Act of Mercy

by Peter Tremayne

  There was a muttering of agreement.

  ‘Because I spoke to someone who saw the body. Brother Guss saw it, as did Sister Muirgel.’

  Cian gave a cynical bark of laughter.

  ‘Convenient, isn’t it, since both Muirgel and Guss are now dead and cannot support your claim?’

  ‘Very convenient,’ agreed Fidelma. ‘Muirgel was also murdered while Brother Guss …’ She shrugged. ‘Well, we all know what happened. He fell overboard because he was driven by fear.’

  All eyes turned to Sister Crella.

  ‘There was only one person from whom Guss was backing away in fear at the time,’ Brother Dathal commented.

  Sister Crella sat hypnotised like a terrified rabbit. She was deathly pale and could only shake her head from side to side as if in denial.

  ‘Sister Crella?’ Brother Tola pursed his lips thoughtfully. ‘I suppose it makes some sense. There are rumours that she was jealous of Muirgel.’

  ‘Brother Guss told me that he firmly believed that Sister Crella was the person who had killed Muirgel,’ Cian offered, glad that the responsibility had apparently shifted from his shoulders.

  ‘Jealousy? Lust!’ sneered Sister Ainder disapprovingly. ‘The greatest sin.’

  Sister Crella started to cry softly. Fidelma thought she should intervene again.

  ‘Sister Crella was only the unwitting cause of the death of Brother Guss,’ she revealed. ‘Unfortunately, Brother Guss did have that unshakable belief that Crella was the guilty person. He was young and fearful – and don’t forget that he had seen what the killer had done to both Canair and Muirgel. He was afraid for his life; frantic with a fear that caused him to lose his reason. When Crella came towards him, he thought she was going to strike him down and he backed away in fear, only to fall overboard. His death was caused not by Crella – but by the person who had engendered such a fear of death in him.’

  There was another, long silence. Sister Crella was staring at Fidelma through her tears, not really understanding what she had said, simply registering that Fidelma was not accusing her.

  ‘Are you playing games with us, Sister?’ Sister Ainder turned angrily towards her. ‘You accuse in one breath and then you acquit in another. What do you mean by it? Can you not simply tell us what the motive for these killings was, and who is responsible?’

  Fidelma kept her tone reasonable, as if discussing the weather.

  ‘You, yourself, have told me the motive.’

  Sister Ainder blinked.

  ‘What?’

  ‘You told me – it was one of the seven deadly sins, the sin of lust.’ Fidelma paused to let her words sink in before continuing. ‘In any investigation the first question that needs to be asked is the one which Cicero once asked of a Roman judge. Cui bono? Who stands to gain? What is the motive?’

  ‘Are you saying lust was the motive?’ Brother Tola interrupted, his voice full of derision. ‘How was the death of that Laigin warrior, Toca Nia, attributable to lust? Or are you treating his murder separately? To me it seems obvious that he was killed because of his accusations against Cian there. Only Cian stood to gain by his death.’

  There was clearly no love lost between him and Cian.

  ‘You are right,’ agreed Fidelma calmly. ‘Toca Nia was killed to protect Cian.’

  Cian tried to rise again but Gurvan pressed him back in his seat.

  ‘So you are accusing me, after all?’ he said bitterly. ‘I did not—’

  ‘Did not kill him?’ interrupted Fidelma mildly. ‘No, you did not. I said he was killed to protect you: I did not say he was killed by you. But the motive for Toca Nia’s death was the same as the motive for the deaths of Canair and Muirgel and the two attempts on my life.’

  ‘Two?’ frowned Brother Dathal. ‘Someone has tried to kill you twice?’

  ‘Oh yes,’ nodded Fidelma. ‘A second attempt was made in my cabin last night during the storm. I owe my life to a cat.’ She did not bother to explain further. There would be plenty of time later on.

  ‘So there is one killer and one motive? Is that what you are saying?’ Murchad asked, trying to follow her reasoning.

  ‘The motive being lust,’ she confirmed. ‘Or rather, I should say, a belief that they were in love with Cian, to the extent that all sanity was driven from their minds, leaving an obsession that they must protect him and drive out any who tried to win his love.’

  Cian sat back, white-faced and shaky.

  ‘I don’t understand what you are saying.’

  ‘Had Toca Nia harmed you, then you would have been denied to this person, who wanted you for themselves.’

  ‘I still do not understand.’

  ‘Easy enough. I said that you were the common denominator. Weren’t you the lover of both Canair and Muirgel at various times?’

  Cian’s face was defiant.

  ‘I do not deny it,’ he said shortly.

  ‘There were several others also whose affections you won in your insatiable appetite for young women. Were you trying to compensate for what Una had done to you?’ She could not help the malicious twist

  ‘Una has nothing to do with it,’ Cian swore.

  Sister Gorman leant forward anxiously.

  ‘Who is Una? We had no Sister Una at Moville.’

  ‘Una was Cian’s wife. She divorced him on the grounds that he was sterile,’ Fidelma said with an unforgiving smile. ‘Perhaps Cian was compensating for that degrading position by finding as many young lovers as he could.’

  Cian’s face was working in anger.

  ‘You …’ he began.

  ‘One of those lovers could not abide the idea that you had loved others,’ went on Fidelma. ‘Unlike most of your loves, this person was unbalanced. Insane, we might say, with jealousy. You did not realise what a cauldron of jealousy and hate you were stirring. How fortunate, Cian, that the hate was not directed at you but at the other lovers you took.’

  As if she had poured ice water on his anger, Cian had become suddenly still. He was sitting with his mouth partially open; his mind appeared to be working rapidly as he thought over what she was saying.

  Brother Tola bent towards her.

  ‘If I have understood you correctly, Toca Nia was killed because he was threatening Cian; and this person, insanely determined to protect Cian, simply saw him as a threat, to be removed in the same manner that his lovers were.’

  ‘The person wanted Cian for themselves,’ agreed Fidelma.

  ‘Apart from Crella, there was no one else I had an affair with,’ Cian stated, ‘other than …’ He stared with wide-eyed suspicion at Fidelma; a flicker of fear came into his eyes.

  Fidelma chuckled sardonically as she realised what was going through his mind. That he could accuse her was ironic in the extreme, but it followed his natural arrogance that he actually believed that she would have retained an intensity of feeling for him after all these years.

  ‘I have to confess that when I was eighteen I might have become a victim of that same insanity,’ she admitted to them all. ‘Youth intensifies such emotions, and sometimes we are not mature enough to control them. Yes, it is to the instability of youth that we must look in this matter. But you delude yourself, Cian, if you think that you still have any ability to rouse such emotions in me. You don’t even arouse my pity.’

  Brother Dathal, eager and ferret-like, asked, ‘Why, surely you were not Cian’s lover, Sister?’

  Fidelma grimaced resignedly.

  ‘Oh yes. I, too, came under Cian’s spell ten years ago when I was a young student at the college of Brehon Morann at Tara.’ She gazed thoughtfully at Cian. ‘It was a youthful, immature affair on both sides,’ she added with a maliciousness she did not realise that she possessed. ‘I grew up. Cian didn’t.’

  ‘Well, how would this insane lover realise that?’ asked Brother Dathal intrigued. ‘If your affair happened ten years ago, it was before Cian joined the religieux at Bangor and doubtless long before any of us knew him.’

 
Fidelma shot him a glance of appreciation.

  ‘You ask a good question, Brother Dathal. You all became aware when I first came aboard that I had known Cian before. One person was very interested in that fact. That same person overheard Cian and me discussing our sad little affair.’

  She swung round abruptly to Cian.

  ‘I am sure that you can work things out for yourself. You admitted to me that you had affairs with Canair, Muirgel and Crella.’

  Before she had finished speaking, Brother Bairne had leapt from his seat opposite Cian and flung himself across the table. He was brandishing a knife.

  ‘Bastard!’ he cried, grabbing Cian by the throat and raising the weapon.

  Gurvan had reached forward in front of Cian and grabbed Bairne’s s wrist with the weapon in it in a vice-like grip, thrusting the wrist back in a painful bend. With a scream Brother Bairne’s fingers let the knife drop through onto the table. It fell with a clatter and Brother Tola had the presence of mind to scoop it up and hand it to Murchad.

  Brother Bairne was no match for the stocky and muscular Breton seaman. Even as they struggled, while Cian slipped back out of the way, Gurvan hauled the flushed-faced, frenzied young man across the table and twisted his arm behind his back. The young monk went suddenly limp; all the fight seemed to have left him.

  Fidelma regarded him with disapproval.

  ‘That was a silly thing to do, Brother Bairne, wasn’t it?’

  ‘I hate him!’ the young man whimpered.

  ‘Hated but lusted for him?’ Sister Ainder was aghast. ‘I don’t understand!’

  ‘Brother Bairne, explain why you hated Cian,’ Fidelma invited patiently.

  ‘I hated Cian for taking Muirgel from me.’

  Cian laughed harshly.

  ‘Madness! Muirgel was never yours to take from you, you stupid child.’

  ‘Bastard!’ cried Bairne again, but was still firmly held in the grip of Gurvan.

  Sister Crella had recovered some of her spirits now.

  ‘Cian is telling the truth. Muirgel wanted nothing to do with Bairne. She thought he was weird, an effeminate dreamer. And she did have an affair with Cian.’

  Cian nodded agreement.

  ‘But Muirgel and I ended that relationship just before we set out from Moville. Muirgel had found another lover and I had found Canair. It was as simple as that. Muirgel told me that, against all the odds, she was in love with Guss.’

  ‘Guss?’ Crella stared at him confounded. ‘Is it true? It can’t be.’ She raised a hand to her cheek as the horror of her denial of her friend’s involvement with the young man grew.

  ‘It is true,’ Fidelma told her. ‘Muirgel really did love him and only your dislike of Guss kept you from believing it. Your refusal to believe that Muirgel was in love with him, made me suspect Guss for a while but, at the same time, your dislike of him, which seemed like jealousy in his eyes, caused Guss to believe that you were the killer – hence his great fear of you, which led to him falling overboard.’

  Brother Tola was shaking his head in perplexity.

  ‘I still cannot see why Brother Bairne would kill Toca Nia if, as he says, he hated Cian. Surely the arrival of Toca Nia was the answer to Bairne’s dreams – the best way to get rid of Cian?’

  Fidelma was impatient.

  ‘You have missed the point. Bairne did not kill anyone. He was not competent enough. Look at the feeble attempt he made just now! Let me get back to what I was saying before he made that stupid display. I was suggesting that Cian was well able to work things out for himself. He had admitted to affairs with Canair and Muirgel. He even admitted to a brief affair with Crella. But there was still one more person on this ship with whom he had an affair, the only person who overheard us arguing about our youth.’

  Sister Gormán had risen from the table, for already a look of horror had spread over Cian’s face and he had turned to her, memories flooding back. Gormán’s features were not reflective of guilt but defiant, and there was a curious glint in her eyes. Her jaw stuck out aggressively. The laugh she gave sounded slightly hysterical, a high-pitched chortling sound, the tone close to malignant triumph. As Fidelma gazed on her face, she was completely confirmed in her estimation that Gormán was, indeed, insane.

  The young girl glowered in defiance at all of them.

  ‘I have committed no crime,’ she spoke scornfully. ‘Does not the Book of Genesis say:

  ‘I kill a man for wounding me,

  A young man for a blow.

  Cain may be avenged seven times

  But I seventy-seven!’

  Fidelma corrected her gently.

  ‘You are quoting from the Song of Lamech, son of Methushael, whose endless desire for vengeance was transformed by the words of the Christ. Remember what Christ told Peter according to the Gospel of Matthew? “Then Peter came up and asked him, ‘Lord, how often am I to forgive my brother if he goes on wronging me? As many as seven times?’ Jesus replied, ‘I do not say seven times; I say seventy times seven.’” Let Lamech’s shade die with his vengeance, Gormán.’

  The girl turned furiously towards her.

  ‘Do not be clever with me, whore of Babylon! I would have killed you too but you were able to thwart me twice. You will be punished yet. “ … I saw a woman mounted on a scarlet beast which was covered with blasphemous names and had seven heads and ten horns. The woman was clothed in purple and scarlet and bedecked with gold and jewels and pearls. In her hand she held a gold cup, full of obscenities and the foulness of her fornication; and written on her forehead was a name with a secret meaning: Babylon the great, the mother of whores and of every obscenity on earth. The woman I saw was drunk with the blood of God’s people and the blood of those who had borne their testimony to Jesus”.’

  ‘The girl is raving!’ Sister Ainder muttered uneasily, rising and edging away from her.

  Murchad glanced towards Fidelma as if to ask what he should do.

  Cian had relaxed now and was sitting with his hands resting on the table. He regarded the girl with complete indifference.

  ‘Thank God this matter is resolved,’ he said to no one in particular. ‘This insanity has nothing to do with me. I am not responsible for the madness of this girl. Dominus illuminatio … Why, I only ever slept with her once.’

  Sister Gormán wheeled round on him, eyes blazing.

  ‘But it was for you I did it, for you – don’t you understand? I did it to save you! So that we could be together!’

  Cian smirked.

  ‘For me?’ he sneered. ‘You are crazy. What gave you the idea that I wanted anything more to do with you after that night? You women always want to turn everything into permanent ownership.’

  Sister Gormán jerked back as if he had struck her across the face. A bewildered expression crossed her features.

  ‘You can’t mean that. You said that night that you loved me.’ Her voice became a soft wailing sound.

  Fidelma found compassion welling for the young woman as the memories of her own youth drifted through her mind again.

  ‘Cian loves only Cian, Gormán,’ she said sternly. ‘He is incapable of loving anyone else. As for you, Cian, you may claim that you are not responsible for these atrocities, and you are correct so far as the law goes. However, the law is not always justice. You cannot neglect that moral responsibility which you bear. Your selfishness, your manipulation of people’s emotions, especially the emotions of young women, are your responsibility. You must answer for it eventually, if not soon then at some later stage in your life.’

  Cian flushed in annoyance.

  ‘What is wrong with grasping at pleasure in this life? Have we all to become Roman ascetics and go into the desert as hermits? Why can’t we continue to live our lives filled with enjoyment?’

  Brother Tola’s face mirrored his anger.

  ‘Thou shalt not kill, is the Commandment of the Lord. The woman is condemned but you, Cian, you have been the cause of this madness and you must stand condemned
alongside her.’

  Cian turned to him with derision.

  ‘Under whose law? Don’t dictate your narrow morals to me. They do not apply.’

  Gormán stood with hunched shoulders, like a whipped dog; her arms wrapped round her body as if they gave her some comfort. She was rocking back and forth on her heels, sobbing.

  ‘I did this for you, Cian,’ she crooned softly. ‘Muirgel … Canair … I even killed Toca Nia to protect you from his wicked accusations. I would have killed her – Fidelma – and then Crella. They both meant you harm. You had to be protected. Without them we could have been together. They interfered with our happiness.’

  Fidelma spoke softly, almost kindly, to her.

  ‘Perhaps you will tell us how you killed Sister Canair. I know part of the story from Guss; I would like to know the other part. Can you tell us?’

  Gorman giggled. It was a chilling sound for it was the giggle of an innocent young girl.

  ‘He loved me. Cian loved me – I know it. “I will betroth you to me for ever; I will betroth you to me in righteousness and in justice, in steadfast love, and in mercy. I will betroth you to me in faithfulness …”!’

  Fidelma dimly recalled the words. She thought they came from the Book of Hosea. There had been many quotations from Hosea.

  ‘Even if he denies it now, he loved me as I loved him. We would have married if … if these others had not ensnared him with their lust, and … and …’

  Cian shrugged diffidently.

  ‘She is clearly demented,’ he muttered. ‘I wash my hands of this matter.’

  ‘Gormán!’ Fidelma turned sharply to the girl. ‘Tell us of the fate of Canair. When did you kill her?’

  Somehow Fidelma’s coaxing tone pulled Gormán back from whatever darkness she was descending into and there came a few moments approaching sanity.

  ‘The night before we sailed, I killed her in the tavern at Ardmore.’

  She gave the statement coldly, without emotion now, standing quite still, her eyes suddenly devoid of feeling as they stared at Cian.

  ‘All because Canair was having an affair with Cian?’ interposed Brother Tola.

  The girl had a curious smile on her face.