Writ in Stone (16 page)

‘No,’ he said briefly. Obviously he had decided that it wasn’t worth denying the relationship.

‘How do you know?’

He said nothing so she continued. ‘Did he tell you that he didn’t know?’

‘We didn’t discuss the matter,’ he said stiffly.

‘And yet you spent a long time talking after the service of prime and on other occasions today. Don’t deny it; I observed you.’

‘We had other matters to consider,’ he said after a long pause during which he managed to convey a sense of outraged displeasure.

‘Such as the abbey of Knockmoy.’ Mara heard with pleasure how crisp and authoritative her voice sounded. How dare this hypocrite give such pain to Turlough? She would love to cry his sin aloud to the people of the Burren.

He said nothing so she pressed on. ‘I understand that there will be no problem now about Father Denis’s appointment as abbot to Knockmoy. Is that true?’ she added sharply when he did not answer.

‘It’s not a matter for me,’ he said after a while.

‘But there is now no obstacle,’ she persisted.

He looked at her. By the light of the fire, she could see his grey eyes glitter. She could read their expression well. There was fear there, and hatred also. Was the fear for himself or for his son, she wondered? The hatred was undoubtedly directed at her. Suddenly she remembered Brigid’s words. Was she in danger from this man?

‘
Qui tacet, consentire videtur
,’ she said to him in Latin, but still he didn’t answer. She waited for a moment and then translated into Gaelic: ‘“He who remains silent is seen to consent”, is that true of you?’ He shot her an angry glance – whether for assuming that he needed a translation, or because he resented the insinuation, she did not know. Still he did not reply. She didn’t care. Sometimes no answer was as revealing as a flow of words.

‘So the death of Mahon O’Brien smoothed the road to promotion for your son,’ she stated, looking intently at him, then leaning over and carelessly tossing another few sods of turf on the fire.

He had himself under control by the time she looked back, but for a moment the smooth face had been marred by a fury that could not have been surpassed by his famous ancestor, Teige, the Bone-splitter. Why should he look so angry about this? This time the anger did not seem to be directed at her, but had erupted at the word ‘son’.

‘So you see,’ she continued, still pretending to occupy herself with the fire, but at the same time covertly studying his narrow face. This man puzzled her. ‘I must ask questions of all who may have had an interest in causing the death of either King Turlough Donn, or his cousin, Mahon O’Brien, your brother.’

He did not respond and she had not expected him to do so. It was time for some plain questions to which she would expect plain answers.

‘I understand that the custom here is for you to be the first to leave the church after a service. Why did you and your son stay behind in the church this morning after the service of prime?’

‘I wished to see how far Master Mason had got with the reparation of the carvings. I wanted to make sure that all was ready for Christmas.’ He answered more readily than she had expected. Obviously he had been prepared for this question.

‘And did you?’ Her reply was purposefully fast. She would have to throw him off balance to get at the truth.

‘Did I?’ He tried to make his tone sound puzzled. She looked full into his face now and he evaded her eyes.

‘Did you talk to the mason?’

Now he was in a quandary. She could see him wondering whether perhaps the mason had been in the church, wondering whether he might be caught out in a lie.

‘No,’ he said after a moment. ‘I was feeling tired and I thought I would go back and have an hour’s rest before breakfast, as I had advised the brothers to do. Tomorrow night will be a long night for us all. The tradition is that we stay awake from matins to dawn. Of course, the days are very short at this time of the year so it is customary to give the brothers extra sleeping time when the weather is bad and the light is poor. No, I decided that I would see the mason later on.’

‘It wouldn’t have taken long to stroll across the church floor and look at the carvings?’ she said sharply and when he didn’t reply she got to her feet.

‘Let us go and look at them now. You were on your way when I delayed you.’

Without waiting for an answer she swept through his parlour door, passing a lay brother in the small dark hallway. He went to the door and opened it and then she saw that this was the young brother who had read during their dinner of salted cod.

‘Thank you, Brother Francis,’ she said politely and then, as she and the abbot walked side by side along the eastern side of the cloister, she said in a low voice to him, ‘I understand that young brother is an O’Kelly from Galway?’

‘That is correct.’ Again there was that sideways look as if he endeavoured to read her mind. She stopped, then turned and faced him fully and the abbot’s eyes slid away from hers.

‘Surprising that he did not attach himself to one of the Galway abbeys, Knockmoy, for instance.’

He gave her a sidelong glance and then said after a slight pause for reflection, ‘Actually he was at Knockmoy.’

‘And why did he transfer?’

‘There was some sort of trouble,’ said the abbot, picking his way carefully through the words like a man would tread over sharp stones. He began to move forward again towards the church.

‘What sort of trouble?’ asked Mara impatiently. No wonder this abbot annoyed Turlough so much!

‘Well,’ said the abbot reluctantly, ‘there was an enquiry into the former abbot’s behaviour and Brother Francis O’Kelly gave evidence.’

He shut his mouth tightly and Mara did not press him further. In any case she was not sure that she could trust her voice as an unholy glee was bubbling up inside her. So it was Brother O’Kelly who gave witness to the shocking affair of the hair-washing by a woman, she thought. It must have been a wonderful scene in front of some sour-faced prelate from Rome. She fell back a little and allowed the abbot to precede her through the cloisters’ door to the church while she arranged her face into a suitably grave expression.

‘One minute, Brehon, I’ll just light a few candles.’ His voice came back to her and almost instantaneously a sudden light shot into her own mind. Could Father Abbot have engineered the whole affair? Bribed this Brother Francis? The young monk looked dull and self-satisfied. Offered him a new position, and perhaps a promise of promotion and at the same time he would do a great service to his own clan. With the war-experienced Turlough dead, and Conor as king, the O’Kellys could probably easily defeat the O’Brien clan. This would give Brother Francis a motive, but would the abbot have any reason to wish death on his cousin, Turlough, who had always been so generous in his gifts to the abbey? On the other hand, it seemed too much of a coincidence that Brother Francis’s evidence had been instrumental in removing the former abbot from Knockmoy; it was very likely that the abbot had engineered that.

The church was now quite dark so the light of the candle threw the stone carvings into startling relief. On the top of one of the fluted pillars, there was a circle of twelve carved harebells and beneath them had stood twelve stiff, upright poppy heads. Five of these poppy heads had broken off during the three centuries since and the gaps had been filled in with almost perfect replicas. The stems were so finely carved and the rounded sides, each capped with a brittle circle, were carefully scored. The poppy heads looked as if they could be crushed between finger and thumb; only the gleaming white of the limestone showed that these had not just been plucked from the herb garden.

The abbot moved the candle up and down inspecting the work and then nodded with satisfaction.

‘Well done, Master Mason,’ he called down the steps where the blows from the mallet had ceased for a moment. ‘After a few years no one will know your work from the work of the mason who carved these stone flowers five hundred years ago.’

‘So the chancel was decorated when the abbey was originally built.’ Mara knew that, but it occurred to her that it would be well to end her interview with the abbot on a fairly friendly note.

Father Abbot seemed relieved and began talking animatedly, showing her the carvings and the repairs that had been done over the centuries.

‘See here,’ he said, holding up the candle and showing her a faintly incised cross just below the fluted crown of an arch, ‘this is the mark of the original mason; his mark can be found all over the church. And here, look there where the curve of scallop shells outlines that arch, if you look closely you can see that some of these have been repaired: that was about a hundred years ago. I have a note about it in the abbey documents. Look, you can see that this time the mason signs his work with a pattern from the bible book.’

Mara stood on her toes and found the mark, a small spiral ending in a loosely trailing curve. The illuminated copies of the Holy Book were all decorated with these spirals; even a few of her own law books showed the same ornamental drawings.

‘And now,’ continued the abbot triumphantly, ‘here we are fifteen hundred years after the birth of Christ and the mason now makes his mark with the Roman numeral for five hundred.’

Mara looked. The abbot was right. It was not the Gaelic letter
d
with its curved sides and scrolled top, but a square-cut straight-edged
D
. She understood the abbot’s point; the use of this
D
probably showed a man who was literate.

‘Why five hundred?’ Mara spoke almost to herself, but the abbot went straight to the open doorway leading down to the vault and called out:

‘Master Mason, why do you use the Roman numeral five hundred for your mark?’

The answer was a while in coming, but then slow heavy steps could be heard coming up. The man was coated in the grey dust of the plaster, even the seams of his face seemed to hold the fine powder, and when he spoke his voice was even huskier than before.

‘I am the five-hundredth mason in this part of Ireland, my lord,’ he said. ‘Or so my father used to tell me,’ he added.

How does he know, thought Mara, but the abbot nodded with satisfaction. He was a man who liked everything to be neatly sorted. Mara could imagine how he would show this new work to visiting prelates and inform them that it was done by the five-hundredth mason in the west of Ireland.

‘Could you spare me a moment, Master Mason?’ she asked politely. ‘The king’s son, Murrough, said that . . .’

The man gave a sudden start and she thought that, even under the coating of grey dust, his face turned a little paler. She hastened to reassure him.

‘The king knows of the merry prank that his son played,’ she said reassuringly. ‘No blame attaches to you. But Murrough reported that you were up and dressed when he woke and I wondered whether you had already been to the chapel.’

The mason cleared his throat noisily, but when he spoke his voice was huskier than ever.

‘No, my lady,’ he said. ‘The king’s son is mistaken. I had slept in my clothes as it was so cold.’

Understandable given the icy chill of that lay dormitory, but nevertheless Mara pursued her questions. ‘And you were standing at the shutters, were you not?’

Murrough had not said that, but it was most likely that a man, rising from his bed, and finding everything frozen, would go to the shutters to see what the weather was like.

The mason bowed his head and muttered something.

‘And did you see anything? See anyone?’

He thought about this quite carefully and then shook his head. He looked over at the abbot and the abbot intervened.

‘If that is all, Brehon,’ he said hurriedly, ‘I think Master Mason had better be getting back to his work. The stone sarcophagus for my brother’s body will need to be finished soon.’

‘That is all, Father Abbot,’ said Mara courteously. Why had the abbot been so quick to cut short her questioning? And why did the mason look towards the abbot in such a marked manner? Normally he seemed to hang his head. She watched the man carefully as he shuffled away, his heavy boots bound with strips of linen so that his feet made no noise as he went down the steps to the vault beneath. She heard him pick up his mallet, but there was no sound of a blow. It seemed as if he were waiting for something, perhaps for the abbot to join him, to give him more instructions, or was there some other significance in the wait? Had he perhaps seen something when he looked out of the shutters in that early dawn? Had he seen the abbot visit the church that morning?

The west door at the bottom of the church was pushed open allowing a stream of light to illuminate the darkness of the nave. Mara glanced around; no one had entered, but someone was there at the door, slowly pulling it shut again. The stealth of the action attracted her; someone was obviously trying to make as little noise as possible.

Swiftly she marched down the centre of the nave and seized the handle of the door, pulling it wide open.

‘Ah, come in Father Denis,’ she said suavely. ‘Father Abbot and I were just speaking of you.’

Father and son were very uneasy in each other’s presence, she thought, as she watched them stealing covert glances at each other. Did they share a guilty secret or was this just a lifetime habit where concealment was essential to allow this ambitious O’Brien priest to gain the approval of Rome? There had been a big change, during the last ten years, in these Cistercian abbeys. The easy-going lax behaviour of the Celtic church was no longer permissible; all had to be done according to the laws from Rome. Abbey after abbey in the whole of Ireland had been visited by abbots from England and from France and had been roundly condemned. The days had gone by when a powerful family, like the O’Briens, could automatically appoint a member of their own family to the position of abbot.

‘How old are you, Father Denis?’ she asked abruptly.