Verdict of the Court: A mystery set in sixteenth-century Ireland (A Burren Mystery)

by Cora Harrison

  Mara paused and looked around. She missed the atmosphere of tension that usually occurred as she detailed the progress of her investigation at the Burren. The people sitting in front of her belonged to a small, tight-knit community and most had been present in the castle on the night of the murder. She had told them nothing that they did not know already.

  Nevertheless, she had to go step by step through the whole matter and explain her thought process and the conclusion to which she had come. She looked down at the strained faces of Turlough’s friends and relations and proceeded smoothly.

  ‘There were many puzzling features to this murder. About half an hour before the murder Brehon MacClancy was definitely alive according to the testimony of various witnesses.’ Here she thought of the twins and their report of the man passing wind and apologizing to a flagon and she bit back a smile.

  ‘During that half-hour, a very fast jig was played and most people were dancing or else standing beside the table here.’ She touched the wood with her fingers and wished that it was the rough, cold capstone at her usual judgement place, at the Poulnabrone dolmen. A few faces looked curious now and she proceeded carefully, making sure that her thoughts were in order and were expressed as clearly as she could.

  ‘And,’ she added, ‘the doors leading out of the hall, as testified by most of those who were present, were not opened during that time. The serving of the food had finished; the cook and his assistants had retired to the kitchen. This then appeared to mean that the murder was committed by one of those guests of the King – one of the twenty people, including seven children, who had remained in the hall when others went down to dance to the music from the players in the main guard hall.’

  Now every eye was on her and Mara proceeded with her story.

  ‘One of the puzzling features was the fact that the murder was committed within the sight and sound of these twenty people, including the very sharp-eyed children. And another was that it appeared as though the murder weapon, the knife, was driven in with the left hand. The third, and perhaps the most puzzling one of all, was that the knife was driven in such a small distance that it actually fell out of the shallow wound shortly after the man’s death.’

  Mara allowed them all to think about that and to whisper to each other for a moment and then held up her hand for silence.

  ‘One person, a left-handed person, was seen to bend over Brehon MacClancy and to whisper in his ear and some of my suspicions did focus on that person …’ She did not look towards Enda as she said this, but went on quickly, ‘But then I began to think about it and to wonder why the knife fell so quickly from the wound. One would expect that a knife, plunged into the back of the victim, by any adult, a knife driven in hard enough to kill, would remain until extracted, but this knife had made such a shallow wound that it fell out as the flesh relaxed.’

  There had been a time when Mara had considered the girl twin, Cael. She was the owner of the knife and she was only a young and a very thin child. A blow from her, without adult muscle or weight, might well have only penetrated a small distance. And Cael had hated Brehon MacClancy, whether because of what had happened to her sister, or anything that had happened to herself. The boys’ clothes and boys’ attitude may have been Cael’s defence. Brehon MacClancy, thought Mara viciously, had been a nasty man with a liking for dominance over children and a desire to hurt and to torture his victims. He was a blackmailer, not for any gain, but for the pleasure of seeing his victims squirm. Still, to no man is justice denied and his murder had to be solved, just as if he had been the most worthy man in the kingdom.

  ‘It was then that I began to think that there might be some cause of death other than a knife wound,’ she said, looking around at the assembled people and tacitly inviting them to join with her on the journey towards the truth. ‘“After all,” I said to myself, “there was very little blood. The man had not bled to death; the knife could not have touched a vital organ, so why did he die?”’

  Now everyone was leaning towards her and some part of her, of which she was always slightly ashamed, revelled in her ability to tell a story. She nodded her head at her audience.

  ‘Of course, the next step was to inspect the body properly and to find out the real cause of death. It didn’t seem as though it was a failure of the heart – I’ve observed that when that happens there is a purple colour in the face and a congested appearance of the eyes and this was not present. Unfortunately, the physician fell ill and by the time that he had recovered …’ Her eyes rested politely for a moment on Donogh O’Hickey and she was pleased to see that he looked uncomfortable.

  ‘By the time that the physician had recovered,’ she repeated, ‘the body, in its box, had been slid from its position in the middle of the basement, right down, past the iron gate at the end of the room and had disappeared into the river. I would presume that this action was taken by the murderer in order to avoid any medical inspection. No doubt my request had been overheard.’

  She would leave it at that, she decided. What had happened to her, that attempt to drown her, was her own business and she did not wish to distress Turlough by detailing the effort made to get rid of the investigating Brehon by murdering her. She continued in a matter-of-fact tone.

  ‘On the night when the murder occurred one of the many dishes cooked for us by Rosta was a pie of lampreys. Now these eels have a very poisonous sac within them. A young physician in the Burren, someone who has learned from your own physician here and has spent many years studying in other countries, told me some time ago that this poison is so very potent that once it enters the bloodstream then a person can die within minutes. And when I picked up the knife after it had fallen from the wound I was surprised to find a strong fishy smell from it. It did not occur to me then, but later on the fact struck me and I wondered whether that could be the solution to the man’s death.’ Mara thought back to her conversation with the physician about Nuala and her theories relating to the death of that early King of England from a ‘surfeit’ of lampreys. Now she declared boldly: ‘I do believe that the tip of the knife which entered the blood of Brehon MacClancy had been soaked in the deadly poisonous sac of one of the lampreys and it was poison entering the blood, not a wound, which caused the man’s death.’

  The silence was now intense. Mara looked around the room at the waiting faces and said quickly: ‘You may ask me how the murderer managed to get hold of the poisonous sac from one of the lampreys and my answer to you is that was easily done as the murderer was the man who cooked and cleaned out the fish.’

  From the corner of her eye Mara saw Turlough stand up abruptly and then sit down again. She did not look towards him, but continued slowly and carefully.

  ‘Rosta, the cook, was a good man, a kind man, a man whose whole life was dedicated to serving and pleasing the King whom he had served in battle for as long as he was able, and who, after the injury to his leg, went on serving him by cooking the wonderful meals that were so enjoyed. We all know now that he has given his life to save the King that he served. But men are fallible and Rosta yielded to temptation to sell off some of the King’s salmon and Brehon MacClancy found evidence against him and was about to shame him in front of the King and the people of Bunratty on this day by accusing him of theft. The evidence was there, locked in the cupboard in the Brehon’s room.’

  And in the large cage full of salmon below the nets at the entrance from the basement to the river, she thought. This made an ideal place, perhaps, for these illicit salmon to be reserved. All salmon from the river belonged to the King and Rosta had no right to sell any of it – a venial sin and one that would have been readily forgiven by his easy-going master, but Rosta could not bear the shame of public disgrace if his thievery had been unveiled at the Epiphany judgement day.

  Brehon MacClancy had died of poison from a lamprey, but he had also died from the poison of his own malice.

  Turlough was whispering loudly into Enda’s ear and Enda rose from his seat.

&nbs
p; ‘May I put the case, Brehon, that Rosta, the cook, was not, at any stage, in the great hall during the time when Brehon MacClancy met his death,’ he said with dignity.

  ‘No, he wasn’t,’ admitted Mara and saw the heads, which had turned towards Enda, turn back to her again. She waited for a second and then pointed dramatically to the end of the hall. Every head swivelled and then turned back again. A few had understood, but the rest looked puzzled.

  ‘I had forgotten the “squint” of course!’ Mara allowed a note of exasperation to enter her voice and, indeed, every time that she thought of the obviousness of it, she felt embarrassed at her own stupidity.

  ‘The squint, as those who are acquainted with this castle know well, gives an extremely good view from the King’s solar, although from here, in the great hall, it’s almost impossible to see a figure who stands there in the angle. I have often stood there and looked down and noticed that no one ever looked up at me, or seemed aware that there was a watcher. It was very easy for the cook to go up to the King’s solar,’ she continued. ‘If found there he could have the excuse that he was placing refreshments on the table – as, indeed, was his habit at various times of the day. He went up to the solar – no doubt the knife, anointed with the deadly poison, was in some sort of container, hidden below a basket of rolls or something like that. He launched it from the squint at a moment when nobody was looking. No one saw him stand there, no one saw the knife come down. It is, in fact, as I have just said, quite difficult from the hall to see anyone standing up there because of the angle in which it is set. He waited for his opportunity, launched the knife – remember this cook, Rosta, was a great knife thrower, when a member of the King’s guard, before his leg wound made it impossible to continue in that service. He flung the knife and it entered into the man’s back just below the shoulder blade and the poison went straight into the bloodstream and killed him – in his sleep. There is one other matter,’ Mara went on, ‘because Brehon MacClancy was sitting opposite to the squint, sleeping at the table – as Rosta would have observed before he left the room – he was actually facing the squint, therefore the knife entered the flesh from the left-hand side, though, in fact, Rosta was right-handed.’

  Mara did not give them time to debate this matter. It was time for the case to be wound up.

  ‘I tell you all of this because the deliberate killing of a fellow person must never go unmarked,’ she said in a loud, clear voice. ‘However, there is a tenet in our law, the law that has served this country since before the time of St Patrick, and will, I hope, serve it in the centuries to come, and the law says: “Marabh cach marbh a chínta” (“every dead man kills his offences”). Rosta the cook has given up his life to save the life of all here at Bunratty; his offence is dead and his name will be honoured in the kingdom of Thomond for as long as memory lasts.’

  There was a great stir among everyone. People sat back and spoke to neighbours, smiles wreathed faces and heads nodded. The offence was as nothing when put in the balance of the heroism of the deed that followed it. There would be no mourners of that unjust man, the Brehon of Thomond, and many who would mourn the cook who had died so heroically in the service of the King whom he had loved and venerated. Mara saw Turlough sit back. The flush of anger had disappeared from his face and he spoke eagerly with Enda. He was probably, she thought affectionately, planning some sort of memorial to Rosta, the cook who had given his life for the beleaguered garrison.

  Mara wished that she, too, could relax; that she could sit back and chat and answer questions and revel in the thought of a mystery worked out and solved, but she could not do it. From the time that she was three years old a great reverence and respect for the law, taught to her by her father, had filled her and she knew that the law had no compromises. She had to carry through what she had set out to do. She sat in silence for a couple of minutes and then once again rose to her feet and held up her hand.

  ‘There was another unlawful killing which occurred this Christmastide,’ she said and saw the puzzled faces swivel around towards her. ‘This death was not a secret killing; responsibility was immediately acknowledged for it. Nevertheless, the law demands not just full confession but also restitution.’

  Mara waited until the murmurs died down. She did not glance towards Turlough, but looked stiffly ahead of her.

  ‘I speak,’ she said, ‘of the unlawful killing by strangulation of Maccon MacMahon. The man responsible for ordering the deed was the King but the law expects that the King, like other members of the clan and kingdom, must observe the law and must, if he breaks it, pay the penalty, or else lose his honour price.

  ‘The man who died, Maccon MacMahon,’ she continued ‘was a man who had betrayed his King and the people of the kingdom. He brought death and destruction to Bunratty by arranging for enemies to attack the castle and the village and by disabling the cannon which was positioned ready to defend against an assault from the river. For these crimes he deserved punishment.’ She stopped for a moment, scanning the faces and feeling within her an urge to share her view of the law, to make them and their children and their children’s children understand the importance of keeping the letter of a law which in this part of Ireland had resisted three centuries of English endeavour to denigrate and to destroy it.

  ‘Brehon law,’ she went on, ‘has a penalty for almost every crime or misdemeanour known to man. Maccon MacMahon committed a crime and should have been judged, in front of the people of the kingdom, by the law, and retribution exacted. But Maccon MacMahon was not so judged, but was unlawfully killed and so the man who gave the order for this killing, the man who said, “on my head be it”, this man is guilty of an unlawful killing.’

  Mara took a deep breath and then said in a calm, clear voice: ‘I judge you, King Turlough Donn O’Brien, to be guilty of the unlawful killing of Maccon MacMahon, and I call on you to pay the fine of forty-two séts, or twenty-one ounces of silver, or twenty-one milch cows for this homicide and in addition to that the honour price of the dead man which I reckon, since his status was that of an aire déso, to be ten séts, or five ounces of silver, or five milch cows. So, therefore, a total fine of fifty-two séts, or twenty-six ounces of silver, or twenty-six milch cows must be paid by King Turlough Donn O’Brien to the children and heirs of Maccon MacMahon.’

  There was a long pause. Everyone in the hall sat very rigid, very quiet, though eyes were all on the figure at the end of the table. And then Turlough said curtly: ‘So be it.’

  ‘Then the business of this court is over,’ said Mara. ‘Go in peace with each other and with your neighbours.’

  And then she sat down and wondered whether her ten years of marriage had come to an end.

  Seventeen

  Cáin Lanama

  (The Law of Marriage)

  Exempt from legal suit for each, is what each may have used or have consumed as against the other, except what lien, obligation or loan may have imposed, or what one of them may have misappropriated from the other.

  Exempt from legal suit is:

  Everything useful to the partnership

  Everything done in good faith.

  Liable to legal claim is everything done in bad faith in the law of the couple.

  Mara and her five scholars arrived back in the Burren before the light faded on seventh January. The boys were tired, subdued after the tragedy of so many deaths, puzzled by the verdicts of yesterday and they rode in silence for much of the time, leaving Mara free to think her thoughts. Her mind was bleak. She and Turlough had been very happy together during the last ten years. Custom had not made stale their feelings for each other – he had been a husband, a lover, a friend and the only one in her life whom she trusted with her innermost thoughts, doubts and fears. She had worried about this marriage before she had finally agreed to it; had been concerned that it might interfere with her professional life as a Brehon, but Turlough had always accepted her work, her obligations to the kingdom and to her law school and had never sought to cha
nge her in any way. Until now the marriage had been a success. But now?

  Her mind went around and around, ceaselessly going over the events of the last few days. Could she have omitted that verdict? Could she have classified the hanging of Maccon MacMahon as an act of war? But she knew that had not been possible. Brehon law made a sharp difference between any action taken against an enemy clan or a person from a foreign land and an act of violence against a member of the clan or kingdom. Maccon MacMahon should not have been hanged, but should have stood trial and paid the fine due for his treachery, his betrayal of his King and over-lord.

  How had Turlough reacted to her judgement? Other than that brief and abrupt ‘so be it’ he had not spoken to her. She had been busy with her papers and he had his relations and his friends to talk with. From time to time she had looked across at him, but could read nothing from his face, courteous, friendly, interested, as he had exchanged ideas and plans with his guests. They had all eaten a brief meal, served with food as good as they could make it, by Rosta’s assistants and the party which had arrived for the festivities had begun to break up.

  Turlough had left Bunratty almost straight after the meal. He had decided to escort Conor and Ellice by easy stages to the abbey near the sea where a skilled monk would once again try to bring his delicate son back to some measure of health. Mara had refused the midday meal and had slept for most of the afternoon and then spent a wakeful night, lying wide awake and alone in the large bed of the sumptuous King’s apartment. If it had not been for the scholars she would have set out for home on the day before, but she dared not allow them to run the risk of doing the last stage of the journey in darkness and mist.