Chain of Evidence (24 page)

Jarlath and Tomás; it’s interesting, thought Mara, how both of them had got what they wanted. Tomás was now
taoiseach
and Jarlath was the sole owner of the fleet of merchant ships.

And why had Jarlath sold his ship to O’Donnell? Did he plan that he would buy a splendid new ship within a short period of time? Was Garrett’s silver still carefully locked away in the strong room of the castle, or had the key been found and the stores rifled? And how much was Garrett’s share in the merchant ship business worth to his younger brother, Jarlath?

‘Ardal,’ she said, interrupting his enthusiastic description of his little Spanish jennet, ‘tell me something, Ardal.’

Always the soul of politeness, he moved back up beside her and she put her question to him.

‘Immense!’ he exclaimed. ‘I envy Jarlath. The world is opening up. There was a time when trade was just with England, France and Spain and even then to have a ship was to be rich, but now! There’s the Spice Islands – ships are criss-crossing the oceans laden with goods from there. And the last time that I was in Galway there was talk of a sea route to China. Think how easy it would be to bring back silks by sea than with the long years of travel across land. That young man will make a fortune, Brehon, or I will be most surprised.’

‘I see,’ said Mara. Now that she had her information, she wanted to spend the rest of the journey to Carron with only her thoughts for company. Over her shoulder she said, ‘Shane, do you remember how, when you were younger, you always wanted to go to sea? Well, you must hear what the O’Lochlainn has to say about the exploration of the oceans.’

The ancient inauguration site of the MacNamara clan was in a strange hidden site. Mara was not fanciful, but the place always seemed to have an eerie atmosphere of primeval times long passed. It was in one of those hanging valleys which slotted into the limestone hills around and appeared even more secret and verdant because of the smooth shining stone surrounding them. One by one the party from the law school dismounted and tied their horses to the ancient large
low-br
anched ash tree at the entrance.

Theirs were the only horses there, but a subdued murmur of many voices from above them told Mara that the clan had arrived. No doubt those from the Burren had either walked or left their horses at the castle above.

‘You go first, Shane; the rest of you follow him,’ she said in a low voice. It was fitting that the king should be the last to arrive. She tucked her arm into his and held him back while Fachtnan ushered the scholars along the narrow path of deeply scored limestone which descended into the small valley. A strange and eerie place, she thought, as she paced beside her husband; some pine trees grew on either side of the path, their enormous roots, swelling like claws from the stony ground, their grey-blue branches meeting overhead and casting a deep gloom over the passageway. A tiny stream twisted its way down beside the path leaving small islands and promontories for the ferns which grew in clumps beside it. A pretty place on a bright spring day, thought Mara noticing some pale yellow primroses nestling among the glossy green of the hart’s tongue fern’s strap-like leaves, but today in the dark and the rain there was something eerie about it. She had pushed back her hood to do honour to the occasion but was aware of steady drips going down the back of her neck from the spiky foliage overhead.

‘I’ll get through this as quickly as possible – skip a few of my ancestors,’ whispered Turlough, but Mara frowned at him.

‘Do it right and in a couple of hours we’ll be sitting by the fire and you’ll have a bottle of the best burgundy you’ve ever tasted – a present from the mayor of Galway himself,’ she murmured, keeping her face solemn and dignified as they emerged from the path.

The small valley was crammed with people, all in their best clothes and all getting very wet. In front of them was Tomás MacNamara, dressed in a white
léine
and a mantle made from pure white lamb’s wool. His face bore a look of almost saintly dedication with his brown eyes bent onto the ground. His wife, Cait, stood well back from him, but oddly her eyes were not on her lord, but on the prettily-flushed, petulant face of her eldest son who stood beside her. The boy, Mara noticed with a slight flicker of malice, was looking worriedly at the harm that the rain was doing to his finery and more interested in that than in the ceremonies.

Tomás was led in procession to the cairn and he stood there, calm, and impassive, seemingly unaware of the rain which had now begun to fall heavily again, splashing in small runlets down from the stony hillside, spraying on to the golden celandines and the delicate petals of the wood sorrel. Turlough, never one to mind the rain, stepped forward and stood out in the open, impervious to the downpour, while others moved as near to the overhanging rocks as they could or shrank back into the pine-covered pathway. Fintan MacNamara, the blacksmith from the Burren, approached Turlough and handed to him the ceremonial rod – a
newly-p
eeled, straight, narrow branch from the nearby ash, a tree that was sacred to the MacNamara clan. A very ancient right, that of handing the rod to the king would have come down to Fintan from ancestors – perhaps going back to the distant past of legends. It showed, thought Mara, that the MacNamara clan were Burren in origin and she felt even more regretful that so many of the clan members now lived outside the kingdom.

When Tomás reached the foot of the cairn, King Turlough Donn touched him on the head with the white rod.

‘Do you swear to be my vassal?’ he enquired in a pleasant, conversational tone that seemed to imply that a negative answer could be received as easily as an affirmative.

Tomás, however, rose to the occasion. He had a pleasant voice, with a good timbre in it and he pitched it carefully to fill the whole valley as he swore on his hand to be the king’s vassal in accordance with the ancient Brehon laws.

‘And I swear to maintain my lord’s boundaries,’ he said, paused, looked around.

‘And to escort my lord to public assemblies,’ he continued.

And then, with war-like emphasis: ‘And I promise to bring my own warriors to each
slógad
and to support my lord in the uprising.’

And then he dropped his voice slightly and said with emphasis, ‘And in the last hour of my lord, I will assist in digging his grave mound and will contribute to the death feast.’

Turlough heard this unmoved, though Mara usually could not repress a slight shudder. Today, however, she was absorbed in watching Tomás’s face, while Turlough enumerated his ancestors from the great Brian Boru down through the following four centuries. Was it the face of a man who had finally attained his dream; the face of a man, perhaps, who would be willing to kill in order to find himself in the position where he was at this moment? But his face told her nothing. It was calm and dignified.

Then Tomás bowed to King Turlough Donn and encircled the cairn three times, sunwise, before climbing solemnly to the top of the mound. He lifted up the white rod and held it high above his head. There was a great shout of ‘the MacNamara’
from the clan of MacNamara. This was the naming ceremony and without this he would not be the
taoiseach
of the clan.

Tomás allowed the echoes from the rocks around to die down before holding out the white rod for silence and then in a sonorous voice he swore to serve his people and to protect them in return for a just rent and a fair tribute. Thus was Tomás MacNamara inaugurated as
taoiseach
of his clan, only four years after the inauguration of the murdered man whose body still remained to be buried. He waited for a moment for the cheers to die down. This was the moment when Mara expected to see him look at his wife, Cait. But his eyes were turned in a different direction and were fixed on the impassive face of Jarlath who was standing at the back of the crowd, half-hidden by the immense bulk of the blacksmith. Mara’s eyes followed his but Jarlath did not return the gaze, only stared straight across the small enclosed hollow, appearing to fix themselves on a small crop of pale-green sheath-like leaves from the deadly nightshade plant.

And then Tomás looked back again at his clan and this time he spoke with a note of iron in his voice.

‘And on this day, a day that will always be sacred to me, I swear to the MacNamara clan that whoever was responsible for the secret and unlawful killing of the last
taoiseach
, my cousin, Garrett MacNamara, then that person will be pursued and will meet with the full penalty of the law.’

There was a buzz of conversation from the listening people as he stepped down and moved away from the cairn. Several faces were turned towards Mara and with difficulty she preserved an impassive face.
How dare he take my office upon himself
, she thought but said nothing. He had not even looked towards her and may not have meant an insult, she told herself. In any case, now was not the moment to quarrel with a newly elected
taoiseach.

Mara waited for a moment until Tomás stepped forward to speak informally to Turlough and then she went across to Jarlath and smiled at him in an easy way.

‘Any regrets?’ she asked as she had done before and he answered her with a broad smile.

‘Not in the least,’ he assured her.

‘You looked pensive for a moment,’ she said, probing a little more.

‘I was thinking about the sea,’ he said. ‘There’s a nice wind getting up. Coming from the south-east, too. Just the wind that I want. I could almost feel how good it would be to be out there on the ocean. Too many people around here; I feel hemmed in.’ Jarlath looked around him with an air of restless dissatisfaction. ‘Everything is the same as when I was a boy. It wouldn’t suit me. I like new places, new sights, and meeting new people.’ He glanced down at her with a smile. ‘You should try it yourself sometime, Brehon; you would enjoy it, I think. Come with me on a voyage.’

‘You’re only saying that because you want to conceal that you are secretly wishing to get away from me and my questions as soon as possible.’ Mara laughed as she spoke, but she watched his face narrowly and thought that he looked slightly taken aback as though she had uncovered his thoughts. ‘I don’t think that I want to get any wetter than I am at the moment,’ she went on, smoothly covering her words of any covert intention. ‘Is the burial going to be straight away?’

‘Straight away,’ Jarlath assured her. ‘Tomás has given orders that the coffin is to be taken to the churchyard on a turf cart. It will be waiting for us there.’

On a turf cart! Mara stared at him with astonishment. Even the lowliest cottager in the kingdom would have a better burial than that. When the father of Garrett and Jarlath had been buried, men had fought for the privilege of carrying the coffin. And so many had there been to share the burden that the little piles of white quartz stones, placed by the mourners at the traditional stopping places down the steep hillside, still appeared like a long line when seen from the valley below. But to be conveyed to the burial place on a turf cart! What an end to a man’s life, she thought. Not a bad man, either, just awkward and ill-at-ease with his fellow creatures – married to a different woman he might have eventually become well-liked and esteemed by his clan. A surge of anger filled her. Immediately she stepped forward and took her place at the foot of the cairn. Instantly every eye went to her and then conversations finished and there was silence except for the trilling of a pair of tiny gold crest birds.

Mara waited until all were looking at her and then said in low, but clear tones, ‘Now we need to honour the dead and to escort the body of Garrett MacNamara to his final resting place.’

Keeping her head high, she put her arm into Turlough’s and turned down the path.

‘Don’t slip,’ said Turlough as she strode out, almost dragging him in her eagerness to get to the road and to save Garrett’s body from the final indignity. ‘What’s the matter?’ he asked, always sensitive to her moods.

Tomás has arranged to have Garrett’s body awaiting us at the churchyard – carried there by a turf cart – and Jarlath, Garrett’s own brother, told it to me without a qualm
, she almost replied, feeling her anger almost choking her. But she closed her lips firmly. Before Turlough had become king of the three kingdoms, there had been constant wars, clan were set against clan, all of them warring to become the most powerful. The MacNamaras were the second most powerful clan in the three kingdoms and there had been battles between them and their overlords, the O’Briens. Since the inauguration of Turlough the enmity and rivalry had become dormant; it was not for her, the wife of the king, to fan the hidden flames. She would do her best for Garrett, try to ensure a dignified burial, solve his secret and unlawful killing, but she would do it herself and not involve Turlough more than was necessary.

The body was already at the small graveyard at Carron when they arrived. And yes, it lay on a four-wheeled turf cart, the coffin perfunctorily covered by an old tarpaulin. There was a fair attendance of farm workers, though none, which Mara could see, of the indoor servants. No doubt they were back at the castle preparing a celebration feast.

Among the farm workers was Brennan the cowman, who was standing beside the coffin, and Mara went forward to greet him.

‘A sad day,’ she said. She had been to so many of those burials that the conventional words flowed from her lips without any thought of hers. She was touched by his presence, though. After all, he had been dismissed from his position as chief cowherd by the man whom he now came to honour. The place beside the coffin in the churchyard should surely have been Jarlath’s but he kept his distance, talking to Father MacMahon in an animated fashion.

Brennan said something but she could not understand it. He seemed to be gobbling his words more than when she had met him with Cumhal. What an affliction it must be to have been born with a mouth that was unable to shape the sounds of speech adequately. Mara, who used a quick and clever tongue to steer her way adroitly through the potential flare-ups of a volatile and war-like people, found she could hardly bear to envisage a time when words would not work for her.