My Lady Judge

by Cora Harrison

  ‘He’s half-wolf himself,’ said Mara. ‘He may not want to hunt his relations.’ But one half of her mind suddenly focused on Diarmuid, rather than his dog. Turlough had said Diarmuid was looking for her when she was in Galway. What had he to tell? He was a shy, reserved man. He would not have been up there with the boisterous crowd around the bonfire. He would have stood below and waited for someone to call on him for his fiddle music. Perhaps he wanted to talk about Lorcan, or perhaps he had seen something in the shadowy depths of the Wolf’s Lair hollow. I’ll see him after Mass, she thought quickly. He’d prefer an informal approach like that.

  ‘Well, that was very worthwhile,’ she said to the boys, ‘thank you all for giving up your free time to me. Now I want an announcement to be made after Mass in each of the parishes of the Burren. I want all the people to come to the dolmen at Poulnabrone when the abbey bell rings for vespers. I will make a formal announcement of the killing of Colman and ask for the killer to come forward.’ She paused and looked around. All heads were nodding. This secret and unlawful killing would have to be announced to the people of the kingdom. They all knew that.

  ‘If we could divide ourselves among the parish churches of the Burren,’ continued Mara, ‘that would be the quickest and easiest. Fachtnan, will you go to Oughtmama, Enda you go to Drumaheily, Aidan to Rathborney, Moylan, you go to Noughaval as usual, and Shane, Hugh and I will go to Kilcorney.’ She didn’t go to Kilcorney normally; Noughaval was her parish church, the place where her father and mother and all of her other relations were buried, but Father Conglach was the most difficult of the priests in the kingdom of the Burren and she would be able to lean the whole weight of her office on him and make sure that her instructions were carried out. A request from one of the boys might be ignored by him. ‘Go now, and get ready for Mass. I’ll ask Cumhal to get the ponies ready. Hugh, Shane and I will walk, but the rest of you can have the ponies as you will have more of a journey.’

  Shane looked disappointed, but a long, slow walk across the fields and back again might just trigger confidence in Hugh. She could arrange a little treat for them afterwards. Shane, though the younger of the two, had the stronger personality and Hugh was more likely to take notice of his advice than of his elders. She would work on him, she thought. Even if Hugh said nothing now, eventually he would tell all that he knew. She was beginning to guess the outline of his story and now she knew why Colman had met his death. She knew why, but she didn’t know whose hand had plunged the knife into Colman’s neck.

  ‘Cumhal,’ she called as she went outside, ‘will you get four ponies ready for the older lads? Make sure that you give the strongest one to Fachtnan. He has to go to Mass at Oughtmama and you know how difficult that climb up the mountain is.’

  ‘He’ll have to get off and walk for the last bit – he’s a hefty lad,’ said Cumhal. ‘I’ll tell him. You’ll be getting the priests to make an announcement,’ he stated. There was little that he did not know about the Brehon’s procedures. Often she wondered what she would do without him and Brigid. She felt a sudden rush of affection for Cumhal, feeling sorry that she had teased him the night before. She noticed that he did not speed off in his usual quick, efficient way to do her bidding, but paused to straighten a stone on top of the wall. His face looked troubled.

  ‘This is a bad business, isn’t it?’ she said, inviting a confidence.

  Cumhal nodded. ‘There’s a lot of talk,’ he said, carefully not meeting her eyes but apparently concentrating on straightening the stones to an unaccustomed degree of precision.

  ‘Yes, there would be,’ said Mara, bending down and pulling up a weed from among the gentians.

  ‘People are saying things,’ said Cumhal, taking one stone from its place and then replacing it in the same slot.

  She nodded, without looking at him, and pulled out another couple of weeds. ‘They’d talk to you when they wouldn’t talk to me,’ she said.

  ‘There’s talk that something was seen that night up on Mullaghmore.’

  She considered this gravely. ‘The killing?’ she asked, straightening her back and looking at him.

  ‘No,’ he said quickly. ‘But they’re saying that plenty knew that he was dead before the night was over.’

  Mara sank down on the wall, feeling one of the rearranged stones roll beneath her. Stones are perhaps better left undisturbed, she thought idly: move one, and the stability of a wall is lost.

  ‘Would more than one have killed him?’ she asked. It was possible, she thought.

  Cumhal shook his head. ‘I’m not saying that,’ he said carefully. ‘What I’m saying is that plenty knew that he was dead and they think they know why. There are no tears being shed over him on the Burren. He wasn’t liked. No one trusted him. Some hated him; I know that for a fact. There was talk …’ He hesitated for a moment; she could see the struggle going on in his face. He was one of the O’Connor clan himself. He would not want to betray any secrets, even to his mistress. Then he straightened. ‘I’d better be getting those ponies ready now,’ he finished firmly and she knew that he would say no more.

  Why had no one said something to her before about the blackmail? she wondered. And yet, as soon as she considered the matter, she knew the reason. Families were all-important in this stony kingdom. Colman would have been regarded as one of her family and, because of the high respect in which she was held, no one would have wanted to complain of him. The people of the Burren had undoubtedly known what he was. Colman had been a blackmailer, she was sure of that – and now she faced the word, and acknowledged the evil intrinsic to that word. But whom had he blackmailed? And which one of his victims had eventually tired of his demands and taken that final step to silence the blackmailer for ever? Mara sighed and went indoors to select a suitable gown for Mass.

  Black, she thought, as she lifted the gowns from the chest at the end of her bed. Black was right for the occasion. It would mourn Colman, show her authority and in any case, black suited her very well. She pulled on a freshly laundered creamy-white léine and then laced the long sleeves to the shoulders of the gown and slipped it over her head. She studied her reflection in the long silver-plated mirror by the window, opening the one small casement to allow the sunlight to flood into the room. Yes, she thought, from the shining braids of black hair to the pointed toes of her leather shoes, she looked good. A pity that Turlough had gone to the bishop’s Mass at Kilfenora in the nearby kingdom of Corcomroe. Still, he would be back this afternoon and they would have a meal together. She smiled wryly at her shadowy mirror image. Brigid had a great saying that she continually used to the lads: ‘You can’t have your cake and eat it,’ she would scold.

  I’m trying to do that, Mara thought. I enjoy his company, I enjoy the compliments, the feeling of being admired, I would like him to make love to me, but I don’t want to give up my position – I am probably the only woman Brehon in Ireland at the moment, I run a successful law school, I turn out good lawyers, on the whole; there are aignes and Brehons all over the country that have been trained by me here at Cahermacnaghten. If I married Turlough, I would have to give all that up.

  A large white butterfly with a bright orange spot on each wing swooped in through the open casement and for a moment she stood and watched it as it fluttered around the room and then landed on a purple velvet cushion. It would not stay there long, she thought. It would prefer the liberty of the wide open spaces outside to the luxury of the inside; the clean, cool petals of the purple cuckoo flower to the softness of the velvet cushion. With a sigh, she turned and went down the stairs. The day was going to continue fine, she would leave the window open so that the butterfly could go free, and when she came back her chamber would be full of the scent of early summer.

  ‘Ride carefully,’ she said to her scholars as she came out of the gate to her house. The ponies were all tossing their heads and whinnying with excitement. Cumhal had tied them to a long bar outside the gate piers and the four older boys were climbing up on to the
ir backs. They looked relatively tidy now, but that wouldn’t last after they had galloped across the Burren. Still, what did it matter? The two younger ones were shining with cleanliness and neat in their white léinte. Shane wore a brooch at his shoulder, but Hugh had none and suddenly Mara remembered the ornate jewel-studded brooch that Colman had been wearing. Was that belonging to Hugh? Very likely! Cian, the silversmith, had visited Hugh only a week ago. He had probably taken away Hugh’s small silver brooch and given him the new one, as well as the knife, as reward for passing his examination. Hugh had got very high marks and Cian had been delighted.

  ‘Let’s go,’ she said. ‘Come on, Bran, you can come too.’

  ‘But you have to wait outside the church,’ said Shane gaily, resting his hand on the wolfhound’s neck.

  ‘Bran knows that,’ said Mara as the ponies disappeared in a cloud of dust.

  She waited until they were halfway across the fields to Kilcorney before she spoke again. Hugh was looking quite relaxed and happy, joining Shane in throwing sticks for Bran to retrieve and lay at their feet. She hated to break into their fun but she had to get this affair between Colman and Hugh clear in her mind before she started to disentangle some of the other threads of this complicated matter.

  ‘Hugh, do you know what I mean by blackmail?’ she asked, beckoning Bran to walk to heel by her side. Hugh nodded silently and dropped the stick that he had been carrying.

  ‘Tell me what it is,’ she said gently.

  ‘Blackmail is the extraction of goods or silver by means of threats to reveal a hidden secret,’ he said dully.

  ‘And Colman was blackmailing you,’ she stated.

  He stopped and looked at her. There was a terrified look in his eyes.

  ‘Does Shane know why he was blackmailing you?’ she asked. He nodded again and put his hand on Bran’s neck.

  ‘Do you mind if he tells me?’

  He hesitated, slowly stroking the dog’s muscular back.

  ‘She probably won’t be too cross,’ observed Shane. ‘A bit,’ he added, ‘but not too bad. You shouldn’t have done it, you would probably have pa – ’ He stopped and bit his lip.

  ‘You would probably have passed, anyway,’ finished Mara. ‘That was it, wasn’t it, Hugh? You cheated at the examination and Colman found out. Come on, tell me … Was that it?’

  He nodded reluctantly.

  ‘He took in the Heptad about the seven types of women whose behaviour deprives them of their honour price,’ said Shane eagerly. ‘He kept just remembering the bit about the prostitute in the bushes and forgetting about the chantress of lying tales and …’

  ‘I see,’ interrupted Mara. ‘And Colman caught you, did he?’ Hugh nodded.

  ‘He had it stuffed into the sleeve of his léine,’ said Shane. ‘Colman saw him peeping at it.’

  ‘And he said that he would tell you and I would fail my examination and I would be sent away from the law school for cheating,’ said Hugh. His eyes filled with tears. ‘He said I had to give him some very good presents, so when my father brought a new brooch and knife for me, I kept the knife a secret, but I gave him the brooch. I thought that would be enough for him, but I took the knife when we were going up the mountain. I thought Fachtnan would stop him, he stopped him bullying me before, but then Colman kept me with him and the others got ahead. Then he took the knife away from me and he said I had to get some more silver for him next month when my father visited me.’

  ‘I guessed that was what it was.’ Mara kept her tone calm and unruffled. ‘Well, you shouldn’t have tried to cheat, Hugh. For your punishment you will write out that Heptad five times in your very best handwriting. Give it to me before Monday morning and that will be the end of the matter. As Shane says, you would probably have passed your examination even if you did forget one or two categories so it was a foolish thing to do. Now, tell me, who did Colman talk to that night – when he told you to go away – was it Lorcan?’

  ‘No,’ said Hugh. He was looking much better, thought Mara with satisfaction.

  ‘No? You’re sure?’

  ‘I’m not absolutely sure,’ said Hugh doubtfully. ‘But I didn’t see Lorcan with him. It was Muiris that he was talking to … you know, Aoife’s father. They were in Wolf’s Lair together. But he may have talked with someone else afterwards. I wasn’t near. He told me to go away. I … I was too scared to go over for a long time. And I missed the lighting of the bonfire, and the singing and the dancing. And I was just standing there in the dark. And Colman didn’t come.’

  ‘And when he got too fed up with waiting, he went over to Wolf’s Lair,’ said Shane.

  ‘And you saw Colman,’ said Mara. They had been walking fast and were coming near to Kilcorney now. The people in the Burren, wearing their best clothes, were thronging the small lanes, walking, riding or sitting in carts pulled by patient donkeys or stubborn mules. ‘You found the body?’ she asked quickly, conscious of the need to get the whole story before they arrived at the church.

  Hugh shuddered. ‘He was lying there with my knife sticking out of his neck.’

  ‘And you saw no one else?’

  Hugh shook his head. ‘No, I was scared. I didn’t know what to do. I thought everyone would think I had done it. It was my knife.’

  ‘Why didn’t you just pull the knife out and hide it?’ asked Shane. Mara frowned at him, and Hugh shuddered again.

  ‘I couldn’t,’ he said. ‘I couldn’t touch him … so I just climbed up and joined the others on Eagle’s Rock.’

  ‘And you told the others?’

  ‘Later on,’ said Hugh, ‘when we were going home, Shane kept pestering me and asking what was wrong and asking where Colman was.’

  Why didn’t Fachtnan tell me? thought Mara.

  Shane looked at her earnestly, seeming to read her mind. ‘We didn’t tell you, Brehon, because Hugh made us all swear on our fathers’ honour that we wouldn’t say anything. Fachtnan said that, anyway, someone else would be bound to have seen Colman’s body on the way down, so it wouldn’t matter that Hugh didn’t tell. We couldn’t believe it when nobody did see him. We kept waiting to hear the news. We didn’t know what to do.’

  ‘Well, never mind,’ said Mara, dismissing this. There was no point in scolding at this stage. ‘Hugh, are you sure you saw no one else? Up there near to Wolf’s Lair?’

  Hugh shook his head.

  ‘Yes, you did,’ said Shane. ‘You saw Father Conglach talking to Nessa. You remember – you said she was crying. You thought he was scolding her about having a baby.’

  ‘Oh, yes, I remember,’ said Hugh, embarrassed.

  The bells of the church had started to toll and Mara asked no more. The boys found the subject of Nessa’s baby awkward. She was too young, too unattractive, for them to find it at all interesting.

  ‘You go ahead and find a seat while I have a word with Father Conglach,’ she said as they went down the path to the church. ‘I shall ask him to make the announcement.’

  Father Conglach was looking unwell, she thought as she made her way back from the sacristy into the little church. He had agreed without protest to make the announcement and that was not like him. This latest evidence of evil and wrongdoing in the community seemed to have hit him badly. He swept out into the chancel in his usual way, but as he muttered the Latin prayer at the foot of the steps she thought his back looked more bowed than usual. His voice rose and fell as Mara considered the problem of Colman’s death.

  Why was Colman talking to Muiris? He would not have sent Hugh away if it had been just a normal conversation. It was undoubtedly a blackmail attempt. But what had Colman found to blackmail Muiris about? He was considered a good, upright farmer, a clever, astute man, a very successful man and a good family man. His son was courting the daughter of a taoiseach in Corcomroe. That would be a great match for him. No doubt he would want his daughter to make a good match, also. Mara tried to turn her head discreetly to see who was in Kilcorney church today. She dared not look openly
around. Every eye would be on her – even more so than usual. Everyone would know about that secret killing and everyone would wonder what the Brehon was going to do. Diarmuid was there, she noticed, but she couldn’t see Muiris. That was surprising; this was definitely the parish church for Poulnabrucky. She wondered whether Muiris had seen her crossing the high paved fields and had hastily decided to go to Mass at Carron, or Oughtmama instead.

  ‘Diarmuid,’ Mara said after Mass was over and everyone was standing outside in the warm noontime sun, ‘Diarmuid, you were looking for me yesterday. Brigid told me that you called.’

  ‘Oh,’ he said. He looked uneasy. ‘Well, the truth is that I think I said a bit too much to you the day before. I had no right to say it. It was Lorcan’s own business and I got it all wrong. It was just a bit of an argument that he had with Colman.’

  ‘You’re talking about that silver that Lorcan paid as blackmail to Colman,’ said Mara briskly.

  Diarmuid winced at her plain speaking. ‘Well, it seems that I got it wrong,’ he said unhappily. ‘It wasn’t that at all. Just a little wager between them, and Lorcan lost. That’s all there was to it.’

  ‘I see,’ she said carefully. ‘I understand what you are telling me, Diarmuid.’

  They are all involved, she thought. The O’Connors will be worried about Lorcan being implicated, the MacNamaras will not really want Feirdin to be the one that killed Colman, the O’Lochlainns are involved with Muiris – was he not a foster-son to the old taoiseach? she wondered, trying to remember the past. And then there were the O’Briens. This was a clan that was much more numerous in Corcomroe and in Thomond, but there were still many minor members here on the Burren. Hugh’s father, Cian, was a younger brother of an O’Brien taoiseach at Lemeanah Castle on the southern boundary between the kingdoms of Corcomroe and the Burren. The O’Briens would bring pressure on the king himself, if there were danger to one of their members.