A Secret and Unlawful Killing

by Cora Harrison

  ‘I remember,’ said Mara.

  ‘And she was originally the wife of Henry’s eldest son, Arthur,’ continued Enda. ‘Did she and Arthur get divorced, Brehon?’

  ‘No, they don’t have divorce over in England; he died, perhaps of the wasting sickness,’ said Mara. And then she thought of Turlough’s son, Conor, but quickly she moved the thought from her mind. She had long practised the art of thinking only of what she could remedy. There was no remedy for Conor, she surmised, if even the son of the King of England could not have been saved.

  They passed Carron Castle while Enda was still enlightening the younger scholars about King Henry VIII.

  ‘Only eighteen and he’s a king,’ whistled Aidan. ‘Lucky!’

  ‘So they don’t have our rule of the eldest and the most worthy, Brehon, do they?’ asked Moylan.

  ‘No,’ said Mara over her shoulder. ‘In England, if your father is king, then you become king the very second he dies. Even a tiny baby can be a king.’

  They found this very funny and she sympathized with their amusement. In the Irish society a king was expected to be warlike and to lead his clan from the front. Enda continued to lecture Shane and Hugh about the differences between Brehon and English law, but from behind her she could hear Aidan and Moylan, amid raucous bouts of laughter, swapping details of Turlough’s instructive talk to them about the English way of life. From the phrases such as ‘arse-hugging breeches’ and ‘bulging cod pieces’ she surmised that Turlough had been enjoying himself.

  As they approached Oughtmama, Mara hurried them past the small farm where the sight of Malachy’s horse, still tied to a tree, showed that the unfortunate fourteen-year-old wife of the sheep farmer was still struggling to produce a baby.

  ‘It’s the next left turn, Fachtnan,’ she called. He and Nuala were so busy chatting that she thought it was quite likely they might ride past the lane to the mill and thereby amuse Aidan and Moylan even more.

  ‘I’ve never been to a water mill,’ said Shane, when they arrived at the ancient former monastic site. ‘How does it work, Brehon?’

  ‘Enda will tell you,’ said Mara, dismounting from her mare and tying the reins to a handy branch.

  ‘I’m just going to show Fachtnan where we found the body of Aengus,’ said Nuala, swinging her long brown legs over the pony’s back. Although Sadhbh made sure, now that Nuala was fourteen, that she wore the customary full-length léine, normally she had it kilted at the waist with her leather belt so that it seldom came much below her knees.

  ‘We’ll come too,’ said Aidan promptly, with a nudge to Moylan.

  ‘No,’ said Mara. ‘I need you two. My eyes aren’t as good as yours. I want to search the grass around here. I don’t know what I am looking for exactly, but if you find anything that looks as if it shouldn’t be there, then bring it to me. It could be anything like a piece of cloth, or a brooch or a knife — anything at all. Fachtnan and Nuala, you do the same up by the sluice gate. When we’ve done that, we’ll search the mill house, but Enda, Hugh and Shane, you keep a good look out, also.’

  Nuala and Fachtnan went up to the sluice gate, Moylan and Aidan seized a stick each and started vigorously stirring the grass and Enda made for the mill house, explaining to Hugh and Shane, ‘The water goes in that chute there and it turns that paddle wheel, do you see it? And up these steps in the next storey are the two millstones. Do you remember the eight sayings of Fithail?

  ‘“Around what is a household established,” said his son to Fíthail.

  ‘“That’s easy. Around a steady lower millstone,” said Fíthail.

  ‘“Tell me, what is the lower millstone of a household?” said the son.’

  ‘“That’s easy. A good woman,” said Fíthail …’ chanted Hugh obediently.

  ‘Brehon,’ screamed Shane.

  ‘What is it?’ Mara immediately abandoned Aidan and Moylan and went running across the short thick grass. She passed rapidly through the wooden door and then stopped.

  Enda and the two young boys were huddled just inside the door. Mara followed the direction of their horrified eyes.

  There on the wooden floor, stretched out, with an ominous, clotted lump of blood on his temple, was Niall MacNamara.

  ‘He’s dead,’ whimpered Hugh.

  Mara looked at the body on the floor. Niall did look dead. Above his head was a large ragged hole in the wooden ceiling; the shaft that rose up from the paddle wheel was cracked in the middle. One half was still sticking up, but the other lay, exposing the jagged edge of its split, on the floor. And beside Niall were two immense stone wheels, one of them broken in half.

  ‘The millstone has killed him,’ said Aidan.

  It was obvious what had happened: once the shaft had broken, the weight of the two millstones had brought them crashing down through the flimsy wooden floor in the second storey. One of them had hit Niall a glancing blow on the temple.

  ‘What broke the elm-wood shaft?’ asked Moylan.

  ‘Was Niall lying there on the floor when the shaft broke?’ whispered Hugh.

  ‘Was this an accident, Brehon, or another murder?’ queried Enda.

  Mara ignored the questions that poured from the boys. Quickly she crossed the floor and knelt beside the body spreadeagled on the floor. She reached out and touched the outstretched hand. It took a moment before her brain registered what she was feeling.

  Niall’s hand was not cold and lifeless; it was cool, but not cold. Mara moved her finger and found the wrist. There was a faint throb there; a faint beat of life.

  ‘You and Hugh, go and get Nuala,’ she said urgently to Shane. ‘Enda, get on your pony immediately and fetch Malachy. He’s at Seán Ruadh’s place two miles north of Carron. You know it, don’t you? Ask him to come if he can possibly do so. Tell him that Niall is alive, barely, but he is alive.’

  All three were gone instantly. They had all been trained from an early age into habits of instant obedience to their Brehon. Mara sat back on her heels, quickly unpinned her mantle and wrapped it around the unconscious body. It was all that she could think of doing. She didn’t think of praying. She didn’t even think of Malachy. Everything depended now on how much the fourteen-year-old Nuala had managed to glean from her solitary studies of her grandfather’s manuscripts.

  Nuala was there almost before Mara had completely wrapped the body. She came in swiftly, made no outcry and asked no questions. She knelt by Mara’s side, looked at the wound, at the ugly clots of blackened blood, and then lifted one eyelid and peered in.

  ‘The wound is not a problem,’ she said to Mara. ‘He hasn’t been badly cut. You can see that he has stopped bleeding a long time ago. That’s why the blood is black. The problem is the skull. He had a terrible blow on the head. He may die quite soon. Feel how cold he is.’

  She put her finger on Niall’s wrist and then said decisively, ‘There’s very little life left. His blood beats too slowly. We need to get some warmth into him. Fachtnan, make a fire some way. As quickly as you can! There are some iron pots upstairs. You can heat up some water in them.’

  ‘Here is my tinder box,’ said Mara. She pulled the tinder box from her pouch and then took one of Niall’s cold hands within hers and began to rub it gently. Nuala did the same, her face serious and intent.

  ‘Should we give him a drink?’ whispered Mara.

  Nuala shook her head. She did not reply, but went on rubbing the cold hand. Then she released it, undid the latchets of the sandals and started to rub the feet. Mara took the two hands within hers.

  ‘Pity we can’t light a fire in here,’ said Nuala in her normal voice, ‘but that wood must be old and rotten for the millstones to fall like that. It’s probably like tinder. The whole place might go up in flames.’

  It seemed ages before Shane arrived with a small flagon of hot water. ‘Fachtnan has more heating up, but he said to take this into you now,’ he said with one quick, scared glance at the unconscious man. ‘Hugh will bring some more as soon as it is hot e
nough.’

  ‘Find a linen sack upstairs. I’ll soak it in the hot water and wrap it around his feet,’ said Nuala. ‘Tread carefully, you don’t want to fall through that ceiling.’

  Shane went instantly. Mara glanced up. She was not sure that the timber, though old, was that rotten. The floorboards were far apart, but they seemed to be in good condition. What had made the shaft suddenly break, bringing down the two ton-weight millstones? Was it an accident, or was it another attempt at murder? What curse lay upon this ancient site that those lives which touched it recently should be lost?

  ‘God bless us and save us, this is a terrible thing,’ said a shocked voice at the doorway. ‘What in the name of God has happened here?’

  ‘Excuse me, Maol,’ said Shane, pushing past the bald-headed man with scant ceremony. ‘Here you are, Nuala. This is an old soft linen bag. I brought another one as well.’

  Nuala dipped the bag into the boiling water, held it steaming in front of Niall’s waxen-white face for a moment and then wrapped his two stone-cold feet in it. She left it there for a few minutes and then put it back into the water and immediately towelled Niall’s feet in the dry bag, rubbing them hard until a faint shade of pink appeared. No one answered Maol’s question.

  ‘Here’s the next pot of water,’ said Hugh.

  ‘Good,’ said Nuala. She took out the hot linen and then handed the first pot to Hugh. ‘Tell Fachtnan to fill it up again. Tell him to keep on boiling water as fast as he can.’

  ‘Why is he making that snoring noise?’ asked Shane in a low voice.

  ‘His skull is damaged. I’ve heard that before. He may die,’ said Nuala. She went on soaking the linen, wrapping the feet, unwrapping, drying, wringing out the next hot cloth and then wrapping the feet again. Her concentration was immense but after a while she said in a low voice, ‘When do you think Father will come, Mara?’

  ‘Should be soon, now,’ said Mara. ‘You carry on. I think he is beginning to look a little better.’ She wasn’t sure whether that was true, but Nuala was beginning to look a little less like a competent physician and a little more like a frightened child. She deserved some encouragement. The possibility was that Malachy might not be able to come; the young mother might still need his assistance urgently and even if he did, he probably knew no more than Nuala. So Mara continued to warm the stone-cold hands and Maol continued to mutter an unending stream of prayers and querulous queries, whether addressed to her or to his God, Mara did not know. Nor did she bother answering. Shane knelt down beside her and started to rub the other hand. Hugh came to and fro with small pots of boiling water and once seized some broken timbers from the ceiling and took them out, for the fire no doubt.

  ‘A terrible thing,’ said Maol ponderously. ‘Father and son to die on the same spot: you would think that a curse had been laid on this mill.’

  ‘Maol, you go back to your house and get a good fire going and a warm bed ready,‘’ snapped Nuala. ‘That would be some use at least. I think if Father doesn’t come soon, I’ll take a chance and move him. When you have everything ready, come back here with some sort of litter to carry him on. You and the lads will be able to carry him to your place.’

  ‘Yes, that would be wonderful if you could do that, Maol,’ said Mara diplomatically. ‘If you need any help, then Aidan or Moylan would love to be of assistance. Where are Aidan and Moylan?’ she asked as Hugh came back with more water.

  ‘They’re getting dead wood from the hedges for the fire,’ said Hugh.

  ‘That’s good,’ said Mara, feeling proud of all of her scholars. Each one of them was behaving in a practical and sensible way.

  ‘Do you think it would be a good idea to move him?’ she said in a low voice to Nuala.

  ‘I’ve been trying to remember,’ said Nuala, a frown of concentration etching itself across her smooth forehead. ‘The trouble is that I know so little. I think, though, that it is only in the case of broken bones that you don’t move them. I’ve never seen anything about the head. We could tie him to the litter and Maol, Fachtnan, Aidan and Moylan can carry him carefully. It’s not far to Maol’s house.’

  ‘I’ll go and send Fachtnan down with Maol,’ said Mara. ‘We’ll do it straight away. We won’t wait for your father to come back.’ Privately she thought that Nuala was well on the way to being as good a physician as Malachy. She had such a deep interest and she continually studied and thought about things.

  The abbey bell had rung for the noontime recitation of the angelus by the time that Malachy and Enda arrived. By then, Niall was warming gradually, well tucked up in Maol’s bed, snug beneath a pile of sheepskins and with a roaring fire fed enthusiastically by Moylan and Aidan. Nuala sat beside the bed, feeding small drops of hot mead into Niall’s mouth; he had just swallowed something as Malachy came into the room.

  ‘Sorry,’ he said to Mara. ‘I couldn’t get here any quicker. The baby was just arriving as Enda came.’

  Nuala looked a question and he gave her a reassuring glance. ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘by the grace of God, they’re both alive, but it was a hard birth. I had to pull the baby out with the birthing tongs that Fintan made for me. Let’s hope that the mother survives, but the little boy is well and feeding hungrily. What happened here?’

  Mara allowed Nuala to tell the whole story. Malachy nodded silently, felt the pulse in Niall’s wrist and still said nothing.

  ‘What do you think?’ asked Nuala impatiently.

  ‘He’s bad,’ said Malachy. ‘He’ll probably go on like this for days.’

  ‘And then?’

  ‘And then he’ll die,’ said Malachy impassively. ‘Or else, he might just recover,’ he added.

  ‘I’ll go and check on Hugh and Shane,’ said Mara, rising to her feet. ‘We left them there in case we didn’t see you coming. I’ll take Enda, Moylan and Aidan with me and leave you Fachtnan in case there is anything you need. Nuala will tell you all that she has done to keep the life in the man.’

  She hoped that Malachy would be appreciative of Nuala’s efforts. He was a silent man who appeared perpetually tired, a man who seemed to lose all love of life when his wife had died. He loved his daughter, but he put no enthusiasm into teaching her to become a physician. Mara remembered her own father, Séamus, Brehon of the Burren, and how proud he was of his clever daughter and how he made everything about learning the law seem such a wonderful game. Nuala’s interest in medicine was so intense that she would respond enthusiastically to any little bit of teaching. Mara resolved to have a word with Malachy and then followed Enda out of the little house.

  ‘Brehon, you know, I think that Niall stayed at Oughtmama all night,’ said Moylan, as they walked up the steep lane towards the mill. ‘There’s a pile of sheepskins in the old house up there, the one with the stone roof – it looks like someone made a bed there, and Maol said he saw a light shining from the window last night.’

  ‘But Fintan said he went back,’ argued Aidan, ‘don’t you remember? He told Enda that he passed the forge a few hours later.’

  ‘Doesn’t mean that he didn’t go back later on,’ said Moylan.

  ‘That makes sense.’ Moylan looked flattered. For once, Enda was agreeing with him. He gave Aidan a scornful glance.

  ‘He must have stayed the night, bird brain,’ he said with conviction. ‘He wouldn’t get up in the morning and go off to Carron without milking his cows and letting his dog out of the shed. Niall would never do a thing like that. He loves that dog.’

  ‘I don’t like that expression, “bird brain”, Moylan,’ said Mara mildly. ‘Why don’t you say something like: well, let me put the case. That would sound more lawyer-like.’ This produced a stunned silence, welcomed by her because she needed time to think. Moylan’s words had given her an idea. Suddenly all the puzzles about these two murders, which had seemed to be like a tangled length of rope, had begun to unravel and everything had started to fall into place.

  Shane and Hugh were happily engaged in sending boats, made from twi
gs, through the chute of the mill. Mara joined them.

  ‘Just fetch me a mat, or a couple of old sacks from the mill, Aidan, will you,’ she said, and when they came she knelt down and peered into the murky depths of the mill race.

  ‘What are you looking for, Brehon?’ came Hugh’s voice.

  ‘I’m not sure,’ said Mara truthfully. ‘I’ll know it when I see it, though. I’m looking to see what Niall was looking for.’

  She could hear Enda saying something but she did not listen. Right under the paddle wheel there was a gleam. A stray beam of autumn sunshine slanted in there and lit up something shining, something of silver and burnished iron. She pulled her head out and stood up.

  ‘Sorry, Enda, what did you say?’

  ‘I was explaining to Aidan why you thought Niall must have been looking for something in the water.’

  Mara looked at him with respect. ‘And what was your explanation, Enda?’

  ‘Well, of course, he must have been lying down with his head just where the shaft is. I worked that out. Otherwise he would have been able to dodge the stone when it came crashing down. If he were lying down, peering into the water, then he wouldn’t have had time to move out of the way. In fact,’ said Enda, his voice suddenly rising, ‘that was probably why the shaft broke. He was trying to move it so as to see something.’

  ‘Or the murderer was up on the floor above and saw him and decided to murder him by bashing a hole in the floor and letting the millstones come crashing down,’ suggested Moylan enthusiastically.

  ‘Hmm,’ said Enda sceptically. ‘There are easier ways of killing a man than that. Anyway, why didn’t he finish him off? He must have known that he was still alive.’

  ‘Perhaps he was hoping that we would think it was an accident.’ Moylan’s voice began to lose conviction. Enda was very respected by Aidan and Moylan for the ease with which he learned everything.