A Fatal Inheritance

by Cora Harrison

  Obligingly Ug stripped his teeth in the ghastly semblance of a smile and then basked in the admiration of the scholars.

  ‘We were wondering whether Dinan was around, or whether Ug could fetch him for us; I’m a bit worried about my assistant, Fachtnan. Anu said that he left her hours ago; his horse is still in the enclosure and one of the scholars thinks that he might have taken his little girl to see the Moonmilk Cave,’ said Mara, apologetically looking at the soaked and dripping sheepdog.

  ‘Ug will take you there himself and be more use to you, too, than young Dinan. He won’t be pestering you with all those old stories. Doesn’t say a word; just gets on with his orders. If there’s anything wrong, Brehon, just send the dog back to me for help. That cave is a nasty, slippery old place, though there’s plenty that swear by the stuff.’ And with those cryptic words, Gobnait pointed at Mara, turned to the dog, and said, ‘Go to the Brehon, Ug.’

  The intelligent Ug gave one sharp, crisp bark, the canine equivalent of ‘Yes, my lord,’ guessed Mara and he came over and sat at her feet.

  ‘Moonmilk Cave, Ug,’ ordered Mara, wondering whether this miracle dog knew the name of every nook and cranny in the area.

  Ug gave another bark and ran twice around the little group of Mara and her scholars, and then raced ahead.

  ‘We’ll never keep up with him,’ said Mara in dismay, watching the dog sprint across the rocky ground.

  ‘Don’t you worry about that, Brehon; he’ll be backwards and forwards, keeping one of his eyes on all of you. He won’t let anyone fall behind. I must go in now and have a bit of dinner, but send the dog for me if there’s anything wrong. Don’t go in too far. Stay near the entrance. Myself and Pat will come with lamps and a stretcher once we see himself come back to fetch us.’ With a casual wave, Gobnait went off to his meal and Mara looked anxiously after Ug and hoped that he would live up to his reputation. It had been an inspiration of Cormac’s to think about the Moonmilk Cave. It was very likely that they had gone there since Fachtnan had promised Orla a trip. What had possessed him to give in to the child and take her to one of those uncomfortable and fairly dangerous caves? Of course, to a little girl it probably sounded like a magical place. The moon is made of cheese; Brigid used to chant to her when she was about Orla’s age, but milk seemed to be a more likely idea and suited the whiteness better than yellow cheese. Orla probably had some fanciful notion that the moon was kept in this cave during daylight hours.

  ‘Don’t run, you’ll fall over the stones; Ug will wait for you,’ she called ahead to her younger scholars who were trying to keep pace with the sheepdog. Sure enough, Ug did turn frequently to make sure that they were all with him, and from time to time, he came back and swept in a wide circle behind and around them, herding them skilfully. They were going in the direction of Ballynahown, and it appeared that Moonmilk Cave was probably in the same cliff formation as the Cave of the One Cow, but quite a bit further east. She remembered thinking when she was young that the stark stone facade was like a row of stone buildings in ancient Rome, and now she thought, as they came nearer, that the numerous caves were like the doors to the buildings. I don’t think that I’ve ever come up as far as this before, she thought and wished she had done it a few years previously when she was younger and had more of a spring to her step. It was hard going, with levels constantly changing, rocks blocking the path and deep crevices disguised by lumps of winter grass. It didn’t help to be burdened with her satchel, but there was no help for that. She would have been uneasy without it and unwilling to hand it over to anyone.

  ‘That’s Moonmilk Cave over there, Brehon,’ shouted Art. ‘Look at the ivy hanging down. When we were inside, I remember thinking that it was like a dark green curtain over the doorway, just like they have at the king’s place at Bunratty.’

  ‘And Ug is sitting outside the doorway, looking pleased with himself,’ said Cael. ‘Clever dog.’

  Eleven

  Bretha Crólige

  (Judgements on Blood-Lettings)

  Every physician should cultivate a herb garden in order to have the means to make medicines for the sick. Other materials should be diligently sought for on mountains, in caves and by the sea.

  There must be something wrong, Mara thought. Surely if Fachtnan were in the cave he would have heard the voices of the scholars shouting to each other and calling playfully to the dog.

  Ug, unlike Cormac’s dog, Dullahán, had his mind strictly on business. He bustled around them as though they were a group of unusually stupid sheep, herding them into the cave, going straight for his goal and refusing to acknowledge any blandishments or commands from his charges, but forced them to go ahead through the thick curtain of ivy until he had them all inside the cave, looking back out at the daylight through the lace-like fronds of the dark green triangular leaves. There was a cluster of boulders that seemed to block the entrance, but Ug squeezed past these and they all followed. And then they were in a high cave about five or six metres long.

  ‘This is the place that Dinan brought us to; I remember this place.’

  ‘Look, Brehon, that’s the moonmilk, look, that white crumbling stuff on the rocks.’

  Mara’s eyes were becoming accustomed to the gloom. The moonmilk substance encrusted the rock face on their left-hand side, looking like clumps of dirty snow. Here and there water dripped from above and its colour was a blue-white, like watered milk. It was an extraordinary sight.

  ‘I’ve never seen anything like this,’ she said. ‘In fact, I’ve never heard of this. I wonder whether Brigid knows about this place. I’ve never heard of moonmilk, before.’

  ‘You can eat it,’ said Cormac. ‘We all tasted it when we were here with Dinan. He told us that the great god of medicine, Dian Cécht, made this cave for mortals with bad stomachs.’

  ‘Really,’ said Mara, almost forgetting Fachtnan in the interest of the mention of such a familiar name. ‘I wonder does Nuala know about this stuff. I suppose that she must since little Orla had heard of Moonmilk Cave.

  ‘I told Dinan that Dian Cécht was in our law books and he said that was good that we were learning these things and that we must make sure that we hand it down to our children and to our children’s children and to the people of the kingdom,’ said Cael with a giggle and a quick glance at Domhnall.

  ‘Taste it, Brehon; it’s quite safe. We all tasted it and we’re still alive,’ said Cian.

  Mara tasted. It had a powdery taste, neither pleasant nor unpleasant.

  ‘It’s supposed to cure you if your food burns in your stomach, according to Dinan, and Dian Cécht, apparently,’ said Domhnall. ‘He said that Gobnait used to have a bad stomach when he got married first – he wasn’t used to all the fancy cooking that Anu did for him. Anyway, this stuff made a new man of him, or so Gobnait said.’

  At this second mention of his master’s name, Ug gave a quick sharp bark that recalled Mara to the purpose of her presence. ‘Fachtnan,’ she called, cupping her hands around her mouth and then called again, and heard the echoes return her voice to her.

  ‘Hold back the ivy for me, Cormac, so that we get some more light.’ It would have been easier to pull it down, but she didn’t want to interfere with the goats’ feeding of it. She was beginning to understand the value of this seemingly barren land to the brothers with their flocks of sheep and goats. The caves were as useful as barns and cow houses would be to more prosperous farmers; places of shelter – warm in the winter, and cool in the summer. And better than barns and cow houses, they were providing food and water as well as safety for the animals.

  ‘The clouds are moving off the sun, now, Brehon,’ shouted Cormac. ‘You’ll soon be able to see.’ The cave was facing south and the sun had eventually come through the clouds and, just as Cormac spoke, it shone down the cave, revealing the length and the height of the whole chamber.

  ‘It goes back further than this,’ said Slevin, ‘I remember we went quite a way. See, just about five or six paces down, it turns int
o a very narrow passageway, with that moonmilk on a sort of shelf. We went along that, one behind the other; it goes quite steeply up a hill and then you come to where the moonmilk shelf actually turns into your floor. Dinan wouldn’t let us go any further. He said that it was too slippery and that you could break a leg on that surface. Do you think that is what happened to Fachtnan?’

  ‘Odd he didn’t hear me call, though,’ said Mara. ‘Let’s all shout together. I’ll count. One, two, three.’

  To her alarm, the resulting yell and the dog’s barking seemed to cause some sort of vibration within the cave. Great clumps of solidified moonmilk and bright green hart’s tongue ferns fell from the ceiling and, what was worse, some small rocks tumbled down, also; one of them narrowly missing Art’s head.

  ‘We mustn’t do that any more,’ said Mara urgently. ‘Are you all right, Art?’ She guessed that this moonmilk was something to do with rainwater taking the lime from the rocks and weakening them, just as the rainwater on the stone pavements of the fields seemed to wear the rock away and cause small hollows. There was no sign or sound of Fachtnan and if he were anywhere near he could not fail to have heard the shouting and have responded. She had no intention of taking her young scholars through the labyrinth of the cave. With the strong March sunshine they could see to the back of the first part and there was no sign of anyone there.

  ‘I’m not sure whether we should send the dog for Gobnait and Pat, or not,’ she said, feeling worried and hesitant. ‘I can’t imagine that Fachtnan would have taken Orla any further into the cave.’

  ‘Orla was going on about moonmilk,’ said Cael. ‘She went on and on and on about it.’

  ‘It might have been something for her mother to make stomach medicine from,’ said Mara. She remembered Gobnait’s remark: ‘there’s plenty that swear by the stuff.’ She had a memory of Brigid talking about limewater for babies and this stuff certainly had a taste of lime from it. So that was the explanation for Orla’s insistence and Fachtnan’s acquiescence. It was apparent, even to her, that Orla was jealous of the strong link between her mother and Saoirse so the gift of the moonmilk substance would have been an attempt to gain Nuala’s attention. Fachtnan, a very sensitive man, would have been aware of Orla’s jealousy, would have been sorry for his younger daughter and anxious to help her to bring a present to her mother.

  ‘But they wouldn’t have needed to go any further in,’ pointed out Domhnall. ‘They could have gathered bags of the stuff here.’

  ‘Well, you know Orla,’ said Cael with a shrug. ‘She always wants her own way and Fachtnan usually gives into her. I could imagine her saying that she wanted to see if there was something better in the next cave, something whiter, some drier stuff, or wetter stuff.’

  ‘You could be right,’ said Domhnall and then they all looked at Mara.

  ‘I know I am probably fussing but I feel uneasy about you all going any deeper into that cave,’ she said. ‘What I’d like to do is just to go forward myself and try calling out fairly softly, just projecting my voice but keeping the pitch low. So if you’ll just wait outside the cave, all of you. I’ll be calling from time to time so that you’ll know that I’m all right. Oh, and Cian, will you keep Ug? He has a very ear-splitting, high-pitched bark and I think that might have been what caused the problems the last time.’

  ‘Come on, Ug, good boy, let’s find a fox,’ said Cian.

  ‘Dinan thinks that foxes are the souls of the dead gods of evil,’ said Art as Mara nerved herself to step forward into the cave.

  ‘Keep as much of the ivy back as possible,’ she said softly without replying to this interesting thought. What with Father O’Lochlainn and the Fár Breige, Dinan and his ghost-inhabited foxes, she felt that she was thoroughly sick of the supernatural. She switched her mind from the murder case and focused it upon finding Fachtnan.

  Step by step she moved forward and when she reckoned that she had gone about sixteen paces, she came across a narrow passageway leading to the left. She peered into it, but it looked uninviting and far too narrow. In any case, there did not appear to be any of the powdery white moonmilk there so she continued going up the slope along the main passageway. The floor of hard rock beneath her feet became slippery, just with mud, she reckoned. Her night vision had begun to improve and she could see a rock shelf covered with moonmilk by her side. She kept going steadily. There was little danger, she reckoned; it had only been the unfortunate combination of the six voices and of the dog’s high-pitched, ear-splitting bark that had caused the fall from the roof. Otherwise, this seemed a good cave with plenty of headroom.

  ‘Fachtnan!’ she called in a low voice, but there was no response so she went on. The cave started to slope more steeply uphill and to become decidedly narrower. Now the shelf of moonmilk had become the floor and she had to walk very carefully with her arms outstretched to keep her balance on that slippery surface. The air was good though; in fact, she was aware of a slight breeze blowing in her face.

  ‘Fachtnan,’ she called again, but she had begun to despair of receiving an answer. This is where a sensible person would return, she told herself. Oddly she had a feeling that there was something malevolent in the air. Perhaps it was just the effect of all the stories that Dinan had been reciting. She even caught herself wondering whether the malicious Morrigan had any connection with that particular cave. Odd, she thought, how Dinan seemed to be intent upon drawing comparisons between the goddess of evil and his cousin. He had laid great emphasis on the ten tresses, or perhaps it was braids, of rich red hair that the Morrigan wore. Clodagh, perhaps, encouraged these ideas. She must have been a woman filled to the brim with hate. She had been a lovely girl with rich red hair and she had turned into a sour malevolent old woman who continually strove to embarrass and disgrace her husband, her kin group and even her clan, not just in her home or her village, but in the market places and fair grounds, at the great festivals of Imbolc, Bealtaine, Lughnasa and Samhain, spring, summer, autumn, and the start of winter when the four clans of the kingdom came together. She had shamed them all on those occasions.

  And then suddenly a memory came back to her from her own childhood. She had gone to the Samhain festival with Brigid. It had been very dark, no moon, no stars that night, but the huge bonfire blazed up at the entrance to the cave where the spirits of the dead would emerge for their few hours of freedom and would mingle with the living and try to entice foolhardy young men and girls to accompany them back into the cave. And then suddenly a great shriek went up, ‘The Morrigan, The Morrigan,’ and a girl with red hair came out from the dark cave and had stood there, with the light from the bonfire no brighter than her hair. Mara remembered as though it was yesterday, the intensity of her own shriek and how Brigid, always a mother to her, had swept her into her arms and taken her home immediately.

  I wonder whether that could have been Clodagh, thought Mara, it would be just the sort of thing that she would have done, slipped into the cave in a moment when the fire was dimmed and then emerged into the full glare when the flames leaped up again. She caught herself shivering slightly and tried to summon up a laugh. How stupid she was being. She had not the slightest belief in the supernatural, but she did fear the effect that such practices could have on people, and she feared the way that some unscrupulous persons would use these superstitions to cloak evil.

  She would go back and send the dog Ug, with his four agile legs, across the rocks, back to Oughtdara and summon men with lamps. By now she really could not see anything other than a faint gleam of moonmilk underneath her cautiously moving boots. The air on her face, though, increased and that kept her going for another few paces in the hopes that there might be an exit from the cave. She turned a corner, feeling the rock face carefully with her hands. The light now became stronger and it appeared to be coming from some spot ahead and above her.

  And then she almost fell. Something lay across her path. She bent down and touched wool, harsh woven wool. A cloak. And then flesh. A face. She moved
her hands up and down. It was definitely a body, not dead; breath came loudly and with an almost snoring sound from it. Her hand moved over the face and then felt a clump of springing wiry curls. It was Fachtnan, she knew that hair, had known it since he was an untidy-looking eight-year-old with an unruly crop of curls. She sank to her knees beside him, thankful that she had found him, but where was his little daughter?

  ‘Orla,’ she called softly, but there was no reply.

  Mara straightened up. Her vision was beginning to improve. There was another corner ahead of her, but around that corner a faint and very dim light seemed to be coming. Keeping one hand on the wall, carefully she stepped over Fachtnan and rounded the rock face. Now she could see everything and she could see where the light had come from. There was a small opening in the ceiling, an opening just about big enough for a man. At some stage there had been a rock fall, rather like the minor one that they had caused, but this was not minor. There was a large hole – about six feet long, or even longer, and almost as wide, and the floor of this part of the cave was littered with jagged-edged rocks.

  The roof was very far up, about thirty feet, she reckoned, but the light was good enough for her to see that a long rope hung down through this hole reaching the floor inside the cave. She stared at it for a moment and then remembered that she still had to find Orla.

  But there was no sign of Orla anywhere. She had a sick feeling in the bottom of her stomach. A small child, a nervous little girl, lost in the labyrinth, terrified; there was danger in this situation. She had to get help as soon as was possible, but first she had to check on Fachtnan, to see what had happened to him so that she could send a sensible message to Nuala.

  Mara went back and knelt beside Fachtnan, moving her hand tentatively over his head and then finding a clot of something sticky at the back. He had fallen and struck his head. She hoped that the thick springing curls of hair might have cushioned his head to a certain degree. His right leg seemed bent at a strange angle and she guessed that he might have broken it. However, he was a strong and healthy young man and she was sure that Nuala would be able to deal with his injuries. She was more worried about Orla. Where, on earth, had the six-year-old gone?