Condemned to Death

by Cora Harrison

  The boat had come to rest on the sand and the body of a man lay in it – hands outstretched and dangling over the sides and the face, framed by shoulder-length hair, turned up towards the sky. And the significant thing was that there were neither oars nor sail.

  Mara looked down at him. The sun had risen to its full height; the light sparkled across the blue sea and it cast a warm glow on the face, but there was no doubt the man was dead. The worst thing about the corpse, she thought, was the way the swollen tongue protruded as if seeking moisture and the eyes were fixed and staring – almost betraying the horror of the final moments. She stood there silently for a few minutes, noting everything.

  ‘It’s nothing to do with us, Brehon.’ The slightly belligerent tone came from Brendan O’Connor, the samphire-gatherer, Etain’s brother. His voice was loud and quite hoarse – a man who spent his life on the sea, ferrying the delectable fronds from an inlet on the northern side of Black Head rocks across the bay and into the docks of Galway City. He wouldn’t have taken part in the fishing expedition; his own business was too valuable for him to take a few days away from supplying the cooks and innkeepers of Galway with the fresh samphire.

  ‘Did you find the body, Brendan?’ she asked.

  ‘No, no, it wasn’t Brendan. It was young Síle here.’ Fernandez sounded almost alarmed as he contradicted her. He dragged Brendan and Etain’s young sister forward, Cael’s tent-mate, a child of about eight, thought Mara, noticing with an inward smile that Cael looked disdainfully at the girl and moved a step nearer to the law-school scholars, placing herself firmly between her brother Cian, and Art, the fisherman’s son. The little girl gave her evidence in a frightened whisper. She had gone to collect some pretty shells and then seen something glinting from a rock and so had climbed out from over here … And she pointed back to where a line of rocks, still splashed by the retreating tide, ended in this small oval of sand, surrounded by pool-filled boulders.

  ‘We thought it best to leave it until you came, but we should get it buried before the tide comes in again and sweeps it back out to sea,’ explained Fernandez. ‘In this weather the corpse will soon be in a bad way and the boat can be buried with it. It’s useless, as a boat. You can see for yourself, Brehon, that the timbers are as thin as linen in some places.’

  ‘Stands to reason that those who laid him on the tide wouldn’t have wanted to waste a good boat,’ said Setanta, Art’s father, and there was a low murmur of agreement from all of the fishermen around him.

  ‘Nothing to do with us, as Brendan says, Brehon,’ said Michelóg, a local farmer whose land stretched down to the beach. Brendan nodded his agreement, while the other fishermen, Mara noticed, glanced at each other. Michelóg was not popular amongst them, and yet they were nodding when she looked at them as if to say that they were all in agreement.

  ‘You can see for yourself, Brehon,’ said Brendan, taking over the leadership while the fishermen turned gratefully from Michelóg towards him. ‘You can see for yourself that the boat did not come from the Burren because there was a south-westerly wind last night – you can still feel it on your left cheek and it was a south-westerly gale three nights ago. That boat would have been swept up here from west Corcomroe or even from the Kingdom of Kerry during the storm – it’s nothing to do with us,’ he repeated. ‘It’s an affair belonging to another kingdom.’

  ‘Your young lad, here, young Cormac, has been explaining to me about the custom of putting a murderer in a boat with no oars and pushing him out to sea. I had forgotten all about it,’ explained Fernandez. Mara said nothing. She felt furious with Cormac. ‘Say nothing except to me when there is a case going on’ was the rule that she had given to all her scholars, but Cormac, obviously, had not been able to resist airing his knowledge. It was, perhaps, a pity that Domhnall had felt that he should be the one, as the eldest in the law school, to bring her the news. If he had remained she was sure that he would have managed to silence Cormac. Slevin did not have the same easy authority, and may have been busy with safeguarding the boat and its terrible contents.

  ‘This is nothing to do with any of us, Brehon.’ Michelóg was looking at her very intently and she suddenly found this insistence, this slightly belligerent tone of voice to be strange, and she found the respectful silence of his listeners even stranger. She was surprised to find Michelóg on such good terms with the fishing community. A couple of years ago she had judged a case, brought by the fishermen of the area, that Michelóg deliberately and continually allowed a very savage bull of his to wander on the sands in order to alarm the fishermen and prevent them from using the bay at Fanore. Mara had quickly found a precedent among her law books and had told Michelóg that he had to keep his bull under control, either locked in a shed or in a field with no road access and near his house. Now, however, he seemed to be on the best of terms with Fernandez and Brendan.

  There was, she thought, a certain impetus from the crowd that surrounded her to say that this sad event had nothing to do with the people of the Burren. So what was wrong?

  ‘I’ve got a horse and cart ready here, Brehon,’ put in Michelóg. ‘We can take the body to Kiltonaghan Church. Someone has slipped up there to get the priest. We want to do everything in the right way according to the rules,’ he ended sanctimoniously.

  ‘We’ve all decided that we will bury the poor fellow in our own churchyard; he has made his peace with God and man,’ put in Fernandez, looking around him. Heads were nodding, but there was a feeling of tension in the air which did not accord with Fernandez’s pious words. Children were very silent, the younger ones clutched by mothers, the older ones wide-eyed and apprehensive. The whole of this maritime community acted as though they were under threat, and the threat, she realized, came in their eyes from her presence. If Domhnall had not gone to fetch her, would the man already be under the earth, in the same way as the stinking remains of a giant whale that came ashore after a storm last winter had been hastily buried until the earth had stripped the flesh from the valuable bones?

  ‘Father O’Connor is waiting for him,’ said Setanta and it was his voice, anxious and somehow slightly guilty, that aroused her suspicions even more. She had known Setanta for over twelve years and had entrusted him with the care of her beloved son, and would have been certain that he trusted her and was devoted to her interests, but he avoided her eye when she looked straight at him. All her instincts told her that something was wrong here, that this was not what it appeared to be – that it was not a body that had drifted up from the Kingdom of Kerry.

  And then she looked up at the dunes. Something had just occurred to her. She remembered the old boat that had lain there where a rabbit had jumped out – was it there? Somehow, she thought, as she rode down, and looked across at the tents in the hollows, the boat was no longer there, though it had taken her eye three days ago.

  And yes, it had been about the size and shape of the one which now held the dead body. She glanced at her eldest scholar and saw that he too seemed to be gazing at the body in a slightly surprised way. When he sensed her eyes upon him, he made up his mind and turned to her with an air of decision.

  ‘Could I have a word with you, Brehon?’ he asked quietly and immediately she moved away from the crowd and only halted when she knew that they were out of earshot of all.

  ‘I think that I know this man,’ he said, before she could ask him anything. ‘I could be wrong, but I don’t think so. It has been puzzling me ever since I saw the body, but looking at him there again, I suddenly remembered. I think that he is a goldsmith and dealer in gold from the city of Galway. I haven’t seen him for a few years, but I’m fairly certain that is who he is.’

  Mara nodded. This was enough for her. Domhnall’s parents, her daughter and son-in-law, lived in Galway and he spent his holidays there. He was a careful boy, would be most unlikely to speak unless he was reasonably sure of the facts. This combined with her instinct that something was wrong was enough for her for the moment. Step by step she would
check the facts, and if necessary unravel the mystery. She returned to her place beside the boat and allowed all eyes to fix upon her before she spoke.

  ‘Domhnall,’ she said quietly, ‘would you ride to Rathborney and ask Nuala, the physician, to come here. Tell her that I want her opinion on the cause of death. Go now, the sooner she is back, the sooner we can discover the truth.’

  The cause of death, in the opinion of all that surrounded her, was probably obvious. The man had committed the crime of fingal, had been judged, had been sentenced – somewhere along the south-western coast, probably, certainly well away from the Kingdom of the Burren – had been placed in a boat with no oars, had been set adrift upon the Atlantic Ocean, had been delivered over to the judgement of God Almighty, had died by exposure to the wind and the waves, by lack of pure water.

  And yet some strong instinct made her wonder whether this was the true story, and Domhnall’s words had now confirmed this. If the man was from Galway City, then English law prevailed there. A man who committed a murder would not be left in the hands of God, but would be hung from the gallows that stood just outside the city walls.

  And if this weather-worn boat came from the Fanore sand dunes, then the murderer might well be standing there in front of her.

  ‘Art,’ she said looking at her son’s foster-brother, ‘would you go and tell the priest that the Brehon is investigating the death of the unknown man and there may be no burial today.’ Art was a polite, pious boy and would be tactful and careful of the priest’s feelings.

  He was, of course, also, the son of Setanta the fisherman and of his wife Cliona, the sheep farmer, both of whom were present among the uneasy, rather guilty-looking crowd who faced her at the moment. This errand would probably remove the boy from the sands until the preliminary details had been taken and there were still plenty of scholars to serve her purposes until Nuala the physician arrived and either confirmed her suspicions, or, which Mara hoped, dismissed them. Mara had great reliance on Nuala and felt that she would probably be able to tell without any lengthy examination whether the man had died out there on the Atlantic Ocean or whether there was some other reason for his death.

  Three

  Bretha Commaithschesa

  (Judgements of the Neighbourhood)

  There is a common right to all seaweed cast upon the beach. It may be taken and used to fertilize the land.

  All edible plants, such as the seaweed duilsc which grows upon the rocks of the foreshore, may be taken freely by those who wish to gather them.

  Mara, with one last look at the body in the boat, deputed Slevin to stay on guard and to keep the seabirds from molesting it, and then walked out of the small inlet and back across to the main area of the beach. The crowd of fishermen and their families followed her in unusual silence.

  The sands at Fanore were scored diagonally with a long level line of black limestone, rather as though some long-gone race of people had built a road to run from where the River Caher entered the beach, between the sand dunes, right down to the low-tide mark on the other side. Here and there on this smooth flat surface a rock had been left and had been sculpted by the sea into a square shape, as if a giant had deposited a shining black stone box there in the centre of the roadway. Mara took up her position on one of these, seating herself on the smooth surface, warm from the sun, and sending Finbar to get her satchel from the pony’s side. She always kept it ready packed with slips of vellum, a travelling inkhorn and a case of well-trimmed pens. For the moment, though, she thought, her words would go unrecorded. She looked up at the still silent people.

  ‘Does anyone know who this man is?’ she asked and as she expected, heads were shaken.

  ‘Or how he was washed up on the sands?’ she continued and again there was this silent shaking of heads. Men looked at each other uneasily, though, and the women’s eyes were shielded or fixed on their children.

  ‘I don’t wish to hold up your work,’ she said to them all. ‘I shall just sit here and perhaps anyone who suddenly remembers the man, or knows anything about the boat, could come and tell me if anything occurs to their mind. But in the meantime, I know that you need to tend to your fish and my scholars here can tell me what happened this morning. Síle,’ she said to the eight-year-old, ‘perhaps you will stay, too, since you were the one that first saw the boat.’

  It was very interesting, she thought, to see how glances were exchanged at that and how the women grabbed the hands of young children as though to prevent any chatter and how the older boys and girls sidled away with quick looks at their parents’ faces. There was definitely something quite wrong here. No one is at ease with a dead body, but fishermen and their wives had often seen the dead, killed by Atlantic storms. Etain was the last to go. She watched her young sister for a moment with a troubled look on her face but eventually went away with many backward glances.

  ‘Come and sit down,’ Mara invited her younger scholars. The MacMahon twins, Cian and his sister Cael, sat side by side at her feet and Cormac perched on a smaller box-like rock at a slight distance. After a slight hesitation, Síle went and squeezed herself onto the rock beside Cormac. He half got up, caught his mother’s eye and sat down again. Cael sniggered and Síle gave a proud smile. Mara decided to get rid of the child as quickly as possible. It wasn’t fair to embarrass Cormac to that degree in front of his friends.

  ‘Just tell me again, Síle, how you found the boat,’ she said. Looking across the sands she realized that the boat, on its narrow spit of sand, even from this position in the middle of the beach, was completely hidden by surrounding rocks. She stood up, but still could not see it, so sat down again.

  ‘I didn’t know it was there,’ said Síle, seeming to be slightly alarmed. She repeated the words and her voice rose to a shrill pitch. Mara noticed that Síle’s brother and sister, Etain and Brendan, had not gone back to their hunt for samphire, nor had they joined the groups tending to the fires and gutting fish but stood together halfway up the sands.

  ‘You didn’t see it until you had climbed over the big rock; that’s right, isn’t it, Síle?’ Cormac’s voice was unusually indulgent and had a soothing note in it. Mara gave him a grateful nod.

  ‘That’s right,’ repeated Síle. She smiled adoringly at Cormac and snuggled a little nearer to him. Etain and Brendan turned back from the sea and went slowly up towards the fires.

  Mara briefly considered cross-questioning Síle about the boat, but then abandoned the idea as unworthy. The girl was obviously very young for her age and not too bright. She should really have kept Etain if she had wanted to do any interrogation. The parents, she remembered, were dead so Etain was probably mother as well as sister to Síle. She thanked the child effusively and sent her up to join the sister and brother, noticing with amusement the sigh of relief from Cormac when he got his rock back to himself.

  ‘Did any of you see her go across the rocks to discover the body?’ she asked in a low tone.

  ‘I did,’ said Cormac instantly. ‘And she was alone; no one went with her; they were all up at the top of the beach by the fires with the fish, Brehon,’ he added and his quick-witted understanding of what Mara would need to know made her sorry that he would not study a little harder and show more interest in the law. ‘She climbed over the rocks and then she screamed at the top of her voice – we didn’t take any notice of her, but then she kept on screaming until everyone came running.’

  ‘She’s just so stupid,’ said Cian with scorn. He turned to Mara with a businesslike air. ‘Where do you think the body came from, Brehon?’

  ‘And could you tell us about the procedure Brehons follow when a body floats in from another kingdom?’ enquired Cael with a thoughtful air. The girl was a natural scholar, always thirsting for new knowledge and with a memory that retained facts and figures in the same way as those sponges that floated in on the Atlantic tides retained water.

  ‘Do you know, Cian and Cael, I’m not certain of the answer to either of those questions,’ confe
ssed Mara. ‘Of course, I will be able to send a message to the Brehons of north and south Corcomroe if it does turn out to be a case of “fingal”; though further south as far as Kerry might be a bit more difficult with the countryside down there in a state of unrest, but we’ll see what the physician says first.’

  She wished that Nuala’s husband, her law-school assistant, Fachtnan, was here, but it was the end of term and he had gone on a journey to the north of Ireland to see his father and mother. It might be, she told herself, that there was no case here for her to deal with, that it would be just a matter of burying the body, but somehow she didn’t think so. Reason and instinct told her that this was unlikely to be a case of fingal. She was quite certain that no such case had been judged recently in Corcomroe. Only two days ago she had met Brehon Fergus MacClancy, her near neighbour from north Corcomroe, who lived near the giant cliffs of Moher, visible from where they stood, and he had said nothing about such an unusual case – and moreover, she suddenly recollected, Fergus had talked of a visit from his lawyer cousin, another MacClancy, from the south of the kingdom and surely a matter like this would have been discussed.

  ‘If the dead man is the result of a sentence of fingal, and I’m not sure of that,’ she said in answer to Cael, ‘then I suppose our only duty is to see that he gets a decent burial. It seems to me that if it is, then the body must have been swept up from beyond the River Shannon, from the Kingdom of Kerry. Brehon MacClancy, the cousin of the Brehon that you knew, Cael and Cian, the one that died at Bunratty, well, he said nothing to me about judging such a case and his cousin, Brehon MacClancy from the south of the kingdom, has recently visited him, therefore this body must have come from further down the coastline.’ The MacClancy dynasty of legal families stretched over the entire south-west of Ireland.