Suffer Little Children (10 page)

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Authors: Peter Tremayne

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BOOK: Suffer Little Children
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‘What were the bonds made of?' Fidelma asked, wishing to check what she had learnt already.
‘Torn pieces of cloth. As I recall they were pieces of linen and dyed.'
‘Can you recall the dyes?'
‘Blue and red, I believe.'
Fidelma nodded. The evidence concurred with that given by Brother Conghus.
‘I suppose that they were thrown away?' Fidelma queried, presuming the worst.
She was surprised when Tóla shook his head.
‘As a matter of fact, no. Our enterprising apothecary, Brother Martan, has a morbid taste for relics and decided that the bonds of Dacán might one day become a much-sought-after and valuable relic, especially if the Faith recognises him as a man of great sanctity.'
‘So this Brother … ?'
‘Martan,' supplied Tóla.
‘So this Brother Martan has kept the material?'
‘Exactly so.'
‘Well,' Fidelma smiled in relief, ‘that is excellent. However, I will have to take temporary charge of them as being evidence pertinent to my inquiry. You may tell Brother Martan that he will get them returned as soon as I have done.'
Tóla nodded thoughtfully.
‘But how did Dacán get himself bound by his enemies without a struggle?'
Fidelma pulled a face.
‘Maybe he did not suspect that they were his enemies until later. Just one more point of clarification, though, and then I think we are done. You said that the body was cold and implied that it had been a long time dead. How long?'
‘It is hard to judge. Several hours at least. I do not know when Dacán was last seen but he may well have been killed around midnight. Certainly the death occurred during the night and not later.'
Fidelma found herself focusing on the oil lamp which stood on the table by the cot.
‘Dacán was killed sometime about midnight,' she said reflectively. ‘Yet when he was found the oil lamp was burning.'
Cass, who had been more or less a silent spectator to Fidelma's questioning of Brother Tóla, was watching her with interest.
‘Why do you remark on that, sister?' he queried.
Fidelma went once more to the lamp and picked it up carefully so as not to spill any oil from it. Silently, she handed it to him with equal care. He took it, the bewilderment on his face increasing.
‘I do not understand,' he said.
‘Do you notice anything odd about the lamp?'
He shook his head.
‘It is still filled with oil. If this is the same lamp, then it could not have been burning more than an hour from the time Brother Conghus discovered the body.'
 
 
Sister Fidelma sat on the cot in her chamber, hands linked together at the back of her head, staring upwards into the gloom. She had decided to call a halt to the investigation for that evening. She had thanked Brother Tóla for his help and reminded him once more that, on the following morning, Brother Martan must hand over to her the strips of cloth that had bound Dacán. Then she had bade the young, enthusiastic Sister Necht a ‘good night's repose' and told her to report to her again with Brother Rumann the next morning.
She and Cass had retired to their respective rooms and now, instead of falling immediately to sleep, she sat, leaning back on her cot, with the lamp still burning wastefully while she considered the information she had gathered so far.
One thing she now realised was that her cousin, the Abbot Brocc, was being a little selective with the information he had given her. Why had he asked Brother Conghus to keep a watchful eye on Dacán only a week before Dacán was killed? Well, that was something which she would have to sort out with Brocc.
There was a soft tap on the door of her chamber.
Frowning, she swung off her cot and opened it.
Cass was standing outside.
‘I saw your light still on. I hope I am not disturbing you, sister?'
Fidelma shook her head, bade him enter and take the only chair that there was in the chamber while she returned to her seat on the bed. For propriety's sake, she left the door open. In some communities, the new moral codes were changing the older foundations. Many leaders of the Faith, like Ultan of Armagh, were arguing against the continued existence of mixed communities and even putting forward the unpopular concept of celibacy among leading religions.
She was aware that an encyclical attributed to Patrick was being circulated giving thirty-five rules for the followers of the Faith. The ninth rule ordered that an unmarried monk or anchoress, each from a different place, should not stay in the same hostel or house, nor travel together in one chariot from house to house nor converse freely together. And according to the seventeenth rule, a woman who took a vow of chastity and then married was to be excommunicated unless she deserted her husband and did a penance. Fidelma had been enraged by the circulation of the document in the name of Patrick and his fellow bishops, Auxilius and Iserninus, because it was so contrary to the laws of the five kingdoms. Indeed, what had made her actually suspicious of the authenticity of the document was that the first rule decreed that any member of the religious who appealed to the secular laws merited excommunication. After all, two hundred years ago Patrick himself was one of the nine-man commission which had been established by the High King, Laoghaire, to put all the civil and criminal laws of the five kingdoms in the new writing.
To Fidelma, the circulation of the ‘rules of the first council of Patrick', as they were being called, was another piece of propaganda from the camp of the pro-Roman faction which wished the Faith in the five kingdoms of Éireann to be governed entirely from Rome.
She caught herself as she became aware that Cass had been saying something.
‘I am sorry,' she said awkwardly, ‘my mind was drifting miles away. What were you saying?'
The young warrior stretched his legs in the cramped chair.
‘I was saying that I had an idea about the lamp.'
‘Oh?'
‘It is obvious that someone refilled it when Dacán's body was discovered.'
Fidelma examined his guileless eyes solemnly.
‘It is certainly obvious that the lamp could not have been
burning all through the night, if Dacán was killed at midnight or soon after … that is,' she gave a mischievous grin, ‘unless we are witnesses to a miracle; the miracle of the self-refilling lamp.'
Cass frowned, not sure how to take her levity.
‘Then it is as I say,' he insisted.
‘Perhaps. Yet we are told that Brother Conghus discovered the body and found the lamp burning. He did not refill it. It was still burning when Brother Tóla went to examine the body and he swears that he did not refill it. He further told us, when I raised that very point, that he had extinguished the light when he and his assistant, Brother Martan, carried the body to his mortuary for examination. Who then refilled it?'
Cass thought for a moment.
‘Then it must have been refilled just before the body was discovered or after the body was carried away,' he said triumphantly. ‘After all, you judged for yourself that the lamp could only have burning no more than an hour by the amount of oil still left in it. So someone must have refilled it.'
Fidelma regarded Cass with a sudden amusement.
‘You know, Cass, you are beginning to display the mind of a
dálaigh.
'
Cass returned her look with a frown, unsure whether Fidelma was mocking him or not.
‘Well …' he began, starting to rise with a petulant expression.
She held up a hand and motioned for him to remain.
‘I am not being flippant, Cass. Seriously, you have a made point which I have neglected to see. The lamp was certainly refilled just before Conghus discovered the body.'
Cass sat back with a smile of satisfaction.
‘There! I hope I have contributed to solving a minor mystery.'
‘Minor?' There was a sharp note of admonishment in Fidelma's voice.
‘What matter whether a lamp is filled or unfilled?' Cass asked, spreading his hands in emphasis. ‘The main problem is to find who killed Dacán.'
Fidelma shook her head sadly.
‘There is no item too unimportant to be discarded when searching for a truth. What did I say about gathering the pieces of a puzzle? Gather each fragment, even if they do not seem to be connected. Gather and store them. This applies especially to those pieces which seem odd, which seem inexplicable.'
‘But what would a lamp matter in this affair?' demanded Cass.
‘We will only know that when we find out. We cannot find out unless we start to ask questions.'
‘Your art seems a complicated one, sister.'
Fidelma shook her head.
‘Not really. I would think that your art is even more complicated than mine in terms of making judgments.'
‘My art?' Cass drew himself up. ‘I am a simple warrior in the service of my king. I adhere to the code of honour that each warrior has. What judgments do I have to make?'
‘The judgment of when to kill, when to maim and when not. Above all, your task is to kill while our Faith forbids us to do so. Have you ever solved that conundrum?'
Cass flushed in annoyance.
‘I am a warrior. I kill only the wicked – the enemies of my people.'
Fidelma smiled thinly.
‘It sounds as if you believe them to be one and the same. Yet the Faith says, do not kill. Surely if we kill, if only to stop the wicked and evil, then the very act makes us as guilty as those we kill?'
Cass sniffed disdainfully.
‘You would rather that they killed you instead?' he asked cynically.
‘If we believe in the teachings of our Faith, then we must believe this was the example Christ left us. As Matthew records the Saviour's words, “those who live by the sword shall die by the sword”.'
‘Well, you cannot believe in that example,' scoffed Cass.
Fidelma was interested by his reaction, for she had long struggled with some of the theology of the Faith and had still not found a firm enough ground to argue many of its basic tenants. She often expressed her doubts in argument by taking the part of a devil's advocate and through that means she clarified her own attitudes.
‘Why so?' she demanded.
‘Because you are a
dálaigh.
You believe in the law. You specialise in seeking out killers and bringing them to justice. You believe in punishing those who kill, even to the point of raising the sword against them. You do not stand aside and say this is God's will. I have heard a man of the Faith denouncing the Brehons also in the words of Matthew. “Judge not or you will be judge”, he said. You advocates of the law ignore Matthew's words on that so do I ignore Matthew's words against the profession of the sword.'
Fidelma sighed contritely.
‘You are right. It is hard to “turn the other cheek” in all things. We are only human.'
Somehow she had never felt comfortable with Luke's record of Jesus' teaching that if someone steals a person's cloak, then that person should give the thief his shirt also. Surely if one courted such oppression, such as turning the other cheek, it meant one was equally as guilty for it gave actual invitation to further theft and injury at the hands of the wrongdoer. Yet according to Matthew, Jesus said: “Think not that I am come to send peace on earth; I came not to send peace, but a sword. For I am come to set a man at variance against his father, and the daughter against her mother, and the daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law, and a man's
foes, they shall be of his own household”. It was confusing. And long had Fidelma troubled over it.
‘Perhaps the Faith expects too much from us?' Cass interrupted her thoughts.
‘Perhaps. But the expectation of humankind should always exceed their grasp otherwise there would be no progress in life.'
Fidelma's features suddenly dissolved into an urchin grin.
‘You must forgive me, Cass, for at times I do but try to test my attitudes against the Faith.'
The young warrior was indifferent.
‘I have no such need,' he replied.
‘Then your faith is great.' Fidelma was unable to keep a note of sarcasm from her voice.
‘Why should I doubt what the prelates preach?' inquired Cass. ‘I am a simple person. They have considered these matters for centuries and if they say this is so, then so it must be.'
Fidelma shook her head, sorrowfully. It was at times like these that she missed the stormy arguments that she had experienced with Brother Eadulf of Seaxmund's Ham.

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