Cross of Vengeance (A Burren Mystery)

by Harrison, Cora

  It was such a puzzling case. Mara frowned to herself. At this stage it was completely understandable that she had little idea of who the murderer was. But not to know how the crime could possibly have been accomplished – well, that was strange. If the German pilgrim had been found murdered on the steps of the altar, wearing his ornate and colourful clothes, then it would have just involved a careful sifting of evidence, times, alibis, motives.

  But that large, heavy body, stripped of all clothing and yet not bearing a single bruise, moved a distance of about 150 yards from the church, then spreadeagled in the shape of the crucified Christ on the capstone of an ancient tomb – that, so far, seemed inexplicable.

  ‘I’ll be back in the afternoon tomorrow,’ she said aloud. By then Nuala would have found out the time of death and the real questioning could begin.

  ‘Stay tomorrow night with us,’ he said immediately. ‘And your scholars, too. It will be lovely to have young voices in the castle again. When myself and my brothers were growing up the place rang from morning to evening. We were outside every day, no matter what the weather, and then when darkness came we would be up in the old room under the roof and playing with bows and arrows and having sword fights and making up plays. What energy we had, all four of us. Poor fellows – I still can hardly realize that they are dead. That terrible shipwreck …’ He paused for a moment, his face full of sorrow, and then said more cheerfully, ‘We’ll give you supper, Brehon; your boys will find plenty to eat. The company will be good for Narait, too.’ He paused for a minute and said quietly, ‘We have almost given up hope of a child of our own. It will take a miracle now, I think. And Narait is in no mood to wait for a miracle.’

  Mara nodded sympathetically, but there was nothing that she could say. This was Nechtan’s second marriage and no child had resulted from either of them. It looked as though he were barren. And his brothers with two cousins had been killed in a shipwreck so now he was the last of the ancient family of Quinn – coarbs to the ancient lands of the Kilnaboy monastery. Under Brehon law, Narait could now leave him, be impregnated by another man and then return to him. Nechtan would have to rear the child as his own. Mara felt intensely sorry for him, but there would be little that she could do if Narait wished to avail herself of the provision within the law – after all, why should she remain barren and not know the delight of giving birth to a child and rearing it? Mara thought back to her own joys and deep delight in her son Cormac, and although there were moments of worry and anxiety, overall was this feeling of huge triumph and achievement. – this is my beloved son, she thought, and knew that nothing that Cormac would ever do would rob her of this feeling. No, she thought, if Narait had left the barren marriage bed and had sought the love of a lusty stranger, then she had nothing to expiate under Brehon law.

  But Nechtan, her husband, was the descendent of an ancient line; he could not be expected to welcome this. And if the stranger who had impregnated, or had wished to impregnate his wife, was one who had already desecrated the church of his ancestors … what then?

  ‘Yes,’ said Mara to Nechtan. ‘Thank you very much – we would love to do that. The boys and I will enjoy it and it will save me a lot of time.’ She had half thought of leaving the boys behind, thinking they might be tired after their early rising and hard, back-breaking work at the bog, but they would be excited to stay overnight with Nechtan.

  Eleven

  Bretha Crólinge

  (Judgements on Blood Lettings)

  When blood has been shed, it is the responsibility of the culprit to maintain his victim in a hospital, or in a house appointed by the physician, until a full recovery has been made.

  A physician’s house or hospital should be placed in a quiet spot and if possible should have flowing water nearby so as to calm the spirit of the sick person.

  It should always have a garden where herbs may be grown. A good physician will have more than a hundred herbs within the enclosure so that all illnesses can be treated.

  ‘She’s feeling quite ill,’ said the widow firmly. She waited until Mara had glanced through their belongings and then she took the three bags into her powerful-looking hands and dismissed the boys with a nod. They took formal leave of the Brehon and went across to the stable. The widow waited until they were out of earshot before hissing, ‘She cannot possibly see you. That was a terrible shock, this morning. You should have warned us. In any case it was quite unnecessary to subject us to such a sight.’

  Yet there was a certain edge of amusement to her statements. Mara eyed her tolerantly and said: ‘Nonsense!’

  The widow began to laugh. She was a plain-looking woman in comparison with her delicately-made elder sister, but there was a spark of humour in her sharp grey eyes and a twist to her mouth which amused Mara.

  ‘She thinks you are quite uncivilized,’ she warned. ‘She wants to see a sergeant-at-arms.’

  ‘She’s out of luck and in the wrong place,’ said Mara crisply. ‘This kingdom is ruled by the law of the king and through him by his Brehons. I am the Brehon of the Burren and I am the law. Now, tell me, when was the last time that you saw Herr Hans Kaufmann?’

  ‘Same time as yourself,’ said the widow readily. ‘I saw him when he claimed sanctuary at the church – quite exciting it all was, made Madame almost suffer a spasm.’

  ‘The prioress’s name is Eglantine, I understand,’ said Mara.

  ‘Can’t get used to it,’ said the widow frankly. ‘Can’t get my tongue around Eglantine. She was christened plain Margaret – Meg – and I was Bess, and the youngest of us,’ her face changed and softened, ‘poor thing, she was christened Grace because she was so beautiful – she was the loveliest little girl. We all adored her.’

  ‘I can see the traces of beauty,’ said Mara gently. ‘She has a lovely mouth, lovely hair. Grace is a pretty name.’

  Bess heaved a sigh. ‘We don’t know what is to become of her,’ she said. ‘My mother is dead; my father died a long time ago; my brother has a large family – his wife doesn’t like Grace. I’m to be married again. I know I’m a bit on the old side, but Lord bless us, my new husband is on the old side too – captain to a trading ship, so I’ll be off on voyages with him. Meg has her convent and her nuns, and Grace refuses to become a nun – come what may, she will not abide to be shut up in one of those places, she says.’

  ‘Very much younger than you and your sister.’ The prioress, thought Mara, must be in her late fifties and her sister, the widow, was even older – or perhaps that was her weather-beaten complexion. Grace, on the other hand, seemed more like an eighteen-year-old.

  ‘A big family,’ said the widow firmly, ‘and, of course, as usual in big families, the eldest has to look after the youngest. But I cannot take her on the ship with me.’

  ‘So this pilgrimage …’ hinted Mara.

  ‘It was Meg’s idea,’ said the widow frankly. ‘She thought that the girl might pick up a husband – you’d be surprised who goes on these pilgrimages. There was very merry company at Canterbury. Lord bless you, there were a few lusty fellows there staying at the same inn as we. I could have fancied one or two of them myself if I didn’t have my own Ned, of course.’

  ‘Of course,’ said Mara with a smile. ‘But Grace …’

  ‘Oh, she … yes, well, she is fussy.’ The widow shut her mouth firmly.

  ‘And Hans Kaufmann, did you meet him at Canterbury?’

  The widow’s face lit up with amusement. ‘Now, he was a bit of luck!’ And then her expression changed. ‘Poor fellow. No, we didn’t meet him at Canterbury. We went there at the beginning of our pilgrimage and then crossed over to France to see the relic of the true cross in St Germain des Prés, then we went to Mont St Michel in Normandy to see the relic of the skull pierced by the Archangel’s forefinger, then crossed back to Wales and then …’

  ‘As a last resort …’ prompted Mara mischievously, and the widow laughed uproariously, throwing her head back in genuine amusement.

  ‘That�
�s right,’ she agreed. ‘I never thought that I would go to Ireland – I’ve heard such strange things about this place, but we did make up our minds to it and there, waiting for the boat, was the German. Well, you must admit, Brehon, he was a fine figure of a man – even finer when you saw all of him, wasn’t he?’

  ‘He was indeed,’ agreed Mara coolly, taking one step back so as to avoid being nudged in the ribs. She began to change her mind about Bess and to feel sorry for Grace. One sister was a pious hypocrite and the other coarse and vulgar. She wondered how the exchange had gone between the scarred woman and the handsome young German while both sisters were eyeing him and summing up his possible matrimonial intentions.

  ‘And they got on well, the two of them; talked together during the journey?’

  ‘They did indeed,’ said Bess emphatically. ‘He was a cloth merchant and Grace is very clever with her fingers, always making something – spins, dyes, weaves the wool from my brother’s sheep. Pity she can’t have some land of her own and her own sheep, somewhere in the mountains, but she falls into terrible depression if she is on her own. She has no friends, never goes out, only wants to be with me. And now I’m off and she can’t come with me. And there is no money in the family to provide for her.’

  ‘But this pilgrimage, surely that must have been costly for you, was it not?’ hinted Mara.

  Ardal O’Lochlainn had told her once how much a pilgrimage cost; she couldn’t remember the exact sum, something like twenty gold pounds was in her mind, but whatever it was, the expenses must be huge – the hire of horses, the stabling, the cost of overnight stays in inns, food, fees for ship passages. It all amounted to a sum that only the very rich could possibly afford.

  ‘Oh, that’s all taken care of by the convent,’ said Bess carelessly. ‘They get these young girls entering with big dowries and, of course, pilgrims come to the shrine at Meg’s convent and leave big donations. But she can’t do another pilgrimage next year, or even the year after, that stands to reason, so you can see that we were desperate to get matters settled for Grace before we finished.’

  ‘And so you came to Ireland.’

  ‘That’s right,’ said Bess with a heavy sigh. ‘We had no sooner reached Holyhead, got off the ship from Normandy, than we saw him there, outside the inn, waiting for a ship to Ireland. He could see that Grace was tired, poor thing. Her leg was paining her. He spoke to her very kindly and invited us into the inn for a drink, bespoke a private parlour and everything, put a footstool for Grace so that she could rest her leg.’

  ‘What is wrong with her leg?’ asked Mara sympathetically. ‘Was it the fire?’

  ‘That’s right. There’s nothing wrong with the leg itself; it’s the scars pull when she walks. She’s got in the habit of limping because of the pain – she can run as fast as anyone of her age if she forgets the tug of the scars. We scold her about it, tell her she’ll never get a husband if she walks as though she were an old woman.’

  ‘Tell me about Hans Kaufmann,’ put in Mara, feeling even sorrier for Grace. No wonder the girl was so ill-at-ease.

  ‘Meg was very taken by him, and so, I could see, was Grace, though she was shy of him. So I whispered in Meg’s ear to say that we, too, were going to Ireland to see this relic of the Holy Cross – he was telling us that the one in Germany had been burned and that he had heard such tales from other countries also. So Meg said to me afterwards that it was our duty to go.’

  ‘And it was all for nothing,’ said Mara.

  ‘That’s true!’ Bess sighed, then brightened up. ‘Still, who knows what we might meet at Aran. They say that the world visits the shrines at Aran. It’s the end of the world, and if you go further you will fall off the end of the world into hell, or else ascend into heaven.’

  ‘Yes, I’ve heard such stories,’ said Mara absent-mindedly. She glanced at the position of the sun and wondered whether it was worth trying to insist on seeing the other two sisters, but decided that it was probably more important to go back across the Burren. She had to see Nuala and find out the approximate hour of death and whether the dead man had been drugged. She should also, she thought, call in at the farm belonging to Cormac’s foster parents and enquire about Art.

  ‘Will you tell your sisters that I shall see them tomorrow afternoon,’ she said, rising to her feet.

  ‘The prioress will want to know when the funeral will take place,’ said the widow. ‘She wishes to say a prayer at it.’

  ‘Not until I am satisfied that the body of Herr Kaufmann can give me no further information,’ said Mara cryptically, and was interested to see a look of alarm jump into the woman’s face. Puzzlement she could understand, but why alarm? Something more to think about, she decided, and glanced out through the tall window that gave such a splendid view of the Fergus.

  Mór was out in the small vegetable garden that filled the space between the kitchen and the river. She had already filled her basket with cabbage leaves, but, unusually for her, was doing nothing at that moment, just standing gazing out over the river.

  Mara made her farewells to the widow, then left the hall and went out through the busy kitchen and into the vegetable garden. There was, she noticed, a boat tied to a post at the far end of the little garden.

  ‘How beautifully you keep everything,’ she said enthusiastically, eyeing the neat rows of peas, all tied to their sticks, and the tall stalks of cainnen, each one bearing its cluster of tiny garlic-tasting cloves. Mór, on her arrival, had begun quickly picking these and pressing the individual cloves into an empty row of well-dug soil. She worked fast and neatly, keeping her eyes fixed on the soil.

  ‘Let me hand them down to you; they are so wonderful in cooking, aren’t they?’ said Mara. And then as Mór looked up to receive the next clove, she continued quickly, ‘What did you arrange with Hans Kaufmann when you brought him his supper, Mór?’

  There was a definite look of alarm in Mór’s eyes when they met Mara’s and she quickly lowered them, but this time she took a long moment to insert the tiny clove into the well-prepared soil. Mara waited for a moment and then said gently, ‘Did you promise to let him escape, perhaps to row him over to Thomond and let him find his way back to Wexford?’

  There was no mistaking Mór’s expression now. She raised her head, her eyes wide and her lips parted in an amused smile.

  ‘No, Brehon, I didn’t arrange anything of the sort. He was quite happy, you know. He said to me in German: “Brehon eine gute Frau ist” – a good woman, isn’t that right?’

  ‘So nothing was fixed up about an escape?’ Mara watched Mór’s face carefully, but could see nothing but amusement in her dancing eyes. And then suddenly that amusement was overlaid by a look of sorrow and her eyes filled with tears.

  ‘Excuse me, Brehon,’ she said hastily. ‘I think I smell that sauce burning. These girls are so careless.’ And with that she snatched up her basket of cabbage leaves and fled towards the kitchen, leaving Mara to make her own way out, around the side of the building and across the yard.

  On her way out she noticed Blad was needlessly pulling up a few tiny weeds on the cobbled ground in front of the stables. He did not ask any questions when she greeted him, but she could see from the worried look in his eyes that he was deeply concerned about the future of his inn.

  ‘You know, Blad,’ she said impulsively, though with a quick look over her shoulder to ensure that no cleric was listening, ‘things may not be as bad as you fear. There is a new movement in Europe, new religious ideas. It could be that relics will become as out-of-fashion as if you, in this year of 1519, were wearing a houpelande – you know, like the effigy of Nechtan O’Quinn’s great ancestor wears on his tomb. It would be good, wouldn’t it, if wells became the new fashion? We have plenty of these on the Burren – three, isn’t it, in Kilnaboy? People might journey across the world to see them and purchase water from them.’

  Just as sensible as praying to a piece of wood which might, or might not, be 1,500 years old and part of the cros
s of Jesus, she thought, watching his face light up.

  ‘Or else,’ she went on, ‘this new religion will have its own saints and martyrs and Hans Kaufmann will be the first of them. The world might be beating a path to Kilnaboy if that is the way. You’ll be as famous here as Canterbury was after the murder of Thomas à Becket.’

  ‘I’ll tell Father MacMahon about that,’ said Blad, growing more cheerful by the minute.

  ‘Best not,’ said Mara hastily. ‘He wouldn’t like to think of a new religion – tell him about the holy well, though. It might be nice to have some more ceremonies connected with it.’ She herself liked the present ceremony of tying little bits of cloth to the thorn bush beside it and loved to imagine the saint looking down at them, as though at a patchwork quilt, and picking out the owner of each piece and dealing with their troubles. However, that might be too domestic a ceremony to bring pilgrims from across the world. ‘Perhaps someone might be healed at the shrine or perhaps Father MacMahon could devote a special day to the saint every year – or a couple of special days – talk to old people of the parish about ceremonies when their grandparents were young. I’m sure that Brigid was telling me something one day; I’ll ask her about it. Kilnaboy people are very attached to that well.’

  Mara felt rather pleased with that idea and congratulated herself on steering his thoughts in such an optimistic direction. And then she remembered that for the sake of the law and for her responsibilities as Brehon this murder had to be solved and the murderer brought to justice. Shrines could wait – murder and its effect on the community could not.

  ‘Tell me, Blad,’ she went on, ‘did Mór say anything after she came back from bringing supper to the German?’

  ‘I didn’t see her then, Brehon. It was early – still bright – so I was trying my luck down at the river doing a bit of fishing. She’ll tell you herself. I saw her later on in the evening – must have been just after that heavy rainstorm when I was serving a last cup of brandy to Brother Cosimo and Father Miguel. Father MacMahon came around to have a drink too – said he needed a nightcap and nothing in his own house. God bless him, he had had a bad day! They were all talking about the German, saying terrible things about him, but in the pantry Mór told me that he had been in good spirits when she brought him his supper and that he had thanked his lucky stars that he was in Ireland and going to be tried under Brehon law and just pay a fine, rather than Spain and be burned to death in one of their nasty … inquisitions, I think she said that he called it. Do you want to talk to Mór, Brehon?’