My Lady Judge

by Cora Harrison

  ‘It’s the king coming back again, Brehon,’ called Cumhal from the field opposite. He had a slightly sour note in his voice and Mara’s lips twitched with amusement. There was no doubt in her mind now that Cumhal and Brigid were very against any special relationship between the king and their mistress. She understood their feelings. This law school had been owned and worked by an O’Davoren for many years and if Mara married the king now, that would be the end of the O’Davorens at Cahermacnaghten and the end of the law school, perhaps. This would matter immensely to Brigid and Cumhal who were both so very proud of the status of their position at Cahermacnaghten.

  ‘Go and have your supper, boys,’ she said. ‘Tell Brigid that the king may be going to pass the night here.’ It was a good idea for him to break his journey between the Aran Islands and Thomond – he would have crossed over this morning, she guessed – but fond as she was of him, she wished that he had decided to spend the night with Fergus and Siobhan at Doolin rather than at Cahermacnaghten. She hastened down the road to meet him.

  ‘My lord, it is good to see you,’ she said formally. She was pleased to see that the group of gallóglaich from Mahon O’Lochlainn were still with him. She still shuddered to think of her close encounter with the O’Kellys. Was Colman involved with the O’Kelly clan? she wondered again. Was there, perhaps, a political facet to the murder of the young lawyer? Anyway, whether or not Colman was involved, the danger to Turlough was very real and he could not ride around virtually unprotected. Brigid wouldn’t be too pleased to have to feed all of these gallóglaich again, but it couldn’t be helped.

  ‘Mara!’ Turlough Donn’s arms went around in a tight hug and the now familiar feeling of pleasure surged through her. I wonder how he would like to have me as a wife of the fourth degree, she thought. He could come to visit from time to time just as Ardal O’Lochlainn visits his fisherman’s daughter in Galway. We could both carry on with our own lives in the meantime. I wonder what he would say if I proposed that.

  ‘You’ll stay the night?’ she asked, disentangling herself with a quick, amused glance at Cumhal’s disgruntled face. The news of this would soon be carried to Brigid. Hopefully it wouldn’t affect the supper she served up.

  ‘I’ll stay the night and have breakfast with you in the morning, with pleasure,’ replied Turlough, ‘but I promised to have supper with Finn O’Connor – he crossed back with me on the boat from Aran. He’s gone down to Ballyganner now to get ready, but I just turned off to greet you.’

  ‘Ah, Brigid,’ he called as she came out. ‘I won’t be having one of your beautiful suppers, but I will be coming back later this evening to sleep in your guest house so I will have breakfast here. Don’t worry about those lads’ – he indicated the gallóglaich – ‘they’ve all got their tents and they’ll put them up there in front of the gate and around the enclosure, if that’s all right.’

  ‘You’ll have a something to eat when you come back, my lord?’ asked Brigid. She might not be in favour of a marriage, but she could not resist the charm of the man.

  ‘Just a glass of wine and something very light, then,’ said Turlough, his face lighting up. ‘Your mistress and I will have a few things to talk over.’

  ‘We’ll have something good for you,’ promised Mara. Despite the slight awkwardness of knowing that he was still waiting for an answer to his letter, her heart felt warm at the prospect of seeing him again and having the pleasure of his company over a glass of wine.

  ‘See you later in the evening, then,’ he said, mounting his horse. ‘Oh, I saw three of your lads over in Corcomroe this morning. Enda, isn’t it, the tall blond boy, and the other two … the boy with the pimples … What are their names?’

  ‘Enda, Moylan and Aidan,’ said Mara with a frown. ‘What on earth were they doing over in Corcomroe?’

  ‘They seemed to be going towards the sea, near Doolin,’ said Turlough, moving off down the road after his bodyguards. The gallóglaich formed into pairs, some riding behind him and others in front, all of them scanning the distant horizon for any sign of the O’Kellys. ‘See you this night,’ his voice floated back towards her.

  ‘It’s a wonder that he doesn’t stay the night at Ballyganner,’ said Brigid with pursed lips. ‘Surely the O’Connor and his wife would be able to put him up. It would be more suitable.’

  ‘He’ll get a better bed and better food here,’ said Mara calmly, ignoring the word ‘suitable’. The tower house at Ballyganner was damp, draughty and comfortless. Turlough had probably been putting off taking his formal cuide from the O’Connor for as long as possible. Every taoiseach had to offer the king an evening’s entertainment and supper for himself and his retinue in the winter months. Turlough, she knew, had already paid his formal visits to the O’Brien, the O’Lochlainn and the MacNamara.

  ‘Perhaps some little baked salmon pies and some sorrel to go with them,’ mused Brigid. ‘Giolla from Ballyporty has been fishing.’ Her face had softened. She did love to cook and she did love appreciation. ‘You’ll get out the wine yourself, will you, Brehon?’

  ‘I will,’ promised Mara. Yes, a marriage of fourth degree would suit her fine. That would give the people of the three kingdoms something to think about, she thought merrily, it would give them something to discuss in front of the slowly burning turf fires during the long winter evenings. In the meantime, she had work to do. She followed Brigid back into the law school enclosure, her mind running over the tasks that lay ahead of her.

  The schoolhouse was warm and comfortable and blessedly silent. The sun had moved around to the west, warming the stone building and lighting up the whitewashed wall opposite the window from floor to roof-rafters. Mara peered at Fachtnan’s untidy scrawl. He had done a great day’s work, but the information was all higgledy-piggledy and she needed to tabulate it and copy it all out in her clear, bold hand before she could reduce the possible murderers to something manageable. Now all I need is Enda’s information about Oscar O’Connor, she thought. He might be another possibility for my murder list. But would Oscar climb all the way up a mountain and murder a man just as an act of revenge, or was it a murder done on the spur of the moment? Perhaps it’s a pity that I didn’t get Fachtnan to enquire about Oscar O’Connor as well and then I would have all the facts in front of me now instead of having to wait for Enda, Moylan and Aidan to make their appearance.

  There’s the parish bell for the angelus, she thought after a while; those boys should be here by now. She got to her feet to go to see Brigid and then stopped. There was something of significance in Fachtnan’s evidence. She went to the shelf, took a small piece of vellum and made a note of her question, and then returned to her work.

  Some time later she realized that the light was dimming. It’s getting late, she thought. Where are those boys? She got to her feet. The broad band of sunlight on the wall had shrunk to a narrow orange strip high up near to the rafters. When she looked out of the window the high wall of the enclosure shadowed the flagstones in the yard. The sun had sunk down near to the horizon over the sea. Suddenly Mara remembered the king’s words. Enda, Moylan and Aidan must have gone over to Corcomroe to see Oscar. They had no business doing that, of course. Their instructions were to interview the people on the list Mara had written out for them, but they had probably got bored with this. She wondered uneasily whether they had tried to force a confession from him. Enda had spoken of solving the murder. If they had done that, and if Oscar were the murderer, what might have happened? He was a very powerful young man; he could easily have overpowered three skinny adolescents. She pictured the huge iron mallets that pulverized the stone and felt an icy prickling at the back of her neck as she went hurriedly out of the door.

  ‘Brigid, have Enda, Moylan and Aidan come back yet?’ she asked, opening the door of the kitchen house.

  ‘No, Brehon,’ said Brigid, scrubbing a handful of wet sand energetically over the surface of the large alder-wood kitchen table. ‘I was just going to come over to see you about them,
but Shane and Hugh seemed to think that they might be quite late so I didn’t worry too much.’

  ‘But, how do …’ began Mara and then she remembered the two mischievous faces. Something was going on.

  ‘Where are the others?’ she asked, looking around. Everything was suspiciously quiet.

  ‘Fachtnan’s gone for a walk and I think Hugh and Shane are playing chess in the scholars’ house,’ said Brigid, returning to her scrubbing.

  Shane and Hugh were not playing chess, she guessed as she opened the door of the scholars’ house. The house was too silent. They never played chess without shouting at each other. There were three rooms: one in the middle for study, reading and games, one bedroom for the older boys at one end and one for the younger boys at the other end of the small house. The doors to the middle room and to the older boys’ bedroom stood ajar, but the door to Shane and Hugh’s room was closed and from behind it Mara could hear urgent whispering. She opened the door swiftly and stood on the threshold. They were sitting side by side on Shane’s bed and the two faces, illuminated by the last rays of the setting sun, no longer bore the mischievous, amused expressions of earlier, but now seemed worried and apprehensive.

  ‘Where are Enda, Moylan and Aidan?’ she asked abruptly.

  They looked at each other. Hugh opened his mouth and then shut it and looked down on the bed.

  ‘We don’t know, Brehon,’ said Shane. There was an uneasy note in his voice and she pounced on him instantly.

  ‘Tell the truth,’ she said fiercely.

  ‘I am telling the truth, Brehon,’ he said defensively.

  She gave him a long look.

  ‘When did you last see them?’

  ‘We saw them here this morning, Brehon,’ said Hugh.

  ‘That was not what I asked you,’ she said swiftly. ‘I’ll ask the question again and I want a truthful answer: when did you last see Enda, Moylan and Aidan?’

  ‘This afternoon, Brehon,’ said Shane with a despairing glance at Hugh. ‘A while before the bell went for vespers.’

  She sank down on Hugh’s bed. ‘Tell me what they said to you.’

  ‘They asked us to give a message to Roderic, Brehon,’ said Shane.

  ‘To Roderic?’

  There was a long silence. Mara felt bewildered, though relieved. Whatever prank Enda, Moylan and Aidan were involved in she would not have expected it to include Roderic, who was a sensible, balanced young man – far too old to have anything to do with these silly adolescents. At least they were safely back from Corcomroe; the king had seen them over there in the morning.

  ‘What was the message?’ she asked.

  Shane hesitated. The corners of his mouth were twitching. He looked at Hugh for help.

  ‘They wanted us to give a message to Roderic and to pretend that Emer sent it,’ said Hugh.

  ‘Really, how silly! And what was the message?’ asked Mara.

  ‘We were to tell him that Emer wanted to meet him down in Poll an Cheoil,’ said Shane.

  ‘Poll an Cheoil!’ exclaimed Mara. Poll an Cheoil, hole of the music, was the entrance to a cave that ran underground quite near to the law school.

  ‘You see,’ said Hugh earnestly, ‘Enda thinks that either Oscar O’Connor or else Roderic did the murder; he wants to find the truth before the end of the day. That’s what he said. He wants to be the one who will solve this murder investigation.’

  ‘So he had this plan,’ said Shane. ‘He left a note for Oscar telling him to come to the cave and he put on it: We know the truth of what happened on the mountain. Come to Poll an Cheoil Cave in Ballyconnor North.’ He stopped and said rather uncertainly, ‘Well, I think that was what it said.’

  ‘You know the place, down in the cave, the place called the Cauldron? Well, they were going to use that for an interrogation chamber,’ said Hugh.

  I told them all never to go down there, thought Mara. She knew exactly where they meant. It was a small, round space only accessible by a sheer drop of about ten feet. She had been down it many times when she was a girl, although her father had forbidden it. She and Dualta used to go there.

  ‘They were going to entice him down – tell him to go first, and then pull up the ladder and interrogate him and not let him out until he confessed.’

  Mara sighed. ‘Were Roderic and Oscar supposed to come at the same time?’ she asked mildly.

  ‘No,’ said Shane. ‘They were going to do Oscar first. They waited for ages, but Oscar didn’t turn up so they came out and sent us with the message for Roderic.’

  ‘Aidan was practising Emer’s voice – you know the way that he can get his voice all squeaky sometimes – he was going to lure Roderic down.’

  ‘And then Aidan was going to escape by moving a stone away from a hole on the other end, and then he was going to tip the stone back to block it and keep Roderic imprisoned while Enda interrogated him.’

  ‘And did Roderic go?’

  ‘Yes, he did,’ said Hugh, giggling openly now. ‘He went red in the face and said nothing, but we hid behind a rock and we saw him go out a few minutes later. He waited until Father Conglach passed by and then he went down the road.’

  ‘And then we heard the bell for vespers so we raced back,’ finished Shane.

  But that was four hours ago, thought Mara. Roderic would have soon realized that it was a boys’ prank and would have gone home once he had been sure that Emer was not there. She thought it unlikely that he would have been deceived, no matter how much Aidan tried to make his rapidly breaking voice sound like Emer’s dulcet tones. So what had kept the boys? Could Oscar have come later on, after all? There had been a terrible note of desperation in that young man’s voice. Could he allow his temper to take over? And could there possibly be some connection between Oscar O’Connor and the O’Kellys? The O’Kellys had caused trouble in Galway; Mara knew that.

  The two young boys were staring at her, made uneasy by her long silence, and she tried to make her voice sound reassuring. ‘I’ll just go and fetch them back,’ she said. ‘You stay here. You can have a game of chess or do some study and make sure that you go to bed when Brigid tells you.’

  She quickly left the room and crossed over to the kitchen house. ‘Brigid,’ she said. ‘Hugh and Shane told me that Enda, Moylan and Aidan have gone down the cave at the back over there, at Ballyconnor North. They were planning some joke on Roderic to entice him down the Cauldron. I’m just going to fetch them back.’

  Brigid made an exasperated sound with her tongue. ‘Those three are more trouble than a houseful of small children,’ she said. ‘And Cumhal has gone up the mountain to help Eoin MacNamara fetch down some cattle. Do you want to wait until he comes home and he’ll go for them? Or do you want me to go, Brehon? Or we can send one of the men from the farm.’

  ‘No, no, I’ll go,’ said Mara. ‘A walk will do me good; I’ve been straining my eyes over old documents. I’ll just change my shoes and then I’ll be off. Don’t worry about supper for Enda, Moylan and Aidan; they don’t deserve it. I’ll take the covered lantern in case I need to go down, but they are probably larking around near the entrance. I’ll probably just need to call them.’

  There were plenty of footmarks on the damp clay when she arrived. Certainly more than three sets, she thought. Several hobnailed boots, such as the boys wore, but also a smooth leather print. She went down the short, steeply sloping passageway; it was an easy cave to enter, though dangerous further down. All these caves under the Burren were dangerous, her father used to say. It had been a long time since she had gone down there and somehow the small steep-sided hole seemed further from the entrance than she remembered. She stopped for a moment. Everything was very quiet; she had expected to hear boyish shouts and horseplay but perhaps the strange booming noise in the distance masked all other sounds. Funny, she thought, I don’t remember hearing that booming sound before. It’s almost as if this cave leads to the sea. It couldn’t, though. She had lived all of her life within a quarter of a mile of Poll an
Cheoil and had never heard that there was a way through it to the sea. On the other hand, its name, hole of the music, probably meant that sounds did come from it from time to time.

  Then she stumbled across something on the ground. She raised her lantern, opening one of the small horn windows in order to see better. It was a sugán ladder made from rough slats of wood and twisted rope. She recognized it. Moylan and Aidan had made it last summer. But what was it doing lying on the floor? Surely this was the place where the hole had led down into the Cauldron? She swung the lantern around but the hole did not seem to be there. She was just about to move on when she noticed a long scrape on the wet clay of the passage. Something had been dragged along there, and she could now see what it was. There was a heavy flagstone lying there at the side of the passage. She pushed it with her foot and it moved. She bent down and heaved it aside. A rush of air came up to her. She lifted her lantern and shone it down. Yes, this was the Cauldron. She looked down, but there was no trace of the boys.

  Once again, though, there were patterns of footmarks, hobnailed-boot footprints, all over the wet, yellow mud on the floor. She stared at them for a moment. She couldn’t decide whether any men’s footmarks were there. Probably Enda, at least, had feet the size of a man’s. He was a tall boy and Aidan was shooting up fast. There seemed to be no sign of the smooth-soled boot print here. She held up her lantern and shone it down the rest of the passageway, but there were no footmarks further on. The boys had come as far as here, had used the ladder to go down; the damp, smooth mud told that story, but what had happened next?

  ‘Enda,’ she shouted, and listened to her own voice returning to her, cutting through the continuous booming in the distance.

  ‘Enda,’ she called again, and then, with increasing desperation: ‘Moylan, Aidan.’ There was no answer. Where could they be? Perhaps they had already left the cave, she thought hopefully, but the memory of that rope ladder lying on the floor and the heavy flagstone sealing the opening chilled her. If they had climbed out surely they would have gone back to the law school, and surely they would have taken the rope ladder with them?