A Secret and Unlawful Killing

by Cora Harrison

  Diarmuid shook his head. ‘I didn’t need thanks,’ he said quietly. ‘I did it for you, not for him.’ Absent-mindedly, he bent down and picked a few creamy-gilled mushrooms from the side of the road and placed them in his pouch. No doubt he would fry these over his kitchen fire with a couple of rashers for his supper, thought Mara, feeling suddenly touched by his lonely bachelor status.

  ‘How is Wolf?’ she asked. Wolf was a magnificent dog with red-gold fur and a huge head. Diarmuid’s cousin, Lorcan, had bred him from a mating between a sheepdog bitch and a wild wolf. Up to a few months ago Wolf had treated all mankind, except his owner, with suspicion, but during the summer Mara had made friends with him and now Wolf adored her also.

  Diarmuid looked startled and then pleased. ‘He’s in great form,’ he said. ‘You wouldn’t believe the company that he is.’ He paused, giving her an embarrassed look, and then confessed, ‘I often bring him into the house during the evening. That dog can almost talk.’

  ‘I’ll come down one evening to see him and I’ll bring some of Brigid’s sausages with me,’ promised Mara, amused at his confession. Diarmuid, like all farmers, tried to pretend that a dog was just a piece of merchandise. Wolf, she guessed, was a substitute for wife and children to this warm-hearted man.

  ‘That’ll be nice,’ he said; his eyes were full of affection and Mara smiled at him. He seemed to be the one person in her busy life who never looked for anything from her. The people of the Burren respected her and were fond of her, but the clansmen usually had some legal problem for her to address. The boys at the school, her servants, her farmworkers, all brought her problems and questions. The king was beginning to get restless and to want an answer to his surprising proposal last May. It would be very peaceful to visit Diarmuid; they would pass a pleasant couple of hours together, admiring Wolf and talking over old times.

  ‘So is Garrett going to take charge of the wake and the burial?’ Mara asked.

  Diarmuid nodded. ‘The ban tighernae tried to tell him that Ragnall’s daughter should do that, but I said she was only a child without any near relations. She tried talking me down, but I just stood there. In the end, I said that the Brehon wanted the taoiseach to do it. The ban tighernae still tried to argue, but Garrett agreed straight away when he heard that.’

  ‘What’s she like, Diarmuid? Ragnall’s daughter, I mean.’ asked Mara. She bent down to pick a sprig of purple heather, but then changed her mind. Let it grow, she thought. The bees were enjoying it. It would only die tucked into her brooch.

  ‘Pretty little thing,’ said Diarmuid. ‘Quiet girl … I don’t rightly know if I’ve ever heard her say anything much except, “yes, Father”. She was always working on that farm and she’s only a small girl; you wouldn’t think that she would have the strength for some of the things that he made her do. He was out being the steward and she was left looking after the farm. I’d say that she had a hard time,’ said Diarmuid compassionately. ‘You never saw her out having fun with the other young lads and cailíní. Ragnall kept her locked up at home. I don’t suppose she’ll miss him too much, but, of course, you never can tell. Do you know her to see, Brehon?’

  ‘I just saw her yesterday at the fair with young Donal O’Brien. Liam, the O‘Lochlainn steward, seemed to think that they were in love with each other.’

  ‘I saw them too,’ said Diarmuid meditatively.

  ‘And would you agree with Liam?’

  ‘Oh, yes,’ said Diarmuid softly. ‘She’s in love with him.’

  ‘Do you think that he is in love with her, though?’ asked Mara. ‘A steward’s daughter doesn’t seem good enough for the son of a taoiseach and, by all accounts, this is a young man with great notions about himself.’

  Diarmuid nodded emphatically. ‘He’s in love, all right,’ he said firmly. ‘He would carry the clouds for her,’ he added in a low voice, almost as if he were speaking to himself.

  Mara was silent for a moment. She had never heard the phrase before. She looked at Diarmuid, but he was not looking at her, just gazing into the distance. His face had a lonely, sentimental expression. Was he thinking of young Donal O‘Brien and his love for the pretty little Maeve, she wondered, or was he thinking of himself and his twenty years of loyalty to the friend of his youth? She felt sorry for him; she suspected that he had been in love with her all of her life. She remembered his anguish when he heard the news that she was to marry Dualta, a young student at her father’s law school, and his disgust when Dualta, contrary to Brehon law, had revealed secrets from the marriage bed in the local alehouse. Without Diarmuid’s loyalty to her, she might never have been able to divorce Dualta and to rid herself of an unworthy husband. Would it have been better for her if she had married Diarmuid rather than Dualta? They would have been very happy together and he, she knew, would have taken, as much as was possible, the weight off her shoulders. She dismissed the fanciful thought. Now she would have to deal with the present and make sure that young Maeve and her lover, Donal O’Brien, had nothing to do with the murder of Ragnall MacNamara.

  ‘I’m going down there now,’ she said. ‘I have to break the news of her father’s death to her.’

  He looked back at her then. ‘Are you going down to visit young O’Brien, too, today? Would you like me to come with you? They say that he has a bit of a bad temper. He always seems to be in some fight or other whenever he visits an alehouse.’

  ‘I think I have plenty of experience in managing bad-tempered young men,’ said Mara with a chuckle. ‘No, you go back now, Diarmuid, I’ve taken up enough of your time for today. I’ll be around to see you during the next few days.’

  The lane to Shesmore was long and winding, with hedges so high that, even mounted on horseback, Mara could not see over the top of them. Being the only farm between Noughaval and Lemeanah it must be a very lonely place for a girl, Mara thought compassionately. Still, perhaps that had added to her attractions for young Donal O’Brien. The kingdom of the Burren was a sociable place, with all the inhabitants taking full advantage of the many fairs and horse-racing events, as well as the four big festivals of Imbolc, Bealtaine, Lughnasa and Samhain, so Donal would have been meeting all the other young girls continually from childhood onwards. Maeve, with all her prettiness, would have come as a welcome novelty to him if he had suddenly met her one day in the lane that joined the lands of Lemeanah Castle to Shesmore.

  Shesmore itself was a prosperous-looking farmhouse, originally a cottage Mara surmised, but with additions so that now the whole was a substantial, L-shaped, two-storeyed building with windows filled with thick opaque glass. Ragnall had obviously done well for himself during his stewardship of the MacNamara clan. Very few people in the Burren had glass in their windows; most were content with wooden shutters and perhaps a piece of linen nailed across the window frame during the summer months.

  Maeve was at home; she came out at the sound of the horse hoofs on the well-paved yard.

  ‘Brehon,’ she said. Maeve was startled to see her; there was no doubt about that. It took a minute before she added politely: ‘Tá failte romhat.’ There was a definite note of wariness in the young voice, despite the routine words of welcome.

  ‘Dia’s Muire agat,’ replied Mara, walking her mare to the mounting-block. She eyed the girl carefully. She bore no apparent signs of sorrow or guilt. There was nothing amiss with the delicate complexion of the pretty face before her, and the wide blue eyes were as innocent as those of a baby.

  ‘Have you been worried about your father, Maeve?’ she asked quietly as she dismounted.

  The blue eyes — surely there was a shade of purple in them; they were darker than the blue léine that she wore — widened even more. ‘No, Brehon,’ she replied softly and deferentially, ‘has he sent you with a message for me?’

  Either this girl was innocent or she was a consummate actress. It was impossible to tell which. In fact, there was something slightly over-naive about the last phrase. Did Maeve really think that her father had sent the Bre
hon, a person of almost as high a rank as the king himself, as a messenger?

  ‘You weren’t worried when he didn’t come home last night?’

  ‘I thought he probably stayed overnight at Carron,’ said Maeve. She didn’t look puzzled or enquiring and the perfection of her face was unmarred by any shadow of worry. Mara watched her carefully. Surely by now she should have started to worry, whatever the relationship was between herself and her father.

  ‘I’m afraid that I have very bad news for you, Maeve,’ Mara said gently. ‘Your father was found dead this morning.’

  ‘What happened?’ breathed Maeve and then she turned away, her face closely hidden by her hands, her shoulders heaving.

  ‘No one knows,’ said Mara. ‘His body was found at Noughaval. It appears that he was murdered sometime last night.’ She put an arm around the girl, but Maeve’s face remained resolutely hidden, and she did not respond. Small sobbing noises came from her, but Mara wondered cynically if they were genuine. After a few minutes, the girl pulled herself away and walked over towards the door of the cow cabin, where she seemed to be struggling to regain control of herself. Finally she pulled a handkerchief from her pouch and scrubbed vigorously at her eyes, took a deep breath and came back to Mara.

  ‘I don’t know what to do,’ she said unexpectedly. Mara was startled; she had expected more questions about the cause of death, enquiries about the murderer or just laments for her dead father, but it sounded as though Maeve were more worried about the practicalities of death than anything else.

  ‘About what?’ Mara asked, taking the girl’s hand. She was touched to feel calluses all over the small palm and the slim fingers. Diarmuid was right. This girl, despite her child-like appearance, had been made to work hard. It would be little wonder if there were no love lost between Maeve and her father.

  For a moment the blue eyes, their clear white surrounds unmarred by grief, nor reddened by tears, looked at her assessingly and then the black eyelashes dropped over them.

  ‘I don’t know what to do … about his body … about the wake … I don’t know what to do …’ she stuttered. ‘There’s no one … no near kin.’

  That distress appeared genuine anyway. Poor child, thought Mara pityingly. She was glad that she had sent Diarmuid to Carron Castle. He had handled that matter well. There would have been little point in putting this child through all the difficulties of caring for the dead body and then the long-drawn-out ceremonies of the wake. Garrett owed it to his steward to look after his funeral arrangements. It could be done easily by his household; he had enough servants available to handle this.

  ‘I think you can leave that to the taoiseach. He’ll manage everything. The wake would be best held at the tower house in Carron and then your father can be buried at Carron Church beside your mother,’ Mara told the girl firmly.

  Maeve nodded and held her handkerchief to her eyes again. Mara gave a quick glance at the sun to check its progress. There was one other task that she needed to do before riding back to Poulnabrone. It had taken her longer than she had imagined, riding down that very narrow lane. She would probably have been as quick, if not quicker, going round by the road. However, after being the bearer of such bad news, she felt some compunction at leaving the child alone. ‘Is there anyone that I could send to be with you?’ she asked.

  ‘No,’ Maeve replied tonelessly. ‘Don’t worry about me, Brehon. I’ll be all right. Fionnuala is in the kitchen.’

  ‘Would you call her, or shall we go in to see her?’

  The girl shot a quick sideways glance at her. There was something slightly odd about the expression, not sorrow — there appeared to be little genuine grief there; her face seemed defensive rather than grief-stricken. There was also a shade of impatience in her look, almost as if she wished that she could be left in peace to do what she had to do.

  ‘Fionnuala,’ she called and when an elderly woman appeared at the door, Maeve moved quickly over to her. ‘Fionnuala,’ she said, ‘the body of my father has been found in Noughaval churchyard.’

  Mara looked at her with interest; she was sure that she hadn’t mentioned the churchyard to Maeve.

  ‘God bless us and save us,’ said Fionnuala. She crossed herself, but there was something perfunctory about the gesture and her eyes were wary as they looked at the Brehon.

  ‘I think you had better take Maeve indoors,’ said Mara mildly. ‘She’s had a bad shock.’

  ‘Yes, of course,’ replied Fionnuala, and there was nothing false about the motherly way that she put her arm around the slight figure of the girl. Mara felt relieved. At least she could leave Maeve in her hands with an easy conscience.

  ‘I’ll need to find the road to Poulnabrone,’ said Mara. ‘I suppose if I strike across the fields there towards the west I’ll meet it.’

  ‘Yes, Brehon,’ said Maeve. ‘The road is just two fields away. I’ll open this gate for you,’ she said hurriedly, moving out of Fionnuala’s arms and rushing over. Obviously she wanted to get rid of the Brehon as soon as possible. Mara wondered why, but perhaps it was natural. Perhaps she wanted time to grieve privately. Many people handled sorrow like that. ‘You’ll find a gap just straight across the field,’ Maeve continued, ‘that will take you into the second field. The gap is open at the moment so you’ll have no trouble.’

  Mara thanked her, mounted her mare and went through the gate. It was strange that no further questions had been asked, she thought. However, grief can rob a person of their wits; she had often witnessed that. She rode steadily across the field to the gap at the far end and then looked back over her shoulder. There was no sign of Maeve or Fionnuala so no doubt they had gone into the kitchen. Mara hoped that this Fionnuala was a motherly person. She might well be more of a parent to Maeve than that strange, bad-tempered man, Ragnall MacNamara.

  The second field Maeve had described seemed to have been abandoned; it was very overgrown with hundreds of hazel bushes sprouting from the grykes between the slabs of stone. The bright purple flowers of the field bugle were everywhere underfoot and the pale cream faces of the burnet rose twined around the hazel stems and raised their small pretty flowers to the sun. Ragnall should have cut down this hazel scrub and then put a few goats in here, Mara thought impatiently. She wondered why the steward had neglected this piece of land so much. However, the farm was probably only a small part of his income as he would, of course, receive a portion of all the rents and tributes which he collected each year on behalf of the MacNamara taoiseach. It was a big farm, nevertheless; too big, thought Mara, for Maeve to be able to inherit it all. The Brehon law was strict about that: land must be kept within the kin-group and the clan. Unless Maeve married a cousin, she could take only land enough to graze seven cows as her dowry. That would mean about twenty acres of this good grazing land of the High Burren.

  Mara got down from her horse and led her carefully through the clustering twigs and small branches; she would not risk a tear to the golden hide of her finely bred mare. As she pushed her way through the thickets she could hear the small tan-coloured hazel nuts crunch beneath her feet. The foxes and the pine martens would have a great feast here and plenty of nourishment to get them through a hard winter.

  By the time that Mara eventually reached the road, the sun had already moved well out of the east and was approaching its September zenith. However, she did not turn north towards Poulnabrone — if she were late, she knew that the people of the Burren would wait courteously and patiently for her — she turned towards the south and towards the new tower house of Lemeanah.

  Teige O‘Brien, a first cousin of King Turlough Donn O’Brien, had built Lemeanah soon after he had become taoiseach of the O’Brien clan on the Burren. It was a four-storey-high tower with doors set into the outside walls of the third and fourth floors, ready for a new extension to be built sometime in the future. It was the biggest tower house on the Burren, built in a magnificent style, which Mara was sure that Garrett MacNamara envied. Smoke poured from its chimney,
and servants and workers bustled in and around the small cabins that surrounded it. On the north side of the tower house was a field with some stallions galloping about whinnying loudly, and Mara’s mare raised her head as if to answer them.

  ‘Hush, girl,’ said Mara, hurriedly stroking the golden neck. Quickly she dismounted. Her sharp eye had caught sight of a flash of blue on the top of the wall. She narrowed her eyes against the sun. Yes, it was Maeve climbing into the field near the tower house. Apparently she had gone by a quicker route than the way she had sent Mara. She had not gone for comfort from Fionnuala, but had come to her lover. Was it for comfort or to prepare him for the Brehon’s visit? Mara did not know the answer to that question.

  Someone else had seen that flash of blue also. A tall young man had vaulted the wall near to the tower house and was striding rapidly across the field, ignoring all of the playful young stallions, and making directly for the girl in the blue léine. Mara waited patiently for a few minutes to give a chance for the news to be passed on, and then she mounted again, riding sedately down the road, with her head turned away from the young couple and towards the stony fields opposite.

  By the time that she reached the gates of Lemeanah, the two had disappeared from the field. Mara thought that Donal might have come to meet her, but there was no sign of him. He had obviously not inherited the courtesy of his father, Teige, she thought; he must certainly have seen her as she rode down towards the tower house. Or perhaps he had his own reasons for not encountering her. However, she had little time to waste if she was going to get to Poulnabrone for noon, so she refused the offer to dismount from a servant who came running to the gate, and sent him instead to find Donal O’Brien. There was a flash of puzzlement in the eyes of the man; he found it strange that she should ask for the son rather than the father, but he did not dare question the Brehon so he straight away went in search of his young master and Donal appeared several minutes later.