Cross of Vengeance (5 page)

In any case, she had her share of curiosity and wondered whether Mór would reveal anything about this intriguing Hans Kaufmann. How wonderful if he was to propose marriage, but Mara feared that it may not have been marriage which was on his mind.

Mór, to her pleasure, was in great good humour, admiring how grown-up Domhnall had become since she had seen him last, flirting a little with the handsome Slevin, and trying to kiss Cormac who had often been at the inn when accompanying the king to Thomond during the summer holidays.

‘I’ll only put up with it if I can have a sweet pastry,’ he said with a grin, and Mara did not scold him for his outrageousness because she saw how Mór was looking for an opportunity to work off her high spirits. What had Hans Kaufmann said to her during those few minutes out in the courtyard? Had he told her that he would call in again on his way back from the Aran Islands? Or perhaps they had been together in that hour when he was missing from the table. Mór’s colour was high and her dark blue eyes were sparkling. Despite an excess of weight, she was a very pretty girl. And, of course, it had been surprising that the German should have left the hall without partaking of the sweetmeats and the malmsey wine. Perhaps that wink exchanged between himself and Mór had been an agreement for an assignation – it had been a little odd that she had allowed her kitchen maids to serve the sweet course and had not appeared herself with it. Mara remembered thinking that Blad had not looked too pleased either. His good manners as host had not allowed him to leave the ladies on either side of him, but she had seen him look towards the door to the kitchen in a puzzled fashion. Mór had been somewhere else. Hans Kaufmann had not gone to his room; there had been no sound of footsteps going up the steps – he had crossed the cobbled surface of the courtyard and then had gone … where?

And then, above the exuberant shouts, laughing comments and the exaggerated smacking of Mór’s full lips as she chased Cormac around the room, there was a thunder of heavy boots in the passageway outside and Sorley, the sexton, burst into the room. His face was red and his grey hair, cut very short, seemed to stick straight from his head. He glared at Mór.

‘Where’s my key?’ he shouted. ‘It’s gone from my jerkin. And I left my jerkin here in the kitchen. Who touched the key to the tower?’

Mara took a quick step forward. There was a note of hysteria in the man’s voice. He was an odd fellow. Perhaps digging graves and shovelling old bones aside every week of his life for as long as she could remember had had a strange effect upon him, but she had never seen Sorley smile. His face was white now and small patches of red appeared in places, one right in the middle of his forehead. The boys stopped laughing and stared at him uneasily.

Mór had flushed a bright poppy-red, but now her face grew pale at the look in his eyes. Mara stepped forward quickly. ‘It’ll be somewhere, Sorley,’ she said soothingly. ‘It’s such a big key that it won’t be mislaid. And Father MacMahon has his key, doesn’t he?’

His face turned even redder. ‘I’m talking about
my
key, Brehon,’ he said. She had a feeling that only respect for her office stopped him short of shouting at her. He nodded stiffly, but managed to keep his mouth shut after that. His angry eyes swept from Mór to the two aghast faces of the kitchen maids. Mara saw them exchange looks and guessed that they knew something about the key. Quickly she intervened again.

‘You probably lost it in the courtyard,’ she stated. ‘Come along, boys. Let’s all go and search. Come with us, Sorley. You can show my scholars exactly where you walked.’

His hand went to the empty cord dangling from the belt of his jerkin and he looked once more around the kitchen. Sorley had been offered the same meal as they had, and probably plenty to drink also, but he had dined in the kitchen. Even now, with the door ajar, with the windows widely opened to the river, and the fire reduced to embers, the place was hot. When they were cooking there would have been charcoal braziers burning as well. He would have removed his jerkin and hung it up before sitting down to his food and ale. Just as she thought of this, she saw his eyes go to the floor beneath the row of hooks on the wall at the far end of the kitchen. But Mór ran an efficient kitchen and there was not even a crumb to be seen. Mara touched his arm reassuringly.

‘It will be found,’ she said with conviction, and signed to him to go ahead of her in the wake of her young scholars.

‘What is the best way to find it, Domhnall?’ she asked once they were all in the courtyard and Sorley was safely surrounded by her young helpers.

‘Search the whole area,’ he replied decisively. ‘It’s difficult to remember exactly where you’ve walked. We’ll do the whole thing, Sorley. Don’t worry. It won’t take long. Cormac, you measure two paces from the wall. Art, the next two paces …’

‘Did you go into the stables at all, Sorley?’ asked Mara with feigned anxiety. ‘That would be more difficult with all the straw … No? Well, that’s good. Let’s walk along the path towards the church together. The sun should pick up a gleam from the metal. Where were you when you noticed that it was missing?’

At that moment there was a shout from Domhnall. ‘It’s been found, Brehon.’

With a feeling of thankfulness, Mara turned back. She had better things to do than searching fields and roadways for a key. She was not, moreover, surprised to be summoned back so quickly. Mór was bold and decisive.

‘Found it under that chest near the hooks,’ she was shouting, waving the large key triumphantly. ‘You must have dropped it and it got kicked under there when we were serving.’

It was a possible story. The kitchen would have been hectic with the three women and the serving boys dodging in and out of each other’s way, carrying heavy trays, their eyes stinging from the heat of the fires and the smoke from the braziers. Sorley, however, looked sceptical, and as he tied the key back on Mara observed the complication of the knot which secured it to his jerkin and guessed that he was not convinced that it could just have fallen off and then been kicked under the chest. He drew in a long breath and Mór looked at him defiantly.

However, at that moment Blad came out with Father MacMahon and Ardal O’Lochlainn on either side of him. Ardal was, as usual, grave and slightly withdrawn, but Father MacMahon was positively merry with a broad smile on his lips and a slight stagger to his walk. Blad had, Mara guessed, drowned the memory of an unsatisfactory amount of pilgrims with a bowl of brandy and the priest had taken his full share.

‘Wonderful day, Sorley,’ he said exultantly. ‘All the pilgrims praised how beautifully you keep the tower. They thought our arrangements so much better than at other places of pilgrimage.’

None of them had said anything of the sort, to Mara’s knowledge, but, she thought charitably, perhaps a priest had a God-given ability to read minds. She hastened to add her morsel towards obliterating the painful memory of the missing key.

‘Everyone must admire the tower,’ she said solemnly. She had heard again and again how Sorley and his father had built that little tower when the church of Kilnaboy had purchased the relic of the true cross from a church in Rome. ‘It is so wonderfully built and so cleverly designed. It’s like Jacob’s ladder ascending to heaven,’ she concluded. That was, she modestly considered, a stroke of genius. For the first time during the day, Sorley smiled the smile of a satisfied man.

Father MacMahon positively beamed. He cleared his throat pompously and turned to the boys. ‘What is it that the Bible says?’ he demanded, and then without waiting for an answer he continued: ‘“
And he dreamed, and behold a ladder was set up on the earth, and the top of it reached to heaven: and behold the angels of God ascending and descending on it.
” That’s right, isn’t it?’

He hiccupped slightly, and while Domhnall assured him solemnly that he was correct in his memory of the quotation, Cormac and Art, once more overcome by giggles, bolted across the courtyard and set off running towards the church, followed by Slevin and Finbar. Mara smiled at Domhnall.

‘Better get them back,’ she said with a glance at the stables where her Arab mare, a gift from King Turlough ten years ago, was standing patiently in the cool shade, tolerating the companionship of the boys’ ponies. ‘Such a marvellous meal and a wonderful occasion, as always, but now we must return,’ she said, addressing Father MacMahon and Blad. ‘Will you ride back with us, Ardal?’

His reply was drowned by Cormac’s shriek and then a deeper roar. In a moment the boys were back in the courtyard.

But their cries had gone before them and Sorley was hurtling through the gate before they reached it.

‘Fire! Fire!’ they yelled. ‘The round tower is on fire!’

(Judgements of Arson)

When judging a case of arson a Brehon must first decide whether the fire was caused by malice or by accident. The former merits a heavier fine.

Next the judge must consider whether death or injury to either people or animals was caused – if so, the appropriate fine is imposed.

Burning buildings such as mills, barns and animal pens will result in a heavier fine than other buildings.

Fire is violent and terrifying and the effect on the owner should be calculated as well as the amount of the loss. Recompense must be paid for both.

M
ór was the first to react.

‘Buckets!’ she shrieked. Immediately her kitchen staff, who had followed her to the door when she restored the key into Sorley’s anxious hand, dashed back into the kitchen. The stable boys, who were dining on a large basket full of left-overs from the lavish meal, up in the loft space above the horses, came vaulting down and grabbed more leather buckets from the store in the stable. Fire was an ever-present risk in stables and they automatically began to run towards the river.

‘No, the round tower, in the churchyard!’ Slevin’s voice was hoarse with the effort of bawling across the field.

‘The round tower!’ Sorley’s voice was a roar filled with despair. He began to run and Ardal O’Lochlainn followed and overtook him.

‘The well, you numbskulls; there’s a well in the churchyard,’ shouted Mór, hitching her
léine
up through her belt. ‘Get the water there.’ And she set an example by seizing two empty buckets and sprinting through the gate.

‘God and His blessed saints aid us in our hour of need!’ prayed Father MacMahon.

Mara left him to his prayers, resolving not to display as much leg as Mór, but at the same time determined to reach the burning building before any of her scholars got themselves into a dangerous position. Surely, she thought, as she sped through the gate and across the field, a solid stone building like that would not be too vulnerable to fire. Until a couple of hours ago that churchyard was full of people, and even after all had viewed the sacred relic and Sorley had, as she was sure, carefully locked the tower, many people drawn by the annual Feast of the Holy Cross would have stayed in order to pray at the gravesides of dead relations and friends. The fire, she reasoned, could not have been going for more than an hour.

When she reached the church, she began to relax. Someone, probably Ardal O’Lochlainn, who was always good in a crisis, had formed the helpers into a line leading from the well to the tower. The thatched roof was not on fire, but there seemed to be a fire burning fiercely in the top room of the little tower, flames darting out through the small window slit on the south side of the tower. Sorley was on the top of the ladder, Ardal halfway up, and another man at the bottom was passing up the leather buckets filled with the water from the sacred spring of the daughter of Baoith, patroness of the church. Even as Mara arrived, the bright orange tongues of fire in the east window slit were replaced by a cloud of smoke.

Mara’s heart ceased to beat so rapidly. Her scholars were in the back of the line, nearest to the well. Ardal, on the ladder, looked supremely in command and confident; a couple of his men were on the bucket-bearing chain nearest to the ladder, she noticed, and realized that the fire would soon be under control.

Sorley worked on doggedly, pouring bucket after bucket through the narrow opening and flinging the flat empty leather containers down on to the ground. Cormac, who liked to be on the move, now left his post and was darting to and fro, picking up the buckets and sprinting back with them to the more docile Art, still standing at the well. However, he was fast and efficient and in no danger so Mara did not interfere.

Already clouds of smoke were drifting out through the other three windows and the bright flames and sparks had died down. Perhaps the fire had been caused by a stray spark from a bonfire, but there were no bonfires – it was too early in the year for leaf burning.

‘Take over,’ said Ardal abruptly to his young steward Danann who accompanied him everywhere. Mara thought for a moment that Ardal was tired – he had not looked well since he came back from the pilgrimage – but when he came straight towards her, she realized from the expression in his eyes that he wanted to speak and moved across the churchyard to a secluded spot where they could talk without being overheard.

‘What is it?’ she asked quietly. His lips were compressed and his eyes were full of anger. She began to feel alarmed. ‘There wasn’t anyone in there?’ she queried swiftly, suddenly appalled at the tragedy that might have occurred if the door had been locked accidentally. But who could it have been? The pilgrims would have been the last to leave and Sorley would have waited respectfully in the churchyard until they reappeared, and then would have locked the door before crossing over to the inn to enjoy one of Blad’s sumptuous dinners.

‘No, not that.’ But his expression did not lighten. ‘The fire was on the top floor. I couldn’t see much because of all of the smoke, and we daren’t open the door until it is completely out – the draught would start it up again – but I have a terrible fear.’ He stopped and passed his hand over his eyes, stroking down over the thin cheeks.

‘What?’ Mara stared at him, appalled. ‘What are you trying to tell me, Ardal?’