Eye of the Law

by Cora Harrison

  There were a few figures moving across the clints coming from Baur South on the other side of the Glenslade road and two men were riding up the road from Lemeanah. Two men looking very alike, both heavily built men – about fifty years old, with the brown hair, the low afternoon sun picking out gleams of grey from both heads. It was Teige O’Brien and his cousin King Turlough Donn.

  Instantly Mara’s tiredness left her. She was on her feet, smiling a welcome before the two men had dismounted from their horses. A surge of energy flooded through her as she greeted them both, and her voice, as she turned to face the people of the kingdom, was strong and reached easily to the back of the crowd.

  ‘God and Mary be with you,’ she said in the traditional greeting and back came the answer, ‘God and Mary, and Patrick be with you.’

  ‘I, Mara, Brehon of the Burren, announce to you that a killing took place of Iarla of Aran on Thursday morning.’ No need to say anything about the putative relationship between the young man and Ardal O’Lochlainn, she thought. In the corner of her eye she saw several people look in his direction, but Ardal stood impassively, tall and handsome, flanked by his nephew, Donal Óg on one side, and his steward, Liam, on the other.

  ‘I now call on the person who killed Iarla, the man from Aran, to acknowledge the crime and to pay the fine. Iarla’s honour price as a fisherman is one yearly heifer which is worth a quarter of an ounce of silver. The éraic, or body fine, for an unlawful killing is forty-two séts, or twenty-one ounces of silver. As more than forty-eight hours have elapsed since the killing took place then I now declare it to be a case of duinetháide, a secret and unlawful killing. The éraic will therefore be doubled to eighty-four séts. Add to that the victim’s honour price of half a sét and the fine will then amount to eighty-four and a half séts, forty-two and a quarter ounces of silver, or forty-two milch cows. This fine will be paid to Becan from Aran, the uncle of Iarla,’ she ended firmly, looking all around the assembled crowd.

  That should relieve Ardal, she thought as she waited for the murmur of conversation to die down. Ardal had plenty of money. He worked hard for the joy of achievement, rather than for the love of acquisitions. His lifestyle was plain and simple: his clothing a simple saffron léine topped with an undyed, grey woollen mantle, woven from his own sheep. He certainly would not want the fine and the fact that it would be paid to Becan meant that Iarla’s claim to be his son had been judged to be unproven.

  ‘I now call on the person who killed Iarla, the man from Aran, to acknowledge the crime and to pay the fine of forty-two cows,’ said Mara. Then she paused and waited, looking all around the crowd. This procedure had to be gone through, but she doubted if it had ever yielded the name of the killer. In this war-like society, most murders resulted from fights and were acknowledged immediately; those few, classified as duinetháide, secret and unlawful killings, took a long and meticulous investigation to solve them.

  ‘For the second time I call on the person who killed Iarla, the man from Aran, to acknowledge the crime and to pay the fine of forty-two cows,’ said Mara after she had conscientiously given the people sixty seconds to reply.

  ‘For the third time, I call on the person who killed Iarla, the man from Aran, to acknowledge the crime and to pay the fine of forty-two cows,’ said Mara, but she knew by now that no one would reply. There was a buzz of conversation and she allowed it to continue for a few minutes. Then she held up her scroll and silence fell again.

  ‘I will now take evidence about this case,’ she said.

  There was no pause this time. Immediately Becan stepped forward.

  ‘I name the murderers of Iarla of Aran,’ he said in a deep husky voice.

  He looked around. His voice did not carry very well and those not close by seemed to be straining to hear him. He took another step forward and this time climbed on one of the boulders next to the dolmen. Now every eye was on him. He pointed dramatically across the heads of those nearest.

  ‘I name the murderers of Iarla of Aran.’ This time his voice roared like the beating of iron against iron. ‘They are Ardal O’Lochlainn, the father of the dead boy, and his steward Liam.’

  Oddly enough there was no buzz of conversation after this announcement. It seemed as everyone was suddenly frozen. No eye turned towards Ardal, all were staring at Becan.

  ‘What is your evidence for this accusation?’ Mara kept her voice neutral.

  ‘I saw the two of them, early on Thursday morning. Just after dawn. Liam the steward was pushing a turf barrow covered with sacks and the taoiseach walked beside him. They were going down the road from Lissylisheen towards Kilcorney. I took no notice at the time.’ As he went on, he gained fluency. His voice was now well under his control and everyone looked on him.

  ‘That’s a lie.’ One of the young O’Lochlainns advanced aggressively. ‘I was with the taoiseach from the time that we all finished breakfast. Your nephew hadn’t even got up then.’

  ‘He was dead by then.’ Becan’s voice was beginning to lose conviction.

  ‘No he wasn’t.’ Another clan member pushed himself forward, a huge fat man. ‘I’m the cook and I served breakfast to Iarla of Aran, God rest his soul, a full hour after himself had gone off about his business. And if he were dead then, well, all I can say is that he ate a great meal.’

  ‘What about Liam?’ asked Mara mildly. She knew the answer to this, but she resolved to let Becan say what he wanted to say. It would be best for him to get all his suspicions out in the open rather than to mutter them afterwards in an inn.

  While several of the O’Lochlainn clan gave evidence that they were in the company of either Ardal or of Liam, all through the morning, Mara kept an attentive face turned towards them and noted with pleasure that both Enda and Fachtnan had taken it upon themselves to start writing busily on some blank pieces of vellum. Once no one had anything else to say, she took control of the meeting quickly.

  ‘Iarla of Aran will be buried here at Kilcorney, tomorrow morning at noon. He came to us as a stranger and he did not leave us. I, myself, will be present at his burial and I hope that as many people of the Burren as possible will attend to pray for his soul. Now go in peace with your families and your neighbours.’

  ‘There will be no peace for anyone,’ said Becan loudly and harshly. ‘That poor dead lad will not rest in his grave until his murderer is discovered.’ He looked around. The clan members had turned away as Mara’s words finished, but then they turned back, their eyes startled.

  Becan nodded with satisfaction. ‘You can all be sure of one thing.’ His voice now was slow and sonorous, ringing like an anvil across the stone-paved field. ‘You can be sure of one thing,’ he repeated. ‘I know who did it. I don’t know how it was done, but I will find out. I said that Iarla would not rest in his grave until the murderer is uncovered; but he’s not the only one. I won’t rest either until I bring his murderer to justice or kill him with my own hands.’

  Six

  Córus Bésccnai

  (The regulation of proper behaviour)

  The audacht (testimony) before death is the highest and noblest of all spoken utterances, as at that moment it is not known whether the speaker’s soul will go to heaven or to hell.

  A person has the right to leave personal to wealth to whomsoever they please, but clan land must stay within the clan.

  ‘I was talking to Teige today,’ said Mara idly as she sat on the window seat of Ballynalacken Castle and looked out over the Atlantic. ‘He was telling me that he and you used to play in the ruins of that old enclosure near to Lemeanah tower house.’

  ‘That’s right, we did.’ Turlough’s face bore a happy reminiscent look. Boyhood friends were very important to him; he and Teige had been fostered together and had been friends, as well as cousins, ever since.

  ‘There’s some sort of ghost story attached to it, isn’t there? About a woman with red hair who used to come out of a cave at full moon riding a blind stallion – I seem to remember something like that.
’

  Turlough laughed uproariously. ‘Teige and I used to scare his sisters with that. It wasn’t a cave though; it was one of those underground rooms that you find in old enclosures but the passageway off it did lead to a cave. We tried to go along it once, but we scared ourselves. It was quite dangerous with lots of flooded bits and a rockfall while we were in it. We were happy to get out of it with our heads still on our necks, I can tell you.’

  ‘Funny,’ said Mara thoughtfully. ‘Teige doesn’t seem to remember that. He didn’t mention it.’ She thought for a moment, frowning to herself, and then looked up to find Turlough’s eyes on her with a worried expression. She forced a smile and went on rapidly. ‘It’s a problem,’ she said. ‘You see no one knows where Iarla went once he had finished his breakfast and there was only one place, Ballymurphy townland, with none of Ardal’s workers in it. Iarla could have gone over the wall of the courtyard, through Ballymurphy and down south towards Noughaval and that would account for the fact that he was not seen after his breakfast.’

  ‘But not for the fact that he was found dead at Balor’s Cave at Noughaval, that was the puzzle, wasn’t it?’ queried Turlough shrewdly.

  ‘That’s right.’ Mara nodded.

  ‘You’re not thinking that Teige had anything to do with it.’

  ‘I have to consider everyone,’ said Mara honestly.

  Turlough considered this in silence for a few minutes and then shook his head vigorously. ‘Not possible,’ he said decisively. ‘You’re trying to say that Teige might be guilty of the murder of the man from Aran just because the fellow stepped over the boundaries with little Saoirse. Not a chance. That’s not Teige at all. You don’t know Teige as well as I do. He would just give the fellow a wallop that would knock him into the next townland and that would be that.’

  ‘But he didn’t,’ said Mara quickly. ‘He didn’t do anything at all, not even shout at Iarla. It was left to the O’Lochlainn boys and my own boys to teach him some manners. The O’Brien steward broke it up, apparently. And then Liam took them all into the kitchen and fed them with mead, on the pretence of lecturing them.’ Mara’s lips curved in a smile as she thought of the episode, but she quickly sobered. She agreed with Turlough about Teige, but it puzzled her a little that he had said nothing to Iarla at the time and then had apparently lost his temper with his daughter afterwards.

  And why didn’t he tell the Brehon about that underground passageway?

  Unless, of course, that he feared Saoirse herself had had a hand in the murder. She and Mairéad would have made a formidable couple. They were both strong, well-grown girls. They could have hit him over the head and then got hold of a turf cart or something and wheeled the body down the passageway. The addition of the mutilation of the eye could have been to make the murder fit the story of Balor, the one-eyed god, but it could also have been a final act of revenge. Iarla had spied on Saoirse, had ripped her gown, had tried to view her body; perhaps in their eyes the punishment fitted the crime.

  ‘I suppose the fact is that there was one man who would benefit most of all by this murder,’ said Turlough, breaking into her thoughts. ‘And that must be Ardal. He did not show any feeling for the boy, did he?’

  ‘No.’ Mara turned over the memory of Ardal’s face during the last few days. ‘No,’ she repeated thoughtfully. ‘No, he seemed puzzled in the beginning.’

  ‘And after the body was found?’ queried Turlough.

  ‘He seemed . . .’ Mara paused for the right words. ‘He suddenly seemed galvanized – full of energy, rushing around getting statements, organizing the burial tomorrow. You know Ardal – everything will be well done.’

  Mara’s six scholars were all waiting, looking neat and tidy when she arrived at the little church of Kilcorney. Everything was, indeed, well organized. Ardal’s carpenter had quickly put together a coffin of pinewood. The wood smelled new and there were drops of resin oozing from the side of it. Nevertheless, it was perfectly adequate for burying the young man with decency. There were even a few bunches of primroses placed on it. Mara was glad that the lid had been closed; it was customary to leave it open until the last minute, but the less that was seen of that appalling injury to the eye, the quicker wild rumours would die down. No, she thought as she crossed herself and muttered a brief prayer, the god Balor was by all accounts responsible for many evil deeds during his lifetime, but she would not lay this case at his doorstep. Sooner or later she would solve this and do justice to a young man who had come to the Burren to seek his fortune and had not left it.

  ‘Not too many people here.’ Malachy was at her elbow; accompanied by Caireen, the widow of a physician from Galway, across the bay from the Burren. That woman must be staying at Caherconnell, thought Mara. There was no sign of Nuala. Obviously she could not bear to see her father and what would be her future step-mother together. Something would have to be done about Nuala, thought Mara as she agreed with Malachy and murmured a greeting to Caireen.

  It was true that the funeral mass and the burial were not well attended. A sprinkling of people from all the four main clans of the Burren – not too many O’Lochlainns, noticed Mara, glancing around. No doubt, the O’Lochlainn clan had mixed feelings about attending this burial of a man who had claimed to be the taoiseach’s son. Ardal commanded great loyalty from his clan; that personal popularity would have been one of Finn’s reasons for approving of the choice of the younger son rather than the older. Donogh, though respected, was not popular.

  Becan was there. He spoke to no one, and made no reply to the condolences that some made to him. After a while, no one approached him. He stood by the graveside, but made no response to the prayers, nor did he throw the first handful of clay on to the coffin. There was an awkward pause while everyone waited for him to perform this customary duty of the nearest relative. Ardal began to step forward, visibly squaring his shoulders, but Mara stopped him with a quick gesture. This would be too public a gesture of relationship. Rumours about his parentage of the young man from Aran would be stirred up again and would be slow to die down. Hopefully Ardal would marry again and have a son who would be the apple of his father’s eye and Ardal would live to see him grow up and be a better choice as taoiseach for the important O’Lochlainn clan than would the self-obsessed, bitter Donogh.

  No, she thought, she, as the king’s representative in the Burren, would perform this last service for a stranger to the kingdom. Walking swiftly forward, she bent down, picked up the small handful of clay and dropped it on to the coffin.

  ‘In the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost,’ she said loudly and clearly, and, as she stepped back, thought, not for the first time, that a prayer was always an excellent method of ending a suspenseful situation.

  Becan gave her a quick surly look. His face was heavy with suspicion as he turned and scanned the small crowd.

  After the priest had finished his prayers and the small crowd had turned away from the grave, Malachy came over to her. ‘Come back and have a cup of wine before you walk back to Cahermacnaghten,’ he invited. As she began to form a polite refusal, he said quickly and quietly, ‘I would really value your advice about Nuala.’

  ‘Wait a minute, then. I’ll just have a word with Cumhal about the scholars.’

  ‘Bring them with you,’ said Malachy urgently. ‘We’ll manage Sunday dinner for them all – Brigid and Cumhal will enjoy an afternoon of peace and Nuala will be happy to see them all.’

  It sounded as if the problem with Nuala was fairly acute, thought Mara as she went to tell the scholars. They cheered happily. Malachy’s housekeeper, though not as good a cook as Brigid, was notoriously free with her home-made cowslip wine and her notions of its valuable strengthening qualities for growing young men.

  ‘You can save the dinner and it will do for their supper,’ she said to Brigid. ‘They’ll be hungry again by the time we come home.’

  Her eyes went to Becan, still standing undecidedly by the raw patch of earth where the boy that he h
ad always known as a nephew was now buried.

  ‘I don’t like the thought of not offering hospitality to a man who has a long journey across the sea ahead of him,’ she said in undertones. ‘Could you bear it, Brigid? Would it be all right if I offered him a meal before he returned? You could just serve something to him in the schoolhouse.’

  ‘He doesn’t deserve it after that behaviour, shouting out like that at Poulnabrone and then not even bothering to throw a handful of clay on the coffin,’ muttered Brigid.

  Mara waited for a minute and was not surprised when her housekeeper tossed her head.

  ‘Do what you like, Brehon, it’s no problem to me.’ Brigid always had to be allowed her grumble, but Mara knew very well that so far as Brigid was concerned her lightest wish had the force of a command. She went across and proffered the invitation, but was not disappointed when Becan shook his head.

  ‘I won’t,’ he said with a brooding look. ‘I’ve got some other business in hand before I go back. I’ve got something to eat here.’ Then, turning his back on Mara, he seated himself on the low wall that divided the graveyard from the church entrance, took a linen-wrapped package from his pouch and began to eat some coarse oat bread.

  ‘So had Malachy told you that we have fixed the date for the wedding?’ began Caireen chattily as they strolled along together watching the six young scholars running ahead, dodging in and out of the tall uprights of the stone circle set near Caherconnell.