Deed of Murder

by Cora Harrison

  ‘Nessa,’ she said quietly, ‘would you just give a message to Brigid. Ask her to tell my lord, the king, if he returns before I do, that I have to go across to the Burren on important business.’

  ‘Yes, Brehon . . .’

  Mara had already begun to turn away when she realized that Nessa was still standing, unmoving, her mouth slightly open and her vacant pale-blue eyes troubled.

  ‘What’s the matter, Nessa?’ she asked, trying to curb her impatience. Nessa was not too bright and liable to lose the first few wits that she possessed if you rushed her.

  ‘Brigid said to tell you, Brehon, that Fiona is asleep in her chamber.’ Nessa looked relieved that she had managed to deliver her message.

  ‘Thank you, Nessa,’ said Mara. How strange, she thought. Three of her scholars were missing this morning – and all three horses were gone as well, but now two of them were back – and presumably their horses, but the third was lying dead in a lonely valley at the side of a mountain in the Burren.

  ‘Well, don’t disturb her,’ she said aloud. ‘But tell my other scholars, Moylan, Aidan, Hugh and Shane, to saddle their horses and to come with me. And Nuala, too.’ Nuala was by now a more than competent physician. She would be able to estimate when death had occurred and . . .

  ‘What happened to him?’ she asked aloud as Nessa went running back towards the castle kitchen.

  ‘I couldn’t tell for sure, Brehon,’ said Cumhal in his usual reserved manner. This meant, of course, that he had a good idea, but she didn’t press him. Soon enough she would come face to face with the body of Eamon and then she would have to make up her mind. Was it an unfortunate accident – or something more serious?

  Nuala was looking well, thought Mara, as she briefly told her the facts. She had always been tall for her age, but now, at only fifteen, she looked at least seventeen. The year at Thomond, where she had been working alongside the royal physician, Donough O’Hickey, a man whose writings were famous even in far-flung places such as Italy, had done Nuala an immense amount of good. Intelligent and knowledgeable she had always been, but now she was poised and confident. She said nothing; but unlike the four boys she did not appear worried or apprehensive, just rode along, busy with her own thoughts.

  The air was crisp and cool as they turned to ride up the road that led up towards the flax garden. The road had been carefully made for laden carts as well as horses and it wound a leisurely way around and in between the sharply pointed hills of glittering limestone, the ditches on either side of the road filled with primroses and purple violets. The wind was from the north and it blew strongly, bringing a fine dust of bitter-tasting limestone down from the mountain with it.

  They passed the flax workers’ settlement of small, circular, stone huts. Smoke drifted from some of these and a few curious elderly women, babies in arms, came out and then returned to their huts. The news had not reached them yet, surmised Mara, as she guided her horse to the centre of the track for the last steep climb.

  The small hanging valley was sheltered from the wind. To Mara’s surprise only one figure stood near to the body – she had expected a crowd. An unceasing humming noise came from the spinning wheel shed and the rattle of looms from the weaving shed. Several men were dunking large hanks of woven flax into the dye tubs and draping them over a horizontal pole to dry. Others were in the scutching sheds, vigorously banging the plants with wooden mallets and then combing the flax fibres free from the pieces of stem which still clung to them. The O’Halloran clan were wasting no time. Every last ounce of the crop of 1510 had to be turned into linen before May Day – after that date all would belong to Muiris O’Hynes.

  ‘It’s here,’ said Cumhal.

  The large field where the flax grew was completely enclosed by very thin flagstones, each as tall as a man. They had been hewn – perhaps thousands of years ago – from the limestone rock that surrounded the valley. Inside that sheltered space the flax grew tall, protected from the winds and exposed to the sunlight, its rays pouring heat straight down in the midday and in the early morning and late evening bouncing off the dazzling white of the limestone flags.

  A pathway, just wide enough for a small cart, lay between the flagstones and the mountainside, and it was there that Eamon lay.

  No flax grew here but fine, delicate grasses had sprung up, growing through the limestone. Scattered through the grass were thousands of tiny daffodils, turning their trumpets towards the sun’s warmth. Near to the pond the kingcups shone like small brass plates. The grass seemed to have grown inches since she had been here on the day of the auction, less than a week ago, and the tiny valley was like a symphony of green and yellow, the colours blending subtly against the dazzling white of the background.

  Mara did not linger to look at the flowers. She and her companions tied their horses and ponies to the long bar outside it and then walked forward in silence. Her whole attention was on the figure stretched out on the hard, stony ground at the edge of the valley. She knelt beside him filled with a passionate anger – whatever few foibles and conceits he had, he did not deserve this.

  The four young boys knelt too, awkwardly, overawed by death in one who, only a few days ago, had laughed and teased, worked and played alongside them.

  Nuala, though, did not kneel. She stood very upright, looking all around her, at the hill above the pathway, at the tumbled stones on the ground amongst the grasses. After a long, appraising glance around, and upwards at the mountainside, she knelt beside the body and touched it with sure, unfaltering hands.

  After a moment she looked up at Cumhal. ‘Broken his neck?’ she queried with a lift of her dark eyebrows.

  ‘That’s what I thought.’ Cumhal nodded and Mara drew in a breath of relief. This was just a tragic accident. The young man had probably been thrown from his horse, had tumbled down the steep slope of the stony hill, had fallen awkwardly and then broken his neck. Looking upwards she could see the traces of a narrow pathway high above their heads. She was about to say something when she noticed Cumhal’s eyes were still resting on Nuala – almost as though he expected her to say something else.

  ‘Funny bruise on his neck, though. Just here. Almost like a blow.’ She looked at Cumhal. ‘What about the horse? Where was that found?’

  ‘Turned up at Cahermacnaghten – trotted in through the gates – looking the worse for wear. I’d say it had done quite a journey.’ Cumhal gave the facts quickly, still looking at Nuala in an enquiring way.

  ‘A journey? How far?’ Mara was still wondering how Eamon had ended up in this place. Was his death then connected with the flax garden?

  ‘Could have gone over to Thomond, then across the Shannon, and back, perhaps.’ Cumhal had read her mind.

  To Thomond. Mara’s eyes were on the opened satchel beside the body before she turned to Muiris who had been standing quietly, well away from the body, just beside the barn where the spinning wheels had been set up.

  ‘Come and join us, Muiris,’ she invited. ‘You found him?’

  ‘That’s right, Brehon. I was just having a wander around – just making plans, you know. Not wanting to get in the way or anything.’

  He had the right to evaluate the property that he had leased, but Mara guessed that he would not be a very welcome visitor. She could understand why he hovered on the edge, keeping away from the busy workers, but also noting how the various procedures worked: how the flax went from scutching, heckling and combing in one shed; on to the next shed to be spun; then some of the spun threads to be dyed, but most straight to the next shed to be woven into lengths of stuff, ready to be sewn into the léinte, those straight, long-sleeved garments – either knee-length or full-length – that everyone in the kingdom from cradle to deathbed wore every day and night of their lives.

  ‘So you noticed the body,’ she said aloud, and he nodded.

  ‘Didn’t see it for a while because of all the limestone and his cloak being the same colour . . . I was looking the other way, of course, looking over
towards the sheds. But then I noticed him.’

  ‘Was he still warm?’ asked Nuala.

  ‘Not warm, but not stiff.’ Muiris nodded. ‘Not too long dead, I’d say. You see that bit of blood there on his chin – well that hadn’t dried too well when I saw him first. It wasn’t that black colour then.’

  ‘And how long had you been here when you discovered him?’ asked Mara.

  ‘Only a few minutes, I’d say,’ replied Muiris looking very directly at her.

  Mara looked around. There was something rather strange about the intense lack of interest from the O’Halloran clan. The hum of the spinning wheels and the clank of the looms continued without hesitation. Children scurried from shed to shed carrying and fetching, casting scared glances towards the little group on the edge of the valley, but no adults were to be seen. There was no sign of O’Halloran himself and yet she would have imagined him to be the sort of man who would be continually in evidence, continually exhorting and supervising. She rose to her feet.

  ‘Stay there with the body for the moment, Cumhal,’ she said as she walked towards the weaving shed.

  After the bright sunlight, it took her eyes a few minutes to get used to the darkness within, but then figures and objects became visible. There were three large flat looms set up within the space; natural, cream-coloured cloth on two of them, the third was a dark red. Cathal O’Halloran was there beside this one, not working a loom, but gazing fixedly at the shuttle as it passed swiftly across from one man to another, carrying the dyed thread over and under the warp thread. He stiffened when he saw Mara and then slowly and reluctantly came across to her.

  ‘You know why I am here, Cathal,’ said Mara crisply. She was conscious of feeling angry, but tried to be fair. Yes, every minute would be important to the O’Halloran clan and in the normal way of things nothing could be allowed to distract from the work. But a sudden and violent death was not normal.

  ‘I heard that there had been an accident.’ Cathal muttered the words, hardly looking at her.

  Mara let that pass. ‘Summon all of your workers,’ she said with authority, ‘and bring them over to where the body lies.’

  Not giving him a chance to reply or to raise objections, she turned and went back to the place where poor Eamon lay.

  ‘Stand beside me,’ she said to her five scholars when she returned. She took up position with her back to the steeply rising side of the mountain, facing across the valley.

  They came slowly from the sheds, dyeing vats and retting ponds. There was something unnatural about the slow pace at which they came, almost as though each person hung back and hoped another would go ahead. There was something very strange, also, about the lack of sound. The noise from the sheds had ceased, but the workers did not fill the silence with questions or exclamations. They came up and stood in a long line with their backs to the tall slabs that enclosed the precious flax crop.

  And they looked at her and the scholars.

  No one seemed to look at the body on the ground.

  Or at Muiris O’Hynes, the man who had found Eamon.

  If he had not been there to raise the alarm would the body have been tipped into one of those deep holes that were to be found everywhere on this stony mountain?

  Four

  Cáin Lánamma

  (The Laws of Marriage)

  If the divorce takes place while the flax is still growing the wife is only entitled to a cup of linseed oil. If the stalks of the flax have been pulled and bound into sheaves, the wife is entitled to a ninth share. When the sheaves are dry and the flax beaten, the wife is entitled to a sixth share. If they have been scutched, then half goes to the wife. If they have been woven, the wife takes half of the cloth.

  The sheds now appeared empty. All the workers had arrived and stood ranged up before her. About twenty adults and numerous children, thought Mara. They were a toil-worn set of people, hands roughened by the hard work. Some had hands stained red from the red dye made from the roots of the madder plants, others had pieces of fibre and seeds still stuck to their clothing; many hunched from long hours spent over a loom or a spinning wheel.

  The last to come out was Gobnait, Cathal’s wife. Mara observed a quick look flashed between husband and wife, but then Gobnait cast down her eyes. Puzzling, thought Mara. Why the constraint and the feeling of awkwardness? However, there had been a death, perhaps a violent death, and death was always disturbing.

  The people of the Burren, especially the four main clans, the O’Lochlainns, the O’Briens, the MacNamaras and the O’Connors, had confidence in Mara. They knew her well, had listened to her judgements, brought their legal affairs and their problems to her, but these people, the O’Hallorans, were not a Burren clan; they came from an isolated place beyond Kinvarra, a semi-island, accessible only at low tide, in the sea of Galway Bay. They spent the winter there and then every spring, in carts, on donkeys or on foot, they moved from that barren, salt-encrusted patch of land into this rich mountain valley on the Burren, grew the flax and turned it into linen.

  What was now going to happen to them and to the children that they bore in such numbers?

  ‘I’ve asked Cathal to give me a few minutes of your time,’ began Mara, eyeing the way the O’Halloran clan seemed to squeeze back against the tall flagstones, almost as though they feared the body of the young man lying so still there on the opposite side of the pathway.

  ‘I would just like to ask if any one of you, this morning,’ she continued, ‘saw this young man, Eamon the lawyer, this man who has been killed? Did anyone see him come into the flax garden or ride along the mountain pass?’ The easy question first, she thought.

  Heads were shaken as she looked from face from face, but no one spoke, not even Cathal.

  Mara’s face hardened. Surely someone must have noticed Eamon if he came along the road to the valley. He would have been conspicuous on his horse in this lonely place.

  ‘And no one heard anything?’

  Again the heads were shaken.

  ‘And what about the children?’ Now she spoke directly to the dozens of children grouped in front of their parents. They stared back at her. Was there a look of apprehension in those dark eyes? Or were they, perhaps, just shy?

  ‘None of us know anything, Brehon.’ Now Cathal spoke out, his tone loud and confident as always, but his eyes were watchful. ‘We’re all so busy, trying to get two months’ work into two weeks,’ he continued. ‘So if . . .’

  His meaning was obvious and Mara gave a resigned nod. Why should she have any suspicion of them? What good would it do any of them to be involved in the death of a young lawyer without any real connections to the Burren? There was only one person on the Burren – to her knowledge – who might have wished for Eamon to disappear.

  Where was Fachtnan? Surely he could not still be attending to the horse. One of the farm workers could have done that task. Surely he would realize that she would go straight to the scene of the death. Even if he had gone over to Ballinalacken Castle first, he would have found that she was missing and would have guessed where she had gone. Surely he would have arrived at the flax garden by now.

  She gave one last look around.

  ‘You can take the body back to the law school now,’ she said to Cumhal. ‘Send a messenger to Blár and ask him to make a coffin.’ She lowered her voice. ‘I think we will have to bury him here at Noughaval – it’s pointless sending the body back across the Shannon to the law school at Redwood. He has no living near relations; I know that.’

  ‘I’ll go back with Cumhal and have a proper look at him then before he is coffined,’ said Nuala unemotionally. ‘You’ll probably want to have a look around, Mara, so I won’t wait for you.’ She nodded a dark head towards the path. ‘And what about this satchel?’ She picked up the leather bag, opened it widely, looked into it and then closed it again. ‘Nothing in it,’ she said.

  ‘I’ll take that,’ said Mara. She, also, glanced inside, but there was no scroll of vellum, no deed of co
ntract. So she closed it and placed it inside one of the bags that hung from beside her saddle.

  And then they waited while Cumhal and Danann lifted the body into the cart. When it was settled Cumhal and Nuala mounted on their horses and the sad procession made its slow way down the mountainside.

  ‘I’ll come back in a couple of days,’ said Mara to her scholars when the cart had lumbered beyond their sight. ‘By then some people may have recollected noticing something. Or perhaps one of the children may be sensible enough to tell their parents whether they saw Eamon the lawyer during the afternoon.’

  She nodded to Moylan to fetch her horse and took leave of Cathal and his wife, watching the relief in both sets of eyes as the preparations for departure were completed. She mounted her horse, waited until the others were on the backs of their ponies and then moved off at a stately pace, lingering by the entrance to the flax garden until all of the O’Halloran clan had returned to their work. Muiris, she noticed, remained – a low, squat, watchful figure.

  ‘We’ll search the road coming up for signs that Eamon and his horse rode up this way,’ she told her scholars and waited until they were all busy arguing over the age of horse droppings before beckoning to Shane, the smallest and most unobtrusive of her boys.

  ‘Just go up to that path up there and see whether you can find any signs of Eamon having come from the opposite side, from the Galway side, Shane,’ she said quietly and watched while he tied his horse to a bush and climbed in catlike fashion to the small path that ran above their heads.

  He was back very quickly and he had something in his hand, something so unmistakeable that all of the others immediately stopped looking around and came across to look.

  It was a circle of pink linen ribbon tied in a neat bow.

  Mara took it from him. She knew that bow as well as she knew her own fingers. Every deed drawn up by her, once it was signed and witnessed, was tied with a piece of linen ribbon. From the time that she had been a small girl her indulgent father had allowed her to do this part of the ceremony, and even acceded to her request that the linen tape should be pink, rather than a grubby white.