Laws in Conflict (14 page)

‘Tell me what happened.’

‘They were both very drunk,’ he said despondently. ‘Everyone in the town knows that. I met Catarina walking all by herself, in floods of tears. She had left them quarrelling and had run away. I gathered that Carlos had said something very offensive to her when she tried to make peace between them. I took her to her door and advised her to go to bed and to forget all about them. But when I went back to the Unicorn they had disappeared. I tried this place, but they weren’t here, either. And I’m afraid that I gave up then,’ he shrugged uncomfortably. ‘I was tired of the whole affair so I just went off and had a walk down by the docks to clear my own head before going home to bed.’ He paused, and said quietly, ‘If only I had stayed looking for them, followed them out of the town, dragged them both back by the scruff of the neck – well, this may never have happened.’

‘I don’t think you can blame yourself,’ said Mara. ‘Young men get drunk; it’s part of growing up. These two young men were both spoiled and had too much money. That added to the problem. It’s no good now to dwell upon the past.’

‘Walter had blood all over his clothes when he was found, you know, and of course his dagger was driven deep into Carlos’s chest. I heard the constable say that it looked as if they both fell asleep and then Walter woke and stabbed him, and then went into the windmill and fell asleep. Carlos’s dagger was quite unmarked.’

Mara nodded. If Carlos had been still asleep when the deadly attack was made, well that would account for the dagger being plunged into the chest rather than the back; it would also account for the fact that the Spanish boy’s dagger remained unused. On the other hand, her own impression from the dead man’s face was that he had seen his end coming and had been on his feet when the dagger entered his chest. Still, she could be wrong; she wished that a physician that she trusted could have seen the body.

And then, of course, there was the matter of the back of Carlos Gomez’s head. What had happened to that?

‘If only there was something that I could do, now,’ groaned Valentine. He gulped down his wine, but shook his head when the innkeeper came forward with another flagon. ‘Can you think of anything?’ he asked, looking at her appealingly. ‘Lawyer Bodkin was telling us that you solved a case where a mine owner that he knew was murdered. He said that he was astonished when he heard the solution and that you must be very clever to have guessed it.’

Mara was chary of giving him too much hope. If only she were back in the Burren, where her word was law, then this case would be tackled methodically, witnesses would be interviewed by her scholars, the whole matter debated in the schoolhouse at Cahermacnaghten, maps laid out, information neatly collated and available to her and, above all, she would have time to think, time to make sure that no mistake was being made. A case like this could take up to three weeks to solve – more if needed.

The trial of Walter Lynch would be held in two hours – and what lay beyond? – the hangman’s noose?

Valentine Blake jumped to his feet. ‘I must find that ship’s captain!’ His voice was husky and strained with emotion. He looked like a man in a state of utter desperation. ‘I must find him and force him to agree to allow Carlos to be buried here in Galway. We must have more time before the trial and judgement. If necessary, I’ll throttle him with my bare hands.’

This plea (‘
Civis Romanus sum
’,‘I am a Roman citizen’) by St Paul – when threatened with scourging – sufficed in ancient Rome to stop arbitrary condemnation, bonds and scourging. Every Roman citizen had a right to appeal and to have that appeal heard by the Emperor. No Roman citizen could be condemned unheard; by the Valerian law he could not be bound; and by the Sempronian Law it was forbidden to scourge him or beat him with rods. When the chief captain commanded that Paul ‘should be examined by scourging’, Paul asked a centurion: ‘Is it lawful for you to scourge a man that is a Roman, and un-condemned?’

M
ara, left to herself, sipped her wine slowly, nibbled her olives and watched the pale gold sand slip slowly past the narrow centre of the large hourglass that stood on the shelf above the innkeeper’s head. The church bell had sounded the eleventh hour when they had entered the inn and the landlord had just tilted the glass. Now more than half the sand had descended into the lower half of the glass. There must be less than half an hour to go before the court would sit. And as yet there had been no public announcement of the postponement of the trial. Valentine Blake had either failed to find the Spanish sea captain, or else had been unable to persuade him to agree to the burial of Carlos in the city where he had met his death.

Reluctantly she got to her feet, smiled across at the landlord, collected her cloak and went out into the street. She hated the thought of it but she had to go to this trial; nothing in her life and training had made her feel that she could evade responsibility. A daring plan had come into her mind and she resolved that if the opportunity arose, she would not hesitate to rise to her feet. But perhaps she would not need to do this. First she would have to make an attempt to see this John Skerrett and make sure that he was going to put the possibility of a royal pardon in front of the judge. James Lynch was a difficult man, a cold, hard man, as Ardal O’Lochlainn had said, but he was also a very upright one. Whatever was done had to be done in public so that his honour would be salvaged.

People were already huddled in groups at the back of the church when she arrived. Some men were working in the upper half of the church and amongst them she recognized the steward who had given her a seat the day before at Old Sheedy’s trial. She walked boldly up to the chancel of the church and accosted him.

‘I’m afraid that I didn’t thank you for that hot brick yesterday,’ she said, giving him the benefit of her warmest smile. ‘Goodness, what a lot of work you have to do today! How on earth are you going to manage?’ With a shock of horror she saw that the dead body of Carlos was still on the top step to the altar. It had been placed within a wooden lead-lined coffin, but the lid was lying beside it, the body exposed. No attempt had been made to clean the body or cut away the blood-soaked clothing and a few bluebottle flies buzzed sleepily around it. Mara tore her gaze away from it and looked back at the steward.

‘We’ve got these twelve chairs for the jury. At first I put them in two rows, but now I’ve rearranged them in a semicircle so that they can look at each other when significant pieces of evidence come up.’ He gazed at the artistic arrangement of chairs with satisfaction before going on to show her that his worship the mayor would sit on the bishop’s throne. The prosecuting lawyer, Lawyer Lynch, and the defence lawyer, Lawyer Skerrett, would speak from the pulpit.

‘Pity we don’t have another pulpit so that the witnesses can speak from there,’ he said with disappointment, ‘but I’ve done my best by putting that box over there beside the tomb. The witness will have to stand on that and then most of the church will be able to see them. I had a word with the bishop about them standing on the tomb itself but he wasn’t happy.’

Mara gazed at the semicircle of chairs, trying to visualize how the jury would react to this strange trial held only hours after the murder was discovered and where the judge was the father of the accused. And what did the bishop think about the whole affair? After all, she said to herself, Christ flogged the moneylenders from the temple. What would he think of a man being tried for his life a few feet away from the sacred altar? That was, of course, assuming that the jury found him guilty and that his father could think of no excuse for pardoning him.

‘Will they be the same men in the jury as yesterday?’ she asked, and he shook his head.

‘A cousin of Philip Browne is the foreman,’ he said. ‘Most of the others are of the name of Browne as well – merchants, mainly. He was allowed to pick them.’

And of course, they will be keen to have a quick solution to the killing in order not to anger their powerful relations, Philip Browne and his wife Isabelle. Mara thought the words but managed only to nod in response.

‘And what about a dock; what will you do about that?’ She looked around at the arrangements with what she hoped looked like a smile of approbation.

‘They’re bringing down a cage from the courthouse,’ he said with the air of one who has a limitless fund of good ideas. ‘I thought that would solve the problem. Would you like to sit over there in the aumbry by the window, my lady? You’ll have a good view of everything there.’ He pointed to a small niche in the wall with a marble shelf which could be used as a seat. It was a dark corner with no lights nearby and so was a wonderful place to see without being too conspicuous.

‘I was hoping to have a quick word with Lawyer Skerrett about a legal matter,’ said Mara tentatively, but the steward shook his head.

‘His worship the mayor and the two lawyers will walk up from the courthouse so that they arrive as the bell sounds for noon,’ he said to her disappointment. ‘You’d better take your seat now, my lady, because someone else might take it.’

There was truth in what he said. The large church was filling up fast. She would just have to rely on Valentine Blake remembering to put the point. Mara thanked the steward with a smile and moved away.

By this stage Mara had noticed that her scholars had entered the church; she counted heads rapidly. Yes, they were all there. However, she made no sign to them and was pleased to see that Fachtnan ushered them into a space about halfway down the church. She doubted that they would be called as witnesses; they would have had nothing of any importance to relate, and she was not keen to involve them in her plans. The mood of the city was volatile. It was unclear what result was hoped for from this trial and, indeed, it was quite unclear to her what verdict would be arrived at by a judge who happened to be father to the accused man.

If this trial of a near relative had happened in any of the Gaelic kingdoms, she mused as she took her seat in a marble alcove – if this had happened in Burren, for instance – she would have sent for the Brehon of Corcomroe and asked him to hear the case; and, of course, the same would have happened anywhere else. The kingdoms mostly had friendly links with some nearby neighbour and so there would have been no problem.

However, English-speaking Galway, ruled by English laws, was quite isolated. It would take a week or two to get a judge from Dublin and even so the court procedure would have been different. In Dublin the law was exactly the same as in England, but traditionally Galway was ruled by Roman law. It was only in the last few years that English law had begun to prevail. The law of the king and the emperor, she thought, and resolved to make her own knowledge of Roman law be, at last, of some use to her.

Mara looked around her. She noticed Henry Bodkin standing quietly and unobtrusively in a dark corner. Jane was not with him. She must still be unwell otherwise curiosity would have brought her. After all, the Brownes, the Lynches and the Blakes were all close friends to herself and to her brother.

Then there was a stir amongst the crowd and a murmur. The Browne family had arrived – all four of them; Catarina with her face cold and resolute, David looking around him eagerly, Isabelle shedding tears into a lace-edged handkerchief, her husband ill-at-ease and slightly embarrassed. They marched up towards the top of the church and people stood by to allow them a place just before the altar. Valentine Blake greeted them as he came in, but all, except Philip, looked away and did not return his salutation.

From her half-hidden position Mara scanned Valentine’s face, but read no hope in it. His brows were set into a frown and his lips were tight. He had not gone to sit by the altar, a place that his position as bailiff would have merited, but seemed determined to remain in the body of the church and to dissociate himself from the trial. She wondered whether he had managed to even talk with the Spanish captain. She had noticed Alfonso Mercandez, the Spanish captain, come in a little earlier and his face, also, was set and resolute, and he avoided looking at Valentine. He was in a difficult position, she acknowledged. He was employed by the Gomez family and if he arrived back with the bad news, but without the boy’s body, there would probably be recriminations and he might well lose his position.

There was no sign of Margaret and Mara hoped that she would not come. She did not know how any mother could witness her son in such a plight without breaking down and this would add to her husband’s severity.

The cage for the prisoner had arrived by cart. She had heard the horses squeal as their feet slipped on the icy cobbles outside the church and then the two great doors at the western end of the church were thrown open. A double line of soldiers marched in, fanned out, then turned to face each other so that they formed a well-guarded passage in the middle aisle. The cage was carried solemnly up between them and deposited in front of the altar, just beneath where the coffined body of Carlos Gomez lay. It was a heavy iron cage, a cage for a wild beast, a place where a man could crouch, but not stand.

A gasp had come from the assembled crowd when the cage had been carried in and then there was a dead silence – everyone straining his ears until the expected sound arrived – the well-disciplined tramp of marching feet.

They were taking no chances with Walter Lynch. Mara saw with pity how the young man, still besmeared with blood, puffy-eyed and white-faced, was loaded down with chains, manacled and shackled and led like a captured wolf up between the two lines of soldier and was thrust into the cage. Once again Mara prayed that Margaret was not present. This sight would be enough to kill any mother. A sigh went through the crowd and several women took out handkerchiefs.

And then the soldiers stiffened. It hadn’t needed any command from their superiors. The heads were immobile, still turned to the middle aisle, but the eyes were slanted towards the west door.

There, in all the splendour of striped robe, coif and cap, came his worship, judge of the court, the sovereign mayor of Galway, James Lynch followed by his officials and behind them the two lawyers, Lawyer Thomas Lynch and an old man bent and frail. Mara’s heart sank. This must be Lawyer Skerrett. He did not look as though he had the energy or the stomach for a fight.