Hemlock At Vespers (46 page)

Colmán was tut-tutting. His face showed skepticism.

“Is this some mischievous prank? I am well aware what night this is.”

But Fidelma could see that humor was not in the fearful face of the warrior.

“Go on,” invited Fidelma. “What did you do?”

“Do, Sister? I hastened away as fast as I could from that accursed place. I ran to report to my captain, Irél. At first, like the Abbot, he did not believe me. He and another warrior took me back to the tomb. Oh, by my soul, Sister! The voice came again. It was fainter than before but still crying for help. Irél heard it and so did the other warrior who accompanied us.”

It was plain Colmán still did not believe him.

“What is it Irél wants me to do?” he demanded cynically. “Go there and pray for the souls of the dead?”

“No. Irél is one not given to a belief in wandering spirits. My captain wants permission to open the tomb. He believes that someone is inside and hurt.”

The Abbot looked aghast.

“But that tomb has not been opened in fifteen hundred years,” he protested. “How could anyone be inside?”

“That’s what Garbh told him,” agreed the warrior.

“Garbh?” queried Fidelma.

“The keeper of the cemetery. My captain, Irél, sent for him and requested that he open the doors of the tomb.”

“And did Garbh do so?” asked the Abbot, irritably.

“No. He refused unless Irél obtained higher authority. That is why Irél sent me to you, to seek your permission.”

“Quite right. This is a matter of seriousness,” Colmán muttered. “The decision to open tombs is not one a soldier—even the captain of the palace guard—can make. I’d better come along and see this Irél, your captain.” Colmán rose to his feet and glanced at Fidelma. “If you will forgive me, Sister …”

But Fidelma was rising also.

“I think I will come with you,” she said quietly. “For if a voice comes from a sealed tomb, then someone must have been able to enter it … or else, God forbid, it is indeed a spirit calling to us.”

They found Irél, the somber-faced captain of the palace guard, standing outside the tomb with another warrior. There was a third man there, a stocky man with rippling muscles who was clad in a workman’s leather jerkin and trousers. He had pugnacious features and was arguing with the captain. The man turned as they approached and, with relief on his face, greeted Abbot Colmán by name.

“I am glad that you have come, my lord Abbot. This captain is demanding that I break open this tomb. Such an act is sacrilege and I have refused unless ordered to do so by a churchman of authority.”

Irél stepped forward and saluted the Abbot.

“Has Tressach explained the matter to you?” His voice was curt.

The Abbot glanced disdainfully at him.

“Can we hear this voice?” Colmán’s tone was sarcastic and he cocked an ear as if to listen.

“We have not heard it since I sent for Garbh,” replied Irél, keeping his irritation in check. “I have been trying to get Garbh to open the tomb, for every moment is urgent. Someone may be dying in there.”

The man called Garbh laughed drily.

“Look at the doors. Not opened in fifteen hundred years. Whoever died in there died over a millennium ago.”

“Garbh, as keeper of the cemetery, is within his rights to refuse your request,” Abbot Colmán explained. “I am not sure that even I can give such permission.”

It was then that Sister Fidelma stepped forward.

“In that case, I shall give the order. I think we should open the tomb immediately.”

Colmán swung round and frowned at Fidelma.

“Do you take this matter seriously?”

“That an experienced captain of the guard and a warrior take it so should be enough reason to accept that they heard something. Let us see if this is so.”

Irél looked at the young religieuse in surprise while Garbh’s features were forming into a sneer of derision.

Colmán however sighed and motioned to Garbh to start opening the doors of the tomb.

“Sister Fidelma is a
dálaigh,
an advocate of the law courts, and holds the degree of
Anruth,”
he explained to them in order to justify his action. “She has the authority.”

Garbh’s eyes flickered imperceptibly. It was the only indication that he made in recognition of the fact that the young religieuse held a degree which was only one below the highest legal qualification in the land. Irél’s shoulders seemed to relax as if in relief that a decision had finally been made.

It took some time for Garbh to smash open the ancient locks of the door and swing them open.

As they pressed forward there were some gasps of astonishment.

Just inside the door was the body of a man.

They could see that this was no ancient body. It was the body of a man who was but recently dead. From his back there protruded a length of wood with which he had clearly been shot or stabbed. It was like the shaft of an arrow but without feathered flights. He lay face down behind the doors, hands stretched out as if attempting to open the doors from the inside. They could see that his fingernails were torn and bleeding where he had scraped at the door in his terror. And his face! The eyes were wide with fear, as if he had been confronted by some evil power of darkness.

Tressach shivered violently. “God look down on us!”

Garbh was rubbing his chin in bewilderment.

“The tomb was securely sealed,” he whispered. “You all saw the seals on the door. It has been sealed for fifteen hundred years.”

“Yet this man was inside trying to break out.” Fidelma pointed out the obvious. “He was apparently dying even as Irél was ordering the tomb to be opened. It was his dying cries that Tressach and Irél heard.”

Irél glanced toward Sister Fidelma.

“This is hardly a sight for a Sister of the Faith,” he protested as he saw her moving forward.

“I am a
dálaigh,”
she reminded him. “I shall take charge of this investigation.”

Irél glanced questioningly to Abbot Colmán, who nodded slightly, and the captain stood aside to allow Fidelma to enter the tomb. She ordered the lanterns to be held up to illuminate the area.

Fidelma moved forward curiously. She had heard all the stories of Tigernmas, the infamous High King, who had ordered his Druids to be put to death and turned to the worship of a gigantic idol. Generations of children had been frightened into obedience with tales of how the evil king’s soul would ascend from the Otherworld and take them off unless they obeyed their parents. And now she stood at the door of his tomb, unopened since his body had been placed in it countless generations ago. It was not an inviting place. The air was stale, dank and smelling of rotting earth and vegetation. A noxious, unclean atmosphere permeated the place.

The first thing she noticed was that the body was of a man of middle years, somewhat plump, with well-kempt white hair. She examined the torn and bleeding hands and looked at the softness of the fingers and palms. He was clearly someone not used to manual work. She examined his clothing. Apart from the dust and dirt of the tomb and the stains of blood from his wound, they were the clothes of someone of rank. Yet he wore no jewelry, no symbols of office, and when she examined the leather purse attached to the belt around his waist, she found only a few coins in it.

Only when she had conducted this scrutiny did she turn to examine his face. She tried to ignore the terrible mask of dread on it. Then she frowned and called for a lantern to be held more closely, studying the features with some dim memory tugging at her mind. The features seemed familiar to her.

“Abbot Colmán, please look at this man,” she called. “I have a feeling that I should know him.”

Colmán moved forward somewhat unwillingly and bent down beside her.

“Christ’s wounds!” exclaimed the Abbot, forgetting his calling. “It is Fiacc, the Chief Brehon of Ardgal.”

Fldelma nodded grimly. She knew that she had seen the man’s features before. The chief judge of the clan of Ardgal was one of the learned judges of the country.

“He must have been here to attend the convention,” breathed Colmán.

Fidelma rose and dusted her clothing. “The more important thing to discover is what he was doing here at all,” she pointed out. “How did a respected judge come to be in a tomb which has never been opened in generations and get himself stabbed to death?”

“Witchcraft!” supplied Tressach in a breathless tone.

Irél glanced at his subordinate with a look of derision.

“Don’t the teachings of Patrick’s first council tell us there is no such thing as witchcraft?” he rebuked, before turning to Fidelma. “There must be an explanation for this, Sister.”

Fidelma smiled appreciatively at the man’s pedestrian approach.

“There is an explanation for everything,” she agreed, as she let her eyes wander into the interior of the tomb. “Sometimes it is not easily seen, however.” Then she turned back to Colmán. “Would you consult with the steward of the convention and see if Fiacc was in attendance and whether he was due to speak?”

Colmán hesitated only a moment before hurrying away on his task.

Fidelma bent again to the corpse. There was no disputing the cause of death. The shaft of wood, like an arrow, was stuck in the back of the corpse under the shoulder blade.

“The worst place to try to stab a man,” sniffed Irél. “To stab him in the back,” he added, when Fidelma glanced up questioningly at him. “You can never be sure of inflicting a mortal wound. There are too many bones in the way of a vital organ, any of which might deflect the blow. It is better to stab from the front, in and up under the rib cage.”

He spoke with the relish of a warrior.

“So you would say that whoever delivered the blow was an amateur when it came to killing?” asked Fidelma drily.

Irél considered the point.

“Not necessarily. The implement has been inserted slightly to the side and with an upward thrust toward the heart. The killer knew what he was about. He was aiming to pierce the heart immediately. Nevertheless, the victim lived on for a while. If he had not, we would never have heard his cries and discovered the body.”

“You are very observant, Irél. But why do you ascribe the killing to a man?”

Irél shrugged indifferently.

“It is logical. Look at the depth at which the wood is buried in the flesh. It would take strength to thrust it in so far.”

Fidelma could not fault the logic. But she was examining the shaft of wood with more interest. It was a piece of aspen, some eighteen inches or more in length, and it was inscribed with Ogham characters. She ran her finger over the cut letters, feeling the faint stickiness of the sap. The words meant, “The gods protect us.” It was now obvious what it was. The aspen wand was called a
fé
—an instrument by which corpses and graves were measured. It was generally regarded as an unlucky object and no one, would willingly touch
a fé
unless they had need to.

Even Fidelma felt that she had to summon a special courage before she reached over and yanked the piece of wood from the corpse of Fiacc. She immediately saw that it was no ordinary
fé.
Where the shaft had been driven in, it had been whittled into a sharp point and, when she’d wiped the blood on the clothes of the corpse, her eyes narrowed as she observed that this point had been hardened by fire.

Tressach, standing nearby, was gazing aghast at Fidelma’s handling of the wooden
fé.

“Sister,” he reproached, “it is highly unlucky to handle that. And to handle the very
fé
that measured this tomb for Tigernmas …”

Fidelma did not reply. She rose to examine the rest of the tomb.

It was an oval-shaped chamber cut into a mound of earth with its floors flagged with stones while granite blocks lined the walls and were placed so that they formed a natural archlike structure across the entire roof. The length of the tomb was about fifteen feet, and its width a little more than twelve. Fidelma was thankful that the open doors of the tomb had allowed fresher, chill evening air to dispel the fetid atmosphere.

There was no need to ask where the remains of Tigernmas were. At the far end of the tomb, in a central position, stood an upright, rusting iron frame. In it, almost crumbled to pieces, were the remains of a skeleton. There were some fragments of clothing on it; a metal belt buckle and a rusty sword had fallen nearby. It had been the custom for the ancients to bury their chieftains and great rulers standing upright and facing their enemies, sword clasped in their dead hand. This iron cage had obviously been designed to keep the corpse upright in the burial chamber. By this method, it was said, the aura of the dead was supposed to protect the living. The skull of the skeleton had fallen to one side in the cage so that its eyeless sockets appeared to be staring with malignant force in the direction of the dead Fiacc. The skeletal grin seemed to be one of satisfaction. Fidelma felt irritated at the way her imagination interpreted these images.

To one side of the tomb were the rotting remains of a chariot. This would be the king’s most cherished vehicle, left there to help transport him to the Otherworld. Jars and containers of what had once been his favorite foods and drink stood nearby, large bronze and copper containers made by skilled craftsmen.

Fidelma moved forward and her foot caught at something. She bent down and picked up a small but weighty bar of metal. Having examined it closely by Irél’s lantern, she realized that it was silver. She set it down carefully, and as she did so she saw a few brooches scattered about. They were of semiprecious jewels set in gold mountings. Again, it was the custom to bury a portion of wealth with a great chieftain, for he would also need some means to help him in his journey to the Otherworld. Frowning thoughtfully, Fidelma continued to examine the rest of the tomb.

By the beam of the lantern, Fidelma noticed that a small trail of blood led from a point before the iron cage of the skeleton to where the corpse of Fiacc lay before the doors. She could also see scratch marks on the granite floor.

Irél, standing beside her, articulated her thoughts.