Eye of the Law (3 page)

‘What is the position now, Brehon?’ Ardal addressed her with his usual courtesy.

‘Two things have to be taken into consideration,’ said Mara, mentally scanning through the dusty piles of law texts and judgement scrolls that filled the shelves and wooden presses of Cahermacnaghten. ‘The first is the sworn deathbed testimony of the mother, witnessed by a priest, that Iarla, here, is the son of Ardal O’Lochlainn. However, secondly, it must be borne in mind that this was a married woman. No doubt during the Eastertide and the weeks that followed, this woman had intercourse with her lawful wedded husband. It would have been strange if she did not do so. She herself might honestly have believed that Iarla was the fruit of her brief intimacy with the O’Lochlainn; a
taoiseach
– and you were already
taoiseach
at the time, were you not, Ardal? – would seem a romantic father for her son. This does put a doubt in my mind. As well as that –’ Mara looked very directly at the young man – ‘there is no physical likeness between Iarla and Ardal. In fact, I can say, since I know all of the O’Lochlainn’s family, that I don’t think that I have met any dark-haired members. The red hair seems to persist. What was the colour of your mother’s hair, Iarla?’

‘It was red,’ he muttered.

‘I see,’ said Mara, ‘and of course, two red-haired parents would seem to forecast a red-headed child.’

She looked at him carefully. No, he had no resemblance at all to Ardal: the features were quite different. Ardal had a white-skinned face with a straight, well-cut nose, a high forehead and thin, fastidious lips, whereas Iarla was dark with a swarthy skin, dark eyes and a blunt, fleshy nose. However, she knew that this would only be enough to cast a doubt. The law was very clear; a deathbed confession had always to be believed.

‘I think I need some time to decide on this question; perhaps I could appoint a time in two weeks at Poulnabrone. Poulnabrone is our judgement place,’ she informed the two men from Aran.

‘And in the meantime, perhaps you would like to stay with me at Lissylisheen,’ said Ardal, trying to force a note of hospitality into his voice. ‘And you, Becan, until the high seas die down.’

The two men looked at each other and then Becan nodded an off-hand acceptance.

There was an awkward silence for a moment. Becan looked from one to the other. ‘Well, perhaps in the meantime we’ll go back and join the party and let you talk it over,’ he said, grabbing the young man by the sleeve and leading him from the room.

‘I think it might be an idea to send someone over to Aran to investigate,’ said Mara as the door closed behind the two. ‘I could send Fachtnan and Enda. They would do it very well and it would be good experience for them. I’d be interested to hear whether the mother ever spoke of the possibility that Iarla was not her husband’s son, or indeed, whether she had ever mentioned any other possibility for a father.’

‘I’ll go with them, Brehon, if you like,’ offered Liam. ‘We’re not too busy at the moment.’

‘Thank you, Liam, but I think that I will send Cumhal. He’ll enjoy the trip.’ Cumhal was her farm manager. He was an immensely busy man supervising and planning all the work on the farm and assisting the Brehon with the scholars’ out-of-school activities, but she would feel happiest to entrust nineteen-year-old Fachtnan and seventeen-year-old Enda to him. It was kind of Liam to offer, but she felt neither Liam, nor any of the O’Lochlainn clan, should be involved in this fact-finding mission. Justice had to be seen to be impartial.

‘I just don’t feel that he is my son,’ said Ardal thoughtfully. ‘There is nothing there when I look at him, no gesture, no expression, no feature.’

‘He looks more like his uncle, the blacksmith.’ Liam eyed her hopefully.

‘I’ll study my law texts,’ promised Mara.

‘And if the worst comes to the worst,’ said Liam with a grim smile on his lips, ‘I can always take him back to the island and toss him to the fishes.’

Two

‘
Let him (the king) not elevate any judge unless he knows the true legal precedents.
’

‘
B
rehon!’

‘Mara!’

The two voices almost blended. Mara stood up rapidly. Already her magnificent white wolfhound, Bran, had bounded to his feet and with head raised was sniffing the air. Mara put her hand on his collar and then released it. In the distance she saw Fachtnan, her eldest scholar, and Nuala, the physician’s daughter, crossing the clints of shining limestone. She waved and then heaved a sigh. There was some crisis for her to deal with. Her peace would soon be at an end.

‘Wait, Bran,’ she said, signalling to him to lie down again.

It was Thursday. School had finished, the day was fine and she was snatching a half-hour’s gardening, moving some eight-petalled celandines to fill in the gaps in the shining ribbon of gold that wove its way through the hazel wood beside her garden.

Mara’s garden was her pride, her joy and the place where she did her thinking. Today as she placed soft piles of vivid green moss around the clumps of butter-pale primroses, shortened the thorny branches of the pale-pink dog rose, dug up the scattered brass-coloured celandine plants, and cleared the dead leaves from where the bluebells had begun to spear their way through the woodland soil, her mind had been busy with the problem of Ardal and these sudden and unexpected visitors from the Aran Islands.

Becan, according to Brigid, her housekeeper, had left Lissylisheen yesterday afternoon. The wind had died down and he’d planned to spend the night at Doolin and make the sea crossing this morning. Iarla was staying on at the tower house of Lissylisheen, and was, according to Brigid, making a nuisance of himself, following Liam around from barn to farm. Ardal had taken some horses to sell in Galway so Liam had been left to play the host. Possibly not the best of arrangements, thought Mara. Perhaps she should have invited the young man to stay at the guesthouse at the school. However, Ardal had issued the invitation, and maybe it would be good if he were to get to know the boy for a week or two before judgement was announced at Poulnabrone.

By the time that Mara reached her own gate, Fachtnan, closely followed by Nuala, had just vaulted the last low stone wall before the road that ran in front of Cahermacnaghten Law School and the Brehon’s house, a hundred yards away from the school. The news was not too serious, she thought, looking at the two young faces. For a moment she had been afraid that something was wrong with Malachy – Fachtnan had gone over to the physician’s house after school to deliver a request from Brigid to Malachy for some ointment for a farm worker’s arm. However, though their faces were serious, neither looked particularly distressed.

‘What’s the matter?’ asked Mara, opening the gate and standing back to allow them to come in.

‘You’ll be shocked,’ warned Nuala.

‘We got a shock,’ said Fachtnan. ‘Nuala was great. She just got straight down on her knees and started to examine him.’

‘What! Has there been an accident?’ Mara’s mind immediately flew to her six scholars. Ten-year-old Shane and thirteen-year-old Hugh had gone to help her neighbour, Diarmuid, with the lambing; Enda was studying in the scholars’ house; Aidan and Moylan were sowing oats with Cumhal. All should be safe.

‘Not an accident.’ Nuala was watching her face carefully. ‘Definitely not an accident.’

‘Who is it?’ Mara was getting exasperated and it showed in her voice.

‘We were just trying to break it gently,’ said Nuala reproachfully. ‘It’s that fellow from the Aran Islands.’

‘Iarla,’ added Fachtnan. ‘The lad who claims to be O’Lochlainn’s son.’

‘And he’s been injured?’ But Mara knew it was more than that. ‘Killed?’ she queried.

Nuala nodded. ‘Not recently, either. He’s cold and stiff. He’s lying in front of Balor’s Cave at Kilcorney.’

‘I see,’ said Mara. Her heart sank. Mechanically she went back and put her trowel and her leather gloves into her small basket and replaced them in the small stone cabin beside her house. She took her fur-lined cloak from the peg behind the front door of the house, but kept on her heavy boots. The way across to Kilcorney was rough with great slabs of stone and tumbled rock; it was no place for fine leather shoes, especially for a woman who was five months pregnant.

‘Don’t take Bran,’ said Fachtnan suddenly and she understood his feeling. She vividly remembered the other occasion when Bran’s howls had signalled a dead body and the repercussions for the law school from that discovery.

‘Put him back in the stables, then,’ she said. ‘Oh, and just run and tell Brigid that I am going over to Kilcorney, Fachtnan. Tell her that I should be back for supper. Nuala and I will start going and you can catch us up.’

‘Father is with him. He said that he would wait until you came,’ said Nuala as they crossed the field, stepping over the grykes where the violets and primroses were blooming in the small crevices between the slabs of stone. Her face grew angry when she mentioned her father, but cleared when Fachtnan came bounding across the clints, his nail-studded boots striking sparks off the huge slabs of limestone.

The body of the young man from Aran lay half concealed by an upturned willow just beside the entrance to Balor’s Cave. Mara could understand why no one had seen him before now; he was quite hidden from the lane and, in fact, the lane itself was a deserted one, running along for about a hundred yards with only a single cottage on it and ending at the cave.

‘How did you find him?’ she asked Fachtnan, after a murmured greeting to Malachy.

‘Nuala saw a flock of ravens and she thought that they might be attacking some newborn lambs so we turned down,’ he said. ‘They hadn’t attacked the body yet; probably the branches of the willow made them worry about a trap, but I stayed while Nuala went to fetch Malachy. Then when he arrived, we both went to fetch you.’

‘He was killed by someone thrusting a knife or a sharpened stick into his eye,’ announced Malachy. ‘Look.’ He pointed to the mass of blackened blood that crusted over one of the eyes. He gave a quick look around. ‘Strange, isn’t it, to find a man with only one eye outside Balor’s Cave? This will get people scared.’

‘No,’ said Nuala sharply. ‘No, it wasn’t like that at all. You’ve got it all wrong.’

‘What do you mean?’ Malachy rounded on his daughter angrily.

‘Explain yourself, Nuala.’ Mara’s tone was crisp. Obviously relationships between father and daughter were poor, but the first consideration now had to be this murder. Let them fight it out afterwards, thought Mara irritably. Malachy’s half-suggestion that this death was due to supernatural powers was a particularly silly one, she thought, looking at him with disfavour, and then turning back to Nuala.

‘There’s not enough blood,’ said Nuala in a matter-of-fact way. She knelt on the ground beside the body. ‘If he had been stabbed in the eye while he was still living, the blood would have poured out. It would have stained his face, soaked his clothes right down the front and probably soaked the ground too. Look, this is what killed him.’

Carefully she put her hand on the shoulder and eased the stiff body over until it lay on its front and then pointed to a large circular wound on the back of the head. There was sticky black blood on the back of the neck and it had soaked into the sheepskin jacket and the white
léine
below.

‘I’d say that was done with a heavy club or stick,’ continued Nuala. ‘The only strange thing is that I would also have expected blood to be on the ground, but I suppose it all bled into the clothing.’ She gave a slightly dissatisfied look at the corpse and at the earth around it and then rose to her feet, dusting her hands. ‘But it has to be the head, it couldn’t be the eye. That was done after death.’

Malachy said nothing. He compressed his lips and his dark eyes were angry, but he did not disagree. Mara felt convinced by Nuala’s explanation, but thought it would not be tactful to take sides. There was enough trouble between the two of them at the moment and, although her sympathy was with Nuala, in a way Turlough was right. Why should Malachy not get married again after mourning his dead wife for two years? It was just a pity that the woman he chose had one son ready to finish his medical apprenticeship, another nearly ready and a third coming up. This would make three physicians in the family before Nuala was able to qualify.

‘I wonder whether the basket maker would lend us a cart?’ she said aloud.

She looked towards the solitary cottage; Dalagh the basket maker had a large family of children; it was surprising that neither they nor he, nor his wife, had arrived to see what was happening.

‘There’s no one there,’ said Fachtnan. ‘I went straight to the cottage when we found the body. I thought he might take a message, but he was gone and his cart is gone too. I shouted across the field to Fiachra O’Lochlainn – he’s ploughing over there – and he told me that Dalagh set off at about midday with the cart loaded up with baskets and the children went with them.’

‘I see,’ said Mara. ‘Well, we can’t disturb Fiachra in the middle of the ploughing so you’ll have to be messenger again, Fachtnan. I think Lissylisheen is the nearest place. Would you go and ask Ardal or Liam to send a cart. Just say that there’s been an accident and that I sent you. Nuala, would you like to go with Fachtnan?’

‘You haven’t asked for the time of death.’ Nuala’s voice was sullen and she gave her father a challenging look.

‘What’s the time of death then?’ Mara hadn’t forgotten, but thought that it might be more sensitive to ask that of Malachy once Nuala had departed. Nuala in her present mood was bound to disagree with Malachy, and it was always a difficult point to know how long a murdered person had lain there by the time of discovery. There were so many factors to take into account such as the heat of the sun, the cooling properties of a wind, the stiffness of the body.