Laws in Conflict

by Cora Harrison

  ‘If anyone can solve a problem then Mara can,’ said Henry gravely. ‘And we would be so pleased if she would extend her stay.’ He said that with a quick glance at his sister who half-frowned. Jane Bodkin was probably anxious to get rid of their rather troublesome guest, who had been bold enough to tackle the mayor himself and to speak out in the courthouse and in church, but Mara accepted with smiling gratitude. For Sheedy’s sake, as well as for Walter’s, she would stay until she was sure that she could do nothing for them.

  She turned to Margaret and offered the services of herself and her scholars as an escort to Blake’s Castle. Henry, she noted, looked relieved at the prospect of Margaret’s departure. The less he had to do with this affair, the better he would be pleased, she thought. He may have thought that Margaret would insist on trying to visit her son this morning, but she had said nothing. Probably it would be wiser to wait until she had her brother’s company. As one of the two bailiffs in the city he would be able to bring weight to bear on the gaoler.

  ‘I’ll lend you a headdress, Margaret,’ said Jane in a gush of hospitality after breakfast was finished. ‘Come upstairs and choose something. I wish I had a gown that . . .’ Margaret’s gown was torn and crumpled but since Jane was a small, very thin woman and Margaret a large, plump one, then there would be no possibility of this. No one suggested sending up to the Lynch household for clothes, noticed Mara, and she guessed that the Bodkins, as well as Margaret, were wary of James Lynch.

  ‘We’ll wait outside for you,’ said Mara, suddenly impatient of all this time wasting. Breakfast had taken about three times as long as it took in her house and she was anxious to discuss the matter with her scholars. However, she could hardly turn Jane out of her own parlour or even ask for a fire to be lit in another room, so they would have to find somewhere else where they could talk in private.

  Blake’s Pie Shop, she thought. Surely a piece of silver could hire a parlour there. The boys, she thought, were looking a little hungry. They were used to a much more substantial breakfast than they got at the Bodkin household, with its thinly cut slices of toast. Brigid always served up an enormous pot of porridge as well as substantial hunks of newly baked bread and slabs of cheese. Moylan, Aidan and Hugh, in particular, were growing very fast and needed a good breakfast before facing a day’s work. Yes, a large slice of pie would set their brains working very well.

  When they reached the corner of Lombard Street and were about to turn down towards the sea, she saw William Blake, himself, come out of his pie shop on Bridge Gate Street and walk past them with a bow, turning in the direction of Quay Street, after greeting the strangers. Margaret appeared a minute later and Mara led the way at a fast pace keeping William Blake in sight.

  As she had guessed that he might do, he turned down Quay Street, walking quite fast until he reached the end of it. Then with a quick glance to left and right he crossed the road and hammered at the door of Blake’s Castle. Mara congratulated herself silently on being right.

  The Blakes were being summoned to a slogád, a hosting of troops.

  Twelve

  Heptad 97

  There are seven qualities that make a satisfactory judge:

  1. A clear brain.

  2. Great knowledge of the law.

  3. Much experience.

  4. Capacity to take pains.

  5. Ability to see into minds.

  6. Patience.

  7. Incorruptibility.

  The door to Blake’s pie shop stood open and there was a savoury smell of baking. Only William Blake’s daughter was there, but she was effusively friendly, refusing to accept any money for the sole use of a parlour.

  ‘If any come, then they can eat in the shop, Mistress Brehon,’ she said with a quick curtsy. ‘The fire is going well in the parlour and there’s a pie in the oven.’ She ushered them into the cosy room where half the fireplace housed an oven built from clay with an iron door. She knelt on the floor, peeped into the oven and reported that the pie would be ready in two shakes of a lamb’s tail, then went out quickly and returned with an enormous cushion stuffed with goose down which she placed ceremonially on Mara’s chair, and announced that her name was Joan.

  ‘Perhaps we could have some mugs of small ale and a cup of wine for me,’ said Mara, and was not surprised when the girl recited a whole list of wines for her to choose from. Galway was the largest importer of wine in the whole of Ireland and the choice was huge.

  Joan brought seven small wooden platters and one large one when she returned with their drinks. She opened the oven, slid in a flat wooden spade and lifted out the pie, placing it on the large platter. With a sharp knife she immediately divided it into twelve large slices and rapidly transferred them on to the smaller platters.

  ‘It smells wonderful,’ said Shane enthusiastically. ‘What’s it made from, Joan?’

  ‘A fruit called apricots and cheese from Brie,’ said Joan. ‘I’ll bake you another in a minute or something different if you like.’

  ‘We don’t want to put you to trouble for us,’ began Mara, but Joan interrupted her quickly with a flourish of her wooden spade.

  ‘And didn’t you take trouble for the Blakes yesterday, standing up there and speaking out for that poor boy Walter – a lovely fellow; the whole town is fond of him. You just tell me what you would like in the pie and I’ll bake it. What about Spanish chestnuts? Have you ever eaten them?’

  ‘Never!’ exclaimed Aidan. ‘But we would love to try.’

  ‘It’s very kind of you, Joan,’ said Moylan, with his best smile at the pretty, dark-haired girl. He was getting to be quite a good-looking lad, thought Mara idly. He had wonderfully white strong teeth and his features were beginning to fall into place and his skin to recover from adolescent out-breakings.

  ‘I’ll slip a cocoa bean in with it,’ promised Joan. ‘That will bring out the flavour.’

  ‘And some orange,’ pleaded Hugh. ‘We had a slice of orange last night and I’ve never tasted anything so good.’

  ‘That’s enough,’ intervened Mara. ‘We’ll let you choose what to put in the pie, Joan, and I’m sure,’ she added, taking a careful bite from the hot slice in front of her, ‘that if it’s as good as this one it will be delicious.’

  ‘Now,’ said Fiona, as soon as the door closed behind Joan, ‘let’s talk about the killing of Carlos Gomez, because I believe Margaret. I don’t think that Walter did it.’

  ‘I suggest that we leave Walter out of it for the moment,’ said Mara firmly. The issue was too emotional a one; that attractive boy lying under a death sentence – and a horrible death, also, was bound to cloud their judgement.

  ‘It occurs to me,’ said Fachtnan tentatively, ‘that there’s been very little talk of the victim, of Carlos Gomez. Could we perhaps summarize what we know about him first before we begin arguing?’

  ‘Good idea,’ said Moylan, and Mara produced a piece of vellum, a quill and a well-stoppered ink horn from her satchel and looked around at her scholars.

  ‘He was from Spain,’ said Shane with a shrug.

  ‘He was rich; at least we were told by Walter that Carlos was rich. He said that he was filthy rich,’ said Aidan.

  ‘He was thinking of setting up a business of importing horses, so that might have got in someone’s way,’ said Fiona.

  ‘He was paying court – and very seriously – to Catarina Browne, who is absolutely gorgeous,’ said Moylan with a sly look at Fiona. ‘And,’ he added quickly, ‘that did not just affect Walter; apparently Anthony Skerrett, the grandson of that old lawyer, well, he was mad about her, too.’

  ‘That’s right,’ said Fiona. ‘We saw him looking at her across the tables when we were in one of those inns. He was clenching his fist and kicking at the table leg from time to time and muttering to the friend who was with him. He wasn’t drunk either. Do you remember, Aidan? I told you to look.’

  ‘And I said “If looks could kill . . .”, I remember that,’ said Aidan.

  ‘Right, t
hat’s one name to write down: Anthony Skerrett, and the motive will be jealousy. Anything else?’ Mara took another nibble of her pie. It really was delicious.

  Then there was a knock at the door and Joan came in with an unbaked pie and a jug in the other. She smiled at the almost empty platters, placed the second pie in the oven and refilled the mugs with the ale.

  ‘More wine, Mistress Brehon?’ she asked, but Mara shook her head, placing her hand over her cup. The wine was very strong and she needed to keep her head clear. Fiona, she noticed, had the look of one who is thinking hard, but she wasn’t the first to speak when the door closed. Uncharacteristically it was Hugh.

  ‘I think that we should look at the captain of the Gomez ship,’ he said.

  ‘Too late, my boy,’ said Moylan smartly. ‘He’s gone – on the high seas by now, I’d say.’

  ‘Doesn’t stop us looking at him,’ said Hugh with unusual spirit. ‘In fact, I think it was rather suspicious the way that he made such a huge fuss about getting away on that very day. After all, what difference would a few days’ delay make?’

  ‘In any case, that corpse will be absolutely stinking by the time he arrives in Spain; he’ll be lucky if it doesn’t start to leak through,’ said Aidan, who was the son of a farmer. ‘It was pointless, really – all this rushing away. So we have to ask ourselves why he persuaded the mayor into holding a trial and then releasing the body. I think you’re right, Hugh,’ he added, rather unusually for him. Aidan and Moylan rather despised the two younger boys and felt themselves to be immensely older and wiser.

  ‘What was his motive, do you think?’ asked Mara, writing busily.

  ‘Well,’ said Hugh. ‘The captain seemed very keen to talk about Walter’s guilt – very, very anxious that there should be no doubt about it. But I’ve remembered something interesting. Shane and myself were talking to one of the Spanish sailors at the Shrove celebrations and – I must say that we couldn’t understand each other too well, though his English was better than the few words of Spanish we knew – but he seemed to be saying that the captain didn’t like Carlos much and that Carlos had been threatening him.’

  ‘And then he winked at us,’ continued Shane, ‘and slapped his purse and rubbed his first finger against his thumb, just as if he were rubbing a gold coin or something. Hugh and me thought that he was hinting that the captain had been stealing from the Gomez family and that Carlos had threatened to expose him. When he said that he went like this –’ and Hugh drew his finger across his neck – ‘and then he said something about the captain being decapitado.’

  ‘Head chopped off, I suppose,’ said Fiona.

  ‘I remember something like that, too – about the captain. I think Valentine Blake said it to me; something about how he advised Carlos to say nothing until they were back in Spain – safely back, I think he said,’ added Mara.

  ‘But he didn’t come safely back,’ said Fiona.

  ‘And Carlos Gomez wasn’t really the type of person that would take advice from someone,’ said Moylan. ‘Valentine Blake might think that he agreed, but that doesn’t mean that the suggestion was taken up. Carlos was a haughty sort of fellow. Thought he knew it all. Do you remember the way he spoke to you, Fachtnan? Like as though you were just a boy. And you were only trying to stop him putting his foot into something.’

  ‘And he stepped in it the next minute!’ Shane could hardly stop himself laughing at the thought, but then quickly sobered up as he recalled that Carlos was now dead.

  ‘He was drunk,’ said Fachtnan, brushing it aside. ‘That was why he was so rude. But I think that Carlos and the captain were on bad terms, Brehon. They seemed to give each other dirty looks whenever they met.’

  ‘He talked big, that Carlos,’ remarked Fiona. ‘He kept going on about the horses that he would import and how that would make such a huge difference to the type of horses that they have here in Galway – nags, he kept calling them.’

  Mara listened with interest. Her scholars were sharp and they had obviously made a lot of acquaintances during the Shrove celebrations. She was getting a very clear picture of Carlos and that was useful. On the whole, she had found that in cases of murder the character and history of the deceased was of prime importance in the solution to the killing. She decided to tell them about Ardal’s words.

  ‘Margaret Blake said something about Richard Athy setting up a horse-importing business; she said that he was doing very well with it. He struck me as an ambitious sort of man – a man to whom money and position meant a lot. And today I got some interesting information from the O’Lochlainn, who is staying at the fishing village of Cladagh.’ Mara told them about the horses being winched by sling from a Spanish ship to the ship belonging to Richard Athy and they discussed it eagerly, agreeing that Alfonso Mercandez had been privately selling some of the Gomez horses to Richard Athy.

  ‘So Richard Athy would be disgraced if Carlos got the truth from the captain,’ stated Fiona.

  ‘Also, you must bear in mind that if Carlos Gomez, with all the Gomez money behind him, started to import and sell horses here in Ireland, then Richard Athy’s business could be injured,’ said Moylan shrewdly.

  ‘Would that be enough of a reason to kill a man, though?’ questioned Shane. ‘I wouldn’t kill a man just because I was worried about my business.’

  ‘You might if you had six sons,’ said Moylan with a grin. ‘Did you see the family he has, Brehon?’

  ‘I think that is an important point, Moylan; it seems to me that the merchant families of Galway have a very strong sense of family,’ said Mara, thinking of the boatload of Blakes who had arrived down the river that morning.

  ‘They’re sort of clans, really aren’t they,’ said Fiona. She looked around. ‘We seem to have moved away from Carlos Gomez. Have we anything else that we can think of to say about him before we start looking at suspects?’

  ‘May I sum up, Brehon?’ asked Moylan, and when she nodded he rose to his feet, arranged an imaginary lawyer’s gown around his shoulders and cap on his head. This practice had been started by Enda some time ago and now had become part of the ritual at Cahermacnaghten law school.

  ‘Carlos Gomez, aged about twenty, reasonably good-looking, extremely rich, ambitious and perhaps ruthless. His plans appeared to be –’ Moylan looked around and held up one hand, counting off the points on his fingers – ‘One: to report the wrongdoing of the ship’s captain to his father; two: to marry Catarina Browne; three: to set up a horse-importing business. And—’

  But then there was a hasty knock on the door and Joan rushed in. Moylan sat down, blushing slightly.

  ‘Excuse me, Mistress Brehon,’ she said in a rush, ‘have you heard the news? They are crying it at the street corners. Come and listen.’

  She rushed back out again and the others followed her through the little courtyard where they had sat last night. A crowd had begun to gather around a man shaking a bell who was standing on a wooden box at the junction where the three streets, Lombard Street, Market Street and Bridge Street met.

  ‘Hear ye, hear ye!’ he called continuously and rang his bell again and again, looking all around until no more walking or running figures were to be seen. Shopkeepers in aprons joined shop boys and housewives; Mara saw Setanta at a distance with some women from the fish market.

  ‘Hear ye, hear ye! All persons in the city to be of peaceable and civil behaviour, not to walk around the streets or rows tonight after the hour of darkness,’ intoned the town crier, repeating his one sentence message again and again until the crowd started to straggle away. Several heads were together but there were no comments made aloud, and even the children were silent and anxious-looking.

  Joan said nothing until they were back inside the pie shop and then she said loudly and clearly to another woman, her mother perhaps, whose head had appeared from the kitchen, ‘There is to be a curfew tonight. All citizens of the city of Galway are to be indoors by sundown.’ Her voice held a warning note and instantly the older wom
an disappeared.

  ‘Let’s see about that pie, now,’ said Joan, trying to smile, but her face was anxious. Mara’s suspicions about the gathering of the Blake family at their castle beside the docks grew to a certainty. Still, it was not her business. On the other hand, she decided, the affair of young Walter was her business in so much as it was the business of every human being to endeavour to save a life, if at all possible. She sat very still, gathering her powers; her knowledge of the law was of no use to her at the moment – English law reigned here – but her knowledge of human nature, the power of her intelligence and of a well-trained, well-organized mind might come up with a solution. Intuitively she had felt that Walter would not do such a deed and that intuition had been confirmed by her examination of the dead body in the church. She would say nothing of this to her scholars for the moment, she thought. Let them approach their fact-finding missions with clear and unprejudiced minds.

  The pie smelled mouth-wateringly delicious and Joan refused any extra money for it – ‘Just a few bits and pieces left over since last night,’ she said dismissively. ‘I’ll leave you in peace now,’ she said. ‘I have an errand to do, so just let yourselves out whenever you’re finished. There’s not a soul will disturb you.’

  And then she was off – going down to Blake’s Castle with the news, surmised Mara.

  ‘That’s interesting, thinking about the dead man,’ said Shane, speaking with his mouth half-full of hot pie. He chewed, then swallowed and said dramatically, ‘So was the fatal blow struck because Carlos was ambitious or because he awoke jealousy?’

  ‘Or fear,’ put in Hugh. ‘That ship’s captain must have been scared stiff to go back to Spain with him.’

  ‘Or was it,’ continued Shane, imperturbably ignoring the interruption, ‘because he was wealthy?’

  ‘Nothing was stolen from him,’ pointed out Aidan.

  ‘That’s true,’ confirmed Mara. ‘I saw his purse on the body.’

  ‘I know what Shane means, though,’ said Fiona. ‘We should be thinking about the Gomez wealth. He was the son and heir to his father; now he’s gone, who will inherit?’