A Fatal Inheritance

by Cora Harrison

  ‘Orla!’ she shouted as loudly as she could and repeated the name over and over until the caves rang with the name. She shook her head with exasperation at herself. There was something ghostly about the echoes and Orla, not a very clever little girl, but a child who loved stories, would no doubt have heard the tales about the ‘old people’ and stories of haunted caves from her nursemaid and from the scholars at the law school. There was a possibility that the child was not far from her, cowering into the shelter of a rock, with her hands over her ears. Mara waited until the sounds died down, and then tried saying the name quietly but still it seemed to come back with the wail of the banshee.

  Mara gave one more look at the unconscious Fachtnan and decided that she would have to go back to her scholars. They would have heard her cries of Orla and would be very tempted to come and join her. By now she was fairly convinced that the cave was safe if you were cautious, but she knew how meticulous Domhnall was about obeying orders so she did not want to put him in the difficult position of being forced into restraining the impatience of the other scholars. She took a last look at the rope hanging down, tied to a blackthorn or something, upon the field at Ballynahown, she guessed. She wondered what its purpose was. Some of these caves flooded, but Moonmilk Cave was remarkably dry, especially considering all the rain that had fallen in March.

  There was no chance that Orla could have climbed that rope. It must stretch for about thirty feet upwards, she thought. No six-year-old child would be able to do that and Orla was not a particularly athletic or courageous child. She thought back to Cormac and Art at that age. Setanta, Cormac’s foster father, used to tie a rope to a tree branch for them, but that would have been only about six or seven feet long and they were both very tough, very adventurous boys. In any case, this rope reached only to a few feet above her head. Possible for an adult to leap and catch it, but impossible for Orla.

  She had to get help.

  The scholars were grouped around the entrance to the cave and she was touched to see the look of relief on all their faces when she arrived.

  ‘I’ve found Fachtnan,’ she said immediately. ‘He is unconscious and I think that he has probably broken his leg. But there is absolutely no sign of Orla and that is what is worrying me the most. Cormac and Art, I want you to go back and collect your ponies and ride, safely and sensibly, to Rathborney and get Nuala to come to Oughtdara with the cart; don’t tell her that Orla is missing, because we might well have found her by then. She’s probably hiding somewhere, feeling terrified. Let’s send Ug for help first of all so that Gobnait is prepared.’

  What a pity, she thought, that these people could not read, otherwise she could have given the useful Ug a note tied to the broad leather collar that he wore – a defence against a fox bite on the neck, according to Gobnait – and the situation about the missing Orla could have been explained. Still, her scholars would go as quickly as possible and would doubtless meet the brothers on their rescue mission.

  ‘Go on, Ug, good boy, find Gobnait,’ said Cormac encouragingly and the dog shot off, as though he were an arrow that had been released from a bow.

  ‘You others follow him, and safely – be very careful, won’t you?’ said Mara. ‘I’ll go back and wait with Fachtnan in case he comes back to consciousness.’

  ‘Would it be all right if I stayed with you, Brehon?’ asked Domhnall diffidently. ‘There’s plenty to go back and I think that one of us should stay. You always say that there is safety in numbers.’

  ‘Well, I can’t argue with my own wise words,’ said Mara. She spoke lightly, but she was touched by her grandson’s concern for her. And, she admitted to herself, glad of his support. One could keep an eye on Fachtnan while the other searched for his daughter. She was much more worried about Orla than about Fachtnan. A broken leg on a healthy young man was a nuisance, but not a tragedy; a missing six-year-old in a possibly dangerous cave was a more serious matter.

  ‘I wonder if Orla would have had the sense to run for help when Fachtnan fell over and hit his head?’ she said to him.

  ‘I doubt it,’ he said laconically. There was an ironic twinkle in his eyes that made her feel a lot better. She had been like that at his age, she thought, looking back over the thirty-two years that had elapsed. She was more outgoing than Domhnall, but she had been calm and confident and able to deal with whatsoever arose. Domhnall had inherited her abilities and her confidence. He was a very fine young man and she was proud of him.

  ‘Oh, come on now,’ she said bracingly, ‘after all, this is a child who has grown up seeing injured people come to her mother. Surely the sensible thing would be to run back out of the cave and try to get back to where Deirdre lives. She would remember spending the time with her making a cake for Fachtnan.’

  ‘Sounds sensible,’ said Domhnall politely. ‘The only trouble is that Orla is not very sensible. I’d expect her to panic. I’d say that she’s still in the cave.’

  ‘You may be right,’ said Mara with a grimace. ‘We’d surely have seen her, I suppose, as we were coming across.’

  ‘And she’d have heard us. Cael and Cian were shouting at each other, and Cormac was making jokes about the goddess, Morrigan, at the top of his voice.’

  ‘That’s true,’ said Mara with a sigh. ‘Still we’d better look for her out here before we go back inside again. I can remember once a case, long, long ago, when a small child went missing up on the bog on Slieve Elva. Everyone was busying cutting the turf and footing the wet sods and a little girl went missing. There must have been forty people there, all searching for her, shouting her name, all the dogs running around. They went further and further afield – you can imagine what the family were feeling like, thinking that she had drowned in a bog hole – and then in the end she was found curled up fast asleep, only a couple of hundred yards away from the family’s plot. Small children do that, just fall asleep if they are lost and frightened. Mind you, this child was only about two years old. Still, Orla is young for her age and quite timid. I think that we should try searching for her. Where would she go, I wonder, if she ran out of the cave?’

  Mara stared across the rock-littered landscape, trying to see it with the eyes of a six year old. She moved her hand trying to recollect Orla’s height. About to her waist? She really could not remember. Even so, she crouched down and looked across. The cliff that was tunnelled by all those caves with their splendid names was higher than the rest of the valley and here they were standing on a ledge. No matter how small Orla was, she must still have been able, quite clearly, to see across to the small settlement at Oughtdara. The church roof was plainly visible and even more so, the huge walls of Dunaunmore, the ancient fortified place of the Tuatha Dé. Even Orla must have known the way to go back to where her father had left his horse and to where a kind person like Deirdre lived in a cosy house filled with the smells of baking.

  ‘Look, Brehon,’ said Domhnall urgently. Mara straightened and turned to the side. For a moment the south-western sun shone straight into her eyes and then her vision cleared. She was looking along the line of the inland cliff face towards the sea and there seemed to be a figure in the distance. She blinked rapidly and then shaded her eyes. Yes, there was a man approaching, carrying something. Her heart seemed almost to stop for a moment and then begin its slow steady beat.

  Only a lamb, perhaps …

  But instantly Domhnall was gone from her side, moving fast, climbing over rocks, going around groups of boulders and then climbing a flat cube-shaped stone, stopping, standing quite still. And then he turned towards her, his fist raised in a gesture of triumph and his words rang out against the cliff face.

  ‘He’s got her. Aengus has got Orla. She’s all right. She waved to me. Aengus waved and then she waved.’

  Twelve

  Gúbretha Caratniad

  (The Judgements of Caratniad)

  Heptad 47

  A man may divorce his wife for the following reasons:

  1. Unfaithfulness.


  2. Persistent thieving.

  3. Inducing an abortion on herself.

  4. Smothering her child.

  5. Being without milk and refusing to engage a nurse.

  6. Being a cause of war.

  7. Bringing shame upon his honour.

  ‘Good old Aengus,’ said Domhnall, when he arrived back at her side. ‘I wonder how he managed to spot her, wandering around down here; that man must have eyes like a hen harrier’s to be able to see such a tiny little girl from such a distance. It’s lucky for her that he was up there. Gobnait says that Aengus is up on Knockauns or Ballynahown all day with flocks until the light goes. And he stays up there until the light fades, or all night sometimes. In fact, he’s moved back up there, Brehon, did you know; back into one of the shepherds’ huts; Deirdre told me that.’

  ‘I didn’t know,’ said Mara. She was conscious that she spoke in a slightly absent-minded way. A lot of things had begun to come together for her: the hole in the cave roof; the rope; the misty morning; the powdery-white moonmilk, so good for the stomach. And Cian’s remark. She awaited the arrival of Aengus with a slight feeling of dread in her heart.

  ‘No, I don’t suppose that Orla was wandering,’ she said aloud. ‘She probably did what Orla would do. You know what she is like. She probably just sat down beside Fachtnan and wept and shouted to him to wake up, until someone came. It’s all come together really.’

  Domhnall, of course, had not seen the inner cave where Fachtnan had fallen. He had not seen the rope which went up so high and through the rock, through the broken ceiling of the cave; a rope that would allow someone to descend from Ballynahown’s lower slopes to drop straight down twenty feet below and to emerge on the ground above Oughtdara. And, of course, the morning of the murder was a morning of thick mist. He gave her a puzzled look, but she ignored it. She had to think. She sat down on the flat stone and pondered her next move. Orla had to be taken back, Fachtnan had to be lifted safely and without injury across the stony ground. And she had to talk to Aengus.

  By the time Aengus came up to her, she had made up her mind and she went forward, smiling at him.

  ‘Aengus, how good you are! How on earth did you manage to climb down that rope? Tell me what happened?’

  ‘Rope!’ exclaimed Domhnall. ‘What rope?’

  ‘I got very frightened,’ said Orla, determined to be the centre of attention. ‘I thought that he was a bad god coming down from heaven and I runned away.’

  ‘That was silly,’ remarked Mara. Orla, she thought with amusement, was confusing two sets of religions. The gods from the Fír Bolg or Tuatha Dé did not, as far as she knew, indulge themselves with lounging around on clouds playing harps in a heaven above the blue sky. ‘So where did you run to, you silly girl,’ she asked lightly.

  Orla looked at her sulkily. ‘Not telling you,’ she said.

  ‘Sure, God help us, she got a bad fright when she saw me coming down,’ said Aengus. ‘I tried to shout down to her, to tell her that I was coming to help her, but she went mad, she was screaming and then she ran away. Lord bless us and save us, Brehon, I had my heart in my mouth, I thought that she would kill herself, or be lost for ever. They’re dangerous places, them caves.’

  ‘I’m sure,’ said Mara. ‘It’s a good thing that you were there, Aengus. How did you manage to find her? You can put her down now, Aengus. Stand up on your own two feet, Orla. You’re a big girl now. Aengus has carried you for long enough.’

  ‘If you don’t mind, Brehon, I’d like to keep a hold of her now that I’ve got her. I wouldn’t want to be squeezing through any more of those little passageways if she took a notion to run off. Desperate dangerous they are. Lucky I knew those caves like the back of my hand. You’d never believe it, but she had nearly ended up in Sionnach MacDara’s Cave by the time that I managed to catch her.’

  ‘Well, we’re very grateful to you, Aengus.’ There was no doubt that without him Orla might have been lost forever in the endless labyrinths of those caves. Mara felt her legs a little unsteady and concealed a shake in her voice by speaking briskly. A problem had now been solved. But had the last link to the previous problem been put into place?

  ‘Domhnall, would you take Orla and bring her back to Oughtdara. Orla, you can walk now, but you must hold Domhnall’s hand and don’t you dare run away again or I shall be very angry indeed. Do you understand what you must do?’ She looked sternly at the child and waited until Orla gave a reluctant nod.

  ‘I’ll go back to stay with Fachtnan, Domhnall,’ she continued. ‘I’m worried that he might regain consciousness and look for the child and then do something stupid like trying to stand up, or crawl. Perhaps you’ll come back into the cave with me, Aengus, will you? I’m sure that you know more about broken legs than I do.’ These shepherds of the hills were often excellent physicians according to Nuala. Up there, isolated from all assistance or advice, they learned from experience what to do when animals were ailing or had broken a limb or were wounded in some way.

  ‘Take my cloak with you to cover him, Brehon,’ said Domhnall. ‘I’ll be warm enough scrambling across those rocks. I’ll probably end up having to carry her. Come on, Orla, your mother is coming down here with the cart and you can go back with her.’

  Orla went off without a backward glance. She had not enquired after her father; perhaps she had managed to blot his accident out of her mind. Mara shrugged her shoulders and turned to Aengus.

  ‘Orla’s mother and father will be so very grateful to you, Aengus. You were up on Ballynahown and you heard Orla crying, is that right?’

  ‘That’s right, Brehon.’ He was waiting politely for her to go ahead of him but she waved him on and then followed. He did not seem to mind the sudden darkness that came as they stepped into the cave from the bright March sunlight and he went steadily and rapidly ahead. They passed the shelf covered with moonmilk and Mara reflected how, when she saw Aengus on the day of his wife’s death, she had noticed that his mouth and lips were coated with a white powdery substance. Aengus probably knew this cave very well. Poor man; marriage to a wife like Clodagh would give anyone a bad stomach!

  ‘You know where he is lying, don’t you, Aengus; you came down the rope. You tied your rope to a tree, didn’t you and started to come down. Was that what frightened Orla?’

  ‘That’s right, Brehon. I called down to her that it was all right; that I was coming. But she gave a God Almighty scream. I heard her running and she was screaming and screaming. I couldn’t see where she went because I had to keep my eyes on the rope and let myself down hand over hand and keep looking for footholds on the rock, so that I wouldn’t slip down too fast and fall myself. I could hear her feet running. I knew that she was going down that passageway – lucky, she kept on screaming, “Don’t come near me; don’t come near me!” that’s what she kept on about. Poor little thing! I frightened the life out of her. Here, Brehon, this is the place that she went down.’

  By now they had come to the end of the first main cave. Aengus indicated an almost impossibly narrow passageway. Mara marvelled at how he had managed to follow the child. It was a piece of luck for Orla that the man was so small and bone-thin.

  ‘I thought that I should go after her; though I didn’t like leaving the poor fellow lying there, but by the sound of him, I didn’t think he’d come back to consciousness too quickly and the little girl could lose herself for ever in these caves.’ He sounded apologetic and Mara hastened to make up for her silence.

  ‘You did absolutely the right thing, Aengus,’ she said. ‘Everyone will be so grateful to you. You saved the child’s life and Fachtnan will come to no harm. You would have had to leave him, in any case, to get help for him. But Orla could have been killed. I can’t bear to think of what might have happened to her if she lost her way. I remember someone telling me that the whole of this district has a network of underground passageways and caves beneath the surface and that only a fox or a badger would be able to find its way through them. I hope that Or
la was grateful to you,’ she added, thinking that the terrified little girl had probably kicked and screamed when he had eventually caught up with her.

  ‘I didn’t need any thanks, Brehon. I’m very fond of children.’ He said the words in a low voice and there was a note of sadness in it that touched her. Cormac, she thought, was very fond of Aengus and Cormac was a good judge of a person, seeming instinctively, from a very early age, to be able to distinguish between those who liked him for himself and those who were trying to ingratiate themselves with his distinguished parents. Dogs and children liked Aengus. Even little Orla, after her fright, and her terrifying ordeal, had been calm and happy when carried by him.

  ‘I hope that Fachtnan is all right.’ A new worry had come to her mind. They must be quite near where they had left him, but she could hear nothing.

  ‘There he is, the poor fellow.’ Aengus was quicker than she to hear Fachtnan. The horrible snoring sound had finished, and now there were a few groans and then silence.

  ‘He’s coming back to himself,’ said Aengus as they rounded the protruding rock. ‘Ah, here he is. Now, my lord, don’t be upsetting yourself, we’ll soon have you better.’

  Only silence greeted that. Fachtnan had lapsed into unconsciousness again. Mara reached out, feeling around tentatively until she touched the woollen cloak. One hand had been flung out and it felt very cold. Mara decided not to move it. The leg, she reckoned, was definitely broken, but that did not mean that there might not also be an injury to the arm, or collarbone. Carefully she spread Domhnall’s cloak over the outstretched body. That was about all that she could do for Fachtnan – other than keep him from injuring himself any more, or from endeavouring to look for Orla. In the meantime they would just have to sit and wait – it would take perhaps an hour before Nuala and the stretcher-bearers would arrive, and at least half an hour before Gobnait and Pat arrived, escorted by Ug, and hopefully carrying lamps and also a stretcher.