NINE
TUAITHI (ON THE DIVISIONS OF THE KIN IN THE KINGDOM)
The fine (kin group) is divided thus:
The gelfine (bright kin), the descendants on the
male line of the same grandfather The derbhfine (true kin), the descendants on the
male line of the same great-grandfather
The iarfine (after kin), the descendants on the
male line of the same great-great-grandfather
THE CASTLE AT CARRON, home of the MacNamara, was transformed when Mara and Turlough, followed by the bodyguards and the six scholars, arrived at midday on Saturday. The ugly, poorly built, exterior walls were hung with great linen banners proudly displaying the MacNamara crest of the prancing lion. Fluttering pennants, in the English style, were placed on either side of the magnificent iron gates, and horn-players and drumbeaters lined the path up to the old oaken door. The clan had gathered in great numbers, standing around braziers of burning charcoal in the inner courtyard, or waiting under the boughs of the ancient ash tree near to the cairn where the inauguration ceremony would take place. A hum of excitement had begun as soon as the king was sighted and fervent blessings and greetings were called out as they made their way through the massed throng.
‘Wait here,’ said Mara to her scholars as she and King Turlough handed over their horses to a servant, then walked up the path and in through the wide-open door.
For once the draughty ground-floor entry passage was warm and welcoming with braziers of sweet-smelling pine burning in every corner. In honour of the occasion, great efforts had been made to brighten the worn stone spiral staircase: thick candles of scented beeswax were flickering in each small embrasure and newly woven MacNamara banners hung from the curved ceiling above their heads.
At the door of the great hall, Slaney, the new wife of Garrett MacNamara, stood to receive her guests. She was a tall, heavily built woman, about thirty years of age, guessed Mara, gazing at her with interest. Slaney had a high colour, sapphire blue eyes, a wide sensual mouth and a pair of well-displayed, enormous breasts. She had come from a very wealthy merchant family in Galway and was dressed in the latest English fashion, her skirt broad under the hooped width of the farthingale and her hooded headdress stiff with jewel-encrusted embroidery. A haughty, arrogant woman, thought Mara, and wondered why Garrett had gone outside his own clan and any of the other clans in the kingdom in order to marry this large and domineering person. Slaney, she noticed with a flash of amusement, gave the simplicity of the Brehon’s attire and uncovered hair a contemptuous glance and then turned her attention to the king.
‘My lord,’ she said in English, ‘you do us great honour.’
Turlough stared at her disapprovingly and made no reply. Mara suppressed a smile. Was this Slaney stupid? Surely she should know by now how bitterly opposed the king was to anything English. Slaney, however, gushed on in her breathless, high-pitched voice.
‘Prince Murrough is here already,’ she said sweetly as she beckoned to her star guest, who came forward reluctantly, his eyes full of amusement. Mara concealed a smile. Father and son faced each other for a few moments, rather like a pair of rival stags about to lock antlers.
‘Prionsa, she calls you, and you not even a tánaiste,’ said Turlough tauntingly, eyeing this son, so alike, and yet so unalike.
Mara sighed. It was typical of Turlough, of course, but it was not very politic for father and son to be continually airing their differences in public. It was especially silly since she knew with great certainty that this son was the apple of his father’s eye. Poor Conor, though an earnest, hardworking man and a very good son, was never as beloved as Murrough, who had inherited his father’s looks and charm. She gave Murrough a warning glance now and then turned her attention to her hostess.
‘You have made some wonderful changes here,’ she said kindly to Slaney, and armed herself for a boring ten minutes of hearing about Flemish tapestries and the high cost of linen in Ireland.
However, Slaney’s eyes left hers immediately and widened in horror and disbelief. Mara turned and looked over her shoulder to see Niall MacNamara coming up the steps.
‘What is that man doing here?’ hissed Slaney to one of the servants, speaking fluent Gaelic to Mara’s amusement. ‘That man has no right to be here.’
Then she pushed the servant aside and confronted Niall herself.
‘This is for the derbhfine only,’ she said coldly and then as he stopped and stood still in the middle of the stairs, a quick flush of embarrassment mantling his face, she flapped her hand at him as if shooing a chicken away, turned her back and seized ‘Prince’ Murrough by the sleeve of his elaborate silk shirt, drawing him over towards the fire. Mara gazed after her with interest. To suddenly engage in a quarrel with a clan member and then to abandon her most important guests: what very poor manners towards the king and his Brehon! And why was Slaney so anxious to impress ‘Prince’ Murrough and to show the world that she was on his side in this apparent quarrel between son and father? After all, as Turlough had pointed out, it was Conor, not Murrough, who was the tánaiste, heir, to the kingdom, and Turlough himself was hale and hearty and looked set to live for many more years. If Murrough did ever inherit the throne, Slaney would probably be an old woman by then and well beyond looking for favours from the ruling family of the three kingdoms of Thomond, Corcomroe and Burren. Was there something else? speculated Mara, gazing after the couple with interest. Was perhaps Slaney romantically interested in Murrough? He was certainly a dashing figure. She had always felt his charm herself. She looked carefully at the two figures. There seemed to be a certain attraction between them, she thought. They were certainly very aware of each other, standing closely, almost touching but not quite, eyes locked for a moment and then self-consciously pulling away and surveying the room as Slaney’s husband, Garrett, came out from an inner room.
Well, well, well, thought Mara. Now this is interesting. Slaney has only been married to Garrett for less than three months and already she has found herself another man. Turlough will be amused at that.
‘Look at him,’ spluttered Turlough now, staring angrily at his son. ‘Look at him, dressed up like an English man. Look at his doublet and his short mantle and that indecent tight hose. Soon he’ll be shaving off his moustaches and growing a little pointed beard.’
‘Have a cup of mead,’ said Mara beckoning to a servant just as Garrett came rushing up, his high-foreheaded face flushed with embarrassment. He had obviously seen how his wife had left the king without the basic courtesy of offering him something to drink. He took the cup from the servant and proffered it on bended knee.
Turlough received it with a grunt, but then patted Garrett on the shoulder as the first swallow of the honeyed drink slid down his throat. He was not a man to stand on his dignity or to bear a grudge. Garrett stood up looking relieved and then made a signal to an elderly man by the fireside.
‘My lord, may I present Cormac, elected by the clan to be the tánaiste,’ he said.
The previous tánaiste had not died but had become so crippled with old age and infirmity that he had resigned his position and asked the clan to elect a new heir to the taoiseach. This Cormac, a cousin of the previous tánaiste and of Garrett, did not look as if he would last too long either, thought Mara. He must be sixty, at least, though he looked more.
‘You’d think that Garrett would have got the clan to select his own younger brother?’ whispered the king, after he had greeted Cormac. Mara did not reply, though she knew the answer to the question. Garrett would be hoping that this old man might last until a son of his recent marriage became old enough to be elected as tánaiste. A son to succeed the father; this English custom was beginning to come into Ireland. Garrett’s younger brother, very keen on long sea voyages for trade and adventure, was a man only in his early twenties. If he became tánaiste, then Garrett’s eldest son, as yet unborn, might have little chance to be the next taoiseach of the MacNamara clan. That thought remind
ed her of Turlough’s eldest son.
‘Where is Conor?’ she asked. ‘I would have thought he would be here today. Is he away?’
Turlough’s face clouded. ‘He’s not well and that’s the truth of it. He hasn’t been well all of the summer. He’s getting a lot of fevers and he is getting thinner and thinner. First they thought that the house on the island at Inchiquin Lake didn’t suit him, but he’s been no better since he moved out of that. I’m worried about him. I’ve had physicians from all over the country to come and look at him and they give him this and that, but none of it makes any difference.’
With that, he moved abruptly away and began to talk to Teige O’Brien, his cousin. Mara gazed after him. He did look worried. The wasting disease that attacked many young men and women seemed to have no cure and if that was what ailed Conor, then his father was right to be anxious.
By now, despite the noticeable lack of food and drink, people in general were beginning to enjoy themselves. Most of them, anyway, Mara thought, turning her eyes thoughtfully towards Niall MacNamara. He must have decided to ignore his hostile reception because he had now reached the top of the stairs and was huddled into an obscure corner of the hall; in England he would be reckoned a bastard, but here in Ireland? She took tiny sips of her mead, trying to look as if she were enjoying it, while her dark green eyes studied Niall intently, taking in his unaccustomed finery. He had an obviously new mantle and it was pinned with a shining silver brooch. Slaney, of course, was right. This hospitality in the castle would be for the taoiseach’s immediate family, only important outsiders like the wheelwright, the blacksmith and the miller would normally expect to be invited. Did Niall think that since his father was dead, he had inherited his father’s privileges? He did not look as if he were enjoying his victory. No one spoke to him and his face was tense and nervous. Mara nibbled some hazel nuts meditatively and wondered about him.
‘Clear the room.’ Garrett was bustling around getting servants to move the crowd to the sides of the hall. It seemed as if the meagre allowance of mead and food for the privileged guests had now come to an end. ‘Make way for the king,’ he said fussily. ‘Move back everyone. My lord, and you, Brehon, would you follow me.’
Garrett went awkwardly down the narrow twisting staircase, bowing his head to avoid the trailing banners, Mara and Turlough followed him and behind came Slaney with ‘Prince’ Murrough. When they reached the door there was a great cheer from the MacNamaras waiting patiently in the chill of this early October day. They surged forward to gather under the pale yellow leaves of the huge ash tree, leaving a wide pathway for their taoiseach and their king. Turlough gathered his mantle more closely around him and then he strode forward to take his place on the raised platform of heavy stone slabs beside the cairn, the inauguration place of the MacNamara clan on the Burren. Mara stood on one side of him and Garrett on the other. Slaney and Murrough mounted the platform also, but stood at the back, whispering to each other.
‘By the power devolved on me from my great ancestor, Brian Boru, and from his sons and his grandsons, I, Turlough Donn O’Brien, King of Thomond, Corcomroe and Burren, son of Teige, son of Turlough Beg, son of Brian, son of Mahon, son of Murrtough, son of Turlough, true descendant of the derbhfine of Brian, son of Cinnéide, now inaugurate Cormac MacNamara as the new tánaiste of the MacNamara clan here in the Kingdom of Burren.’
The mellifluous Gaelic sentences flowed on and the clan stood reverentially silent until he finished. Then their taoiseach left the platform, took Cormac by the hand and brought him to the king and formally presented him as the duly elected tánaiste for the MacNamara clan in the kingdom of the Burren. The cheers were fairly muted, thought Mara, as Cormac the tánaiste knelt cautiously, his ageing joints audibly creaking, and placed his hands within the hands of his overlord King Turlough Donn O’Brien for the ceremony of imbas. And then Garrett knelt and paid homage also. This time the cheers were definitely very half-hearted. Garrett seemed to have made himself unpopular in the last few months. Perhaps with a different and less ambitious wife, things might have been different for him. His father had been a popular man and this would have influenced the clan to elect the son as the successor and also to warm towards him. Garrett had his chance; now it looked as if he had lost the goodwill of the MacNamaras on the Burren.
‘My lord,’ said Garrett, still on his knees before his overlord, ‘we of the clan of MacNamara have two more matters to settle. There have been two deaths during the last week. Ragnall MacNamara has died and left no son, just a daughter.’
He stood up and looked around. There was a ripple of movement in the crowd as heads turned to see whether Maeve MacNamara was present and then turned back again when she was not discovered. Mara noticed that Teige O’Brien took a long searching look around the crowd. What did he think about his son’s fancy to marry the daughter of the MacNamara steward, she wondered.
‘There is no other near relation of the dead man,’ continued Garrett, ‘so I ask that the land be returned to the clan to be used where necessary.’ His eyes found his wife, who had moved slightly forward, and then he looked back again at the king. Slaney took another step forward so that now she was definitely part of the group.
‘The Brehon will tell us the law about this,’ said Turlough Donn with a slight frown. ‘There must be provision made for the girl. How old is she?’
‘She is sixteen years old and she will shortly be married,’ said Slaney, speaking in Gaelic so that all could understand. ‘Maol MacNamara is anxious to marry her and he could be granted a portion of the land. The taoiseach is in favour of this match and has already given his permission.’ She cast a quick stern glance at her husband and he bowed his head obediently.
‘The law is that, where there is no male heir, a female heir should be given enough land to graze seven cows and the dwelling place that is her home,’ said Mara dryly. She fixed Slaney with a long cold look. What business of hers was this? Slaney had been born and brought up in Galway and had lived under English law. She could not be expected to know Brehon law, but she could hold her tongue until she knew the customs of her husband’s land.
She waited for Slaney’s prominent blue eyes to drop before hers before she continued. ‘Maeve herself, as she lacks a father, will come under the protection of the king. I would be happy to deputize for you, my lord,’ she said to Turlough, wishing that she had fixed this up beforehand.
‘That’s settled then,’ he agreed heartily as Mara breathed a sigh of relief. She should have known that he would not let her down. ‘Maeve MacNamara gets land fit to graze seven cows and the dwelling house. And the Brehon, in my name, will order her marriage as she thinks fit.’
‘But, my lord,’ said Slaney in her sweetest manner, ‘surely the chief of the clan can be relied upon to look after this fatherless young girl.’ Once more she spoke to the king in English and once more Turlough Donn turned a blank face towards her and then looked at Garrett for an explanation. Garrett flushed and cast an uneasy glance at his wife.
‘What the taoiseach’s wife is saying, my lord …’ began Mara, and translated Slaney’s remark slowly and carefully. There was a little ripple of appreciation from the crowd. They were enjoying this; the ban tighernae, Slaney, was not popular amongst them. She gave the remark a moment to sink in and then added: ‘But, of course, the law is quite clear. The king now has the responsibility for Maeve MacNamara; her land and her dwelling house go with her into any marriage which is arranged for her. The rest of Ragnall MacNamara’s land goes back into clan land, and will, no doubt, be allocated by the taoiseach to a deserving young man.’ Or else used to furnish Slaney with all the fine goods which would allow her to boast to her merchant relations in Galway of the splendid marriage she had made. Mara looked quickly at the king and saw her own thoughts in his sceptical eyes. He nodded quickly and she finished: ‘This is the law of the king.’
Garrett looked uneasy. Slaney began to whisper in his ear. The king stared at him with an expressio
n of disbelief in his eyes. Though Turlough was the last person to stand on ceremony this still must strike him as very strange behaviour. After a moment he grew impatient.
‘Is that all?’ he asked. ‘Perhaps we can return inside. The day is becoming cold.’
‘My lord,’ said Garrett after a pause while he licked his lips and glanced nervously at his wife. ‘There is another matter. Aengus, the miller, died; whether by his own hand or by another’s no one can tell. He was not married and had no immediate family so I ask that you confirm that the mill, and the land around it, goes back to the clan and its taoiseach.’
‘My lord,’ said Niall, hastily pushing himself to the front of the crowd. ‘I am the son of Aengus the miller and as such I claim my father’s property.’
‘Aengus was not married,’ repeated Garrett pompously, staring at this insignificant member of his clan.
‘My lord, I was born of the union between Aengus and his servant, Cliodhna,’ persisted Niall.
‘The church frowns on such matters,’ said Slaney. Her Gaelic was fluent and perfect when she chose to speak it.
‘There is no evidence that you are the son of Aengus,’ said Garrett dismissively. ‘Eoin!’ he called, his voice rough and peremptory. As Eoin came forward reluctantly, Garrett seized him by the arm and held him face to face with Niall.
‘What was that you said when we found Aengus’s body?’ he demanded. ‘You spoke then about how Aengus was depressed because he had no son to follow him in the mill.’
Eoin’s face was dark red and he was obviously disconcerted by this public challenge.
‘Were you quoting the words of Aengus the miller, or just general gossip?’ intervened Mara.
‘Just gossip, Brehon,’ said Eoin. He looked relieved and then averted his gaze from the indignation in Garrett’s face.
A Secret and Unlawful Killing Page 12
