Laws in Conflict

by Cora Harrison

  ‘There they are,’ said Fachtnan, and Mara was amused to see how the faces of the two young men, one on either side of her, lit up at the sight of the two girls.

  Catarina and Fiona were cantering around the ring on The Green and rode straight over when they saw the party arrived. They made a lovely pair: one tall, dark and goddess-like; the other small, blond and vivacious.

  ‘Have you had a nice time?’ asked Mara, looking at Fiona’s rather bored face.

  ‘Oh yes,’ said Fiona. ‘But of course, it’s not like riding back in the Burren where we can gallop for miles. I was saying to Catarina that she should come and visit us.’

  ‘She would be very welcome; and you, Anthony, if you would like to see a native law school before you return to London,’ said Mara, watching him. He had shaken hands politely with Fiona but when he turned to Catarina his whole expression softened and changed. His sharp grey eyes glowed and his resolute mouth trembled in a smile. He had not even heard her invitation and she did not repeat it.

  ‘I think that we should return quickly, Fiona,’ she said. ‘Our hosts will be waiting for us. I hear that there is to be a curfew tonight, so the sooner we are off the streets, the better.’

  She watched Catarina as they returned. The girls walked their horses and the two young men strode beside them, each at the head of his lady’s steed. Fachtnan was listening with his gentle smile, looking up at Fiona’s animated face as she chattered about Henry Bodkin’s horses and about what his stableman had said about the lawyer’s ambitions to breed horses that combined the strength and endurance of the Connemara horse with the speed and spirit of the Arabs.

  Catarina, on the other hand, had nothing to say to Anthony. Her head was held high and she surveyed the crowds in the streets with a haughty, slightly hostile eye. She was not popular; Mara was saluted more often than she was and several indulgent smiles were aimed at Fiona’s pretty face. One young man stopped and seized Fachtnan by the hand and seemed to be claiming undying friendship with him, reminding him of the hour they spent together at the Shrove Festival, while gazing fervently at Fiona.

  Anthony, though, acted like an accomplished man of the world, making light conversation and not pressing any unwanted attentions on Catarina.

  And why should he rush things, Mara asked herself? He was now left undisputed victor in the field. Carlos was dead and in a few days’ time Walter might be hanged – and even if a miracle saved him, it was most unlikely that Catarina would ever look at him again.

  Mara’s thoughts were interrupted by a sudden exclamation from Catarina.

  ‘There are those brats of Richard Athy and that dreadful untrained dog of theirs,’ she yelled in a voice filled with fury. ‘Get that unmannerly cur out of here,’ she screamed to five small boys, ranging from about three to twelve years old, chasing down the street after an equally muddy dog who was racing ahead, with a large and rather decayed fish hanging from its mouth.

  It was the strangest dog that Mara had ever seen – not at all like the tall, lean wolfhounds that she was used to, or like the herding dogs used by the farmers in her kingdom. This dog was massive, with enormous shoulders, a heavy, brutal jaw, a protruding line of bottom teeth and very small, pointed ears. His coat seemed to be brown and white but it was so plastered with mud that this was hard to be sure. It dropped the fish when it came to the butcher’s shop and began barking uproariously, big deep barks from his massive chest. The butcher armed himself with a broom, yelling vigorously, women shrieked and the children yelled commands; the dog snarled at the butcher and Catarina’s horse squealed in terror.

  ‘Take the horses down Middle Street. Turn their heads quickly. Fachtnan, you go with Fiona. I’ll see to the dog.’

  Catarina’s highly strung Arab horse was rearing up and showing the whites of its eyes, and although she didn’t like the girl much, Mara had to admire how quickly her voice changed to a soothing murmur and how courageously she kept a hold of the bridle and coaxed the animal to turn its head away from the ferocious-sounding dog.

  ‘Jake! Jake!’ screamed the boys. Passers-by huddled into doorways and added their shouts to the confusion of noise.

  Mara walked immediately into the middle of the road. Pointing a finger at the burly dog, she said peremptorily in a quiet, but carrying, tone of voice, ‘Sit!’, and suddenly all voices were hushed as everyone stared at this strange visitor to their city.

  Jake was equally amazed. He sniffed at the fish and looked around him uncertainly. He did not sit, but possibly had never been trained to know the word. His tail wagged in an apologetic manner and his ears drooped.

  ‘Good dog,’ said Mara, walking up to him and taking him by the collar. By now the horses were well out of sight but she kept her hand on the collar and looked down on the boys.

  ‘We seed you,’ said the smallest one. ‘We seed you at the festival.’

  ‘So you did,’ said Mara in a friendly tone of voice. ‘Have you a lead for Jake? No, leave it, Jake,’ she said sharply as the massive dog bent his nose towards the highly scented fish.

  ‘We losed it,’ said the little boy. ‘We seed you,’ he repeated. ‘You called Lady Judge. We was with our dad.’

  ‘And what’s your name?’ asked Mara. ‘Lend me a piece of rope to secure the dog,’ she called over to the butcher, and he abandoned his broom-weapon and plunged back into the shop.

  ‘I’m William,’ said the eldest boy, inserting his fingers beside hers into Jake’s collar and patting the massive head, ‘and these are my brothers: Henry, Stephen, Richard and John.’

  ‘We are all called after the kings of England,’ said Stephen with a gap-toothed smile, while Henry scowled and William looked anxious.

  Mara kept a firm hold on Jake’s collar. She wanted to give the two girls and their horses time to get away, but she also thought this might be a useful conversation. So these were the sons of Richard Athy, importer of horses, and former lord mayor of Galway, and they had been at the festival.

  ‘I suppose you had to go home early to go to bed,’ she said sympathetically.

  ‘I were up at midnight,’ boasted little John.

  ‘No, you weren’t,’ said William. ‘Father took us home at ten o’clock.’

  ‘He’s horrible and cruel and nasty,’ said Richard cheerfully. He looked about six, Mara thought. She caught the rope that the butcher had nervously tossed to her and threaded it through Jake’s collar, sending a word of thanks across to the man.

  ‘I’ll walk back with you to your house,’ she said. William, the eldest boy, was an extremely thin, rather nervous-looking boy and did not look strong. It might be just as well to deliver Jake back to his own gate. The dog was still muttering low-pitched growls at the butcher; no doubt he had been beaten off with that broom on other occasions. ‘What a shame that you had to go back home early,’ she said sympathetically.

  ‘He’s old, our father is old; that’s what he said. He said that he was sleepy.’ Henry sounded scornful.

  ‘And den he goed back by hisself,’ said John.

  ‘No, he didn’t,’ contradicted William. ‘At breakfast he told Mother that he went straight to bed and fell asleep almost immediately.’

  ‘Because he was so exhausted looking after such badly behaved brats,’ said Stephen cheerfully.

  ‘He tolded a lie,’ persisted John. ‘I seed him go out again. I seed him from my window. I were up at midnight. He goed creeping out – goed down to the gardens.’

  ‘You’re lying,’ said William angrily. ‘Father doesn’t tell lies. Only stupid little boys tell lies.’ He looked at Mara apprehensively, and she was shocked to see a look of fear on his face. Had he been warned not to talk about his father? Had he been threatened? Was Richard Athy’s son trained to keep his secrets?

  She smiled at him. ‘Here, hold the rope; you’re big and strong and you can manage him now. Take him inside quickly.’

  She waited until they were safely inside their gate before walking down towards Lormbard Str
eet and the Bodkin tower house. The gardens were on her right-hand side, just outside the wall and easily reached through Little Gate Tower. If Richard Athy had gone down there at ten o’clock of the evening, then he may well have walked up to The Green.

  Did he meet Carlos Gomez there?

  And if he did, was he the murderer?

  And that, of course, she thought with exasperation, was where it all began to unravel? Could she possibly be responsible for convicting the father of those little boys? She imagined the burden on William’s thin shoulders of knowing that his father was a murderer – of passing his tar-smeared body on Gallows’ Green every day?

  If only she were judging this under Brehon law. Everyone, she thought angrily, should have a chance to repent, a chance to turn over a new leaf and make retribution.

  Fifteen

  Chronicles of William Harrison (1534–1593): Chaplain to Lord Cobham

  The greatest and most grievous punishment used in England for such as offend against the State is drawing from the prison to the place of execution upon an hurdle or sled, where they are hanged till they be half dead, and then taken down, and quartered alive; after that, their members and bowels are cut from their bodies, and thrown into a fire, provided near hand and within their own sight, even for the same purpose. In cases of felony, manslaughter, robbery, murder, rape, piracy, and such capital crimes as are not reputed for treason or hurt of the estate, our sentence pronounced upon the offender is, to hang till he be dead.

  All of the scholars had already returned and were waiting, well scrubbed and well combed in Jane’s parlour, entertaining her with a recital of the pattern of their days back at the Cahermacnaghten law school.

  ‘But you work so hard!’ she exclaimed as Mara came in with Fachtnan and Fiona, whom she had met coming from the Bodkins’ stable yard.

  ‘Yes,’ agreed Aiden with a saintly look, and then rather spoiled it by adding with a grin, ‘That’s why we eat so much.’

  ‘Give us two minutes to wash our hands and then we’ll be with you, Jane,’ said Mara. ‘Will Henry be home for the meal?’

  ‘He sent a message to say that he would be closing his office early because of a curfew, so he would manage until then with a slice of pie from one of the shops. He said he thought it would be best if you did not go out again as there may be trouble on the streets. You and your scholars can have this parlour to yourselves this afternoon. This is the day when my housekeeper and I go through the accounts and make up the orders for food. Henry fears that there might even be a riot.’

  ‘A riot!’ exclaimed Aidan excitedly. Mara frowned heavily at him to stop the words ‘How jolly!’

  ‘I know; it’s dreadful, isn’t it?’ said Jane. ‘Henry’s man said that there are rumours that the mayor is planning to bring forward the date of execution in order to finish up the matter.’ She sighed heavily, and said, ‘His poor mother; he was the prettiest baby!’

  The scholars, shocked into gravity, stared at her uneasily. Fachtnan had already gone upstairs and Mara made a signal to Fiona.

  ‘Say nothing about your morning until we are by ourselves,’ she said to her as they went up the stairs together, and resolved to turn the conversation from these affairs during the meal. At Jane’s words, Shane had gone white and Hugh was crimson with a glint of tears in his blue eyes.

  Death happened everywhere and no one could be shielded from it, but the death of a boy in their own age group, at the ruling of his own father, was something that they had never come across before. Judicial murder, in fact! Mara tightened her lips, resolving that no one should ever lose a life through her judgements.

  And this, of course, was the problem.

  ‘Tell me about the Blake family,’ she said to Jane over the meal. ‘So far we have met a merchant, a banker, a blacksmith and pie shop owner.’ She did not mention the Blakes from Menlough, upriver from the city, though privately she wondered how they made their money – they were farmers and landowners, probably. And how did they get on with their neighbours, the ferocious O’Flahertys, these Gaelic chieftains who were so dreaded by the inhabitants of Galway city, she wondered? Live and let live, perhaps – the Blakes, from what she had seen of them, were a friendly crew.

  ‘Oh,’ said Jane in answer to her question. ‘That’s nothing! The Blakes are everywhere. There are Blakes in every line of business. And, of course, there is hardly a family in the town that they have not married into. You know the funny thing is, though; once a Blake, always a Blake. Our cousin, a horse trainer, he’s married to a Blake and had ten children by her and she still talks about “my family” and “us Blakes”. And my own grandmother was a Blake; she used to look at me and sigh, saying that I looked so like the Bodkins.’ Her lips tightened at the memory.

  Her words reminded Mara of Margaret’s complaint that her nine daughters were all Lynches, every one of them – somehow as if they were not legitimate offspring of hers, unlike her son who was a Blake through and through. What had become of those nine girls? And what were they thinking of now that their little brother was condemned to die by the hangman?

  After the meal was over Jane ushered them into the parlour. Already a large coal fire had been kindled and a small low table was spread with mugs, flagons of wine and beer and platters of small pies stuffed with dried fruits from France and Spain. The scholars, without being prodded, thanked her effusively and Hugh added an invitation to come to see them at the law school the next time her brother came to a horse fair at the Burren.

  ‘It seems a long time since we met him that day,’ said Shane, once the door was closed. ‘Was he buying or selling?’

  ‘Selling,’ said Moylan decidedly. He was someone who always knew what was going on at fairs and marketplaces.

  ‘Catarina says that “Bodkin” as she calls him, gets poor prices in Galway for his horses and that’s why he travels into the country, going to places like the Burren. She says that he needs to get some Arab blood into his stock.’ Fiona examined her face in the cloudy mirror near to the window.

  ‘How did you get on with Catarina?’ asked Mara with interest. ‘What was your impression of her?’

  ‘Didn’t like her.’ Fiona was always decisive in her opinions. ‘You won’t believe it, but she didn’t mention Walter even once and when I said something about pitying him, she just shrugged her shoulders and said that he would have never amounted to much – just as though he were already dead.’

  ‘Did she seem upset about Carlos?’ asked Mara. ‘I understood from her brother David that they were actually betrothed to be married.’

  ‘It’s strange, but she didn’t say much about him, either.’ Fiona frowned to herself. ‘She was quite hard to talk to. I got the impression that she respected him for his business ideas, but she did say something about his weakness of drinking too much. She mentioned, though, also, about David being jealous that she was going to get the entire Gomez fortune and she was rather superior about the fact that she was not angry at the way things turned out now. She seemed to think that she was superior to her brother because of this.’

  ‘What do you mean? “The way things turned out” – what do you mean by that?’ asked Aidan.

  ‘I’m coming to that,’ said Fiona impatiently. ‘Don’t interrupt.’ She looked around at the others and said, ‘Guess what; the Gomez fortune will now be divided between Catarina and her brother David. Her grandfather’s new will directed that the fortune was to go first to the son of Fernandez Gomez, that is Carlos’s father, on Carlos’s twenty-first birthday. And failing any living son from the said Fernandez, it was to be divided equally between the children of Isabelle Gomez Browne – that is Catarina and David. Girls inherit at eighteen and boys at twenty-one, so both of them will get the fortune immediately. And apparently it is quite a fortune! Catarina was very excited. Now what do you think of her for a suspect? And I’ll tell you something else,’ she went on, ‘she’s very strong. There was a pole, made from the trunk of a tree, laid across a couple of tres
tles for a jump and she lifted it with one arm and moved it up to a higher notch.’

  ‘But she would have got the whole if she had married Carlos,’ pointed out Moylan.

  ‘Ah, yes,’ said Fiona, ‘but then she would have to have Carlos as well and that might not have suited her. She would not have liked someone who was keen to rule her and tell her what to do. Carlos was that kind of man and I’d say that she had begun to find that out by the end of the Shrove ceremonies.’

  ‘Yes, but why tell you all about it?’ asked Moylan. ‘Why put herself under suspicion?’

  ‘You forget,’ said Fiona, triumphantly, ‘we’re not part of the investigation. She would have no reason to think of me as anything other than a girl to gossip with and to boast to. I vote we consider her as a suspect.’

  ‘And what about her brother?’ Mara looked around at her scholars.

  ‘The word around the town is that he’s an idler,’ said Moylan smartly. ‘Gets up late, drinks too much, that sort of thing.’

  ‘Hmm,’ said Mara, ‘nothing too conclusive there.’ She looked across at her two youngest scholars who looked as though they were bursting with eagerness to have their turn. ‘Did you find anything out at the fish market?’ she asked.

  ‘You’ll be interested in this, Brehon,’ said Hugh. He looked at her hopefully. ‘We were thinking, Shane and I, that if only you could tell James Lynch about this that you might persuade him to free Walter.’

  ‘You see, one of the fisherwomen told us that Alfonso Mercandez had stuck his knife in her stall table one day and swore to kill Carlos Gomez as soon as he got him on the high seas again. She showed us the very mark when we were helping her to set her stall up again.’