An Ensuing Evil and Others (42 page)

The abbot inclined his head. “Some of these predictions were violent in the extreme, aimed at one or two particular members of the community, foretelling their doom, casting them into the everlasting hellfire.”

“You say that during the month she has been so confined, the pronouncements grew more violent.”

“The more she was constrained, the more extreme the pronouncements became,” confessed the abbot.

“And she made just such a pronouncement against Brother Sioda? That is why you and your steward made the immediate link to Sister Scathach?”

“It was.”

“Why did she attack Brother Sioda?” she asked. “How well did she know him?”

“As far as I am aware, she did not know him at all. Yet when she made her prophecy, Brother Sioda told me that she seemed to know secrets about him that he thought no other person knew. He was greatly alarmed and said he would lock himself in that night so that no one could enter.”

“So his cell door was locked when your steward went there after he had failed to attend morning prayers?”

Abbot Laisran shook his head. “When Brother Cruinn went to Sioda’s cell, he found that the door was shut but not locked. The key was on the floor inside his cell…. This is the frightening thing…. There were bloodstains on the key.”

“And you tell me that you found a bloodstained robe and the murder weapon in Sister Scathach’s cell?”

“We did,” agreed the abbot. “Brother Cruinn and I.” “What did Sister Scathach have to say to the charge?” “This is just it, Fidelma. She was bewildered. I know when people are lying or pretending. She was just bewildered. But then she accepted the charge meekly.”

Fidelma frowned. “I don’t understand.”

“Sister Scathach simply replied that she was a conduit for the voices from the Otherworld. The shadows themselves must have punished Brother Sioda as they had told her they would. She said that they must have entered her corporeal form and used it as an instrument to kill him, but she had no knowledge of the fact, no memory of being disturbed that night.”

Fidelma shook her head. “She sounds a very sick person.” “Then you don’t believe in shadows from the Otherworld?” “I believe in the Otherworld and our transition from this one to that but… I think that those who repose in the Otherworld have more to do than to try to return to this one to murder people. I have investigated several similar matters where shadows of the Other-world have been blamed for crimes. Never have I found such claims to be true. There is always a human agency at work.”

Abbot Laisran shrugged. “So we must accept that the girl is guilty?”

“Let me hear more. Who was this Brother Sioda?” “A young man. He worked in the abbey fields. A strong man. A farmer, not really one fitted in mind for the religious life.” Abbot Laisran paused and smiled. “I’m told that he was a bit of a rascal before he joined us. A seducer of women.” “How long had he been with you?”

“A year, perhaps a little more.”

“And he was well behaved during this time? Or did his tendency as a rascal, as you describe it, continue?”

Abbot Laisran shrugged again. “No complaints were brought to me, and yet I had reason to think that he had not fully departed from his old ways. There was nothing specific, but I noticed the way some of the younger religieuse behaved when they were near him. Smiling, nudging each other… You know the sort of thing?”

“How was this prophecy of Brother Siodas death delivered?” she replied, ignoring his rhetorical question.

“It was at the midday mealtime. Sister Scathach had been quiet for some days and so, instead of eating alone in her cell, Sister Slaine brought her to the refectory. Brother Sioda was sitting nearby and hardly had Sister Scathach been brought into the hall than she pointed a finger at Brother Sioda and proclaimed her threat so that everyone in the refectory could hear it.”

“Do you know what words she used?”

“I had my steward note them down. She cried out: ‘Beware, vile fornicator, for the day of reckoning is at hand. You, who have seduced and betrayed, will now face the settlement. Your heart will be torn out. Gormflaith and her baby will be avenged. Prepare yourself. For the shadows of the Otherworld have spoken. They await you.’ That was what she said before she was taken back to her cell.”

Fidelma nodded thoughtfully. “You said something about her knowing facts about Brother Siodas life that he thought no one else knew?”

“Indeed. Brother Sioda came to me in a fearful state and said that Scathach could not have known about Gormflaith and her child.”

“Gormflaith and her child? Who were they?”

“Apparently, so Brother Sioda told me, Gormflaith was the first girl he had ever seduced when he was a youth. She was fourteen and became pregnant with his child but died giving birth. The baby, too, died.”

“Ah!” Fidelma leaned forward with sudden interest. “And you say that Brother Sioda and Sister Scathach did not know one another? How then did she recognize him in the refectory?”

Abbot Laisran paused a moment. “Brother Sioda told me that he had never spoken to her, but of course he had seen her in the refectory and she must have seen him.”

“But if no words ever passed between them, who told her about his past life?”

Abbot Laisran’s expression was grim. “Brother Sioda told me that there was no way that she could have known. Maybe the voices that she heard were genuine?”

Fidelma looked amused. “I think I would rather check out whether Brother Sioda had told someone else or whether there was someone from his village here who knew about his past life.”

“Brother Sioda was from Mag Luirg, one of the Ui Ailello. No one here would know from whence he came or have any connection with the kingdom of Connacht. I can vouch for that.”

“My theory is that when you subtract the impossible, you will find your answers in the possible. Clearly, Brother Sioda passed on this information somehow. I do not believe that wraiths whispered this information.”

Abbot Laisran was silent.

“Let us hear about Sister Slaine,” she continued. “What made you choose her to look after the girl?”

“Because she worked in the apothecary and had some understanding of those who were of bizarre humors.”

“How long had she been looking after Sister Scathach?”

“About a full month.”

“And how had the girl’s behavior been during that time?”

“For the first week it seemed better. Then it became worse. More violent, more assertive. Then it became quiet again. That was when we allowed Sister Scathach to go to the refectory.”

“The day before the murder?”

“The day before the murder,” he confirmed.

“And Sister Slaine slept in the next cell to the girl?”

“She did.”

“And did she always lock the door of Sister Scathachs cell at night?”

“She did.”

“And on that night?”

“Especially on that night of her threat to Sioda.”

“And the key was always hung on a hook outside the cell so that there was no way Sister Scathach could have reached it?”

When Abbot Laisran confirmed this, Fidelma sighed deeply. “I think that I’d better have a word with Sister Scathach and also with Sister Slaine.”

Fidelma chose to see Sister Scathach first. She was surprised by her appearance as she entered the gloomy cell the girl inhabited. The girl was no more than sixteen or seventeen years old, thin with pale skin. She looked as though she had not slept for days; large dark areas of skin showed under her eyes, which were black, wide, and staring. The features were almost cadaverous, as if the skin was tightly drawn over the bones.

She did not look up as Fidelma and Laisran entered. She sat on the edge of her bed, hands clasped between her knees, gazing intentiy on the floor. She appeared more like a lost waif than like a killer.

“Well, Scathach,” Fidelma began gently, sitting next to the girl, much to the surprise of Laisran, who remained standing at the door, “I hear that you are possessed of exceptional powers.”

The girl started at the sound of her voice and then shook her head. “Powers? It is not a power but a curse that attends me.”

“You have a gift of prophecy.”

“A gift that I would willing return to whoever cursed me with it.”

“Tell me about it.”

“They say that I killed Brother Sioda. I did not know the man. But if they tell me that it was so, then it must be so.”

“You remember nothing of the event?”

“Nothing at all. So far as I am aware, I went to bed, fell asleep, and was only awoken when the steward and the abbot came into my cell to confront me.”

“Do you remember prophesying his death in the refectory?”

The girl nodded quickly. “That I do remember. But I simply repeated what the voice told me to say.”

“The voice?”

“The voice of the shadow from the Otherworld. It attends me at night and wakes me if I slumber. It tells me what I should say and when. Then the next morning I repeat the message as the shadows instruct me.”

“You hear this voice… or voices… at night?”

The girl nodded.

“It comes to you here in your cell?” pressed Fidelma. “Nowhere else?”

“The whispering is at night when I am in my cell,” confirmed the girl.

“And it was this voice that instructed you to prophesy Brother Sioda’s death? It told you to speak directly to him? Did it also tell you to mention Gormflaith and her baby?”

The girl nodded in answer to all her questions.

“How long have you heard such voices?”

“I am told that it has been so since I was a little girl.”

“What sort of voices?”

“Well, at first the sounds were more like the whispering of the sea. We lived by the sea, and so I was not troubled at first for the sounds of the sea have always been a constant companion. The sounds were not disturbing but gentle, kind sounds. They came to me more in my head, soft and sighing. Then they increased. Sometimes I could not stand it. My parents said they were voices from the Otherworld. A sign from God. They brought me here. The abbey treated me well, but the sounds increased. I was placed here to be looked after by Sister Slaine.”

“I hear that these voices have become very strident of late.”

“They became more articulate. I am not responsible for what they tell me to say or how they tell me to say it,” the girl added as if in defense.

“Of course not,” Fidelma agreed. “But it seems there was a change. The voice became stronger. When did this change occur?”

“When I came here to this cell. The voice became distinct. It spoke in words that I could understand.”

“You mention voices in the plural and singular. How many voices spoke to you?”

The girl thought carefully. “Well, I can only identify one.”

“Male or female?”

“Impossible to tell. It was all one whispering sound.”

“How did it become so manifest?”

“It was as if I woke up and they were whispering in a corner of the room.” The girl smiled. “The first and second time it happened, I lit a candle and peered round the cell, but there was no one there. Eventually I realized that as strong as the voices were, they must be in my head. I resigned myself to being the messenger on their behalf.”

“And the voice instructed you to do what?”

“It told me to stand in the refectory and pronounce their messages of doom.”

Abbot Laisran leaned forward in a confiding fashion. “Sometimes these messages were of violence against the whole community, and at other times violence against individuals. But it was the one against Brother Sioda that was the most specific and named events.”

Fidelma nodded. She had not taken her eyes from the girl’s face. “Why do you believe this voice came from the Otherworld?”

The girl regarded her with a puzzled frown. “Where else would it be from? I am a good Christian and say my prayers at night. But still the voice haunts me.”

“Have you heard it since the warning you were to deliver to Brother Sioda?”

The girl shook her head. “Not in the same specific way.”

“Then in what way?”

“It has gone back to the same whispering inconsistency, the sound of the sea.”

Fidelma glanced around the cell. “Is this place where you usually have your bed?”

The girl looked surprised for a moment. “This is where I normally sleep.”

Fidelma was examining the walls of the cell with keen eyes. “Who occupied the cells on either side?”

“On that side is Sister Slaine who looks after this poor girl. To the other side is the chamber occupied by Brother Cruinn, my steward.”

“But there is a floor above this one?”

“The chamber immediately above this is occupied by Brother Torchan, our gardener.”

Fidelma turned to the lock on the door of the cell.

Abbot Laisran saw her peering at the keyhole. “Her cell was locked, and the key on the inside when Brother Cruinn and I came to this cell after Brother Sioda had been found.”

Fidelma nodded absently. “That is the one puzzling aspect,” she admitted.

Abbot Laisran looked puzzled. “I would have thought it tied everything together. It is the proof that only Scathach could have brought the weapon and robe into her cell and therefore she is the culprit.”

Fidelma did not answer. “How far is Brother Sioda’s cell from here?”

“At the far end of this corridor.”

“From the condition of the robe that you showed me, there must have been a trail of blood from Brother Sioda’s cell to this one?”

“Perhaps the corridor had been cleaned,” he suggested. “One of the duties of our community is to clean the corridors each morning.”

“And they cleaned it without reporting traces of the blood to you?” She was clearly unimpressed by the attempted explanation. Fidelma rose and glanced at the girl with a smile. “Don’t worry, Sister Scathach. I think that you are innocent of Brother Sioda’s death.” She turned from the cell, followed by a deeply bewildered Abbot Laisran. “Let us see Sister Slaine now.”

At the next cell, Sister Slaine greeted them with a nervous bob of her head.

Fidelma entered and glanced along the stone wall that separated the cell from that of Sister Scathachs. Then she turned to Sister Slaine, who was about twenty-one or -two, an attractive-looking girl.