‘Set up another trestle table for the bodyguards over there by the wall so that they can be near to the king and can keep checking the road,’ she said after a moment’s thought. ‘The
gallóglaich
could put up their tents around the law school first and then check the road while the bodyguards eat.’ The bodyguards would be just out of earshot over there next to the wall, but their presence would inhibit any lovemaking and would reassure Cumhal and Brigid.
‘So what’s the trouble with the O’Kellys, then?’ she asked when she returned to the king. She sat down beside him on the bench and did not draw back when he moved a little closer. There was no point in pretending that she did not take pleasure from his affection for her. She did not stir, either, when Cumhal arrived a few minutes later with a small stool as well as the trestle table. When he came back with the stiff bleached linen cloth and the flagon of wine he removed the unused stool without comment. She allowed the corners of her mouth to twitch slightly.
‘Tell Brigid we are ready when she is,’ she said, calmly pouring some more wine into her cup and pushing the flagon towards the king.
‘These are nice,’ said the king, holding up the slender goblet.
‘Cumhal carved them from the apple tree that used to stand over there by the gable end of the house,’ she said. ‘I used to eat apples from that tree when I was a child and it’s nice to have these cups as a memory of it. We should be using my Venetian wine glasses in your honour, but I am terrified of dropping one or having the breeze tip one over out here in the garden.’
‘I prefer these,’ said Turlough. ‘Good, honest Irish-made wine cups – we are having too much contact with the foreign places now, especially England. Look at Galway – all English dress, English laws! Do you know that they even have a law there that says if your name begins with an “O” or a “Mac” you may not strut or swagger in the streets of Galway.’
‘I know,’ said Mara. It always amused her to picture these clansmen, with ‘O’ or ‘Mac’ in their names, with their huge moustaches and their fringes hanging down to their eyes, dressed in their long, shaggy Irish mantles, strutting and swaggering through the crowds of scented, curled citizens of Galway with their padded doublets, hip-length cloaks, their tight hose and their neat, pointed beards. ‘You haven’t explained to me about the O’Kellys,’ she added as he gave her hand a quick squeeze.
‘Well, it all started about five years ago with that battle at Knockdoe, do you remember that?’
Mara nodded – Knockdoe was about eight miles north-east of Galway city. The place had been called something different before that battle, but afterwards it was always known as Knockdoe, the hill of the battleaxes.
‘Well, myself and MacWilliam were against the army gathered by the Earl of Kildare, and Red Hugh, the O’Donnell; and the other northern chiefs and the O‘Kellys from Ui Maine. The O’Kellys lost a lot of men,’ he boasted, taking a gulp of wine, ‘and they’ve never forgotten it and they keep swiping away at me.’
‘Why just you?’ asked Mara. ‘I would have thought MacWilliam would have been nearer to him. He’s up there in Connaught, just beside him.’
Turlough looked all around him carefully and moved his head closer to her cheek. ‘To be honest,’ he said in a low voice, ‘I wouldn’t be surprised if young Garrett MacNamara had something to do with it. We took quite a bit of territory from the MacNamaras around Caisin, to the east of here. It’s now part of Thomond, of course, but the MacNamaras would like it back, I suppose. Could be the O’Connor of Doolin, as well, perhaps. You never know. The earl, Gearóid Mór, is in the pocket of the English, of course. His second wife is related to the Tudors. You should have seen Gearóid when he came back from young Prince
Arthur’s funeral. He was all decked out in silks and velvets like any popinjay. Anyway, let’s not worry about him; here comes Brigid with my supper.’
‘Here’s a lovely loin of venison, my lord,’ said Brigid, coming out from the house bearing two small iron pots and accompanied by Cumhal, carrying the large iron pot that held the venison.
‘Put it on the stone there, Cumhal,’ she said with a quick peremptory gesture of her head. ‘I hope you like the venison, my lord. I cooked it with plenty of butter and a few sprigs of rosemary, Brehon.’ She turned to Mara.
‘It smells unbelievably good,’ said Turlough, leaning over like a greedy boy as Cumhal took the lid off the pot. ‘And two sauces! What are they?’
‘This one is a wine and cream sauce; I think myself that is the best flavour with venison, but the Brehon likes that other one best. That’s made from bearberries. I got the lads to pick me a basketful in the bog last year and I dried them and kept them for sauces.’ Lovingly, Brigid placed the two pots next to the large one on the stone beside the table, and then she bustled back into the house again, coming back with two wooden platters piled high with watercress and tiny crisp spears of celery.
‘Carve some slices of the venison, Cumhal,’ she ordered and stood with her ladle poised while Cumhal filled each platter with neat slices.
‘I’ll try both sauces,’ said Turlough. ‘A man of peace like myself never likes to take sides between two women.’
‘I’ll have them both, also,’ said Mara. After her long and difficult day she felt that she could do with the soothing silkiness of the cream sauce as well as the piquant bite of the bearberries.
‘Wonderful,’ said Turlough, shutting his eyes to savour first one, and then the other sauce.
‘You’re not too worried about the O’Kellys, are you?’ asked Mara after Brigid and Cumhal had returned to the kitchen. She
cut a piece of venison with her knife and then speared the cube and popped it into her mouth. It tasted delicious: crusty with burned juices on the outside and succulent and tender on the inside.
‘Not in the least,’ said Turlough, crunching the celery noisily. ‘If they want trouble they can come looking for it, of course. I’ll give them something to think about.’
‘As a man of peace, of course!’ inserted Mara.
‘Well,’ said Turlough with a grin, ‘it’s like this venison, there is an art in never overdoing anything.’
‘How’s Conor?’ enquired Mara. Conor was Turlough’s eldest son.
‘Good,’ said Turlough. ‘Have you been to his fine new tower house at Inchiquin? He’s pleased to be the
tánaiste
since my brother died. It will be good to have my own son to take over when I am gone.’
‘Pity he’s not called Turlough,’ said Mara. ‘Then you could be like those Richards and Henrys over in England – you could have Turlough I and Turlough II and so on.’ Let’s keep talking about the kingdom, she thought. I don’t want to think about the murder and I don’t want any pressure about marriage tonight, either.
‘He’ll make a good king, Conor,’ said Turlough, ‘but of course it will be one of his brothers or his cousins who will follow him. It might be my second boy, and I wouldn’t be too pleased about that. He has too much interest in English ways. He won’t make a good king of Thomond. I don’t trust him at the moment, at any rate. Anyway, let’s not talk about anything troubling tonight. We’ll just sit here like two old friends and enjoy our burgundy and our venison and let the tomorrows come when they are due.’
He placed his hand over hers. ‘Mara,’ he said quietly. ‘I meant what I said in the letter. I won’t bother you for a decision. Take your time; think it over, and perhaps when you come to see me
with your reports at the end of the month you might want to discuss it then. There’s only one thing more to say and that is that I know if you decide to be my wife I will be the happiest man in Christendom. I think we would get on well together,’ he added in a lighter tone.
‘I know that,’ said Mara earnestly. ‘It’s just that I do need time to think and it is very generous of you to give me that time
… Oh, thank you, Cumhal. I don’t think we need another flagon of wine at the moment, but leave it there just in case.’
This is worse than when Dualta and I were thirteen and my father kept hovering around, she thought, watching Brigid ceremoniously bringing an unnecessary second dish of parsnips over to the table.
‘So what about Kildare?’ she asked.
‘You heard the story about him going over to London and asking Henry VII for extra troops to deal with me?’ asked Turlough. He paused to chew on a piece of venison and then added with huge enjoyment, ‘Do you know what he said about me? These were his very words: “He is a mortal enemy to all Englishmen and the most maliciously disposed of any that I heard speak of.” He wanted the Tudor king to give him 6,000 men to deal with me, but Henry was too mean a man for that. He had too many other things to occupy him at the time. He was in the middle of the Burgundian negotiations and that was of much more importance to him than Ireland. Too much had been spent on us, over the past few hundred years, for too little of a return. These were his views. Tomás MacEgan told me that and he is a very learned Brehon. You know Tomás, don’t you?’
Mara nodded. She knew Tomás; he was a man who never opened his mouth until he had carefully considered his words, a man of immense learning, skilled in English, as well as Brehon, law. Briefly she thought about Colman and his interest in England. She herself had never bothered, but perhaps she should. Knowledge
is power, her father often told her, and power was important to her.
‘Tell me about English law,’ she said.
‘I don’t know too much about it myself,’ said Turlough, dipping a finger of yellow parsnip into the bearberry sauce and munching it. ‘You’d want to talk to Tomás. All I know is that it is supposed to be based on Roman law. They hold their courts indoors, in big buildings – not like us where we have our courts out in the open, on top of hills, or beside ancient places like you do here on the Burren. They have many lawyers in these courts, as well as judges. They say that they have very savage punishments. Men can be hanged for theft there.’
‘I’ve heard that,’ said Mara. ‘Is it any kind of theft or just something very serious like stealing from a great lord?’
Turlough shrugged. ‘Almost any kind of theft,’ he said. ‘Anything from a loaf of bread to the theft of a horse.’
‘So no matter what the crime, everything is punished in the same way?’
‘Oh, they have worse punishments than hanging,’ said Turlough. ‘They can also hang a man, cut him down before he is dead, then draw out his guts before his eyes and then cut him up into quarters. Then they stick his head up on Tower Bridge so that everyone in London has to pass under it and be reminded that they must not break the law.’
‘It’s barbaric,’ said Mara with conviction. ‘What good do punishments like that do to anyone? I wonder that the English don’t devise a more civilized set of laws.’
‘By the way, one of my Brehons got a copy of English laws when he was in Galway. You might like to look at it. My Latin is too rusty to make too much of it.’
‘I was thinking,’ said Mara, ‘that we should make a record of all of our laws. There are books of them in every law school, but these books need to be put together. It might be a good idea to
have a Brehons’ Conference some time. We could start this off in Thomond, with Brehons from your three kingdoms, and perhaps invite other Brehons from different kingdoms. If we are in danger from England, as you think, we will need to have this up-to-date record of our laws so that they don’t get lost or forgotten.’
‘That’s a great idea,’ said Turlough, slapping the trestle table with such force that the platters jumped and the flagon of wine tilted alarmingly. His face was illuminated with enthusiasm. ‘When you come to see me we’ll discuss our plans for this. It will be another thing for me to look forward to,’ he added with a meaningful glance.
‘I should make a start at this here at Cahermacnaghten,’ said Mara thoughtfully. ‘I should find all those old law texts, wisdom texts and judgement texts that my father collected, and things that he taught me, that his father taught him, and his grandfather before him, judgements and laws that have never been written down, but have been passed from generation to generation by word of mouth. I should write all these down and then put them together. It will be a lifetime’s work; we will need to search through the whole of Ireland. Perhaps my grandson, little Domhnall, will carry on the work after I am gone. It should be done, though, no matter how long it takes.’
‘There may come a time,’ said Turlough sombrely, ‘that no matter what we do, the law of England may prevail in Ireland and our Gaelic way of life and our Brehon laws, with all their humanity and their mercy, will be lost for ever.’
HEPTAD 6
There are seven bloodlettings which carry no penalty:
1.
Bloodshed inflicted by an insane person
2.
Bloodshed inflicted by a chief wife in jealousy of a concubine who comes in spite of her
3.
Bloodshed by a physician authorized by the family to care for a sick person
4.
Bloodshed inflicted in battle
5.
Bloodshed by a man who enforces suretyship
6.
Bloodshed by a man who takes part in a duel
7.
Bloodshed by a boy in playing a sport
T
he king left the Burren early the following morning to go to the bishop’s Mass at Kilfenora and afterwards on his formal tour around the kingdom of Corcomroe. As soon as he departed Mara called all of the scholars into the schoolhouse.
‘I know it’s Sunday,’ she said to them. ‘I don’t want to break into your holiday, but I just want to get a few things straight in
my mind before your memory of them fades. You can all be of great assistance to me, as you were all there on that night before
Bealtaine.’
She paused and looked around at them. All seemed at ease, alert, with bright eyes and eager faces.
‘Hugh,’ she said quickly. ‘That was your knife – the knife that killed Colman. Is that right?’
‘Yes, Brehon,’ replied Hugh with the promptness of a well-trained hound.
‘And you gave it to Colman? Why?’
He stared at her. A look of panic had returned to his small, freckled face.
‘He asked me for it,’ he said eventually.
‘And you just handed it over to him?’
‘Yes,’ he said, looking a little relieved.
‘Why?’ she asked calmly.
‘Because he …’ Hugh’s voice tailed away.
From the corner of her eye Mara could see Shane making signs to Hugh. She could interpret them easily.
Tell her
, the sign said, but Hugh was silent. She looked at him thoughtfully; he had clearly told Shane, possibly Fachtnan, too. She would not pursue the question now, she thought. He would tell her soon.
She turned away from Hugh. ‘Now, you’ll all have to help me. You are my scholars and you have always helped with my law cases. This is one case where you know more than I do. That night, I turned back after the first terrace, but you all went on. Even if none of you saw the killing, you were present and will have seen who was there. So when did you first see Colman’s body, Hugh?’
He opened and shut his mouth once or twice and then, strangely, closed his eyes, almost as if the picture in front of them was too painful to bear. ‘Just after the bonfire was lit,’ he said in a low voice and half-opened his eyes again.
Mara beamed at him. ‘That’s wonderful evidence,’ she said enthusiastically. ‘And who put the torch to the bonfire?’
‘Ardal O’Lochlainn,’ said Hugh, his blue eyes now wide and candid.
Mara looked at the others. They were all nodding. ‘You were all with Fachtnan, all the rest of you?’ she asked and waited until the heads nodded. ‘Now, what I want you all to do is to think back to the time before the bonfire was lit by Ardal O’Lochlainn …’ She stopped suddenly, remembering that ride into Galway. Hadn’t Ardal said that he had not been there? She tried to remember his words … something about allowing the men to go … but perhaps she had misunderstood him.
‘Yes,’ said Moylan and Aidan, speaking together as they often did. These two had come to the law school on the same day eight years ago. They were both six years then and had bonded together like a pair of puppies from the same litter. ‘We were up on Eagle’s Rock.’
‘A great place for seeing the whole mountain,’ said Mara. Their attention would have been mainly on the bonfire, she thought. Nevertheless, they were at an age where memory and eyesight are at their best. She turned back to Hugh.
‘But you weren’t on Eagle’s Rock, were you?’ she said gently.
The unhappy look was back in Hugh’s eyes. ‘No,’ he said shortly.
‘Colman told him to wait for him,’ explained Shane.
‘Wait a minute,’ said Mara. She seized the long stick of charred pine that always stood at the side of the fireplace and drew a large oval on the whitewashed board that stretched the length and the height of the wall. ‘Now, this is the first terrace on the mountain,’ she said, indicating the outer oval and quickly sketching in another, slightly smaller oval inside of it. ‘The king and I got as far as here, but most people were going on to the second or third terrace by
the time we left. Now let me put in the other terraces.’ With a steady hand she drew six more irregular oval shapes inside the first.
‘Here is Wolf’s Lair, on the fourth terrace,’ she said, drawing a large ‘X’. ‘Where were you waiting, Hugh?’
‘Over there,’ he muttered.
‘On the fourth terrace?’
He nodded silently. His face had gone pale. ‘I couldn’t see inside Wolf’s Lair,’ he said suddenly.
‘Well, Wolf’s Lair is on the western side of the mountain, so were you over there on the eastern side, the way that people come up?’
Shane was nodding encouragingly, so Mara moved on. Hugh had been very badly frightened; it would take him a time to trust her and to come out with the full story.
‘And you other boys were up here on Eagle’s Rock,’ she continued, letting her voice take on a note of excitement. ‘That’s wonderful – just the place to see everything!’ They would love the idea of a mystery and a chase, she knew. ‘Quickly, now, don’t even talk about it. Just think of a name and then come out and show me where they were just when the bonfire was lit.’
Colman was probably killed before the lighting of the bonfire, she thought, but it would have been quite dark by then. Little could have been seen on the mountain, just shadowy figures moving with pitch torches in their hands. Still, the sudden flare of a torch would illuminate a face for a minute. Once the bonfire flared up the light would give clarity to the figures, of course.
‘Emer and Rory were over here,’ said Enda, coming out and seizing the charred stick. He drew two stick-like figures, one with very large breasts outlined, and then stood back with a smirk, shrugging his blond hair out of his eyes. It’s interesting how the art of adolescent boys seemed to reproduce the fertility symbols of ancient pagan times, she thought idly, as she said aloud, ‘Good, so they were on the top terrace at the north side.’
‘And Rory and Aoife were over here on the west side,’ said Moylan, coming out and copying Enda’s daring drawing. Even Hugh was sniggering now, Mara was glad to see.
‘So they were also on the top terrace,’ she said tolerantly.
‘Father Conglach was on the fifth terrace over on the west side,’ said Aidan, getting to his feet.
‘No, he wasn’t, he was on the fourth terrace,’ contradicted Fachtnan.
‘Yes, Fachtnan’s right,’ said Shane. ‘I heard him shout at Nessa and she was on the fourth terrace.’
‘No, he didn’t shout at Nessa,’ said Hugh quietly. ‘He shouted at Colman; I heard him.’
Mara looked at him with interest, remembering the priest’s condemnation of Colman. Hugh flushed under her gaze.
‘Well, he shouted at Nessa, too,’ insisted Shane.
‘He might have yelled at Colman; I heard him yell, but I didn’t take too much notice,’ said Aidan. ‘He is always shouting about something or other. He was shouting at me the other day for having pimples. He said that they were the mark of the devil,’ he added in aggrieved tones.
Mara concealed a smile. ‘Well, it looks as if Father Conglach was on the fourth terrace near to Wolf’s Lair. Do you agree with that, Aidan?’
‘I suppose so.’ He thought for a moment and then said graciously, ‘Yes, that’s right.’ He came out and drew a stick figure for Father Conglach on the fourth terrace.
‘And Feirdin was going down,’ said Fachtnan suddenly. ‘I remember looking and wondering why someone was going down before the singing and the dancing started. And then I saw that it was Feirdin and I thought he might be frightened. He’s a bit strange about some things. He was with someone. I don’t know who it was. It wasn’t anyone that I know.’
‘Which terrace was he on?’ asked Mara, her heart sinking.
This, of course, would be the conclusion that most people of the Burren would jump at and only Feirdin’s mother would be upset. Even the MacNamara clan would not mind too much if it turned out that Feirdin MacNamara was the man who killed the young lawyer. After all, their own
taoiseach,
Garrett MacNamara, had taken his case for judgement and had wanted to have him kept under restraint. The responsibility to leave him at liberty would be borne by the Brehon.
‘He was probably between the third and the fourth terrace when I saw him, or perhaps it was the second and the third,’ said Fachtnan. ‘I heard Malachy the physician call down to him, but Feirdin didn’t stop. He was going down quite fast.’
‘I’ll ask Malachy, then,’ said Mara. ‘Put the two of them in, Fachtnan.’
After that the suggestions came thick and fast. The top terrace was filled with figures – most of the young people were up there: Donogh O’Lochlainn’s young sons, represented by Moylan with a series of crosses. The older ones, the mothers and fathers, were content with the lower terraces – most of them were marked in on the sixth terrace; Daniel, probably deciding that this was to be Emer’s last evening of fun before settling down to married life, had certainly been on the sixth terrace.
‘Murrough and his wolfhounds were over there on the eastern side on the fifth terrace,’ said Hugh unexpectedly. He walked forward, did a neat little sketch of a wolfhound head and then went over and sat on the floor with his arm around Bran who had come in to sit at his usual place under the lintel of the open door. If Murrough was on the eastern side there, he might have seen Hugh on the terrace below him, thought Mara. I’ll have to ask him. At least one part of the boy’s story could be confirmed.
‘Oh, and Diarmuid was over there near Wolf’s Lair,’ said Shane. ‘I remember seeing him, because I remember wondering if his dog, Wolf, would make a good hunting dog.’
‘He’s half-wolf himself,’ said Mara. ‘He may not want to hunt his relations.’ But one half of her mind suddenly focused on Diarmuid, rather than his dog. Turlough had said Diarmuid was looking for her when she was in Galway. What had he to tell? He was a shy, reserved man. He would not have been up there with the boisterous crowd around the bonfire. He would have stood below and waited for someone to call on him for his fiddle music. Perhaps he wanted to talk about Lorcan, or perhaps he had seen something in the shadowy depths of the Wolf’s Lair hollow. I’ll see him after Mass, she thought quickly. He’d prefer an informal approach like that.
‘Well, that was very worthwhile,’ she said to the boys, ‘thank you all for giving up your free time to me. Now I want an announcement to be made after Mass in each of the parishes of the Burren. I want all the people to come to the dolmen at Poulnabrone when the abbey bell rings for vespers. I will make a formal announcement of the killing of Colman and ask for the killer to come forward.’ She paused and looked around. All heads were nodding. This secret and unlawful killing would have to be announced to the people of the kingdom. They all knew that.
‘If we could divide ourselves among the parish churches of the Burren,’ continued Mara, ‘that would be the quickest and easiest. Fachtnan, will you go to Oughtmama, Enda you go to Drumaheily, Aidan to Rathborney, Moylan, you go to Noughaval as usual, and Shane, Hugh and I will go to Kilcorney.’ She didn’t go to Kilcorney normally; Noughaval was her parish church, the place where her father and mother and all of her other relations were buried, but Father Conglach was the most difficult of the priests in the kingdom of the Burren and she would be able to lean the whole weight of her office on him and make sure that her instructions were carried out. A request from one of the boys might be ignored by him. ‘Go now, and get ready for Mass. I’ll ask Cumhal to get the ponies ready. Hugh, Shane and I will walk,
but the rest of you can have the ponies as you will have more of a journey.’
Shane looked disappointed, but a long, slow walk across the fields and back again might just trigger confidence in Hugh. She could arrange a little treat for them afterwards. Shane, though the younger of the two, had the stronger personality and Hugh was more likely to take notice of his advice than of his elders. She would work on him, she thought. Even if Hugh said nothing now, eventually he would tell all that he knew. She was beginning to guess the outline of his story and now she knew why Colman had met his death. She knew why, but she didn’t know whose hand had plunged the knife into Colman’s neck.
‘Cumhal,’ she called as she went outside, ‘will you get four ponies ready for the older lads? Make sure that you give the strongest one to Fachtnan. He has to go to Mass at Oughtmama and you know how difficult that climb up the mountain is.’
‘He’ll have to get off and walk for the last bit – he’s a hefty lad,’ said Cumhal. ‘I’ll tell him. You’ll be getting the priests to make an announcement,’ he stated. There was little that he did not know about the Brehon’s procedures. Often she wondered what she would do without him and Brigid. She felt a sudden rush of affection for Cumhal, feeling sorry that she had teased him the night before. She noticed that he did not speed off in his usual quick, efficient way to do her bidding, but paused to straighten a stone on top of the wall. His face looked troubled.