Writ in Stone (6 page)

‘Unusual for a pilgrim to drink anything other than small beer,’ commented Mara. She watched the man carefully, but this time he was on his guard and made no move. It was unlikely that he would now reveal himself, unless force was used. Mara shot a quick glance at Father Peter. Though not a naturally pious person, still she always felt it was her duty to keep on good terms with the church. Perhaps this unwillingness to show a face or to allow a voice to be heard was the latest fashion for pilgrims. Perhaps she might be greatly offending religious sensitivities if she ordered the man to be forcibly unhooded.

However, Father Peter’s eyes, like her own, were full of suspicion. He compressed his toothless mouth and shook his head slightly. It was impossible to mistake his meaning; he, like she, did not believe that this was a true pilgrim.

She would summon the king’s bodyguards, she thought. This man was on her territory and therefore under her jurisdiction. It was indeed possible that he was one of the O’Kelly clan. The disguise of a pilgrim would be an easy way of ensuring a night’s lodging at an abbey. The largest of the Aran Islands, just off the coast of the Burren, was a magnet for pilgrims, many of them making their way across Ireland from the east, and stopping at the cathedral of Kilfenora, then on to Kilinaboy with its relic of the true cross, then a night at the abbey and finally a perilous sea crossing the following morning.

At that moment, as if in answer to her thoughts, Fergal, the king’s bodyguard, put his head around the door.

‘Brehon, the king . . .’ he began, but in mid-sentence, he was hastily plucked back and the tall figure of Turlough filled the doorway. He had to bend his head to fit under the low sill, but Mara could see enough of his face to register that he was in a flaming temper.

‘Mara,’ he said and his voice was choked with anger, ‘you won’t believe what that sanctimonious prig . . .’

Mara acted quickly. Turlough had no discretion. When angered he trumpeted forth his feelings to the world.

‘Ardal,’ she said quickly, ‘would you take this man outside? Fergal and Conall will help you to guard him. Father Peter, will you excuse me for a moment. I need to confer with the king.’

The quick-witted Ardal had them all on their feet and was ushering them through the door almost before she had finished speaking. The pilgrim, she noticed, passed the king with his back towards him and his head bowed deeply upon his chest. Then she dismissed him from her mind as the door closed behind them all and she took Turlough by hand and led him over by the fire.

‘What’s the matter, my love,’ she said, smoothing the snowflakes from his heavy
glib
and then parting the rough hair and pressing a kiss on his forehead. ‘Who’s a sanctimonious prig?’

‘That cursed abbot, that . . .’

‘Shh,’ she said, placing her mouth over his for a moment. ‘Walls have ears.’

‘Do that again.’ Now a grin was spreading over his face. Turlough was like a pinewood fire in his fits of anger: hot flames one minute and cool ashes the next.

‘In a minute,’ she said. ‘First tell me what’s wrong, but tell it quietly. Your voice can be heard for miles around. You’re not on a battlefield now, you know.’

He took a deep breath. ‘Well, the fact of the matter is that the abbot has come to me and that . . .’

‘Shh,’ she said again as his voice began to rise.

‘He says he can’t marry us on Christmas Day.’

‘What? Oh, because of his brother’s death, is that it?’

Turlough shook his head vigorously, dislodging a few more icy snowflakes from among the crisp curls of his greying hair.

‘No, no, that at least would make some sort of sense, though there was not much love between them. Still a death can change that. No, he won’t marry us because the Holy Mother Church of Rome,’ here Turlough’s voice took on a note of deep sarcasm, ‘won’t permit marriage with a divorced person and you, my love, are a divorced person.’

‘But why didn’t he say that before?’ Mara was bewildered. She dodged his outstretched arms and stood up beside the fire.

‘Well, apparently he has only just found out.’

‘Really, I thought everyone in the three kingdoms knew about my divorce.’

Mara had been married at fourteen to a fellow student at her father’s law school. Three years later, a year after the death of her father, she had divorced her husband. Memories of the divorce case, which she had conducted herself, still lingered in the minds of most people on the Burren.

‘He even knew all the details of the divorce,’ said Turlough with a grin beginning to spread across his face. ‘He knew that the divorce was granted because your husband spoke about the details of your lovemaking in the alehouse. He found it all very shocking.’ Turlough screwed up his face in a good imitation of the abbot’s tight-lipped disapproving expression and then laughed heartily. He had begun to regain his good humour.

‘But how did he suddenly come to hear about it? It must have been some time last night. He was very polite to me yesterday, almost friendly. I thought he was delighted to have the marriage take place here in the abbey.’

‘He got a letter about it.’ At the thought of it, Turlough was almost choking from rage again.

‘A letter? From whom?’

‘It wasn’t signed. It was just written on a scrap of vellum.’

‘You saw it then?’

‘Saw it!’ Turlough’s voice rose in unison with his fury. ‘I took it from him. Someone had placed it inside his door. He found it this morning after the first service.’

He felt in his pouch and produced the piece of vellum. Mara took it and began to read. There was an unexpected degree of knowledge about her divorce case in it, she thought. Most people would by now have forgotten the name of her husband. She seldom thought of Dualta, herself. She neither knew nor cared where he had gone when he left the Burren after the case was found against him. He had never qualified as a Brehon; she was sure of that. The Brehons in Ireland made a habit of visiting each other during the summer months; someone would have mentioned him.

Mara read the letter again. Even the date of her marriage was correct. Who had written it? Placed inside the abbot’s door either last night or first thing this morning seemed to indicate that someone in the abbey had written it. Surely no one would have battled through the storm in order to acquaint the abbot with a piece of gossip that was fifteen years old. She took from the writing table the piece of vellum where the pilgrim had written about his vow and compared the two.

‘What’s the matter?’ Turlough had noted her start of surprise.

Mara did not reply for a few moments. She had expected the pieces of vellum to look the same, and they had. Weight, texture, grain, all those things spoke of the same calfskin, but what she had not expected was that the script was identical. The careless, rushed letter
a
, the arrogant sweep of the letter
m
and the dashing tail of the letter
s
– all these things confirmed that the letter to the abbot had been written by the pilgrim. But why? And who was this false pilgrim? Mara’s agile mind rushed through the possibilities. And suddenly a name occurred to her: a man who needed to keep his face hidden from both Brehon and king, a man whose voice must not be heard, a man who resented the marriage between the Brehon and the king, a man who feared rivalry from the possible offspring of this marriage; now she knew who this pilgrim really was. There had, after all, been something very familiar about the tall figure with its jaunty, self-possessed bearing. She went to the door and called:

‘Please bring the pilgrim in.’

He came in reluctantly, pushed by Fergal and Conall and guarded from the rear by Ardal. He stood there in the abbot’s parlour, his head bowed and his face still hidden. But now Mara had no doubts. Now she recognized the form and the build of the man and knew what would be shown at his unveiling.

‘My lord,’ she said to Turlough. ‘Here is your son, Murrough, come to greet you at this Christmas-tide.’

Five

(The Regulation of Proper Behaviour)

A proclaimed or outlawed son, a
macc fóccrai,
is called a son of darkness.

Murrough, King Turlough Donn’s twenty-two-year-old younger son, had always been a man full of courage. Hardly a moment elapsed after Mara’s words when, with a contemptuous laugh, he shrugged off the pilgrim hood and then stripped off the gown and stood facing them all. He had shaved off the great curved moustache, the proud mark of all Gaelic warriors, and he was now clean-shaven except for a small trim beard. He was dressed in Christmas colours of red velvet doublet and knee-length green breeches, all in the latest fashion from the Tudor court of London, surmised Mara. With an aching heart she watched Turlough; the look of fury that he had summoned up, with clenched fists and bristling moustache, was struggling with the sorrowful affection for this rebellious young son of his, which showed in his green eyes.

‘What are you doing here?’ he barked.

‘It’s Christmas time. I wanted to see you, Father. I wanted to express my repentance. And I wanted to see my brother Conor. He’s not looking well.’ Murrough’s voice held just the right note of sorrow mingled with respectfulness. Soon, Turlough, a simple man who always expressed everything that was on his mind, and expected everyone else to do the same, would forgive this prodigal son and take him back to the bosom of his family.

Mara narrowed her eyes. She did not believe in this repentance. No doubt, the Earl of Kildare, Murrough’s father-in-law, a man of great importance in the court of King Henry VIII and essential to the Tudor rule in eastern Ireland, had decided that Murrough would be of more use to him over here in the western kingdoms of Thomond, Corcomroe and Burren than he would be hanging around London and living at the expense of the Kildare properties. It was time for her to take part in this family discussion.

‘And, of course, you wanted to wish your father well at the time of his marriage,’ she said sweetly.

Murrough turned his gaze on her. ‘My lady judge,’ he said, sweeping her a courtly bow. ‘You are looking very well.’

He was so like his father with the wide smile, the green eyes, brown hair and broad shoulders that Mara had to harden her heart. She allowed half a minute to elapse before holding out the piece of vellum to him.

‘Or did you? This is your hand here, is it not?’

Mischievously he allowed his eyes to widen with horror as he read the scurrilous details of her divorce case. A smile puckered the corners of his lips and his eyes lit up with amusement.

‘Certainly not, my lady judge; how very shocking!’ The mockery was unmistakable.

Ardal was looking uncomfortable, and the two bodyguards bewildered. It was time to put a stop to this. Turlough and his son would have to be allowed some privacy. She knew how it would go. Turlough would shout. Murrough would feign repentance. Turlough would soften. Murrough would make some promises. And then Turlough would take him back into the bosom of the family. The king was a man of warm affections. His sorrow at the parting from his son had been huge. Despite his abhorrence of English ways and English customs, and his deep disgust at the deeds of his son, Murrough was still his dearest child.

‘My lord, we will leave you,’ she said, putting the piece of vellum back into her pouch. ‘You and I will talk later. Fergal and Conall will stay on guard outside the parlour. Ardal, would you be kind enough to accompany me to the church?’

The snow was beginning to fall heavily when they got outside. The rounded bulk of the abbey hill protected them from the full force of the north wind, but the cold was intense. A family group of half-grown grey crows huddled in the leafless trees above the church and even the insides of the twenty-foot walls were daubed with patches of snow like clotted cream against the grey of the limestone. The air was bitterly cold with that chill that seemed to penetrate even fur and wool.

Ardal said nothing as they walked down the path from the abbot’s house to the church and Mara was grateful for that. Her mind was busy. She brushed aside the cancellation of her marriage by the abbot; all this pomp and ceremony mattered more to Turlough than to her. She was only grateful that her daughter Sorcha was expecting a baby at Christmas-tide and so could not be there. Sorcha would have been upset and Oisín, Sorcha’s husband, would have been outraged. What concerned her now was the possibility that Murrough, whom she knew from the past to be unscrupulous, could be the murderer. Could he have tried to kill his father? Conor, his elder brother, was very ill; everyone knew that. Did Murrough hope that the clan, with its great affection for his father, King Turlough Donn, would immediately elect him as
tánaiste
and, after the death of Conor, he would then be king of the three kingdoms of Thomond, Corcomroe and Burren.

A few of the young monks were indulging in an illicit game of snowballing on the north side of the church, she noticed with a sympathetic grin. She pretended not to see them as they withdrew into the corner behind the north transept. Let them enjoy themselves while the abbot was otherwise engaged, she thought. Unlocking the great west door with the huge key, her mind flitted through the sequence of events. Turlough had publicly declared his intention of spending the first hour alone in front of the shrine of his ancestor; Murrough had been present and could have heard that, could have crept into the church once the service of prime was over. In the church, kneeling facing the shrine, one hooded figure could look like another, and Turlough and his cousin, Mahon, bore quite a resemblance to each other. She stood for a few moments looking around her and then turned to her companion.

‘Ardal, you are very good to help me like this. Could I ask you to fetch the abbot? I really need to know which doors would have been open here this morning when Mahon O’Brien came to the church.’