The Sting of Justice

by Cora Harrison

  ‘A twenty-acre mountain farm for a boy who once had everything.’ Toin’s rich, full voice could not disguise the bitter tone.

  ‘It probably would count as provision if the boy had been convicted of being an unsatisfactory son,’ said Mara thoughtfully. ‘Do you know if there was any misdeed on the part of young Cuan. Had he stolen anything? Injured his father in any way?’

  Deirdre shook her head and said quietly: ‘I don’t know, Brehon.’ Toin laughed scornfully. He took another sip of brandy.

  ‘You don’t know Cuan, Brehon,’ he said. ‘If you knew him you would know that he is not capable of anything like that. The lad was terrified of his father from an early age. He would never have done anything deliberate to incur his father’s wrath.’

  ‘I think,’ said Mara looking from one to the other, ‘that Deirdre should fetch her son and they should both return to Newtown Castle and stay there until I can have a chance to sift through the documents. I shall send Fachtnan, my assistant, to ride over to Kinvarra, or I may go myself. Mahon O’Brien may not have appointed a new Brehon, but he will know where the papers are kept. In the case of Cuan, I should certainly have been informed and I have heard nothing. Deirdre’s case is nearly eight years old so I would have to look back into my records, but again, I do think that I was not informed. However, tonight is the wake for Sorley and Sunday is his burial; his wife and his son should be present for both these occasions.’

  ‘Will you do it?’ Toin eyed Deirdre eagerly and when she didn’t reply, he added, ‘It’s for the boy’s sake. You must give him his chance.’

  She considered the matter for a moment and then bowed her head and slowly got to her feet. ‘I will go,’ she said.

  ‘Wait.’ Toin rang a small bell by his hand and in a minute his servant was in the room. Toin spoke to him in a low voice and then when he had gone out, turned back to Deirdre.

  ‘They’ll have a cart ready for you in a few minutes. You should take what you want to take from your house and then go on and fetch Cuan. The driver will take the two of you back to the tower house.’

  She nodded in an indifferent way as one who cared little about what became of her. There seemed to be no strong feelings about her husband, thought Mara watching her carefully. No hatred, no distress, just indifference. On the other hand, she might be a woman of strong character who was used to hiding her emotions. And there was no doubt about her devotion to her son; the plain face had lit up with passion when his name was first mentioned.

  ‘Tell me a bit more about Cuan.’ Mara waited until the woman had been gone for a few minutes before speaking. She was conscious that she herself should leave. Brandy would only keep Toin going for a while; already his face was grey with pain and his lips were livid. However, he had shown himself interested and concerned about this unfortunate mother and son and he was probably her only source of information for the moment.

  ‘Tell me about Cuan,’ she said again, and was careful to say it lightly. ‘He seems quite different to his sister.’

  ‘You probably think that he is an idiot,’ said Toin eyeing her carefully.

  Mara smiled invitingly and drained her cup of wine. She would not ask the question, but she was interested to know what Toin thought. From the point of view of the inheritance of Sorley’s property it would be important to know whether Cuan was, in fact, lacking in normal wits. Toin reached for the flagon and refilled both their wine cups. He put away the brandy with a decided gesture and Mara leaned back and prepared to listen.

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Toin taking a long swallow of his wine and cautiously easing himself against his cushions, ‘I don’t know if you have ever seen a dog, who from the time he was a young pup, has been continually shouted at and beaten when he thought he was doing the right thing and beaten when he did not know what he should do. Well, that poor dog grows up useless and terrified. In a way, that is what happened to Cuan. He was a nice little fellow when he was young, before his mother was divorced, nothing special, you know, but a friendly little fellow and anxious to please. The boy had a deformity, of course, nothing too bad, his right hand was crippled, but Sorley kept trying to force him to do things which he had no possibility of doing and jeering at him when he failed and beating him for things that he had not done so the result is that he grew up the way he is now. No one ever taught him or trained him. And then Daire was taken into the house as an apprentice and Sorley thought the world of Daire, then anyway. He was always praising him and telling everyone how good Daire was and showing his work to visitors when they came. Cuan, in the meantime just hung about the house, or did a bit of shovelling in the mine. He seemed to get worse and worse and have less and less to say for himself until people did begin to think of him as some sort of idiot and then about a year ago, Sorley grew sick of having him around the house and so he gave him a farm. Well, it was the sort of farm that not even the best of farmers could make much of and this boy was not a farmer. No one had ever shown him anything about farming and, of course, he had no one to turn to for help. Sheedy was his nearest neighbour and Sheedy hated anything and anybody to do with Sorley.’

  ‘Why did Sheedy hate Sorley?’ interjected Mara.

  ‘Sheedy.’ Toin pronounced the name thoughtfully, but added no more for a few minutes. ‘I’m not sure what to say about Sheedy,’ he said thoughtfully. ‘He owns the farm just below where Sorley’s mine is situated. He’s had very bad luck with the farm – lots of cows dying and the grass turning yellow. He blamed Sorley for it, but I wouldn’t like to say for certain that it wasn’t Sheedy’s own fault. He’s a strange fellow. I’d keep away from him, Brehon, if I were you.’

  ‘And Daire stayed on in the castle?’ Toin looked distressed and worried so Mara turned the conversation with her customary ease, but she resolved to go to see this Sheedy.

  ‘Yes, as you say, Daire stayed on, almost like a son of the house, you could say and, for ages, he could do no wrong in Sorley’s eyes and I do think that the lad is an exceptionally skilful silversmith. As time went on, we did not hear quite so much of what he had done and I suspect that Sorley began to get a little jealous of him; also there was some talk that Sorley wanted him to marry Una, but Daire didn’t want to.’

  Toin stopped, took a long swallow from a cup of some sticky, red liquid which stood on a press. For a minute he stayed very still and then continued.

  ‘So then recently Rory the bard came along – but you probably know more than I do about this. He comes from your own part of the Burren. Of course, it was obvious that he was kept there as a possible husband for Una. I didn’t need Ulick to tell me this. Everyone knew that Sorley hadn’t a note of music in him. He hated music, called it noise! Anyway, Rory was there, living in the lap of luxury and Sorley’s only son was out there on the hillside, trying to do something that he had no training for.’

  A sad story, thought Mara, listening attentively. But would the story have a happy ending? Deirdre had been very careful to discount the possibility of Cuan inheriting. Surely, though, she was intelligent enough to know that he would be his father’s heir in absence of any formal legal proceedings? Was she, perhaps, trying to blind the Brehon as to her possible part in the death of Sorley?

  Could this deeply wronged woman have been instrumental in opening the way for this docile, childlike son to inherit the castle and the vast wealth of the husband who had so wronged her?

  EIGHT

  CÁIN LÁNAMNA (THE LAW OF COUPLES)

  There are seven kinds oƒ union between a man and a woman:

  1. Marriage oƒ First Degree: the union oƒ joint property

  2. Marriage oƒ Second Degree: the union oƒ a woman on man’s property

  3. Marriage of Third Degree: the union of a man on woman’s property

  4. marriage oƒ Fourth Degree: the union oƒ a man visiting a woman with her kin’s consent

  5. Marriage oƒ Fifth Degree: the union where a woman goes away openly with a man, but without her kin’s consent

 
6. Marriage of Sixth Degree: the union where the woman allows herselƒ to be abducted without her kin’s consent

  7. Marriage of Seventh Degree: the union where a woman is secretly visited without her kin’s consent

  In a union of joint property neither partner can make an agreement detrimental to the other partner’s interests.

  IT WAS SOON AFTER the bell for vespers. The scholars had done a good afternoon’s work so when Turlough unexpectedly turned up, Mara was in a mood to indulge him. Together they rode over to look at the progress of Ballinalacken, a home that would be theirs for the few weeks that they could snatch from their busy lives. A wonderful place to live in, Mara thought. The scholars would all go home to their own families during the months of July, August and September and also for the month of January. This would be her home then, perched up here on the top of the hill overlooking the turbulent Atlantic.

  ‘Wait,’ she said, reaching her hand out towards Turlough. ‘Wait for a minute, I want to look at the sea.’

  It stretched out in front of them, blue as woad, the waves streaked across its ruffled surface like cream whipped to rough peaks. The colour was so intense that the sky itself paled before it and the limestone rocks were black and formless against the continuously moving water. A single-sailed carrack moved swiftly towards the coast and the gulls cried and screamed overhead. An energetic breeze was blowing strongly from the west, but the air was like wine, full of life-giving vigour. The slopes of the steep hill that led up to Ballinalacken Castle were bright with the tiny purses of pink and mauve heather, almost every flower busily probed by an industrious bee and the bracken glowed golden brown in the bright sunlight. Mara breathed in deeply and looked all around her. This is a moment that I will remember, she thought.

  The castle itself was full of workmen, measuring spaces, building walls, carving stone and sawing wood. It would be a splendid mansion when it was finished. The new extension was more than double the size of the original tower. Some of the windows were already in place and the mullions were beautifully carved from smooth columns of blue limestone.

  ‘You see,’ said Turlough, eyeing her with the excitement of a four-year-old with a new toy, ‘these old tower houses are all very well, but they are cold and dark. This new wing that they’re building here will have good big windows facing south, see, look across there; that’s the hall.’

  ‘Could it have a window to the west, also?’ asked Mara. ‘I’d love to be able to sit and look over the sea and across to the Aran Islands.’

  ‘You see,’ said Turlough triumphantly. ‘Aren’t you glad that you came? Now, if you hadn’t come then I would just be saying yes, yes to my builders. A big window to the west will be fine. We’ll sit there on the window seat when the day’s work is done and we’ll watch the sunsets over the islands. I’ll tell them to make it triple mullioned and then it will have plenty of space for the two of us. Now I want to show you everything. This is to be your house and I want everything to be just right for you.’

  ‘So this is your new home,’ said Turlough when she had seen every inch of the new castle. ‘This will be yours, yours only. You will invite me to visit you here and I will come humbly, cap in hand. You remember that I said this is to be a marriage of first degree. Now what would you like to see next?’

  ‘I’ll have to go soon,’ Mara told him regretfully. ‘I want to go to Sorley’s wake at Rathborney; I didn’t like the man much, and I hardly know his kin, but I am beginning to think that this is a case of murder, not just an accident and a wake is a good opportunity to see the family and friends together.’

  ‘I’ll go with you.’ Turlough did not protest at her departure, she was glad to hear, but she did not want him at the wake. Somehow she felt it was lowering his dignity. It would be unusual for a king to attend the wake of anyone lower in status than a taoiseach. In any case, she had a job to do and she could do it more easily without the distraction of his presence.

  ‘Why don’t you ride on to Cahermacnaghten and we’ll have supper together when I come back and then you can stay the night,’ she said softly. And then before he could worry about her riding alone, she said quickly: ‘Young Donie from my farm will be waiting for me at Toin’s place and he will escort me home.’

  He looked relieved at that. ‘Toin will make sure that Donie has a good torch if there is no moon,’ he said. ‘Toin is the best of hosts, poor fellow.’

  ‘Did you tell me once that you knew Toin when you were young?’ she asked.

  He shook his head. ‘No, not then, he would be about eighteen years older than I am. I knew his father though, at my father’s court. Toin’s father was a harpist. He served my father, Teige of Coad, God have mercy on him, and when he died, the old man went on playing for my two uncles, Conor na Sróna and the Gilladuff.’

  ‘So Toin himself did not become a harpist?’ Mara was surprised. These skills and positions were usually passed from father to son. Her own father, grandfather, great-grandfather and his father before him, had all been lawyers.

  ‘No, he didn’t,’ said Turlough indifferently. ‘He became a physician, first one in his family to do that. I think I heard some story of a physician curing him of something when he was young and he set his heart on learning the skills himself. He must have done well to accumulate enough silver to set himself up as a briuga. He’s a nice man, very like his old father who was always kind to us all when we were children. I can remember him trying to teach me to play the harp and he was the soul of patience with me.’ Turlough laughed heartily. ‘I was all fingers and thumbs, all right with a sword in my hand but no good with the strings. The old man would sing a note and I would try to play it. Toin has a beautiful singing voice, too, he’s probably not able now, poor fellow but I can remember a few years ago, when Teige and I stayed with him on his way to the Aran Islands; I’d never heard such wonderful singing!’

  ‘I’m afraid his singing days are over now,’ said Mara softly. ‘I think, from the way Malachy looked at him, that he has only a few weeks to go. He looked very ill today, but determined to keep himself going and to help others to the end.’

  ‘I know, Ulick told me when I met him earlier today.’ Turlough looked uncomfortable. He was as brave as a lion when facing danger in the battlefield, but he hated illness. His own eldest son, Conor, was very ill, and Turlough could seldom bear to talk of him. She could see him casting around to change the conversation.

  ‘There’s something I want to discuss with you, something that I was talking about to Ulick,’ he said hurriedly.

  ‘What was that?’ asked Mara gently. It had taken a long time to wander around the half-finished building. She cast a quick glance to the west at the spectacular sky of primrose-yellow streaked with orange and darkest blue. The sun would soon set. She should be on her way, but she had to give Turlough another few minutes. He had a thoughtful, worried look about him, almost as if he were looking for an opportunity to broach a difficult subject.

  ‘Well, you know Ulick. He’s a very clever fellow. He’s been to Rome and then back through France and England. He has even stayed a few nights in London with Sir John Morton, the king’s counsellor.’

  ‘King Henry VIII?’

  ‘No, before that, this was last year. It was Henry VII, his father, the king that died last April.’

  Mara waited. Normally Turlough took no more interest in England or English affairs than she did herself. He had something of importance to say.

  ‘He was talking about Henry VII and saying that this Sir John thought the king was a great legislator and that he had reformed the currency – that’s their money – they never use barter as we do – anyway Henry VII brought out a set of new coins with his own picture stamped on them. There’s three gold coins called “sovereign”, “royal” and “angel” and then some silver coins: a “shilling”, a “testoon” and a “groat” as well as pence and halfpence and farthings – I’d heard of them, of course, but not of the more valuable ones.’

  Mara
looked at him in a puzzled way. ‘Why is all this so interesting to you?’ she asked.

  He avoided her gaze and fixed his eyes on the distant islands. ‘Ulick thought I should have my own currency, put my picture on it, make all the clans buy it from me and use it instead of milch cows and ounces of silver.’ He swung around to look at her and when she still said nothing, he added defensively: ‘Well, it would stop English money creeping in over here. You can’t do much in Limerick or Galway without English money, these days.’

  ‘And how would you make this money? What would you use to manufacture it?’

  His eyes fell before hers. ‘I was thinking about this silver mine here on the Burren,’ he said. ‘If Sorley has disowned his son as Ulick told you, if Sorley has made a will that excluded the boy, then the daughter should not inherit anything as valuable as that mine; surely that’s the law, isn’t it? I met Ulick at the bishop’s house in Kilfenora and he was talking to me about this.’

  ‘The law,’ said Mara cautiously, ‘is concerned to preserve clan land within the clan. If there is no son, then the daughter is the heir. However, if a daughter inherits a large amount of land from her father, then this land would be lost if she married into another clan. The law, therefore, just grants her the house in which she dwells and enough land for seven cows and the rest of the possession goes back into clan land and is available for the taoiseach to allocate to someone else.’

  ‘Exactly,’ said Turlough eagerly. ‘Now Sorley was not a member of a clan, he was a Skerrett from Galway, wasn’t he? And that land on the mountain, that’s common land to everyone who lives around it; I was asking about that. There’s only one man, an ócaire called Sheedy, who farms around there and I could compensate him – more than Sorley ever did. He just bought the tower house from the O’Lochlainn and then, because he owned the farm around it and bought up a couple more farms, he just took what he wanted from the mountain. He just marched in and grabbed it.’