A Prayer for the Damned

A PRAYER
FOR THE DAMNED

Also by Peter Tremayne

Works featuring Fidelma of Cashel

NOVELS

Absolution by Murder

Shroud for the Archbishop

Suffer Little Children

The Subtle Serpent

The Spider’s Web

Valley of the Shadow

The Monk Who Vanished

Act of Mercy

Our Lady of Darkness

Smoke in the Wind

The Haunted Abbot

Badger’s Moon

The Leper’s Bell

Master of Souls

STORY COLLECTIONS

Hemlock at Vespers

Whispers of the Dead

A Mystery of Ancient Ireland

PETER TREMAYNE

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

A PRAYER FOR THE DAMNED.
Copyright © 2006 by Peter Tremayne. All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. For information, address St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.

www.minotaurbooks.com

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Tremayne, Peter.

A prayer for the damned : a mystery of ancient Ireland / Peter Tremayne.—1st. St. Martin’s Minotaur pbk ed.

p. cm.

ISBN-13: 978-0-312-37789-2

ISBN-10: 0-312-37789-4

1. Fidelma, Sister (Fictitious character)—Fiction. 2. Nuns—Fiction.
3. Women detectives—Ireland—Fiction. 4. Ireland—History—To 1172—Fiction. I. Title.

PR6070.R366 P73 2007
823’.914—dc22

2007024874

First published in Great Britain by Headline Book Publishing,
a division of Hodder Headline.

First St. Martin’s Minotaur Paperback Edition: October 2008

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For Paul and Wendy
and the next generation of the Ellis family
Declan and Caleb
but not forgetting Jamie

AD 668:
Muircetach Nár rí Connacht .i .mac Guaire moritur

Chronicon Scotorum

AD 668: Muirchertach Nár, King of Connacht, the son of Guaire, died

Vigilate et orate ut non intretis in dammnare aeternitas …

Gelasius I,
Decretum
,
AD 494

Watch and pray that you enter not into eternal damnation

Sister Fidelma
of Cashel, a
dáaigh
or advocate of the law courts of seventh-century Ireland

Brother Eadulf
of Seaxmund’s Ham in the land of the South Folk, her companion

At the Abbey of Imleach

Ségdae
, abbot and bishop of Imleach

Brother Madagan,
steward of Imleach

Ultán,
abbot of Cill Ria and bishop of the Uí Thuirtrí

Brother Dróon,
scribe and steward of Cill Ria

Sister Sétach
of Cill Ria

Sister Marga
of Cill Ria

At Ardane in the Valley of Eatharlaí

Miach,
chief of the Uí Cuileann

Brother Berrihert,
a Saxon religieux

Brother Pecanum,
his brother

Brother Naovan,
their brother

Ordwulf,
their elderly father and a pagan Saxon warrior

At Cashel

Colgú,
king of Muman, Fidelma’s brother

Finguine,
his tánaiste or heir apparent, cousin to Colgú and Fidelma

Brehon Baithen,
brehon of Muman

Caol,
commander of the king’s bodyguard

Gormán,
a warrior of the guard

Dego,
a warrior of the guard

Enda,
a warrior of the guard

Brother Conchobhar,
an apothecary at Cashel

Muirgen,
nurse to Alchú, son of Fidelma and Eadulf

Nessán
, her husband

Rónán,
a hunter and tracker

Della,
friend of Fidelma and mother of Gormán

Guests at Cashel

Sechnassach,
High King of Ireland

Brehon Barrán,
Chief Brehon of the Five Kingdoms

Muirchertach Nár
of the Uí Fiachracha Aidni, king of Connacht

Aíbnat,
his wife

Dúnchad Muirisci
of the Uí Fiachracha Muaide, his tánaiste or heir apparent

Augaire,
abbot of Conga

Laisran,
abbot of Durrow

Ninnid,
brehon of Laigin

Blathmac mac Mael Coba,
king of Ulaidh

Fergus Fanat
of Ulaidh, Blathmac’s cousin

The main action of this story takes place in the period known as
dubh-luacran
, the darkest period of the year, coming up to the feast of Imbolc (1 February) when the ewes came into lamb. The year is AD 668 and the main events take place immediately after those related in
Master of Souls
.

It would help for a better understanding of the period, and references in this novel, to remind the reader that in seventh-century Ireland a bishop was subordinate in rank to an abbot. Indeed, many abbots held the title of bishop as a secondary rank. It was not until the ninth century in Ireland that bishops slowly started to rise in prominence over abbots.

One other word of clarification: the great river that runs through Tipperary, near Cashel, into Waterford, is called the ‘sister river’ – the
Siúr
. In the Anglicised form it is spelt as Suir. I have maintained the original Irish spelling. It is not a misprint.

A PRAYER
FOR THE DAMNED

T
he young girl was beautiful. The adjective was not one that Brother Augaire freely bestowed on any object, let alone a person of the opposite sex. However, he could think of no other word to describe the quality that awakened such sensuous delight in his mind. It aroused no carnal desire; Brother Augaire’s piety would not acknowledge that. It was a beauty that inspired admiration for beauty’s sake and excited only homage.

It had been some time before he had become aware of her presence. He had been sitting in the sunshine on some rocks by the shore of the bay, fully absorbed in his fishing. This was always a good spot to catch bass as it came in to spawn in the estuaries and inshore waters, and he had already brought in a couple of the fish with his rod and line. Then something had made him glance up to his side and he had seen her, appearing as if out of thin air, standing silently on the shell sand of the short beach area and staring out across the calm waters of the bay.

It was the profile that had caught his attention first. While she wore a
bratt
, a flowing cloak of dyed purple wool edged with badger’s fur, the hood was thrown back off her shoulders, allowing her golden tresses to shimmer and sparkle in the morning sunlight. He could see the intelligent forehead, the unobtrusive nose, the fullness of her lips, the firm jaw and the slenderness of her neck. Yet no words could express the way those features blended together into a form that surpassed even the great sculptures of Greece and Rome. Brother Augaire was in a position to judge, for he had been on pilgrimage to both those distant lands.

She did not appear to have noticed him and so he took his time with his observation. His eyes fell to her slim figure, a pleasing form even though shrouded somewhat by the cloak. He could make out that she was wearing a tight-fitting purple tunic and a flowing skirt of blue, fashioned from either
sída
, the expensive silk bought from foreign merchants, or
sróll
, a shimmering satin. A patterned
criss
or girdle merely accentuated the girl’s slim waist and the shape of her hips. The sun was glancing on a necklace of red jasper that she wore at her neck and, for a moment, she lifted a pale hand to it, showing a bracelet of beaten gold. Brother Augaire even noticed that her shoes were of decorated untanned hide.

Here, indeed, was a girl from a noble family; from a wealthy family.

Brother Augaire glanced round, half expecting to see some companion or a bodyguard nearby. But there was not even a horse waiting patiently along the shore. It was as if she had suddenly materialised there.

He wondered whether to call out a greeting but the girl was looking intently out to sea with an expression of sorrowful yearning that forbade any intrusion into her inner world. Brother Augaire shifted uncomfortably on his rock. He suddenly felt like a trespasser. He knew an impulse to remove himself from a place where he was not wanted.

Then the girl turned and stared momentarily at him; or rather stared through him, because he felt that those deep, dark melancholy eyes did not really see him. But in that moment, Brother Augaire also saw the depth of the suffering on the girl’s features. It was an expression that was beyond grief. Its terrible beauty was hardened into a pale mask as if the girl had come to some fearful moment in her life when her very life’s blood had frozen and never afterwards resumed its regular flow. Even the tears that had obviously been shed had long dried, but the fearsome abyss in her soul, the dark, cavernous well from which they had sprung, was still there. He could see it in those dark haunted eyes.

Brother Augaire dropped his gaze for a moment. When he looked up again, the girl was walking carefully and deliberately away from the shore and ascending the rocky path to the rising headland beyond. Behind the boulders on which Brother Augaire was sitting, a finger of high rocks stretched out into the sea for over a kilometre. It was called Rinn Carna, the Point of Cairns, because the sharp standing
rocks round the small peninsula looked like the mounds which marked the resting places of the departed.