‘If only we could find out what happened to Fachtnan,’ she said eventually. ‘Nuala is afraid that he is dead, but somehow I don’t think so. Fachtnan was always wise, always careful. He had learning problems, but he was always full of common sense and wisdom. I can’t see him trying to tackle a murderer on his own and he wasn’t the sort of boy who would try blackmail. It’s such a puzzle. I always felt that I could rely on Fachtnan to do the right thing.’
‘He did a stupid thing that night if he followed us and that was my fault, I suppose,’ said Fiona.
‘Yes, but he didn’t try to cause a fight as one of the other boys might have done,’ argued Mara. ‘He just went along quietly and made sure that you were safe. I’d say that he followed you the whole way home and that once you were safely back at Ballinalacken he went over to Cahermacnaghten. Then, of course, came the shock of the news about Eamon’s body being found just above the flax garden . . .’
What would Fachtnan do then? she silently asked herself, unwilling to distress the girl further. Being Fachtnan, he would feel a certain responsibility, he would feel that he should perhaps have intercepted Eamon, have persuaded him to return.
But where did he go? And who did he meet? He had disappeared last Saturday and there had been no sign of him since.
‘You go up and get ready for supper,’ she said to Fiona when they arrived. ‘I’ll just look in at the babies first.’
The noise from the children’s nursery floated down the stairs towards her as she mounted up from the guardroom. She smiled as she heard Turlough’s booming voice, and then another man’s voice, a laugh from Cliona and two high-pitched shrieks of excitement from the little boys.
When she pushed open the door, both children were on their feet staggering around the room, Art stumping along in a serious, determined way, the lighter and smaller Cormac making sudden runs, taking a tumble and getting back on his feet almost instantly.
‘Look at the two of them,’ yelled Turlough in a voice that was trained to reach across battlefields. ‘Look at them! What do you think of that for walking?’
‘Walking! That’s running!’ returned Mara, just managing to catch Cormac before he collapsed at her feet. She snatched him up and covered him with kisses, lifting up Art with her other arm and holding the two children closely to her, and then smiled a welcome at Setanta O’Connor who was sitting on the window seat, looking very much at home.
‘My lord took the ball from them, because they were fighting over it, and put it on the table across the room. Art started to crawl over, but Cormac got on his feet so that he could see it better and then he started to run to keep his balance and Art was after him in a second and there they were the pair of them, walking like two-year-old children.’ Cliona was bursting with pride.
‘I’ll have to make them a hurley each,’ said Setanta, smiling at the excited face of his wife-to-be. ‘I can see it won’t be long until they are out running around the fields.’ He got to his feet, stretching his long legs. ‘I’d better be going,’ he said. ‘I was just delivering some fish to the kitchen for your supper, Brehon. You’ll be having lobster and salmon tonight, my lord.’
‘Good man,’ said Turlough, as much at ease with a humble fisherman as he was with his noble friends or kinsmen, thought Mara, feeling fond and proud of her kingly husband and wishing that they had more time to spend together. Next week, she promised herself, next week when the boys have gone on their holidays. And then she thought of the murder, of the two crimes, and set her lips. These things were only solved with a lot of hard work and plentiful allowance of luck, she knew. With a suppressed sigh she handed over the two babies to Cliona and tucked her arm into her husband’s.
‘Let’s talk for a few minutes before we have to go down to supper,’ she said quietly as they went out of the door together.
‘Bad day?’ he asked as they walked up the spiral stairs together.
‘Bad day,’ she echoed with a sigh. There wasn’t much room, but she found his bulk strangely comforting and clung to his arm as, side by side, they squeezed their way up.
‘I just don’t understand,’ she said and then paused. These stairways acted like a funnel for sound. She would say no more until they were in their bedchamber with the solid, wooden door closed between them and the rest of the world.
‘And that comes hard,’ he said with an understanding grin, but he also knew the hazard of listening ears, so he contented himself with dropping a quick kiss on the shining black loops of braided hair.
‘What has Muiris to do with all of this tangle?’ he asked as he shut the door. He didn’t wait for her answer but walked across the fireplace and lifted a flagon of hot wine from it and poured some into a goblet holding it out near to her mouth. It smelled delicious and she gulped it down eagerly.
‘What is it? What’s in it?’ she asked curiously.
‘Lemons and cloves and a bit of cinnamon powder,’ answered Turlough. ‘Brian the Spaniard, the man from the Aran Islands, sent it over today. He is looking forward to our visit, he told me. In the meantime he sent the fruits, molasses – that’s a sort of dark honey, I suppose, sort of powdery crystals – and spices to keep me warm until he can welcome me.’
‘Very cordial of your cousin from Aran,’ said Mara, sipping the hot wine. It was delicious, she thought, though perhaps slightly too sweet. She could have done with half the amount of these molasses.
‘Very cordial,’ agreed Turlough with a grin. ‘I wonder what he wants. I never trust Brian the Spaniard. No doubt, I’ll hear as soon as we land on Aran tomorrow. I wish you were coming.’
I don’t, thought Mara, but there was a wistful note in Turlough’s voice so she just smiled at him and reminded him that she had the murder of Eamon the lawyer and an almost fatal attack on Muiris to solve.
‘I wish that I could help you with that,’ said Turlough eagerly. ‘I’ve been asking Ulick and two boys whether they saw any stranger on the mountain. None of us saw anyone except Ardal O’Lochlainn – we kept a distance from him in case the dogs would frighten his flock – oh, and Donán thinks he saw a stranger over near to the flax garden, but that’s probably just Donán, he likes to make himself interesting. I wouldn’t take much notice of that if I were you. He thought it looked like your scholar Fachtnan, poor lad, but you and I know that is impossible. If Fachtnan were . . .’ He hesitated and then continued hurriedly, ‘. . . if Fachtnan were anywhere near, then he would immediately join you, not skulk at a distance on the hills.’
If Fachtnan were alive
, that’s what he was going to say, thought Mara, but there was no sense thinking along those lines so she said idly, ‘And what about Seamus MacCraith, the poet. Didn’t anyone see him?’
‘Oh, yes, of course, we all saw Seamus – striking attitudes against the skyline, thinking deep thoughts, no doubt.’ Turlough laughed with nervous relief at the turning of the conversation from the missing Fachtnan. ‘Calls himself a poet, but can’t even produce a few verses about hunting. Not the man that his father was, that’s for sure.’
‘They say the same about your son, Conor,’ said Mara quietly. ‘You’ll have to look after yourself. The clan cannot do without you. Don’t take any chances on those mountains. You don’t want to break a leg, or your neck for that matter.’ Something occurred to her and she slipped a question in quickly while he was blustering about how strong he was and how he had many long years of life still ahead of him to enjoy the company of his wife and his new son and how much more energetic he was compared to Ulick Burke who spent half the day stretched out asleep on a patch of heather. ‘And I am as sure-footed as any of the young men,’ he finished.
‘I hope you all had sticks with you on the mountainside, did you?’ she asked her question as nonchalantly as she could manage.
‘Yes, I think so,’ he said after a moment’s thought. ‘Anyway, there’s always a barrel of those iron-tipped sticks in the guardroom so anyone who broke a stick the last time could help themselves. I seem to remember telling someone to help himself – no, I can’t remember who,’ he added as he saw the question in her eyes.
So, no clues there, thought Mara. It would have been one of the guests – the guards would have armed themselves – but which one? It could have been any of them. Donán thought he saw a man; Ulick was wandering around by himself; the poet, Seamus MacCraith, was loose on the mountainside for most of the day, and during that time a strong, energetic, quick-thinking, courageous man like Muiris was assaulted and left for dead.
‘We’d better be going downstairs,’ she said with a sigh. ‘The others will be waiting for us.’
The Great Hall was looking magnificent for the last ceremonial meal of the king’s visit. Twenty-foot boards, covered with snowy-white bleached linen cloths, were set on trestles in the middle of the room. The amount of food was astonishing. Silver bowls and platters were edge to edge in the centre of the table, filled with every delicacy that the king’s cooks could devise. This was going to be a seafood evening. Already, large pink crabs had been positioned by every place and scarlet lobsters lined the centre of the table. Great bowls of green samphire, of carrageen moss and of sea-lettuce were there for those who liked their seaweeds; carrots, turnips and dried mushrooms for those who did not. As soon as the king took his place at the top of the table, Mara sat down beside him. She felt too tired and too discouraged to do her normal arranging of the guests. The few guests left would just have to sort themselves according to their inclinations.
Which they did. Ulick claimed a place beside Fiona, cold-shouldering Seamus MacCraith so adroitly that the poet almost overbalanced. Turlough called to Conor to sit beside him, assuring himself that his delicate son was not tired after the day in the open air. Donán, after a moment’s thought, took the place on the other side of Fiona leaving Mara to entertain Seamus MacCraith.
‘The salmon! The king of fish!’ exclaimed Turlough.
‘Remember the old legend about the salmon of wisdom that we were all told when we were young? Burn your thumb on the side of it and acquire the wisdom, my lord,’ said Ulick languidly. ‘Or perhaps we will allow our young poet to be the one to do that. He is more in need of wisdom than you and I, my lord. We have acquired wisdom on the battlefield of life.’
Seamus MacCraith gave him a contemptuous look and turned his attention to Mara who asked him whether he had a fruitful day.
‘Alas, no,’ he shook his head. ‘There is a certain monotony about the Aillwee Mountain. Just white everywhere. It lacks the sculptural sweep of Mullaghmore Mountain. I don’t find it inspiring.’
Mara gazed at him. Was it possible that any man could be so completely self-centred? ‘I don’t think that it was a monotonous week on the Aillwee Mountain,’ she said drily. ‘You do realize that one man has been killed there and another man almost killed – he may well die tonight.’
‘Oh, that.’ He waved his hand dismissively in the air. ‘I spoke only of the scenery.’
‘I’m glad to have an opportunity to speak to you,’ said Mara and then paused while a portion of salmon was ladled on to her plate and next on to Seamus’s. It was not ideal to be cross-questioning a witness at a dinner table, but Ulick and Turlough were shouting witticisms at each other across the table and little could be heard above the two battle-trained voices.
‘I wanted to ask you if you saw anyone that you didn’t know on the mountainside.’
He had seen several but by the time Mara had elicited, word by painful word, some vague descriptions of what these, uninteresting to a poet, strangers looked like, she decided that they were probably Ardal O’Lochlainn and his shepherds.
‘And you saw no one else, outside of the flax garden, I mean.’ She hesitated, unwilling to put words into his mouth but judging by his abstracted air he had already lost all interest in the subject so eventually she was forced to ask him straight out whether he had seen a woman anywhere near to the flax garden or to the quarry.
‘I saw Fiona, of course. I could see the sun shining on her hair.’ He gazed fervently across the table at Fiona’s lovely face.
‘And me,’ suggested Mara.
He looked at her with astonishment as if he had only just noticed her. ‘Oh, and you, of course,’ he said hastily and his eyes went back to Fiona, who had thrown her head back and was laughing heartily at one of Ulick’s jokes.
‘Red lips . . .’ he murmured.
‘Have some more wine,’ said Mara signalling to an attendant to fill the glass. ‘Now, tell me exactly how you came to discover the body of Muiris.’
He had little to tell. He had been wandering around aimlessly, getting tired of the monotony of sun on white stone, had wandered into the quarry in search of something that might look different or might inspire him. He hadn’t really noticed anything else, but the buzzing of flies had attracted him towards the corpse, as he put it, and Mara did not contradict him – for all she knew Muiris might by now be dead. She would not trouble the family tonight, but would send a messenger tomorrow morning to find out how he did and whether Nuala needed any supplies.
Seamus MacCraith had turned a delicate shade of pale yellow at the thought of the corpse and the flies buzzing in the blackened blood, so she decided to get rid of him. He had pushed away his platter of uneaten salmon and the servants were busy clearing off the first course and replacing it with clean plates and new dishes. She lifted a finger and beckoned to Turlough’s son-in-law, Donán O’Kennedy.
‘You go and entertain Fiona with some young company,’ she said kindly to the poet. ‘I want to have a word with Donán.’
Ulick gave her a grin and she knew that he had overheard, but she didn’t care. If it were not for Turlough’s sake Ulick would not receive any invitations from her, though she supposed that from now on, as godfather, he would have to be included in Cormac’s birthday celebrations. In any case, he was three times Fiona’s age and should have more sense than to be flirting so outrageously with her.
‘Did you have a good day?’ she asked Donán once he had taken his place beside her. He considered the matter in his pompous way and she ate some bread to conceal her impatience. Why on earth had Turlough picked out this dull young man to be a husband to his daughter?