The Sting of Justice

by Cora Harrison

  ‘Rory didn’t come up as far as this,’ said Aidan impatiently. ‘I knew we had come up too far.’

  ‘Hush,’ said Mara. ‘Don’t distract the dog.’ She would slip on the leash when he had found the scent properly, she planned.

  Bran was obviously confused, going back down the lane and then drifting up it again, his nose glued to the ground. Then he came to the gate and stood for a long time there, glancing up at Mara and then down at the ground again.

  Mara’s heart sank. What was the dog trying to tell her? That Rory had come here, to the gate of this farm? That he had stood there for some time. Stood in the shelter of the large hawthorn bush that grew by the gate. That was what Bran was trying to say.

  And if the dog was indicating a true and faithful account of Rory’s movements yesterday morning, what happened next? Had Cuan come out? He would undoubtedly have done so. Very few people passed on this track. Surely Cuan must have come out. And if he did, what happened after that? Was there a fight between the two boys? They would have been evenly matched, both slightly built, neither used to hard labour. But there would have been a difference. Rory would have been unconcerned, slightly mocking, perhaps, but Cuan would have been filled with a murderous rage. She glanced around. The place was untidy, littered with farmyard utensils and tools – most of them covered with dung or even moss – but on top of a large boulder an iron rod was lying, and that had no moss on it.

  And then Bran finally made up his mind. With a quick bark, he left the gatepost and began to zigzag up the hill. Mara followed as quickly as she could; the three boys were running but none could not keep up with the fast pace of the dog.

  A huge enclosure stood to the left of the path on the brow of the hill, built into the face of the cliff. This was Lios Mac Sioda, the home of Sheedy. Mara had planned to call in there and have a word with him, but Bran was going too fast, scurrying along with his nose to the ground. She would not break his concentration now, she decided. In any case, it looked like a steep climb to get to the house within those ancient walls.

  ‘Bran’s turning, Brehon,’ shouted Shane.

  ‘He’s going the wrong way,’ wailed Hugh.

  The path they were following would have still led along the old river valley between the two mountains, but Bran had turned left. The boys scrambled after him and Mara followed as quickly as she could. She had just rounded the corner in time to see Bran, no longer on the gentle slope, but now scaling the rocky surface of Gleninagh South.

  ‘Bran, come back,’ she called, breaking her own resolution. It would be impossible for them to keep up with Bran here; he had four legs, they had two. He was two years old, at the height of his strength and fitness. He was bred for chasing wolves and could outrun any one of them.

  ‘Bran,’ she shouted again, but he ignored her. It was useless, she knew that, but she toiled on, scrambling up the clints, which, like endless steps of stairs, scaled the heights of Gleninagh.

  ‘I can see him, Brehon,’ shrieked Shane who had got ahead of the others. Wirily built, like Bran he was supremely fit and could outrun others taller than himself. ‘He’s heading down to Formoyle.’

  ‘Formoyle!’ Mara stopped for a moment to draw breath. Formoyle was another one of these ancient settlements in the dry valley of the Caher river. What possible reason could Rory have for going to Formoyle? There was nothing there but ancient ruins. She sat down beside a small stunted juniper bush which was sheltering a clump of burnet roses. Amazingly one pure white flower bloomed among the black hips. She waited fingering the petals until Shane had climbed back down again.

  ‘I’ve lost sight of him,’ he said disconsolately. Shane was especially fond of Bran so Mara assumed a nonchalant air.

  ‘We’ll follow on across the saddle,’ she said. ‘He’ll slow down soon.’

  The saddle was the high plateau of rock that lay between the two river valleys. The ground seemed as if some ancient plough worked by giants had chopped the stones into hundreds of small rocks. The flat slabs were heavily scored with lines as if a coulter had been dragged along their surface. Here and there, where goat droppings had fertilized the small hollows, there were exquisite little rock gardens of ferns and even, in one of them, three tiny white flowers of wild strawberries, warmed by the stored heat of the limestone, blossomed among them as if it were May again. But mainly it was just unrelieved boulders and crushed stone. The slanting sun made it a dazzling sight.

  Mara did not rush. There was no possibility of anyone catching up with Bran; he would return once he lost the trail. In any case, the ground was treacherous and she had no wish for anyone to sprain an ankle.

  ‘I haven’t been up here for ages,’ she said looking around. ‘I remember that there was an old fort here, a huge one with a door high enough to let a giant walk through, that’s why it’s called Caher Ard Dorais. Can you see it yet, any of you?’

  Shane, who was still ahead of the others, shook his head. Mara began to get a little worried. As she remembered it Caher Ard Dorais was about halfway on this rocky ground between the two river valleys. The sun was now directly in their faces. It was moving rapidly into the west. They would go as far as the ancient enclosure, she planned, but then they should turn back.

  It took quite some time to reach the fort. They climbed on the high banks and could see for a long distance from there. The green valley of the Caher river was quite visible, but there was no sign of Bran. A herd of cattle walked slowly along, pausing to take a bite here and there from the succulent clumps of grass beside the river. Bran had been trained to ignore sheep and cows, but it was unlikely that the cows would be so at ease if he were anywhere in the vicinity. They would have been glancing nervously over their shoulders at the slightest smell or sound of a dog.

  ‘We’ll have to turn back now,’ she said decisively as they scrambled down. ‘We came out to find Rory and there is no sign of him anywhere. We’ll find the others and join in the search around Cappanabhaile. That’s the place where he’ll be found.’

  ‘But what about Bran?’ asked Shane anxiously.

  ‘Don’t worry about him, he’ll be back soon,’ she said reassuringly and then raised her voice to summon Aidan and Hugh who had gone to explore inside the giant’s door. ‘Come back, boys, we’ll go back to Cappanabhaile,’ she called. ‘We’ll just see if Sheedy is at his place on our way back. He might have some more sensible news of Rory than Cuan had. In any case, he was at Father David’s burial so I do need to ask him a few questions. Bran will join us when he’s caught whatever he’s chasing, or when he gets tired of it.’

  It was true, she told herself. There was no point in trying to follow the dog; he would come back when he had found his quarry. There was little doubt in her mind now; Bran had lost Rory’s scent when he had been hesitating around the gate of Lios na gCat. He had lost that faint twenty-eight-hour-old scent of the young bard and then picked up a newer stronger scent – of a fox, perhaps, or even of a wolf. Either would have accounted for his sudden excitement. She wasn’t worried about the dog; like all of his breed he had a strong homing instinct; he would come home by nightfall. She dismissed the matter from her mind.

  But had Rory come to Cuan’s gate? And if he had, where had he gone then? Was he really lying injured somewhere on Cappanabhaile Mountain? Or was there a more sinister explanation for his absence?

  SEVENTEEN

  BECHBRETHA (BEE JUDGEMENTS)

  Dírann, unshared land, is land available for all to use. It is mainly mountainous land, deep forest land or marsh land.

  A man is entitled to hunt freely upon such places.

  If He finds a swarm of bees there, he may make it his own if he pays one-third of its value to the Church or to his taoiseach.

  LIOS MAC ZIODA had been built for defence. Its western face stood directly over a hundred-feet-high cliff of sheer rock, the small house dwarfed by the huge double walls that curved in a semicircle behind it. At first it seemed as if only an eagle could broach this impenetrab
le stronghold, but on the southern side there was a small gap in the wall and a well-worn track leading up showed this was the way that Sheedy himself entered the stronghold.

  ‘No one around, I’d say,’ said Hugh as Mara and her scholars dragged themselves up the steep path.

  It was true that there was a deserted feel about the place. No cows lowing, no dogs barking, no geese cackling; everything was very quiet. Even though the path they followed was obviously used, the grass beaten down, yet it seemed to be the width of one man only with long thorny briars of dog roses reaching across their heads, and the tiny ivory heads of pointed ink-cap mushrooms remained unbroken in the cool depths of the mosses on either side of the path.

  And yet there was someone living there. A pungent, bitter smell of peat filled the air and a plume of purple-grey rose from a hole in the roof of the cabin-like house. Beside the gap leading into the small haggard in front of the house was a pickaxe. It was thick in fresh mud and had a strange smell from it. Mara sniffed at it. The pickaxe had a smell of sulphur, just the same smell as they had all noticed when they had visited the silver mine.

  ‘Do you think that there is anyone there?’ Hugh spoke in a low voice. Mara wasn’t surprised to hear a slight tremor in it. There was something strange about this place. However, she had to see Sheedy again at some stage and it would be ridiculous to pass his door without making an effort. She raised a hand to tap on the door, but it suddenly opened and the man was on the doorstep staring at them as if he had never seen humans in this place before.

  He was such a strange-looking little man – a small, neat man, with a bald head and watery blue eyes. He was not much above thirty, guessed Mara, but the loss of hair made him look older. He said nothing and made no gesture to invite them inside. This was strange in the Burren where the words, ‘come in, come in,’ always seemed to be inseparable from the action of opening the door. This man just stood and looked and expressed no surprise at seeing a woman and three boys on his doorstep.

  ‘You are Sheedy?’ asked Mara in a friendly way. He still stared at her; it was obvious that he had not remembered her from the day at the silver mines so she added, ‘I am Mara, Brehon of the Burren, and these boys are my scholars.’

  Was he going to ask her in, she wondered. And while she was wondering, he took one step forward, pulled the door behind him so vigorously that it slammed loudly and then began to walk down the path towards the gap.

  ‘I must be getting on with my work,’ he muttered, as if they had just finished a half-hour talk.

  ‘You’ve heard that Sorley the silversmith was murdered in the graveyard on the day of Father David’s burial?’ asked Mara quickly, raising her voice. She felt she needed to pierce through a fog in this man’s brain.

  ‘What?’ he stopped for a moment and then went on. Mara hastened after him.

  ‘You were there, on that Thursday morning, over a week ago. Many people testified that you were there. You came in late, didn’t you?’

  ‘That’s right.’ He gazed at her with annoyance, rather as one might look at a bee impeding progress.

  ‘When you were outside, did you see anyone? Did you see anyone near the graveyard, after the bell had gone for the service.’

  He stopped then and considered the matter for a moment. Then he spoke. His voice had the rusty air of one who did not use the organ too frequently.

  ‘I hold this land from the king,’ he said, a note of fanaticism entering his voice. ‘I, and my father before me, we held this land. We pay tribute for it, we pay tribute to the O’Lochlainn and he pays tribute to the king. What more can we do?’

  ‘No more, surely,’ said Mara soothingly.

  ‘I must get on with my work,’ he said again. It seemed as though he clung to the one sentence as his way out of this unexpected encounter.

  ‘Have you any milch cows?’ asked Shane, gazing around at the overgrown haggard. The question was understandable. It did not look as if there was any work in progress for Sheedy to do. There was no trace of any farmyard, no haystacks, no cow muck; the stone-girt haggard was filled with frothing masses of the small pink Herb-Robert flowers, each small blossom set daintily amongst its lacy foliage. No cow had tramped through here for months, or even a year thought Mara, as she waited to hear what the man would say; there was nothing here but a strange silence and emptiness.

  ‘Cows! How can I have milch cows?’ Sheedy stared at Shane with a bemused expression. ‘How can I have any cows, little gentleman, when all my land is poisoned by that man, Sorley? No grass can grow with that filthy stuff flowing down the hill. Cows need grass, you know, and they need clean water, too, you know that, don’t you?’ He spoke in the voice that would be used to a very young child, bending down slightly to look into the boy’s eyes.

  Shane ignored that; he was a boy who was always confident with adults. ‘What’s wrong with your water, then?’ he asked with a puzzled frown.

  ‘The hill is poisoned, that’s what’s wrong, little gentleman. He’s poisoned the hill, the king’s own hill has been poisoned.’ He said the last words in a sing-song tone of voice. ‘My spring has been poisoned. Will you tell the king that, little gentleman? Even the bees will be poisoned soon and what will we all do, then?’

  ‘Bees?’ queried Shane. ‘How can the bees get poisoned?’

  Sheedy said nothing. He did not appear to hear Shane’s question. He walked briskly down the feet-worn path, bent down and slung the pickaxe over his back.

  ‘I must be getting on with my work,’ he said again.

  ‘Wait a minute. You haven’t answered my question.’ Mara made her voice authoritative but it had little effect on this strange man. As if directed by an inner voice, he marched down the lane, calling over his shoulder, ‘I must get on with my work’.

  ‘You should answer the Brehon when she asks you a question,’ reproved Aidan, taking his responsibilities as a senior member of the law school seriously and dodging in front of Sheedy to block his progress.

  ‘It’s for the king to answer all questions,’ said Sheedy in a high-pitched, strange voice. He pushed Aidan aside with great ease and then went on down the hillside singing lustily in a strange, high-pitched voice: ‘The king is the king of all of the bees . . ’

  ‘Is he mad?’ Hugh asked the question in an awed voice.

  ‘He does seem strange,’ said Mara thoughtfully, ‘but that could be because he lives alone. When you are Brehons you may have to decide if someone is a dásachtach and to do that you must hear all the available evidence and detach external mannerisms from real insanity.’

  They received this in silence and she thought with some compunction that at times they must feel that there were too many laws for their brains to absorb.

  ‘What do you think Sheedy is doing with that pickaxe?’ she asked. That was a simpler and more down-to-earth question.

  ‘Perhaps he’s hoping to find silver on his land,’ said Hugh eagerly. ‘I’ve been wondering whether there might be silver on the land around my father’s place at Carron. My father says that it is very expensive to buy the ore from the merchant ships that come into Galway from Spain. If he could find silver he could have a mine.’

  ‘I reckon that Sheedy is going towards Sorley’s mine,’ said Aidan, stopping to listen. ‘He’s going down the Rathborney path, now. Listen, you can hear him singing his strange song about the king of the bees.’

  ‘Surely it should be the queen of the bees.’ Shane had a logical mind.

  ‘He’s definitely crazy, Brehon.’ Aidan sounded scared. Suddenly he had realized that he was the eldest scholar present. All of his years at the law school he had relied on the older boys and now a note of deep worry sounded in his voice. Mara decided to allow Sheedy to go. Her first responsibility was to her young scholars.

  ‘Perhaps you’re right,’ she said gazing after Sheedy. He had a lethal weapon there, slung carelessly across his back; she had no right to expose these young boys to any danger. ‘Let him get ahead,’ she said in
a low voice, ‘and then we’ll join the others on Cappanabhaile.’

  ‘Shall we go down the Rathborney path after him?’ asked Hugh in a slightly uncertain voice.

  ‘No, we’ll just climb up here at the back and go across Feenagh and then down the other side.’ It would be simpler to go by the Rathborney path, but Mara was determined to let Sheedy get well ahead and, if possible, have people like Cumhal and Muiris nearby when she encountered him again.

  ‘Yes, let’s,’ said Shane enthusiastically and, followed by the others, began the steep climb at the back of Lios Mac Sioda. They were all soaked in sweat and panting hard by the time they reached the top of the cliff face, but there was a disappointment ahead of them; there was no possibility of turning to go back towards Cappanabhaile and Rathborney as the cliff on the eastern side dropped down, sheer as the wall of a house.

  ‘What’ll we do, Brehon?’ asked Hugh.

  ‘I think we’d better go on up to the next terrace,’ said Mara, looking back down the way that they came. ‘I don’t think that I fancy going back down that way again. It was hard enough to climb up it, but I think it could be quite dangerous to try to climb back down.’

  She was annoyed with herself. She wished that she had never bothered with Sheedy, or with Bran, either. Both of these had delayed her little group and now the sky had turned a pale shade of gold and the air was suddenly cooler and damper. When they reached the top of the next terrace the pale blue sea was visible with a streak of amber across its smooth surface. The misty outlines of the Aran Islands were beginning to dissolve and merge with the sky beyond. The sun was near to setting.

  ‘If we go on up here a little this way, Brehon,’ said Shane returning from a quick reconnoitre, ‘we can actually get back down again – it’s quite an easy path, this way.’