A Secret and Unlawful Killing

by Cora Harrison

‘But why put the gate over his neck?’ asked Garrett, looking anxiously from face to face. ‘Wouldn’t that be a strange thing for a man to do to himself?’

  ‘You’d be surprised.’ Father O‘Mahon nodded his head knowledgeably. ‘I’ve seen suicides where a man put the noose around his neck, then tied his hands together before jumping off the stool. They are afraid in case, by the mercy of God, they will have second thoughts.’

  But the ‘mercy of God’, according to his earthly interpreters, will condemn a man to eternal damnation for this deed, thought Mara, trying to keep her rising irritation at bay.

  ‘Do you think that he committed suicide then, Father?’ asked Garrett respectfully. ‘Would you refuse him burial in the churchyard?’

  ‘It could have been murder,’ said Mara coldly. ‘It was obviously not an accident, but it could have been a cold-blooded murder, arranged to look like suicide.’

  ‘He had nothing much to live for,’ sighed Eoin. ‘He just worked from morning to night. He said to me once that he wished he had married and had a proper son of his own to follow him and to help him at the mill. You see, he was never really sure that Niall was his son. He didn’t look a bit like Aengus and, what was more, he didn’t look a bit like the mother either. There was quite a lot of talk about that. It put Aengus off the boy, and then, of course, the other poor fellow, Balor, him being a druth, well, Aengus could have no pleasure in him.’

  ‘He was a sad, poor man.’ Maol wagged his bald head solemnly. ‘His only pleasure in life seemed to be going to church. He went to Mass at the abbey every single morning of his life. Even went to vespers most evenings.’

  ‘I suppose when you haven’t much to live for, then death seems the only way out,’ agreed Eoin.

  Father O’Mahon nodded sadly. His face was set in stubborn lines and Mara knew that he had made up his mind. Poor Aengus would be buried at the crossroads at the bottom of the hill — just as if he were a dead sheep or cow. Garrett would go along with this; it would be quicker and easier than another elaborate funeral. And then there was the state of the body to be considered. It would be an urgent matter to get it quickly underground.

  ‘What do you think, Brehon?’ asked Garrett.

  Instantly a compromise solution came to Mara.

  ‘Only God knows the truth about this death,’ she said solemnly. ‘I think we should leave the final verdict to Him. We should bury the body now in the old churchyard here between the two churches.’

  She looked around; there was still doubt on the faces of both Garrett and the priest, so she hurried on. Once everything was organized, there would be no room left for argument. Her voice took on a tone of crisp authority.

  ‘Eoin, you and Maol go into the mill and get a board to place him on. You’ll find some spades there, also, and you can dig the grave while we are preparing the body. Nuala, come with me and we’ll see if we can find some old sacks to wrap him in.’

  Eoin and Maol gave a quick sideways glance at their taoiseach, but he made no move to stop them, so they set off downhill towards the mill. Garrett and Malachy followed them, glad to get away from the stench and to be doing something practical, thought Mara, though she doubted whether Garrett would lose his dignity to the extent of actually digging the grave.

  ‘We’ll leave you to your prayers, Father,’ she said. ‘Come, Nuala.’

  ‘You think it is a murder, don’t you?’ asked Nuala softly as they made their way down through grass-covered remains of ancient buildings.

  ‘I think it might be,’ said Mara, ‘but I’m not sure.’

  ‘Strange isn’t it, two deaths in the week — they must be related,’ stated Nuala with the conviction of the young and the self-confident.

  The mill was a two-storey building made from wood. It was dark and dusty inside after the clear bright air outside. It took a moment for Mara’s eyes to see around. She had not been inside it since she was a child and had ridden with Cumhal to buy flour from the miller. The stream flowed under the mill via a chute that directed its flow against the paddles of the mill wheel. The weight of the water turned the wheel, which had a central shaft that went up through the ceiling into the upper storey and was attached directly to the upper millstone. When the mill was working then the upper stone would turn, grinding the grain, but now all was silent, except for the sound of the water and the swish of the paddles.

  Beside the main chamber downstairs was a small storeroom, and the four men appeared from this. Malachy had a shovel and spade in his large capable hands while Maol and Eoin were carrying a board. Mara looked around. There were no sacks of flour standing on the shelves at the far end of the room, though large baskets of grain stood waiting to be milled. Ragnall must have taken, as tribute, all of the sacks of flour that Aengus had already ground when he called at Oughtmama on that foggy Monday morning, surmised Mara. Did that mean that Aengus was killed on the following day? On the Tuesday, perhaps? Or perhaps on the same day, even? She stood back to allow Garrett, followed by Eoin and Maol, to go out, but then touched Malachy’s sleeve to detain him.

  ‘What do you think would be the day of death, Malachy?’ she asked as soon as the others were out of earshot.

  ‘Well today is Thursday …’ he said reflectively. ‘Monday at the latest,’ he said then with more decisiveness than she expected from him.

  ‘The body had only just begun to decompose,’ observed Nuala sagely. ‘There was a very warm sun yesterday, remember.’

  Malachy nodded. ‘The days were warm,’ he said. ‘But that was balanced by the couple of cold nights and then of course the flowing water would have kept it cool. No, bearing all these things in mind, it could have been Sunday. Yes, I would think it was Sunday.’

  ‘That’s probably impossible because Ragnall took seven sacks of flour as tribute from him on Monday morning,’ said Mara. ‘It must be Monday afternoon at the earliest. I don’t think even Ragnall would have just helped himself. Aengus had quite a reputation for violence.’

  Malachy shrugged. ‘I would be pretty sure that it was Sunday,’ he said. ‘After all, the sacks might have been left there on the shelf and Ragnall could have just taken them if there was no sign of Aengus.’

  ‘It’s possible, I suppose,’ said Mara doubtfully.

  And then, as Malachy hastened to join the gravedigging party, she remembered the quarrel on Sunday between young Donal O‘Brien and Aengus. What had happened? Donal had galloped after Aengus, had followed him home? Something about impressing Maeve with his championship of his father … She must ask Liam, the O’Lochlainn steward, for the whole story.

  ‘Would these do to cover him?’ asked Nuala. She had gone into the depths of the shadowy interior of the mill and appeared carrying some old clean sacks. Aengus was obviously a tidy, careful man. The sacks had been washed, folded neatly and put away for reuse.

  ‘I can slit them’ continued Nuala. ‘I found a good sharp knife in there on a shelf. That will do it.’ She busied herself for a few minutes and then produced three slightly ragged, large squares of linen.

  ‘These will do very well,’ said Mara absent-mindedly. Her eyes were fixed on a single sack of flour in a dark corner beside the mill wheel. ‘Open the door as far as you can, Nuala,’ she said, narrowing her eyes to look at the bag. Yes, she could read it properly now and she was not mistaken. The sack had the milling date, 25 September, stamped on it, seven days previously, she noted, but what was strange was that it was over-stamped with the MacNamara insignia of a prancing lion. Ragnall had seven bags of flour in his cart on that foggy Monday morning when she met him. She remembered thinking that an odd number like seven was strange; she would have expected six or eight. She bent down and examined the sack carefully. Obviously Ragnall had stamped it. This meant that it would have been placed in the cart, sealed and stamped.

  ‘Why had it been taken out again?’ she said aloud with a puzzled frown. ‘Ragnall must have taken it as part of the tribute.’

  ‘Look, it’s torn,’ said Nuala,
and Mara’s eyes followed the direction of her pointing finger. The sack was made from coarsely woven, unbleached linen and it had obviously been washed and reused many times — too many times: a thin trickle of flour was spilling out from a spot where the threads had begun to split. Mara looked at it thoughtfully, her agile mind raking through various possibilities.

  ‘We’d better go,’ said Nuala after a minute. She was glancing anxiously out of the open door. ‘Father O’Mahon is pacing up and down. I don’t think he is happy about burying Aengus in consecrated ground, even ancient ground like this. They all think it was suicide, except for you.’

  Mara roused herself. Whatever the truth was about that lonely and agonized death, she felt sure that it was not suicide. She would have to do this one last thing for Aengus. He had been a religious man in his life; in death his body should not lie at a crossroads and his soul condemned to roam, forever excluded from the heaven to which he had prayed so ardently. He would have the last rites from the Church that he had believed in so fervently.

  ‘Is that the knife that you found on the shelf?’ she asked, seeing it in Nuala’s hand. ‘Let me see it.’ There was a glint of something from the hilt that made it unlike a miller’s knife. She took it from Nuala’s outstretched hand and gazed at it, noting the stains of dried blood on the blade and on the hilt. It was a fine knife, a hunting knife, too long for general use and too fine for a miller. It had a few jewelled stones embedded in the hilt and an enamel oval set well inside the silver. And in the centre of that oval were the three lions of the O’Brien crest.

  ‘No,’ she said evenly, ‘no, I really don’t think that it was suicide.’

  EIGHT

  MACHCSLECHTA (SECTIONS ON THE RIGHTS OF SONS)

  There are three sons who can inherit their father’s goods: Mac Aititen, a recognized son, Mac Óige, a son of a pure woman (chief wife) and Mac Aldaltraige Urnadma, a son of a betrothed concubine.

  ‘SO WE NOW HAVE two deaths to account for,’ said Mara. Her six scholars sat very straight on their stools and their eyes were bright and concentrated. This was much better than Latin. She went on slowly and carefully, trying to sort out her own ideas as well as explaining the complicated situation to them.

  ‘Ragnall MacNamara, the steward, was killed probably late on Monday evening,’ she said. ‘He was killed in the churchyard beside Noughaval market. Aengus MacNamara, the miller, was killed two miles away at Oughtmama. His time of death is uncertain, but Malachy the physician thinks it could not be later than Monday. In fact, he thinks that he was killed on Sunday. The body was badly decomposed.’ She frowned at the quick ripple of excitement as Moylan and Aidan looked at each other with wide eyes. ‘There is a possibility that Aengus committed suicide,’ she continued. ‘He drowned in the stream that powers the mill; his neck was trapped under the sluice gate.’

  ‘Could it have been an accident, Brehon?’ asked Enda.

  Mara shook her head. ‘No, that would be impossible. He must have been a strong man: after all, he spent his life carrying sacks. If by any chance he put his neck under the gate then he could easily have lifted it up. He either committed suicide or else he was murdered,’ she added bleakly, remembering the swollen body with the water trickling from the gaping mouth.

  ‘Why go to all that trouble to kill a man?’ asked Fachtnan. ‘Why not just hit him over the head or stick a knife in him?’

  ‘Perhaps the murderer wanted it to look like suicide,’ said Shane eagerly.

  ‘There’s some people coming,’ said Moylan. ‘Lots of them … listen!’

  Mara went to the door of the schoolhouse and opened it. There seemed to be a large company of men riding down the quiet road that ran from Noughaval to the law school at Cahermacnaghten. She stood waiting and then glimpsed the familiar heads of the king’s bodyguards over the hedge.

  ‘It’s King Turlough Donn,’ she said over her shoulder to her scholars. ‘He must have heard the news. I think you should all go and have your supper now and we will talk about this tomorrow. Remember, though, don’t speak of anything that you have discussed here, except among yourselves. Shane, run over to the kitchen house and tell Brigid, will you?’

  Brigid would be in a fuss, she thought as she went to the gate. She would like to have had some notice if the king were coming to supper, but Mara felt a great wave of joy sweep through her at the thought of seeing him again.

  ‘My lord,’ she said formally, looking up into his pleasant open face, ‘you are very welcome.’

  The king swung himself off the saddle with the quick agile movement of a man who has spent much of his life on horseback and advanced with wide-open arms.

  ‘Mara!’ he said, kissing her fondly, while his bodyguards rode into the law school enclosure. ‘You were expecting me?’ he asked, a query in his voice.

  ‘No,’ said Mara frankly, ‘but you are as welcome as the swallows in April.’

  ‘Didn’t Garrett MacNamara tell you then? I told him to tell you. We are inaugurating his tánaiste [heir] tomorrow. I thought I, Fergal and Conall,’ he jerked his thumb at the two bodyguards, ‘would stay here in your guesthouse and the rest of my men would be billeted with Garrett.’ He glanced around to make sure he was not overheard and then said tenderly, ‘I take every excuse to enjoy your company.’

  ‘Though, of course, you are desolate at missing an evening in the company of Garrett and the well-born Slaney,’ said Mara with a straight face. She spoke quietly, but at the same time she also gave a quick glance around to make sure that no one could overhear her. Only with Turlough could she allow herself to joke about Garrett and his wife; with everyone else she always preserved a veneer of impartial friendliness towards all of the people in the Burren.

  Turlough chuckled. ‘Oh, I do miss you when I am away from you,’ he said. ‘Why can’t you make up your mind to marry me and leave this place and live with me in Thomond! I know what it is; it’s those wretched boys. You don’t want to leave them. Why can’t you bring them with you, set up a law school in Arra. The place is big enough, goodness knows!’

  ‘I’ll think about it,’ promised Mara with a smile. Their courtship had settled down to a good-natured teasing and enjoyment of each other’s company since his surprising offer of marriage last May — perhaps he, no more than she, did not really desire any great change. It wasn’t just the law school that she would miss if she went as his queen to Thomond; she knew that. She had been Brehon of the Burren for fifteen years now and she did not feel that she wanted to give up that position or to leave the gleaming limestone pavements and flower-filled grykes of the Burren for the monotonous fields of rich grassland in east Thomond.

  ‘It’s strange that Garrett didn’t tell you,’ said Turlough, reverting to the affairs of one of the three kingdoms he reigned over. ‘What an odd man he is! After all, you, as Brehon of the Burren, have to be there for the inauguration.’

  ‘He’s had a lot on his mind,’ said Mara quietly. ‘Have you heard that there has been a second death in the MacNamara clan?’

  ‘A second death!’ exclaimed Turlough.

  ‘Aengus, the miller, was found dead yesterday on the day of the burial of the steward,’ continued Mara. ‘I thought that Murrough would have told you. He was at Carron that day, or so I heard.’

  ‘That son of mine never bothers communicating anything with me,’ said Turlough, his impatient tone belied by the indulgence in his eyes. ‘He’s too busy with his English friends, riding in and out of Galway and spending more time with his father-in-law over in Kildare than he spends with his own father in Thomond. And look at the way he dresses! It’s no wonder that my own clan don’t like him much. I suppose they are afraid that if he became king he might sell out to the English. They say that the O’Neill is thinking of doing this. I must say that I’d be happier if Murrough saw less of his father-in-law and spent less time crossing over to London in his company.’

  ‘Murrough’s young,’ said Mara consolingly. ‘He’ll get over this nonsense, e
specially if he and Eleanor have a son, soon.

  ‘No sign of that at the moment.’ Turlough brooded for a moment and then his face cleared. ‘After all, he is only young; you’re right. I suppose I committed a thousand follies myself at that age.’ Suddenly he swung around to face her. ‘So what’s this about the miller then? Another death?’ he said abruptly as if the words had only just reached him.

  ‘I’m afraid that it was murder,’ said Mara. She thought about it for a moment and then repeated ‘murder’, in a firm tone. She would not voice Garrett’s fears about the miller’s death being suicide to anyone, when she was convinced he hadn’t died by his own hand. She told Turlough briefly of the whole affair and he nodded.

  ‘Could there be a connection?’ he asked. ‘Two MacNamaras: the miller and also the steward; it would seem strange if there was not a connection. You say that there was bad blood between the two men. You had to judge a case between them at Poulnabrone, isn’t that right?’

  ‘That’s true,’ said Mara. ‘I haven’t begun my enquiries properly yet. That could be the connection …’

  ‘But there is something worrying you, isn’t there?’ asked the king, eyeing her closely. ‘Come on, I know you. You’re holding something back.’

  ‘There is one other thing that connects the two murders,’ said Mara slowly. ‘There was a brooch found in the earth that covered Ragnall, the steward, and there was a hunting knife found in the mill.’ She stopped for a moment and then continued. ‘I think that the brooch and the knife may belong to the same person.’

  ‘And who is that?’ asked Turlough, sitting on the low stone wall beside the road and absent-mindedly shredding a piece of golden vetch.

  Mara glanced around. There was no one within earshot, the two bodyguards, Fergal and Conall, in the enclosure, were surrounded by the noisy crowd of scholars, Brigid was flying over to the vegetable store at the far side, Cumhal was driving the cows back to pasture after the evening milking and the road to Slieve Elva was empty.