Deed of Murder

by Cora Harrison

  Mara turned slightly so that she appeared to be addressing the king, but she was very aware of the two men in front of her. Fachtnan’s liberty and perhaps his life hung on a knife edge. All depended now on her skill with words.

  ‘The other document was different. I have never seen this deed. I presume that it is now at the castle of the O’Kelly in Ui Maine. Unless of course it has already been sent to Kildare for the perusal of the Great Earl.’ Quickly, with a slight gesture of one hand, she checked Turlough’s start when he heard the detested name of the Earl of Kildare.

  ‘However,’ she resumed, ‘I think that this second deed was also drawn up at my law school at Cahermacnaghten. Eamon, as a visiting young lawyer, here ostensibly to learn about the workings of such schools, had access to my books, my writing materials, and . . .’ Mara fumbled in her pouch and took out the two small circles of pink, still tied in a bow. ‘These linen tapes were found above the flax garden on the Aillwee Mountain. I know this tape well and I believe it to be unique. When I was a very young child I persuaded my father to have it dyed pink rather than left white and by an accident a huge quantity was done and Cahermacnaghten law school still uses that pink tape to bind its legal documents.’ Perhaps by the time the tape came to an end, she thought, little Cormac would be starting work in his mother’s school and then he could choose the colour.

  ‘So, Eamon drew up the second deed. But what deed?’ Turlough sounded puzzled and Mara was glad of the interruption which brought her thoughts back to the immediate business. She had expected exclamations or denials but O’Brien of Arra seemed grimly determined to say nothing for the moment and he sat with mouth compressed and arms folded. Donán still had not lifted his head and he sat as one who had been turned to stone.

  ‘It was a deed of contract, my lord,’ explained Mara. ‘Certain of your allies were willing to be bribed to go over to the side of the Great Earl and conspire to seize you and imprison you; probably deliver you to the King of England, perhaps to your death. That was their side of the contract and no doubt the earl or his minion offered some titles or lands as reward. Am I not correct?’ She addressed herself to O’Brien and was glad to see him flinch.

  ‘No, no,’ he protested. ‘It was not like that at all.’ He stopped, made a slight grimace, seemed to realize that he had betrayed himself and then continued eagerly, addressing Turlough.

  ‘There was no thought of personal harm to you, my lord.’ O’Brien strove to make his voice sound earnest and sincere. ‘The plan was to take you by ship from Aran to Dublin Castle. Once you were there, the Earl of Kildare would try to persuade you that the future for Ireland lay in England; that King Henry VIII had plans to make Ireland a prosperous place where ancient, outmoded ways of life would be changed and . . .’

  ‘You say you meant me no harm, but you plotted to take my kingdom from me,’ roared Turlough.

  ‘Not so, my lord; you would no longer be king, of course, but you would have the revenues from almost all of your present lands and you would be made earl by the king himself, King Henry VIII.’

  ‘Traitor!’ Turlough hurled the word at his cousin as if it were a cannon ball and O’Brien flinched.

  ‘It was not my plan, originally,’ he said with dignity.

  ‘No, you don’t have the brains,’ said Turlough cruelly. ‘I can guess whose plan it was, who organized these ships, who was going to be the one that would load me with the best of food and give me too much to drink and then send me like a package around to Dublin Castle to wait for the earl to have his will with me.’

  O’Brien was silent, but Mara knew that Turlough had guessed correctly.

  Through the open shutters, from the ground outside, a high-pitched shriek of fury rose up. For some time she had been aware that the two little boys, Art and Cormac, were running around on the greensward in front of the castle. Setanta was kicking a soft leather ball towards them while Bran the wolfhound patrolled the far wall to make sure that neither child escaped. Cormac had fallen and lay wailing on the ground. Art began to run for the ball and then changed his mind and toddled back to where his foster-brother lay and stood over him, plucking at the short woollen jacket that Cormac wore over his léine until the king’s little son was on his feet again.

  Closer than brothers, thought Mara.

  ‘Brian the Spaniard of Aran, as you have guessed, my lord, made the plan,’ she said crisply, still addressing Turlough and ignoring the other two men. ‘He got word to your cousin here, his foster-brother, O’Brien of Arra, and asked for his cooperation. He could arrange everything from Aran; could engage the two treacherous boatmen, could make sure that plenty of English ships were standing by to convey his king into the hands of his enemies. He could do all that, but he needed someone to be here at Ballinalacken to persuade you to make a visit to Aran and to see that your men-at-arms and your bodyguards were left behind. He recruited Eamon the lawyer, bribed him heavily no doubt. Eamon spoke to my scholar, Fiona, about a bagful of silver. His task was to go from taoiseach to taoiseach and to engage their loyalty so that there would be enough recruited to counter any uprising once it was known that their beloved king had been captured.’

  Turlough gave a violent snort at that but Mara ignored him. This matter had to be wound up as soon as possible.

  ‘I’m not sure when you, Donán,’ she went on rapidly, ‘were recruited to the conspiracy. Whether it was at your own place, or whether it was here under my eyes. I fear the latter.’

  Donán lifted his head, as if to reply and deny the charge, but then dropped it again. His face was deadly white, but Mara felt no mercy for him. She placed no credence on O’Brien of Arra and his assertion that Turlough would not have been hurt and that it was purely a question of getting him to listen to the arguments. Anyone who knew Turlough should certainly have known that he would not have given up his kingdoms for any English bribe. He would probably have been killed. And then his kingdom would have been overrun.

  Donán, though, with his permanent sense of grievance that no one had come to the rescue when his home was lost – well, that was a different matter. He would have been open to any persuasion.

  ‘I suppose they offered you your family heritage, they told you that you would have the castle of Nenagh and your lands and the rich market there returned to you, isn’t that correct?’ Mara’s voice was harsh. Donán was the weak link and she had to break him as soon as possible.

  ‘You agreed to this. You played your part. You even managed to inveigle Ulick Burke into being the one to suggest you all went to Aran.’ She paused for a moment to see whether either man would follow up on this, but neither said a word. They did not even glance at each other. So Ulick Burke, Lord of Clanrickard, was possibly still a loyal ally. For Turlough’s sake, she hoped so.

  ‘The plan was a clever one, my lord, but something went wrong. In the first place, Eamon was very much in love with my scholar Fiona and took her along. So I got to know about his journey and how he went north, instead of recrossing the Shannon at O’Briensbridge. And secondly, because he was in love, and because he was greedy for more silver to enable him to marry, he attempted to blackmail you when he met you on the Aillwee Mountain.’

  ‘What was the lad Eamon doing there in the first place?’ asked Turlough, looking puzzled.

  ‘Just taking a shortcut back from Ui Maine,’ said Mara casually and watched comprehension dawn on his face. One of his great enemies, O’Kelly of Ui Maine, had been tipped off that the three kingdoms would be in a state of disarray within a week. Mara nodded at him and then returned to Donán.

  ‘The evening before you had been telling me about your sore throat and I sent you over to Nuala. I know Nuala and I know that she would have given you a medical lecture on every bone in the throat and would undoubtedly have told you how one could kill by squeezing the thyroid cartilage. You are a strong young man and you took Eamon by surprise, possibly first stunning him with your heavy stick and then murdering him by punching him in the base of th
e neck. You then tipped the body down the mountain to make it look as though it were an accident and went back to rejoin the hunting party. There was little fear that you would have been missed, because they were scattered all over the mountainside. The only question now in my mind is the same question that my lord asked you. Why did you do it? You had been given a castle which was as good as the one that had been taken away from you. What was so special about Nenagh?’ Deliberately she introduced a note of enormous scorn into her voice and he responded immediately, looking at her with blazing eyes.

  ‘Someone lacking the blood of the nobility, someone like yourself, could not possibly understand,’ he sneered.

  ‘Understand what? Understand why you joined in with the plans of Brian the Spaniard of Aran? Is that what you are saying?’

  He hesitated for a moment and then, with an air of defiance, he nodded.

  ‘And you have nothing else to say? No other word of excuse?’

  Mara waited for a moment and then when he said nothing she spoke, with great formality, to Turlough.

  ‘My lord, I am now assured of the guilt of these two prisoners and I think that we need to confer in private about their fate. Guards, take them outside the door and guard them well.’

  They shuffled forward, the manacles and shackles clanking as they moved. Mara watched them carefully and then just as one of the guards had opened the door she turned to Turlough and said in a low tone, but one that she knew from experience would carry well, ‘My lord, I would advise that we use English law in this case. The punishment for traitors under English law is that they be hanged, drawn and quartered.’ She could see Turlough start to splutter indignantly so she drowned his voice immediately by giving a loud, clear explanation detailing all the gory details of strangulation, evisceration, disembowelment, and emasculation exactly in the order in which they would be perpetrated.

  Once the door shut behind them she put her finger to her lips and he obediently kept quiet. Mara shut her eyes and forced herself to count slowly up to one hundred. The time would seem long to those outside, straining their ears to hear about their fate. When she opened her eyes Turlough had already opened his mouth and hastily Mara put her finger on to his lips.

  And then before he could speak she went to the door and told the guards to bring the prisoners in and to stand them before her. Both were white-faced and shivering, O’Brien in hardly better shape than Donán. She watched them for a long moment, her face grave, her eyes intent upon their faces, before she spoke.

  ‘Donán O’Kennedy and Brian Ruadh O’Brien of Arra, you have deliberately chosen to forsake the Irish way of life, to abandon the Irish law and to make yourselves subject to England and to the English king. Have you anything to say as to why the sentence under English law should not be passed upon you for your crimes?’

  This prodded them into action. O’Brien had plenty to say though Donán contented himself with nodding vigorously at every point made by his fellow conspirator. Mara listened stony-faced and sighed when O’Brien had reached the end of his arguments.

  ‘They that live by the sword, shall die by the sword,’ she said, thinking that the words had a good sound about them though she was not sure where they came from. ‘You, my lords, have chosen to live by the English way of life, so you shall die by the English way of law.’ She allowed a long pause to elapse, watching with satisfaction how the two white faces before her began to glisten with sweat.

  ‘Unless . . .’ she said dubiously. She turned to face Turlough. ‘But perhaps you might not wish to agree to this, my lord.’

  Then she turned back to the two men again and spoke quickly before Turlough could assure her that he would agree to anything. So far he had only managed to nod in a bewildered way.

  ‘My Lord of Arra,’ she said to O’Brien. ‘Your steward is here in the house. Send for him. Write to your ally O’Kelly of Ui Maine. Tell him to release my young scholar. No doubt it was about that very matter that your steward came here. Tell him that your life depends on this matter; that only if Fachtnan arrives back here, unharmed, will there be any chance of mercy for you where you will be tried under Irish law, not under English. What do you say, my Lord of Arra?’

  He nodded sullenly and she commanded the guard to take off his manacles and bring him to a side table. She herself laid the writing material in front of him, smoothed out the vellum, sharpened the quill and checked the ink pot.

  ‘Write at length, my lord,’ she said. ‘And when you tell O’Kelly that this is a matter of life and death, make sure that you take good care to spell out what sort of death awaits you if Fachtnan is not back at Cahermacnaghten by tomorrow.’

  Epilogue

  Caithréim Thoirdhealbhaigh

  (The Triumphs of Turlough)

  Written in the year of Our Lord 1459

  By Sean Mac Ruaidhrí Mac Craith

  The government of Ireland being now in the year 1172 come into foreigners’ hands, and regal dignity divorced from all and singular, the clans of Milesius the Spaniard’s blood, Donough cairbreach mac Donall More O’Brien (whose spears were tough and his battalions numerous) became chief in his father’s stead and assumed the power, renowned of old, to maintain and govern Thomond’s fair and pleasant countries; the entirety of which dominion was this: from Cuchullin’s far-famed Leap to the Boromean Tribute’s ford; from the borders of Birra to Knockany in Cliu máil, and from the Eoghanacht of Cashel to the northernmost part of Burren, land of white stones.

  So if Eamon was not murdered, the king would now be imprisoned or killed,’ mused Shane with a twelve-year-old boy’s happy lack of consciousness of the emotions of those around him.

  ‘Tell us about O’Kelly, Fachtnan. What was he like?’ said Moylan hurriedly, looking from the face of Fiona to the face of Mara and turning slightly pink with anxiety to avoid painful subjects.

  ‘Well, he wasn’t a bad fellow,’ said Fachtnan judicially. ‘I ate at his table and slept by his fire. He was very apologetic about ‘detaining me’ as he put it and went to great pains to explain that I would be released unharmed in a week’s time. He said that his own Brehon had a great respect for you,’ he added, addressing Mara. ‘It seems a pity that he is at loggerheads with King Turlough.’

  ‘It all goes back to the battle of Knockdoe in Galway seven years ago,’ said Mara with a sigh. ‘It started as a private matter between O’Kelly and Ulick Burke, the Lord of Clanrickard, and each looked for allies. Clanrickard called on King Turlough for aid and he brought in the MacNamara from near Limerick, O’Carroll of Ely, O’Brien of Aran, O’Kennedy of Ormonde. And then O’Kelly got help from the Earl of Kildare, the Great Earl, as they call him, and O’Donnell of Tir Conaill and MacDermot of Connaught and there was a great battle which was won by both sides – depending on who tells the story,’ she finished lightly.

  ‘What was the private matter?’ asked Shane curiously.

  ‘Well, the Clanrickard, Ulick Burke, stole the O’Kelly’s wife,’ said Mara.

  ‘Is that all?’ said Shane with disgust. Nuala, who was sitting very close to Fachtnan, smiled a secret, womanly smile at Mara while the older boys looked amused.

  ‘Let’s talk about the murder, Brehon,’ said Moylan smoothly. ‘What first got you on the trail of Donán O’Kennedy?’

  ‘I think it was Nuala who got me thinking,’ said Mara honestly. ‘She was the one that was very sure that Fachtnan had set out to investigate where Eamon had gone when he went north from O’Briensbridge. Perhaps, Fachtnan, you would tell us all about that now,’ she ended. She would not betray Nuala’s anguish to the others. Perhaps someday she might tell Fachtnan. She looked at him with a slight exasperation. He had greeted Nuala with brotherly affection, but blushed to the roots of his brown hair when faced with Fiona.

  Now he gave Nuala a nice smile, but avoided looking at Fiona. ‘I was quite lucky,’ he began, ‘because there were lots of farmers around when I was going along the road on the east side of the river. One of these had been up all n
ight with a calving cow and he had seen a young man riding fast along the road. I described Eamon and the horse and he was quite sure.’

  ‘Riding fast?’ queried Moylan.

  Fachtnan nodded approval at the interruption. ‘That’s right and that’s what made me think that Eamon was going somewhere, not just wasting time, or riding away in a temper, because . . .’ Here, for the first time, he glanced at Fiona.

  ‘Because he had had a row with me,’ finished Fiona. ‘I’ve told everyone about that, Fachtnan. You saw it, didn’t you? And you followed me back to Ballinalacken, didn’t you?’

  ‘Get on with the story,’ said Nuala tensely and Fiona gave her a surprised look.

  ‘Yes,’ intervened Mara. ‘That’s very interesting, Fachtnan, I think you made a very good deduction there. You seem to have had your wits about you more than I had. I found this case so confusing.’

  ‘Well I picked up the trail again when I was a few miles from Ui Maine. I met a farmer who was taking his cows home for milking. I pulled my horse into a gate to allow them to pass. He thanked me and then he shouted over something about being glad that there were a few young men with manners left in the world. He was muttering something about the young fellow who nearly pushed a cow into the ditch at morning milking time, so I described Eamon and he said that was the man.’

  ‘So then you knew you were on the right trail.’ Shane nodded wisely.

  ‘That’s right.’ Fachtnan gave a grin. ‘It went to my head so much that I got stupid. By then I was pretty convinced that Eamon was on an errand to the O’Kelly; it was the only thing that made sense. I thought it might be O’Brien of Arra who sent him, but then I remembered that Eamon had been very full of himself all of that day and was doing something mysterious in the schoolhouse the night before. He had locked the door and when I looked in the window I could see him by the light of the candle and he looked as if he was writing some document or deed.’