Condemned to Death

by Cora Harrison

  Mara obediently bent down and examined the narrow, brittle shafts of blue-green grass. It was a marvellous grass for knitting the sand into a bank – its roots spread and entangled each plant with the others around it, but its very brittleness made it vulnerable and the narrow keel of the small boat had sliced the stems and leaves, leaving the broken edges to mark the path between the top of the sand dune and the channel of the Caher River which wound its way through the mountains and discharged its fresh water into the ocean. The puzzle of how the body got to the sea was now solved.

  Four

  Uraicecht Becc

  (Small Primer)

  The physician has an honour price of seven séts and this does not increase for any reason so a master of the profession has the same honour price as an ordinary physician.

  Before a physician is allowed to practise in a kingdom, he (she) has to have public recognition. This is bestowed by an examination of the candidate’s training and proficiency by two recognized physicians.

  A fine is exacted if the physician does not cure a curable illness, either through lack of knowledge or because of malice.

  Nuala was with them half an hour later. She had brought her apprentice Liam and a man who worked on her farm with her and all three had panniers suspended on either side of their horses. Domhnall conducted the horses across the firm sand and courteously helped her to dismount before organizing the others into various tasks which allowed Mara to speak to Nuala in private. She was glad to see the physician, glad to have her professional advice in this case, which had started off as a sad occurrence, and now, in her mind, had changed into a puzzling case of murder.

  ‘I thought that I could probably do an autopsy here on the beach rather than bring him all those miles through the mountain back to Rathborney,’ Nuala said in an undertone to Mara as she surveyed the dead man in the boat. ‘I can put up a screen, we’ve brought a tarpaulin and there will be plenty of sea water to wash away the marks afterwards. We’ve brought a bucket, but I thought we could probably get some more from the fishermen, if necessary, and I’ve got my tools here. The boat will do as well as a table, or we can use one of the flat rocks. In any case,’ Nuala took a quick look at the damp, firm sand beneath her feet and nodded, ‘yes, it’s certainly tidal up to here. By the next low tide all marks will have been washed away. An ideal place for an autopsy; I must tell some of my colleagues about this.’ She gazed thoughtfully at the body, bending over and examining the tongue and then straightening up.

  ‘What is it that you want to know, Mara?’ she asked.

  ‘The cause of death, certainly; and I suppose,’ continued Mara, ‘I am wondering whether this is a death from exposure – a man who was judged in some place south-west of here and who was set upon the tide as a murderer of close kin and was abandoned to the wind and the ocean waves, or whether,’ and here she could hear her own voice hardening, becoming direct and focused, ‘or whether,’ she continued, ‘this man was killed somewhere near here, and that the appearance of a death by the sentence of fingal has been faked and the corpse should be investigated as a secret and unlawful murder.’

  ‘Last meal – time of death, you’ll need to know all that sort of thing.’ Nuala, as always, was brisk and professional. Even when she was twelve years old she was so accomplished in medical matters that it was whispered in the Burren that the child was a better physician than her father, Malachy, and was, in fact, a reincarnation of her grandfather. Many people sought the advice of the daughter rather than the father and this made tensions and divisions grow between them. Now, twelve years later, after long years of study under the supervision of the physician at Thomond and travel to Italy to learn the latest methods and knowledge of the human body, she was the envy of many kingdoms. Mara was her godmother and trusted absolutely the young woman’s skill and knowledge.

  ‘I think that once I know how he died I may want further information, but at the moment, I think I just want to know the cause and the time of death,’ she said now and Nuala gave a brief nod.

  ‘I’ll send Liam for you, then, as soon as I have anything to tell you,’ she said and began to take some fearsome-looking implements, saws, knives and pincers, from her leather pannier. Domhnall and Slevin, at her command, had led the three horses back up the sands towards the fresh water of the River Caher and after tethering them to a couple of stakes were standing there. Mara retreated from the curtained-off space, walking first up towards the smoking fish and then changing her mind and turning aside to walk towards the northern end of the beach, to the place where her two eldest scholars stood, still by the horses, but obviously, even from a distance, deep in earnest conversation with each other.

  The River Caher ran on stony ground, down from the mountain, through the sand dunes and then across the open beach. Not deep, thought Mara, looking down at it and wishing that the beach was empty and that she could shed shoes and stockings and paddle through the rippling water. She bent down and put her hand and arm in until her fingers touched the bottom – not much more than a foot deep in places, she thought, but, of course, it was now dead tide. She took out her hand and licked the tops of her fingers – still quite fresh, she thought, but no doubt at high tide the river would be flooded with salt water and a boat could easily be slid down this waterway and into the sea.

  She looked affectionately at Domhnall and Slevin still deep in talk. They were a nice pair, she thought, Slevin, tall and leggy, Domhnall, though a year older, not quite as tall as his friend, a dark-haired, dark-eyed, olive-skinned serious boy, contrasting with Slevin’s fair hair and skin and lively, fun-loving temperament. They had entered her law school at the same time, at the beginning of the Michaelmas term when one was eight and the other seven years old, and they had immediately been best of friends – Domhnall, quiet, studious, her grandson by her first marriage, son of her daughter Sorcha and of Oisín a merchant from Galway, and his best friend, Slevin from Mayo, more extrovert, a very good musician and a talented dancer. She walked down to meet them and could see that they were glad to see her. They cherished their privileges of being the leaders of the law school and now they probably guessed that she wanted to talk about this puzzling affair before the presence of the younger scholars brought irrelevancies and silly jokes into the proceedings.

  ‘Advise me,’ she said to them seriously. ‘I’m wondering what to do when Nuala has finished with the body. Domhnall, how sure are you that this is a gold merchant from Galway?’

  She was interested to see from Slevin’s startled glance that Domhnall had said nothing about this to his friend. Very discreet, she thought with a flicker of amusement, but better to be too discreet than someone who tells before being given permission to do so.

  ‘Yes,’ she said to Slevin now, ‘Domhnall thinks that he might have recognized him, that he could be a gold merchant from Galway, and, of course, that would fit in with your conclusions that the man wore English dress – Slevin thought,’ now she addressed Domhnall, ‘that the man was wearing an English shirt, linen, but made in the English style with buttons down the front, and hose, and could well have had the doublet, cloak, boots and nether hose stripped from him as part of attempt to make a case of murder appear like a judicial sentence of fingal.’

  ‘Iontach!’ exclaimed Domhnall. ‘It’s all beginning to come together, isn’t it, Brehon. I had another look at the man’s face while you and Nuala were talking and I’m sure that he is a goldsmith from Galway. I was used to seeing him all dressed up – he was a fancy dresser, and seeing him there, all bedraggled – just dressed in a léine or a shirt and covered with seaweed, he looked so different, but the more I looked at him, the more I thought that he was, indeed, the goldsmith from Galway City.’

  ‘Do you know his name?’

  ‘Niall Martin,’ said Domhnall without hesitation. ‘Niall Martin. I’m sure that was his name. Mind you, my father would know more about him than I would.’

  ‘And was he married?’

  ‘Not that I reme
mber.’ Domhnall sounded a little unsure, thought for a moment and then resolutely nodded his head. ‘No, he wasn’t,’ he said. ‘I remember my father talking to him, well, Brehon, you know my father – he was giving him advice, telling him that he could expand his business, get a bigger shop, take on some workmen, or an apprentice, make his business more profitable. My father had all sorts of good ideas to give to him, and Niall Martin listened to them all, but in the end he just shook his head. And he said that he had neither wife nor child and no near relations and that he preferred to manage everything himself. I’d say myself that he was content with what he had – that he didn’t want anyone else to have a nose in his affairs. He had a little shop at the bottom of Red Earl’s Lane; you know the place, Brehon, don’t you, and, well it didn’t look anything great, but he did his business there.’

  ‘I see,’ said Mara. She was thinking hard. Domhnall was only sixteen years old, but he was astute and reliable, and above all, because of his father’s connections with the merchants of Galway, he knew all there, spoke perfect English as well as fluent Gaelic, and would be able to make his enquiries acceptable to all. And Slevin, as usual, would make an excellent second-in-command to his admired friend. Should she go herself to Galway to make enquiries, or send these two as her deputies? The key to the mystery of this death, she felt quite strongly, would lie in the Burren rather than in the English city of Galway.

  But in the meantime …

  ‘But in the meantime,’ she said aloud, ‘I have to decide what to do about the body. If it turns out, as I suspect, that this is not a case of fingal but is a murder of a man from the city of Galway, then should he be sent back to Galway, or buried here?’

  ‘It depends on how long he has been dead,’ said Slevin in a practical fashion of the son of a farmer who would have had many dead bodies to dispose of in his time. ‘If he has been dead for only a day, then it wouldn’t be too bad to take the body to Galway City, but if he has already been dead for longer, and myself I would guess that he has been – well, given the heat of the sun, and the length of the journey and then finding a priest and a graveyard …’

  ‘Better to bury him here,’ put in Domhnall. ‘There are plenty of men to dig the grave and if any relatives turn up, they can always come and pray there. After all, if he died at sea, he would be buried at sea.’

  ‘You’re right,’ said Mara, cheered by the matter-of-fact philosophy. ‘We’ll bury him here at Fanore, that’s settled. So what do you think that this man, Niall Martin, if it were he, was doing here on Fanore Beach? It is, after all, a long way from Galway City.’

  ‘Not that long,’ said Domhnall with a cool deliberation in his voice. ‘After all, Brendan, the samphire-gatherer, goes to Galway every day and comes back every evening.’

  Mara met his eyes. ‘That’s an interesting point,’ she said slowly. ‘It does, does it not, provide a link between Galway and this place.’

  ‘Though there appears to be no link between samphire and gold,’ said Slevin.

  ‘I wonder,’ said Mara pensively. She looked at the long line of rocks at the far side of the river. The sun had moved a little into the south-west and she could see the prominent vein of silver-white quartz which seemed to bisect one large flat boulder of black limestone. There had been a lot of excitement, she remembered hearing from Ardal O’Lochlainn when gold had been found on the west coast of Galway in a seam of this soft quartz. Men had laboured night and day but there had been only a small amount of gold found, and the interest had soon faded. She told the two boys about it and Domhnall nodded his head wisely.

  ‘Of course, if ever there was a man who knew the rocks of Fanore well, then it must be Brendan. He’s been scouring the rocks here for samphire ever since he was the height of a rabbit – or so he keeps telling me,’ he added and Mara smiled her appreciation of the dry humour and shrewdness of her grandson.

  ‘You’re right, of course. That makes a double link.’ She thought about the matter. This case, if Nuala confirmed what she suspected, could turn out to be unexpectedly complicated. She looked out to sea, turning over the various possibilities in her mind.

  ‘Dinner!’ shouted Cormac. ‘Dinner, everyone!’ He stuck his two fingers into his mouth and shrilled out a whistle in the direction of his mother and she smiled, raised a hand in acknowledgement and, with her two oldest scholars, made her way to the top of the beach where the cooking fires burned.

  There was plenty of deliciously fresh fish for lunch and Brendan had generously added some of his morning’s gathering of samphire, though he had not stayed for the meal but had set off for Galway.

  ‘The tide is coming in and there’s a nice fresh, south-westerly breeze so he will be in time for the evening meals in the inns and pie shops in Galway,’ Etain explained to Mara. ‘They like to have the samphire as fresh as possible and, of course, it only takes minutes to cook – you put it straight into boiling seawater if possible, if not ordinary salt water, boil and then taste.’

  Mara ate it with relish. If it were not for the dead body only a hundred yards away, she would be enjoying this out-of-doors meal, the fresh mackerel, the chunks of buttered soda bread and the delicious salty taste of the samphire.

  ‘You and Brendan have a good trade with the City of Galway, haven’t you?’ she asked.

  ‘Brendan has been very clever,’ said Etain enthusiastically. ‘My parents used to gather samphire, but they just bartered it for fish from the fishermen and the people around here were not that interested – they could easily gather their own seaweed. Brendan was the one that thought of getting a boat and taking some to Galway City where all of those rich merchants live – people who like to have their food tasty, who like to try different flavours, different dishes.’

  And, yes, it had been clever, Mara thought. Surprisingly there was no provision for the worth of a merchant in the list of honour prices that Brehon laws provided, but yet, here in the sixteenth century, this buying and selling was a new livelihood, something which was as paying, as lucrative as the age-old trades of fisherman or farmer, of weaver or carpenter. An urban society such as Galway City was dependent on traders and merchants to supply its table. Traditionally the wines came from France and from Spain, the exotic fruits and spices from far-flung places, but the simple pleasures of oysters, fresh fish and samphire could come from the nearby Gaelic communities. Doubtless, this was a flaw in her beloved Brehon laws. There should be an honour price fixed for a merchant, something that echoed his or her status in the community, and there should be laws that regulated the trading of goods for profit and for a livelihood rather than a mere bartering of produce produced on the farm or lands. Brendan’s venture into the world of trade had been profitable to him. She could see the boat that he used these days, moored to the short new makeshift pier made from a line of rocks, well padded with narrow tree trunks, that jutted out into the sea, no fishing boat, but a Galway hooker or bád mór, a gaff-rigged boat about thirty feet in length, ideal for carrying goods swiftly and easily with its three brown sails. By sea, the journey to Galway City was less than half the length of the journey by land. And in a boat like that one, it would be accomplished quickly and easily and there would be no deterioration in the samphire, unlike if it was carried by cart along the dusty roads.

  ‘Here comes Liam,’ said Domhnall in her ear and she nodded her appreciation at his judgement at not calling the attention of the others to the appearance of the physician’s apprentice. She raised a hand of acknowledgement, said quietly to Domhnall, ‘I’ll leave you in charge,’ and then strolled down towards the hidden stretch of sand within the rocks.

  The tide had turned, she thought, as she climbed the rocks. It would be urgent to move the body as soon as possible. Certainly there were enough strong arms to carry it to the churchyard and that would be best solution. Many of the men lived close to the shore and spades and pickaxes could be quickly produced to make a grave for the stranger. When she had got to the sand she saw that Nuala had covered
the body with the sheet of tarpaulin and he could be buried in that, buried within the boat which was surely worthless, if, as she felt sure, it had been abandoned in the sand dunes.

  ‘Take a seat,’ said Nuala, nodding towards one of the flat-topped rocks and Mara seated herself, waiting until Nuala had finished her instructions to the man who was emptying seawater over the rocks. All was almost as it had been and the fresh breeze from the sea had blown the smell away.

  ‘Perhaps I should move my hospital down here,’ said Nuala as she came across and sat beside her. ‘The air would be good for my patients and salt water is a great cleanser.’ And then, almost in the same breath, ‘The man you are interested in was middle-aged to elderly – over fifty, I’d say. He ate a substantial meal a few hours before he was killed.’

  ‘Killed,’ queried Mara.

  Nuala nodded. ‘And not by exposure, nor by thirst, nor by starvation; he was killed by a sharp blow to the head about eight hours after his last meal. In fact,’ she said in a matter-of-fact tone, ‘he certainly didn’t die of starvation. He had enough food in his stomach when he was killed to last him for almost a week, I’d say. Wine also, or some form of alcohol.’

  ‘I see,’ said Mara. She wasn’t surprised. All her instincts had told her that she was witnessing something that had been arranged like a picture, arranged to deceive. The boat with no oars, the seaside location, that body stretched out with eyes wide open to the sky, and that tongue, artistically arranged as though dying of thirst.

  ‘Something interesting about the meal,’ said Nuala. ‘Among other fragments there was an almost whole apricot in the stomach. I’ve eaten one of those in Italy but never here on the Burren, or at Bunratty Castle.’

  ‘I’ve eaten apricots, but it was in Galway City,’ said Mara. The pieces of puzzle were beginning to knit themselves together, just as a carpenter puts together the carefully sawn timbers to make a jointed stool.