Whispers of the Dead (18 page)

The hostel keeper smiled for the first time, more a motion of his facial muscles than indicative of any feeling.

“It is true that Tanaí worked here as a gardener. He was an intelligent man. He had been an apothecary and herbalist. One day he mixed a wrong prescription and one of his patients died. He answered before the Brehons for manslaughter and was fined. The Brehons said it was an accident, and there was no guilt of intent
involved—only the guilt of error. But Tanaí was conscientious and, although he could have continued to practice as a herbalist, he withdrew here to the abbey and did penance by returning to study the plants and herbs, living a life of penury and self-sacrifice.”

Fidelma glanced at Liag cynically.

“Until he coveted the reliquary; for what you are telling me is that he was intelligent enough to know its real value. Maybe he thought he would find someone who would endanger their immortal soul for possession of it?”

Brother Liag sighed deeply.

“That is what everyone has thought these last twenty years.”

“You sound as though you still do not agree?” she commented quickly.

Brother Liag was hesitant, and then he sighed reflectively: “The point that I was making is that he was intelligent enough to know that he could never sell the reliquary, if that was his motive. There are some questions to which I have never found satisfactory answers. Tanaí had removed himself to the monastery with his wife and young daughter because he felt he must do penance for a mistake. That strikes me as the action of a man of moral principle. He worked in the abbey gardens in a position of trust for five years. Never had there been a whisper of anyone’s distrusting him. He could have been appointed apothecary of the abbey for the old abbot—he died many years ago now—who had several times urged him to take the position, saying that he had paid for his mistake more than enough.

“Why did he have such a sudden mental aberration? For over five years he was in a position in which he could have stolen the reliquary or, indeed, any one of the several treasures of the abbey. Why did he attempt the theft at that point? And to kill Una! He was never a violent man, in spite of the mistake that led to the manslaughter charge. The killing of poor Sister Una was so out of character.”

“What actually connected him with the attempted theft in the first place?” Fidelma asked. “The abbot said that he fled without the reliquary.”

Brother Liag inclined his head.

“The reliquary was untouched. Sister Una had disturbed the thief before he could touch it, and she was killed while trying to raise the alarm.”

“Where was Tanaí caught?”

“Trying to enter the abbot’s rooms.” Brother Liag shot her a keen glance. “The community caught up with him at the entrance and dragged him to the nearest tree. God forgive all of us. But Sister Una was so beloved by all of the community that common sense was displaced by rage.”

“The abbot’s rooms? That is a strange place for a man to run to when he has apparently just committed murder,” murmured Fidelma.

“A question that was raised afterward. Abbot Ogán, who was one of the community, a young brother at the time, pointed out that Tanaí must have known that he would be caught and was trying to throw himself on the old abbot’s mercy and seek sanctuary.”

“I suppose that it is plausible,” Fidelma conceded. “What happened to Tanaí’s family?”

“His wife died of shock soon after, and his young daughter was raised by the Sisters of the abbey out of charity.”

Fidelma was perplexed.

“There is something here that I do not understand. If Tanaí was found at the abbot’s rooms, if the only witness was killed and the reliquary had not been touched, and there was no eyewitness, what was there to link Tanaí with the crime? Indeed, how do you know that theft was even the motive for the murder?”

Brother Liag shrugged.

“What else could have been the motive for killing poor Sister Una? Anyway, everyone was crying that it was Tanaí who did the
deed and that he had been seen running from the chapel. I presumed that this was without question since everyone was shouting it.”

“How much time had passed between the time the crime was committed and when Tanaí was found?”

Brother Liag shifted his weight as he thought over the matter, trying to stretch his memory back two decades.

“I can’t really recall. I know it was some amount of time.”

“An hour?”

“No, well under an hour.”

“A few minutes?”

“More than that. Perhaps fifteen minutes.”

“So who identified Tanaí as the culprit?”

Brother Liag gestured helplessly.

“But everyone was shouting that… I saw Brother Ogán, the abbot as he now is. In fact, it was Ogán who was foremost in the hue and cry; but there was Brother Librén, the
rechtaire
. . . the steward of the abbey. Everyone was shouting and looking for Tanaí… I have no idea who identified him first.”

“I see,” Fidelma replied with a sigh. “Why do you now have doubts of Tanaí’s guilt?”

Brother Liag appeared slightly uncomfortable.

“I know that his community has his death on its conscience because he was unjustly killed by the anger of the mob and not by legal process. That is enough to lay the burden of guilt on us. There is always doubt if a man has not had a proper chance to defend himself.”

Fidelma thought for a moment.

“Well, on the facts as you relate them, you have a right to be suspicious of the guilt of Tanaí. Had I been judging him at the time, I would have acquitted him on grounds that there was insufficient evidence. Unless other witnesses could have been produced. However, there is little one can do after twenty years.”

Brother Liag gave a troubled sigh.

“I know. But it is frightening to consider that if Tanaí was not guilty, then all this time the real murderer of Sister Una has dwelt within these walls nursing this dark secret.”

“We all live cheek by jowl with people who nurse dark secrets,” Fidelma pointed out. “Now, perhaps you’ll show me to my room?”

After the evening Angelus bell and a frugal meal in the refectory of the abbey, Fidelma found herself almost automatically making her way to the chapel to once again examine the marble statuette of Sister Una. She disliked unsolved mysteries; they kept nagging at her mind until she had made some resolution of the problem. The face of Sister Una, alive in the marble, seemed to be pleading, as if demanding a resolution to this now-ancient murder.

Fidelma was standing before the statuette when, for the second time, a voice interrupted her meditation.

“He didn’t do it, you know.”

The voice was a soft feminine one. Fidelma quickly glanced around and saw a religieuse standing nearby. She was, so far as Fidelma could place her, somewhere in her thirties. The face could have been attractive, but even in the softening candlelight it seemed bitter and careworn.

“To whom do you refer?” Fidelma asked.

“To Tanaí, my father. My name is Muiríol.”

Fidelma turned to her and examined the woman carefully.

“So you are the daughter of the gardener who was hanged for the killing of Sister Una.” It was a statement rather than a question.

“Unjustly so, for, as I say, he did not do it.”

“How can you be so sure?”

“Because I was here at the time and he was my father.”

“Daughters are not the best witnesses to their father’s deeds. I would need more than a statement of belief. You were surely young at that time?”

“I was twelve years old. Do you think that day is not impressed
on my mind? I was with him in the abbey gardens, for I used to often play there. I remember seeing Sister Una passing to the chapel. She greeted us and asked my father a question about his work. Then she passed on into the chapel.”

Muiríol paused and swallowed slightly. Her dark eyes never left Fidelma’s face. There was a haunted look in them as if again seeing the scene—a vivid scene that appeared to torment her.

“Go on,” Fidelma encouraged softly.

“A few minutes after she passed into the chapel, there came a scream. My father told me to remain where I was and ran to the chapel. He disappeared inside. Others of the community had heard the scream, and some came into the garden to inquire what it portended. There came shouting from the chapel, a man’s voice was raised.”

“Was it your father’s voice?”

“I did not think so at the time. But time often confuses some details.”

“Your memory appears clear enough.”

“It is the truth, I tell you,” she replied defensively.

“What happened then?”

“I saw my father emerge from the chapel. A voice was crying—‘Tanaí has murdered Una!’—or words to that effect. I saw my father running. Later I realized that he was running to the abbot’s rooms in fear for his life. But there was an outcry, and the people were angry. I did not know what had happened. I was taken to our rooms by one of the religieuse and remained there until my mother, prostrate with grief, was carried inside. She had seen my father being…” Her voice caught and she paused a second before continuing. “She had seen my father being lynched outside the abbot’s rooms. She never recovered and died soon afterward.”

There was a silence between them for a while.

“From what you tell me, your father could not have killed Una,” Fidelma finally observed. “Did you never tell your story?”

Muiríol nodded.

“I told it to the old abbot, but I was not believed.”

“But did you tell it to the Brehon who investigated the matter?”

“The matter was kept secret within the abbey for years until the old abbot died. The abbot felt guilty that the lynching had taken place with members of the community involved, and he wished to conceal it. So it was not reported to the Brehons. That was why the religious here were kind to me and raised me as one of the community. After the old abbot had died, no one bothered about the story of Una and my father.”

“Knowing this, why did you remain in the abbey?”

The girl shrugged.

“One day, so I hoped, I would find the guilty one. Someone in this abbey killed Sister Una and was also responsible for my father’s death.”

“So you wished your father’s name to be cleared?”

Muiríol grimaced.

“That was my original purpose. Twenty years have passed. Is anyone still interested?”

“Justice is always interested in justice.”

“Isn’t there a saying that there is little difference between justice and injustice?”

“If I believed that I would not be an advocate of the courts,” Fidelma returned.

Fidelma was irritated. She could not sleep. Her mind was filled with the thoughts of young Sister Una’s death. She turned and twisted for an age, but sleep would not come to her. She sat up and judged it was long past midnight.

Finally, she rose from her bed, put on her robe, and decided to go down to the abbey gardens to walk in the cool of the summer night. The only way to the garden that she knew of led through the chapel.

She heard the sound almost immediately as she opened the door into the chapel—a low groaning sound followed by a thwack as if of leather on a soft substance. The groan rose in a new note of pain.

Then she heard a voice:
“Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa!”

Her eyes narrowed at the familiarity of the masculine voice. She peered into the gloom to seek out the penitent.

A figure was kneeling before the marble statuette of Sister Una, head almost to the ground. The back was bare where the robe was stripped down to the waist. In one hand was a broad leather belt that, every so often, the figure would strike his back with, drawing blood, as she saw by the candlelight. Then the groan would issue a second or so after the impact of the leather on the flesh. The words of contrition were mumbled in Latin.

Fidelma strode forward.

“Explain this, Abbot Ogán!” she demanded coldly.

The abbot froze for a moment and then slowly straightened himself up, still kneeling on the chapel floor.

“This is a private penitence,” he replied harshly, trying to summon anger to disguise his shock at being thus discovered. “You have no right to be here.”

“On the contrary. As a
dálaigh
of the Brehon courts, no doors are barred to me, Abbot Ogán, especially when it is deemed that a crime has been committed.”

The abbot rose from his knees, pulling his robe around his shoulders. Fidelma had noticed that his back was scarred. It was of no concern to her that the abbot practiced flagellation: many mystics of the Church did, although she found such practices distasteful in the extreme. The scars, obvious even in the candlelight, indicated that the abbot had practiced the self-abuse for many years.

Ogán was defensive before her hard scrutiny.

“What crime?” he blustered.

With a slight forward motion of her head, Fidelma indicated the statuette of Sister Una.

“You seem to be expressing some guilt for her death. Were you guilty of it?”

The last sentence was suddenly sharp.

Abbot Ogán blinked rapidly at the tone.

“I was responsible, for had I been in the chapel at that time she would not have been alone to confront Tanaí.”

Fidelma’s brows came together.

“I do not follow.”

“It was my task on the day she was killed to clean the chapel. I had delayed my task out of simple sloth and indolence.”

“I see. So you were not here when you should have been. If you feel guilt then that is within you. So when did you become involved in leading the hue and cry after Tanaí?”

A frown passed the abbot’s face.

“Who said I did?” he asked cautiously.

“Are you saying that you did not?”

“I… I came on the crowd as he escaped across the garden. Everyone was shouting. They caught and hanged Tanaí from the tree outside the old abbot’s quarters. That was when I first knew about her death and realized my guilt, for if I had been here…”

“An ‘if’ will empty the oceans,” Fidelma snapped. “So you did not witness the event? You did not identify Tanaí as the murderer and would-be thief?”

Abbot Ogán shook his head.

“Everyone was proclaiming that Tanaí was the guilty one.”