Cross of Vengeance (13 page)

Three things confer
nemed
status on a physician:

1.
A complete cure.

2. Leaving no blemish.

3.
A painless examination.

The honour price of a physician is seven
séts
or three-and-a-half ounces of silver.

‘N
uala’s really slow,’ commented Cormac. For the tenth time he climbed up on the low mound that held the tomb with the naked body and looked across the gorse bushes towards Roughan Hill. Nuala was his godmother, a great giver of presents – not just at birthdays and during the Christmas festival, but after each yearly trip which she took to the University of Padua to perfect her medical knowledge. Although still in her early twenties, Nuala was probably one of the most learned physicians in Ireland and her desire for more knowledge was insatiable.

‘She’ll come when she is ready,’ said Mara. ‘She’s probably bringing a cart to take the body back to her hospital.’

‘To open it up, is that right, Brehon?’ said Domhnall.

Cormac’s eyes widened. ‘What for?’

‘I’m not sure – it’s a long time ago and I was young, but I think that she opens the stomach to tell when a person died. Something to do with his last meal, is that right, Brehon?’

‘That’s right, Domhnall,’ said Mara, feeling thankful that the sensitive Art was not present. ‘And, of course, to determine what actually killed the person.’

Cormac’s eyes widened even more, but he prided himself on being tough so he just hoisted his shoulders with the air of a hardened soldier. It was interesting, thought Mara, that although Cormac had been studying at the law school for five years now, and really did not see a huge amount of his father, he was, nevertheless, far more of a warrior king than a scholarly lawyer like his mother, and her father before her. What would be his future? she wondered, and was seized with a sudden feeling of dread and vulnerability, almost as though she had foreseen an early death for this most beloved son of hers. He was clever and quick to learn, but not that interested in the law and without the drive and determination that characterized Domhnall. At the moment it seemed as though his whole life was devoted to having fun and playing pranks – and, of course, appearing tough. Now he wandered back to the corpse and stared intently at it.

‘Here comes Nuala, I’d say; that sounds like a cart,’ interrupted Domhnall. ‘They’re coming by the road.’ Quick and neat in all of his movements, he climbed to the top of a young ash tree and then slid back down again. ‘It’s all right, Fachtnan is with her. She’ll know where to go,’ he said.

Marriage suited Nuala, thought Mara, as she watched the physician approach. She had been a pretty child – dark-haired and dark-eyed, but always with a slight air of sadness about her. Nuala’s mother had died when she was quite young, and her father, the physician Malachy, had never acknowledged his daughter’s brains and ambitions and continually frustrated her attempts to follow in the footsteps of her father, grandfather and other ancestors. This had cast a shadow over her girlhood. Now a successful and well-trained physician, married to Fachtnan, whom she had loved since childhood, owning her own hospital, the mother of two little girls, she was glowing with happiness.

‘What’ll she say when she sees the body crucified like that?’ Cormac sounded excited and stood back so that the tomb and its terrible burden could have immediate impact.

Mara smiled to herself. She could guess what Nuala would say and was pleased to find herself right when Nuala, on her arrival, said nothing, just gazed on the corpse with the keen, steady gaze that she brought to all medical problems, whether they concerned a baby’s rash or a man raving in a high fever. She took her time, inspecting the five wounds and eventually said, ‘The damage to the hands and feet appears to have been caused after death.’

Mara said nothing. She had guessed that. This was what she had expected. She saw Domhnall nod to himself and glance at Slevin as if to say,
Told you so!

Then she forgot the boys when Nuala added, ‘But some time after death,’ and leaned over the puncture mark on the right hand with an air of interest.

‘Some time after,’ repeated Mara. That surprised her.

‘Half an hour, at least, I’d say, but I can tell you more once I examine the body. We’ll take it away now if there is nothing else that I can help you with.’

‘We can’t find the clothes anywhere, but we think that he was murdered in the church,’ said Mara. She led the way to the place where the piece of linen still lay among the white flowers of the marsh maidens and nodded to Cormac to give his explanation when the triangular padded codpiece was unfolded. Fachtnan took the time to listen to Finbar’s story of how he found it, and praised him for his cleverness.

‘Bet I find the rest of the clothes,’ boasted Finbar.

‘And they are not in the church?’ asked Nuala.

‘Not a sign – so far as we could see.’

Nuala frowned over the codpiece.

‘Could he have been wearing this when he was stabbed?’ asked Mara.

Nuala’s shake of the head was quick and decisive. ‘Impossible,’ she said. ‘That knife in the ribs went straight into the man’s heart. He would have poured blood.’

‘No blood on him now,’ said Fachtnan.

‘Rained last night,’ put in Slevin. ‘I couldn’t sleep – it was so hot and then I heard it rain. It cooled off a bit then.’

‘Not last night, more the late evening – couple of hours after sunset,’ contradicted Domhnall. ‘I woke and went to the window and opened the shutters after it finished. The moon was only just up.’

Nuala went back to the body. ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘it probably was the rain that washed the body clean. You can still see traces of blood in the roots of the hairs on the stomach. But,’ she scrutinized the capstone on the left side of the body, testing a feathery piece of lichen with one fingernail and bringing her eyes close to the stone under the body, ‘I’d almost be sure, Mara, that he was not killed here. Sure,’ she amended, kneeling down and examining the grass by the stone. ‘No shower of rain could have completely cleared traces of blood from this.’

‘Someone hit him over the head, knifed him and carried him on to the slab,’ said Cormac cheerfully.

‘No.’ Nuala wore a faint frown. ‘No, no one hit him over the head.’ She went back and made a complete examination of the head. ‘Not a sign,’ she said.

‘Strangled him?’ suggested Fachtnan.

Nuala shook her head again.

‘He’d be blue in the face with his tongue sticking out if he was strangled,’ said Cormac. ‘The King was telling me …’

‘That’s enough, Cormac,’ said Mara. Odd the way he always referred to his father as ‘the king’ – and to her as ‘the Brehon’. We lost him when we gave him to Cliona and Setanta to foster, she thought sadly. And yet he is the world to me. But what am I to him? And then she took her mind back to the problem of the death of this German pilgrim.

‘Not knocked unconscious, nor strangled,’ she said with an effort. ‘So how on earth did anyone get his clothes off? He’s a big, heavy, strong-looking man.’

‘I hadn’t thought of that,’ admitted Nuala. ‘What do you think, Fachtnan?’

Fachtnan scratched his thick, curly hair. ‘Strange,’ he said. ‘Why on earth should a man take off his clothes so that his murderer could stick a knife in his ribs?’

‘What do you boys think?’ asked Mara. It was the sort of odd problem that a young mind could solve.

‘Went for a swim?’ suggested Finbar.

‘He was locked in the church, b—’ pointed out Slevin, stopping himself just in time from calling Finbar a birdbrain. ‘At least he was until Mór brought him his supper, and it’s stupid to swim after supper – especially one of Mór’s suppers. In any case, even if he was on his way to the river, he wouldn’t run past the inn stark naked. He’d undress on the bank like everyone else.’

Mara explained to Nuala the arrangement about the church key at Kilnaboy and Nuala nodded. The majority of houses in the kingdom of the Burren had a favourite place where a key was supposedly hidden. The fact that usually all of their neighbours knew the hiding place was not considered to be of importance; Nuala herself, as a trusted physician, probably knew twenty or thirty such hiding places. In any event she showed no surprise that a church filled with treasures would have such relaxed security arrangements.

‘There are absolutely no bruises on him,’ said Nuala, examining the body again. ‘I would be prepared to swear that no violence was used until the knife was slid in through his ribs, in here on the left side.’

‘Perhaps someone dared him – you know –
you take off all your clothes and run up and down the church and see if God strikes you dead
,’ said Cormac airily. ‘Then, when he’d taken everything off, they stuck a knife in him, threw his body over a horse and took him out here – and then tried to pretend that he was crucified, by sticking a knife into his hands and feet.’

‘I’ve got an idea,’ said Domhnall suddenly. ‘Could someone have put something in his food when he had his supper, something that would make him sleep and allow the murderer to take his clothes off; it would be someone who wanted to make it look as though God had taken vengeance on him for burning the piece of the true cross. It’s just an idea,’ he ended modestly.

‘It’s a very good idea,’ said Mara warmly. ‘What do you think, Nuala?’

‘Some poppy syrup, perhaps,’ said Nuala doubtfully. ‘There are only two places that this could have been obtained – from my hospital, or from Caherconnell.’

Her face closed and her lips tightened as she said this. Nuala’s father had left his physician’s business at Caherconnell, the ancestral home of the O’Davoren physicians, to the son of his second wife, and Nuala had never forgiven this. If it had not been for the kindness of an elderly physician who had bequeathed to her his house and farm, thus providing her with an income to pay her fees as an apprentice to a famous physician in the kingdom of Thomond, she would never have achieved her dream. Mara could see now how she compressed her lips and passed her hand across her face before speaking.

‘A man would have to be heavily drugged not to resist having his clothes removed, but I will certainly bear this in mind and examine the stomach contents carefully. Thank you, Domhnall, that was a good idea. I’ll check our stores and send a message over to Caherconnell,’ said Nuala with an effort.

‘You forget,’ said Mara quietly, and with a quick look along the path leading back to the churchyard, ‘we do have five pilgrims here who may have been to lands where the poppy grows and where those drugs are readily available, or else they may have met other pilgrims who gave them some as a medicine – such things do happen, I think.’

‘Or even the murdered man himself, he may have had something in his luggage,’ said Fachtnan.

‘Very possible; we must investigate everyone’s belongings.’ Mara was conscious that time was going by.

‘Let’s get the body into the cart,’ said Nuala, and beckoned to her servant to bring the cart forward.

The driver of the cart was a big and strong fellow; Mara knew that he assisted Nuala in operations where, despite the soporific effects of the poppy syrup, patients had to be held down while an amputation or a deep incision had to be made. However, he still needed the help of Fachtnan in order to move the body on to the cart. As they were struggling, Mara’s mind went to the murderer. It had to be a strong man, she thought, and then stopped herself from going any further. Facts first, she reminded herself, turning away and looking back towards the church of Kilnaboy.

How had anyone stripped the body and then killed the man? The other way around it would all make sense, but the witness of the clothes proved it wrong. No shower of rain could have washed the blood from that snowy-white codpiece, yet there was not a trace of blood on it.

‘Brehon! Look!’ shouted Cormac and Mara turned back quickly. Everyone was staring at the capstone. There, underneath where the body had lain, was a deep stain of blood.

‘But it’s on the right side – and he was stabbed on the left,’ said Cormac.

‘It’s hard to tell,’ said Nuala, inspecting the capstone with professional interest, ‘but I would have thought there was not enough blood here. I still think that you are right to think that he was murdered in the church and then brought out here almost immediately. The blood would still be liquid when he was moved on to the stone and—’

‘And he was lying on his face first of all,’ shouted Cormac. ‘That would be right, wouldn’t it, Nuala? And some blood leaked out from the wound. And then the murderer turned him over on to his back, what do you think, Nuala?’

What a clever brain that child has, thought Mara proudly. Aloud she said judicially, ‘That was well reasoned, Cormac.’

‘And limestone does suck up moisture,’ said Domhnall thoughtfully. ‘I remember pouring out a cup of milk that Brigid was trying to make me drink when I came to the law school first – I poured it on to that big mounting block of limestone and it sucked it all up; she never noticed.’

‘That’s true,’ said Nuala with a nod of approval at that piece of scientific observation. ‘I think Cormac is right, though. This man was killed elsewhere, brought here, perhaps on the back of a horse – but after that heavy shower last night, it’s no good looking for a bloodstain on a horse I would say – unless it was a white horse – so brought on the back of a horse, dragged on to the capstone, face down, and then – perhaps an hour or so later, after the horse had been returned to its field, arranged on his back.’ Nuala looked up at the Roughan hillside where five dark brown horses grazed the clumps of grass between the gorse bushes. ‘And that might have been the time that the murderer finished off the job – made a murder look like an act of God to the ignorant.’

‘Marked the stigmata on hands and feet,’ said Domhnall solemnly.

‘Anything else?’ asked Nuala after a minute. ‘If not, I’ll go now.’

Mara came out of her thoughts with a start. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Yes, of course, you go on. I’ll call down to Rathborney later in the day and see what you’ve managed to find out.’