Cross of Vengeance (25 page)

After a few minutes, Cormac slid into the room, looking a little embarrassed and slightly worried, but he held the door open in a very polite manner and said, in his best English, with the air of one making an announcement: ‘Here are the ladies, Brehon.’

To Mara’s dismay, not just the prioress but the lady’s two sisters were with him. Still, they all had their cloaks – were wearing them, in fact, so that could be turned to an advantage. She rose to her feet instantly and smiled as the prioress explained, slightly belligerently, that they had all been about to go for a walk. Mara waved the explanation aside.

‘It was so kind of you all to come,’ she said effusively. ‘And how wonderful that you are wearing your cloaks; I promised Father Miguel that I would check everyone’s cloak to make sure that there were no signs of blood on them. Father Miguel,’ she said with great solemnity, ‘is insistent that there should be no doubt as to the divine involvement in the death of the German pilgrim. I have promised to bear witness. Perhaps I could check your cloak first, Madame.’

By the time she had verified that there were no discernible traces of blood on the prioress’s cloak, the other two had divested themselves and she could go through the same procedure while keeping up a flow of conversation about the terrible rainstorm of the night when the pilgrim had been killed.

Oddly enough, the three women wore what were known as ‘Irish mantles’. Ardal O’Lochlainn, she knew, exported vast quantities of these through Galway to England, presumably by Wales, and they had been bought there by the sisters. These mantles were made from double wool, with honey combed through the nap until their surface was almost totally waterproof. If they were already running water from the heavy rain there would have been no chance of blood soaking into them. Nevertheless, Mara checked as thoroughly as she could, handing each garment back as soon as she had finished.

‘What a shame to deny you of your walk,’ she said. ‘Cormac and Finbar, while I talk to the Lady Prioress, would you take Mistress Grace along by the river, show her the places where the fish rise; Slevin and Domhnall take Mistress Bess to the sacred well, she will be interested in that, I’m sure. And here, take this …’ She produced a small, irregularly shaped piece of parchment and held it out to Bess with a smile.

‘You can tie it to the thorn bush beside the well,’ she said. ‘Make a wish and then your wish will come true before the end of a year.’

Bess took the small piece of skin with a broad grin and a look of easy acquiescence. ‘I’ll wish for fortune, what do you think, boys? Will that work?’

‘Sure to,’ Slevin assured her, and they went off, Bess’s loud, strident laugh sounding as they went through the door, Domhnall could speak English fluently and Slevin was good at the language also – they would keep her amused.

‘Let’s go to the river through the kitchen;’ proposed Cormac to Grace. ‘Mór generally gives you a cake or something as you pass through, and you can smell what’s going to be cooking for dinner.’ He did not seem to be embarrassed by her scarred face, but, Mara saw with pleasure, addressed her with more deference and courtesy than he usually showed towards adults.

‘Mór’s been a friend of mine all of my life,’ he added with a note of conspiracy in his voice. Mara was pleased to see Grace’s pale face gaining a little colour at the charm that, at unexpected times, emanated from her problem son.

‘Yes, let’s go and see what she can offer us,’ she said, her face expanding into a smile and showing pretty, well-shaped teeth inside the twisted and scarred mouth. ‘I’m very fond of cake myself.’

‘I’ll finish my task, Brehon,’ said Fachtnan. Mara had given him a tiny sign, just the sliding of her eyes towards the door, but they had worked together in close harmony for so many years that Fachtnan knew instantly that this was an interview that the Brehon would wish to conduct without witnesses. He would, she knew, use the utmost tact while checking the cloaks of Sorley, Father MacMahon, Nechtan and his wife, Narait.

Left alone with the prioress, Mara did not rush into speech. This woman, she thought, looking across the table with interest, may have come from quite humble origins. She had probably entered the convent, less because of religious fervour, but rather through an ambition to make the most of herself – a belief that she had brains and ability and that she could do better than become the wife and slave of some doltish farmer. She had taken her vows, risen in the ranks, made a success of her profession, and then – who knows – on some moonlit night in a sultry June she may well have yielded to nature, have lain with someone: someone who, perhaps, was almost forgotten, but who had a delicate cast of feature and a blond hair of head, she thought, remembering that entry in the notebook belonging to Hans Kaufmann; someone just like the stricken Grace; someone who had seduced her senses and had led her away from the straight and narrow path.

And then, poor thing, the realization, the growing acceptance of the terrible truth; no doubt the confiding in her sister Bess and in the mother, now dead, and somehow or other a feigned illness, a secret birth and a resolute parting – the prioress returned to her convent and an extra baby was added to an obscure farm in north Wales.

‘Was Herr Kaufmann blackmailing you about Grace?’ Mara made her question purposefully blunt, but kept her tone of voice neutral and non-judgemental.

The woman whitened. ‘What on earth do you mean?’

‘My only interest,’ said Mara, in tones that she made sound indifferent and uninterested, ‘is in the death of this German pilgrim. Through long experience, and I have been Brehon – rather like your Sergeant-at-Law in England and Wales – here in the kingdom of the Burren for over twenty-five years now, I’ve found that the more I can learn about the dead person, the easier it is to solve the puzzle of the murder.’

‘Twenty-five years,’ said the prioress with a strained smile. ‘You must have been a very young woman for such an important post.’

‘Yes, I was probably too young,’ admitted Mara. ‘You see, my father had been Brehon before me. I had taken over his school and I suppose that made it easier for me to take over his position.’ She smiled amiably at the prioress. ‘I think I did everything too young. I had a daughter when I was only fifteen years old.’ And then she stopped. If the woman were to imagine that Sorcha was born out of wedlock, then that was all to the good; one confidence might lead to another.

The prioress’s expression was thoughtful. After a few minutes she said abruptly, ‘How did you find out about Grace? Did Bess tell you?’

‘Certainly not Bess, nor Grace either. Though I fancy,’ said Mara cautiously, ‘that she was the one that told Herr Kaufmann.’

‘Stupid girl – trying to make herself important,’ muttered the prioress.

‘And he asked you for money – I saw the coins in his bag.’

The prioress pressed her lips together but said nothing.

‘So you are telling me that he just threatened to reveal the truth about you and then left it at that?’ queried Mara with a lift of an eyebrow, and when the woman just stared straight ahead, she went on smoothly, ‘You can tell the truth to me and it will go no further. We are alone here. Your secret is as sacred to me as if it were told in confession. It will not be betrayed. Grace is a lovely girl and somehow, somewhere, sometime, a man will look beyond the scarred face and will value the spirit inside it. I don’t think that Hans Kaufmann would have been such a man. He was someone who had a mission, he was a fanatic, he was looking for flaws within the Church of Rome, flaws that would give ammunition to his master, Martin Luther.’ She paused and then said very softly, ‘Only one thing interests me in this matter: did you have anything to do with the death of Hans Kaufmann?’

‘Nothing!’ There was a note of sincerity in the woman’s voice which Mara recognized, and she nodded understandingly when the woman said, ‘I thought it was all over and done with. I had given him the money that he demanded, and, to be honest, I thought he had a soft spot for Grace. He sought her out, talked with her and drew her out of herself.’

‘Did you and your sisters go out that evening?’

‘We got caught by the rain,’ said the prioress. ‘We ran back and raced up the back stairs to our rooms. This is a very good inn. There was a bright fire burning in my room and my cloak soon dried in front of it. My sisters, I’m sure, had the same. I saw neither of them until the following morning.’

‘One more question,’ said Mara. She got to her feet. She would stroll out and put the same questions to both Bess and Grace when they returned, but she was conscious that this woman was the leader of the little group and her word would be the most important of all three. ‘One more question,’ she repeated. ‘Did you see Mór, the innkeeper’s daughter, return from the church with her empty baskets?’

The prioress seemed surprised by the question, but she turned it over carefully in her mind. ‘No,’ she said, ‘no, Brehon, no, we definitely did not see her. You see we went for a walk along the bank of the river – quite some distance – then the three of us came back the same way, by the river bank, and we were already soaking wet so we went up the outside stairs to the back gallery and wished each other good night, and each of us went straight into our bedrooms and did not come out again that night. You can ask my two sisters; they will tell you the same story.’

De Canibus: Sinodus Sapientium

(Concerning Dogs: A Synod of Wise Men)

1. Whatsoever mischief a chained dog is accused of doing in the night that shall not be paid for.
   
2. Whatsoever mischief a dog does during the day in his master’s byres or pastures that shall not be paid for.
   
3. But if the dog goes beyond the boundaries of his master’s land whatsoever mischief he does must be paid for.
   

N
echtan and his wife were good hosts. They both seemed genuinely delighted to have the Brehon and the four boys as their guests. After supper they all went up to the big room at the top storey of the castle and found the toys and playthings that the four brothers had enjoyed. There were models of knights on horseback, siege weapons, a splendid castle with moat, a spectacular gate with towers on both sides, and a magnificent portcullis above the entrance; swords and shields, bows and arrows, even a painted target – the bottom of an old barrel – which the brothers had used for practice with throwing knives and arrows.

But Domhnall’s eye was taken by the baskets of costumes for plays, and the other boys, as usual, followed his lead.

‘We used to put on plays for the people of the parish,’ explained Nechtan. ‘Father MacMahon was a young man then, and he was full of zeal that everyone should understand the word of God. So me and my brothers, and my cousins, used to act out Bible stories. I remember them so well,’ he said fondly. ‘Here are the costumes. We would do the creation, and the fall of Lucifer, of course – here’s the flaming sword.’ Nechtan produced a wooden sword carefully painted in reds and blacks and finished off with yellow-edged scarlet-painted leather flames. Cormac gave it a few flourishes, and Mara thought secretly that with his handsome face and red-gold hair, he would make a wonderful angel. There was a devil’s mask there also, made cleverly from leather, with curved horns and lines drawn with gold paint in straight slashes around the eye sockets and fanning out from the curved open mouth, but the angel costumes were spectacular with magnificent wings made from swans’ feathers.

‘And then there was “Cain and Abel”,’ continued Nechtan. ‘And “Noah’s Ark”, of course. That was wonderful when we acted it. We brought all of the animals from the farmyard along to play their parts and you’ve never seen such a mess.’ He laughed heartily at the memory, and Mara thought that she had never seen him look so happy.

‘The costumes should all be here for the different stories,’ he said, rummaging in the baskets. ‘Father MacMahon used to get us to put on these plays for the pilgrims. This was before the inn was built, of course, but we used to act the plays amongst the ruins of the old monastery and the pilgrims used to sit on the stones and in the old blank windows. They would throw coins on to the stage, too, after the play was finished. Father MacMahon told us that the money was intended for the greater honour and glory of the church, but we used to retain some of it for our own uses.’ He chuckled to himself, but Narait, Mara noticed, did not smile at her husband’s boyhood recollections, as would most wives, but looked bored and wearied.

‘I’ve seen the players act those plays in the courtyards of the inns in Galway,’ said Domhnall, glowing with excitement. ‘My father used to rent a place at a window of the inn and we all went. The little ones got tired after a while and my mother took them home. But I stayed to the end,’ he finished, and Mara was sure that he spoke the truth. Domhnall, no matter how young, would always see matters to the end.

‘Which was your favourite, Domhnall,’ she asked.

‘“The Shepherds’ Play”,’ he answered immediately. ‘That has such good jokes in it – I’d like to be the sheep stealer.’

‘Why don’t you put on a play for us all this evening?’ said Mara impulsively. ‘It’s a shame to miss the opportunity of using these splendid costumes. Would you like to stay up here now and practise? Come down when you are ready. You won’t need any play books or anything – choose something simple. You wouldn’t mind, would you, Nechtan?’

‘“Cain and Abel” would be your best chance; there are just four parts in that,’ said Nechtan eagerly. ‘Look, the costumes are there, just under the ones for Abraham and Isaac.’

‘I’ll be Cain and you’ll be Abel,’ said Slevin to Domhnall. ‘The other two can be Adam and Eve.’

‘I’m not being Eve,’ said Cormac firmly. ‘Not in a hundred years will I dress up as a woman.’

‘Let’s leave them to it,’ said Mara hastily. Domhnall would work something out to soothe Cormac’s dignity, she knew.

The conversation downstairs flagged a little after the boys had left. Fachtnan had checked the cloaks of both Nechtan and his wife and had found no traces of blood on either, though both had admitted to having been caught in the downpour. Nechtan had been checking that as much turf was moved under shelter as possible, and Narait had suffered a headache brought on by the sweltering heat and had gone for a walk. As soon as she could do so in a natural manner, Mara once again led the conversation around to the events of that evening.