settlement; they had the right of inheritance of personal property and the right of sickness benefits when ill or hospitalised. Ancient Ireland had Europe’s oldest recorded system of hospitals. Seen from today’s perspective, the Brehon Laws seemed to enshrine an almost ideal society.

This background, and its strong contrast to Ireland’s neighbours, should be understood in order to appreciate Fidelma’s role in these stories.

Fidelma went to study law at the bardic school of the Brehon Morann of Tara and, after eight years of study, she obtained the degree of
anruth
, only one degree below the highest offered in either bardic or ecclesiastical universities in ancient Ireland. The highest degree was
ollamh
, which is still the modern Irish word for a professor. Fidelma’s studies were in both the criminal code of the
Senechus Mór
and the civil code of
Leabhar Acaill
. Thereby, she became a
dálaigh
or advocate of the law courts.

Her main role could be compared to a modern Scottish sheriff-substitute whose job is to gather and assess the evidence, independent of the police, to see if there is a case to be answered. The modern French
juge d’instruction
fulfils a similar role. However, sometimes Fidelma was faced with the task of prosecuting in the courts or defending or even rendering judgments in minor cases when a Brehon was not available.

In those days, most of the professional or intellectual classes were members of the new Christian religious houses, just as, in previous centuries, all members of the professions and intellectuals had been Druids. Fidelma became a member of the religious community of Kildare, founded in the late fifth century by St Brigid. But by the time the action in this story takes place, Fidelma has left Kildare in disillusionment. The reason why may be found in the title story of the Fidelma short story collection
Hemlock at Vespers
.

While the seventh century AD was considered part of the European Dark Ages, for Ireland it was a period of Golden Enlightenment. Students from every corner of Europe flocked to the Irish universities to receive their education, including the sons of many of the Anglo-Saxon kings. At the great ecclesiastical university of Durrow at this time, it is recorded that no fewer than eighteen different nations were represented among the students. At the same time, Irish male and female missionaries were setting out to return a pagan Europe to Christianity, establishing churches, monasteries, and centres of learning throughout Europe as far east as Kiev, in the Ukraine, as far north as the Faroes, and as far south as Taranto, in southern Italy. Ireland was a byword for literacy and learning.