Chain of Evidence (16 page)

He nodded but didn’t say anything, smiling amiably.

‘You’ve heard all about the death of the
taoiseach
,’ she stated and he nodded again.

‘Why do you think that he ran out in front of the cattle?’ she asked innocently.

He grinned and then a low chuckle escaped him. Suddenly he looked younger with a smile showing two large, slightly protruding teeth. ‘Din’t,’ he said forcing out the word. ‘Frit of cahle,’ he volunteered and then laughed again.

‘Why would he have had a chain around his leg?’ asked Mara and he looked startled, glancing over at Cumhal for an explanation.

‘Chain,’ said Cumhal, twisting his hands to mime the word.

‘No goo,’ said Brennan. ‘Wdne stop ’em.’

Mara gave him a friendly smile. ‘Well, enjoy your time with us, Brennan,’ she said and Cumhal pointed with his head towards the field. Brennan looked glad to go, but Mara waited until he disappeared before saying to Cumhal, ‘Did he understand, do you think?’

‘Understands a lot more than he pretends,’ said Cumhal briefly. ‘Get’s a bit worried though, about talking to someone new.’ He didn’t ask her any questions but he looked puzzled. He was an intelligent man with a great knowledge of farming so she decided to try her question on him, though by now she was fairly sure that she knew the answer to that particular puzzle. But who had tied the fateful knot?

‘Cumhal, can you think of any reason why the body of Garrett MacNamara might have had a chain looped around his ankle?’ she asked and was not surprised when he shook his head the puzzlement fading from his face as he understood the purpose of the question. Cumhal had been puzzled, but, thought Mara, as she walked the short length of road between the Brehon’s house and the law school, the inarticulate Brennan had shown no surprise at her question. If he had understood her – as Cumhal seemed to think – then why had he not looked surprised? Why had he evaded her question and pretended to think that she had asked him whether Garrett had taken a chain to stop the cattle stampeding.

Mara’s mind was whirring with ideas when the party from Thomond arrived. She felt stale and she was tired and she was worried and when that happened she usually took her rest and recreation in her flower garden in front of her house. Despite the poor weather and the cold winds that still blew, her
flowerbed
, shaped like a stream, of dark blue gentians all in flower was a glorious sight as they threaded their curving path through the centre of her garden. The warm weather earlier in the year had advanced the growth of the roses and several pale pink buds appeared on the rambling branches just at the entrance to the little piece of woodland that sheltered her garden from strong westerly winds. The lilies in the baskets of woven purple willow were growing tall but the recent cold weather had held them back and this year, she thought, they would not flower until June. She bent down to pull out a weed from the paved pathway that led to her front door and then straightened. The sound that she had been awaiting – the noise of several
iron-shod horses on the limestone road – rose above the lowing of the cows and the anxious twittering of the nesting swallows. With a smile she went to the gate and waited for the party from Thomond.

Nuala had changed. Once released from Turlough’s bear-like hug, Mara studied her young cousin. Nuala had always been grown-up for her age and now, at eighteen, she was a woman, tall, brown-eyed, assured, her glossy, jet-black hair braided and coiled behind her head. Mara felt tears sting her eyes when she thought how proud Nuala’s mother would have been of her daughter. The beautiful, talented poet, red-haired Mór O’Lochlainn, sister to Ardal, Mara’s best friend, had died of a malady in her breast when Nuala had been only twelve and the girl had a difficult time growing up with an indifferent father, the physician Malachy O’Davoren, who had not acknowledged the girl’s intelligence and interest in the
profession
of her father and grandfather.

‘I need your help and your brains,’ Mara assured her, throwing her arms around Nuala. ‘But first come in all of you, come in and rest and hear the story, as Brigid says.’

‘I’ll just go across to see the other boys with Fachtnan, first, and let you talk to my lord,’ said Nuala. ‘I’m not tired in the least.’ The boys at the law school had been like brothers to the solitary girl when she was growing up and perhaps it had been inevitable, thought Mara, that the kind, handsome Fachtnan should have been adored by Nuala. She would have enjoyed her ride from Thomond in his company. Her olive skin was glowing and her dark eyes smiling.

‘Brigid,’ she shrieked as she saw the sandy-haired housekeeper come out from the kitchen house and begin to run down the road. Nuala was a huge favourite with Brigid who could never quite forgive the pretty Scots girl Fiona, for distracting Fachtnan’s attention from the girl who had worshipped him from the time that she was twelve years old. Mara watched the meeting with a smile and then turned back to her husband.

‘So Garrett is dead,’ said Turlough. ‘Well, I’m sorry about it, but I can’t say that I’m too sorry. Not a man for the post. God have mercy on his soul,’ he added hastily.

‘Come inside,’ said Mara, taking her royal husband’s arm and leading him rapidly inside the Brehon’s house. Turlough, despite almost fourteen years of kingship, was terribly indiscreet and was quite liable to bellow out his opinions in the hearing of all.

Brigid had lit a fire of beech logs in the parlour and the clear bright flames lent a glow to the lime-washed walls. Mara escorted her husband to the cushioned bench beside the fire and poured some wine from a flagon that had been warming gently on the hearth.

‘Your Venetian glasses,’ said Turlough holding it up to the light of the window. ‘The ones your father brought home from Rome. Is this a special occasion?’

‘It’s always a special occasion for me when you come,’ said Mara with sincerity. She would not have her life be different, but it was true that she and Turlough, he as king of the three kingdoms of Thomond, Corcomroe and Burren, she as Brehon of the Burren and
ollamh
(professor) of Cahermacnaghten law school and mother of a three-year-old boy, saw too little of each other. Still, snatched moments were precious. She
swallowed
a mouthful of her own wine and smiled.

‘How very decadent to be drinking wine at this time of the morning,’ she said with appreciation. The wine was a full-bodied Burgundy imported to the city of Galway and sent across to her by her son-in-law Oisín who was a trader in that city.

‘Tell me about Garrett,’ said Turlough after a minute while he, too, savoured the wine and nibbled one of the buttered griddle scones that Brigid had left, wrapped in a clean linen cloth, on the iron rack to the side of the glowing logs.

Mara told him of the terrible death, trampled to death beneath the hoofs of the cattle stampede, but he, no more than anyone else, had any idea why the late
taoiseach
should have had a chain tied around his leg.

‘If it was anyone other than Ardal . . .’ began Mara and he nodded.

‘Hard to see Ardal making a mistake,’ he agreed. He took another sip of wine and said, lowering his voice a little, ‘To be honest, I’m not that sorry about the death, God be good to the man, but he was . . . well, I was never sure of him. Young Jarlath will make a much better
taoiseach.
I’ll deal with him very well.’

‘I’m afraid that you won’t be dealing with him at all,’ said Mara with a grimace. ‘Jarlath accepted the position and then, I don’t know whether it was because he felt that he might be under suspicion, but subsequently he declined it in the
presence
of all the clan. A man called Tomás from Thomond is now their choice.’ She would say no more about Tomás, she decided. Turlough was impulsive and emotional. If he took a dislike to Tomás and felt that he was usurping the place that should have been Jarlath’s, then it might be hard to talk him out of it.

‘Let me tell you about Stephen Gardiner,’ she said rapidly.

‘Seemed a nice fellow,’ he said idly. ‘A lawyer, isn’t he? You and he should get on well.’

Mara pressed her lips together. ‘I’m glad you liked him,’ she said demurely, lowering her eyes over her glass and taking a sip to conceal the smile that she could feel tugging at the corners of her mouth. ‘He came over here from Cardinal Wolsey, chancellor to your fellow king, Henry VIII.’

‘That’s right; one of your lads was telling me. Writing a book, so young Shane said . . . Clever fellow I’ll be bound. More your type than mine.’ Turlough was no scholar and seldom looked at a book, but regarded Mara’s collection, most of which had been handed down to her by her father, with great respect.

‘As a matter of fact, he came to the Burren, on the advice of O’Donnell, the Earl of Tirconnell, to inveigle Garrett MacNamara into giving up his loyalty to you and bowing the knee before the king of England. In return, Garrett would, too, have been an earl – the Earl of Castletown, and his son Peadar would have been Lord Mount Carron and the automatic inheritor of earldom from the moment of his father’s death,’ said Mara and then sat back and waited for the explosion.

‘There’s one thing that puzzles and worries me,’ she said when he had run out of steam and vented his feelings on the treachery of the late
taoiseach
and had consoled himself with another glass of wine. He looked at her enquiringly.

‘I’m just wondering about Stephen Gardiner,’ she said. ‘I think that Garrett’s death came as a nasty shock to him – and that is understandable. After all, the work that he had put in was now come to nothing – and even if Peadar, or rather Rhona, his mother, had been part of the plot, Peadar was now discarded by the clan and Jarlath, I imagine, would not have been interested in being an Englishman and an earl. But I’m just wondering about Stephen. You see when he heard the news that Jarlath had refused the position, he looked odd, you know, Turlough; he looked to me like . . . Well, I keep wondering why did he look like a man who was thinking intensely . . .’ She hesitated and then went on: ‘Really like a man who sees an opportunity opening up – I could see his eyes flying from Tomás to the other clan members and then to Jarlath . . .’

‘Troublemaker, they’re all troublemakers,’ said Turlough in an agitated tone of voice. He never liked the feeling of being betrayed, of his vision of Gaelic society being disturbed. ‘I remember my father, Teige of Coad, God have mercy on him,’ he continued. ‘I remember him talking about the time that the Duke of York came over to Ireland – the duke was fighting with the king of England at the time – one of the Henrys – the sixth one, I think – and he tried stirring up trouble over here in Ireland. Putting father against son; that was what he spent his time doing while he was over here. Pretended to care about Ireland, but his thoughts were all for England and how he could get an army together and get rid of whichever Henry was on the throne then. Sooner we get rid of that Stephen Gardiner, the better, if that is his sort.’

‘We’ll do that,’ said Mara calmly. She was suddenly conscious of receiving a huge insight and she smiled at him gratefully. He might not be reckoned to be very clever, but he had a sensitivity, an almost animal instinct, that scented out trouble. She hated to see him disturbed out of his flush-left routine. He was, she thought, looking at him dispassionately, one of the ancient race; one of the Irish kings of gone-by ages. Times had changed; she knew that, but she hoped, intensely, that this husband of hers would be able to live out his life according to the simple and honest rules that he had set up for himself.

‘Don’t worry,’ she said aloud. ‘I’ll handle Stephen Gardiner. I know his sort. I’ll leave you now for a little while – perhaps you would go and see Cormac and then have a rest – or the other way around. But I do want Nuala to see the body as soon as possible and tell me what she thinks.’

Nuala, she thought, had advanced hugely in confidence. She was, according to Turlough, the prize pupil and then assistant of the chief physician in Thomond – O’Hickey, the healer. He had a son, Mara knew, a son who was winning himself the renown that had previously been his father’s, but Nuala spoke little of the young Donough O’Hickey and when she did so it was in tones that revealed to Mara that her interest in the young man was professional only. From time to time, her dark brown eyes wandered towards Fachtnan; however, she was no longer a child, wearing her heart on her sleeve, as Brigid would phrase it, but a controlled, thoughtful young woman.

‘What do you think?’ asked Mara and Nuala smiled at her impatience.

‘I can’t tell until I see the body, Mara,’ she said. ‘At least,’ she amended, ‘I can’t tell you anything other than what your own commonsense and experience will already have told you.’

And with that they all had to be content.

‘I’ll tell you everything I can once I have examined the body,’ was all that she would say to the eager questions from the scholars as they rode in a group across the valley and then up the steep slope towards the castle which had been the pride and joy of Garrett MacNamara and his wife Slaney.

‘No one around,’ called Moylan as they breasted the last slope.

‘I suppose everyone is waiting for the burial to take place,’ remarked Shane, looking around at the empty roads and the quiet fields.

‘They can’t be still holding the wake,’ muttered Shane. ‘They’d all be as drunk as March hares by now if they were still at it in the castle.’

Nevertheless, they were all still there. As the party from the law school dismounted they could see that the stables were still full of horses and many strange grooms, who did not seem to recognise the Brehon, came to help her dismount with a surly air.

‘Heavy drinkers these men from Thomond,’ said Aidan. ‘Not the ladies, of course,’ he added with a quick look at Fiona who tossed her head and was unsure of whether to be pleased, or whether to assert that ladies could drink as much as men.

‘You’d think that they’d have gone back home to see to their farms, by now,’ said Moylan disapprovingly. ‘I don’t think many of the clan that we saw the last time we came here were from this kingdom.