Condemned to Death

by Cora Harrison

  ‘Would lemon go with the samphire, though?’ enquired Mara innocently.

  ‘Well, I can but try,’ said Joan. ‘It’s no good making up recipes in your head too much, it’s your mouth that needs to do the work and the great thing is that I can have as much samphire as I wish. I was telling you about the girl who came here, ate a nice apricot pie, well, she and her brother can supply me with as much as I want. Etain, her name was.’

  ‘And she came in with the goldsmith?’ queried Mara, seeing her opportunity.

  ‘No, no, not with the goldsmith. I can’t imagine him with a pretty girl like that. No, he was with someone else. Someone who spoke funny, foreign …’

  ‘Spanish?’

  ‘No,’ said Joan with scorn. ‘Not Spanish, nor French, not anything usual like that. Funny …’

  Galway, thought Mara, was a very international place. Gaels, English, Spaniards, French, Portuguese and even Dutch traded there. Joan would probably speak a smattering of most languages. Where could this stranger have come from if Joan did not recognize his accent? What would pass as ‘funny’ in this sophisticated city?

  ‘Could have been Greek,’ said Valentine casually. ‘We had a ship from Athens in here a week ago. Stayed for a few days; I think it may still be here, down in the docks, though it might have sailed last night.’

  ‘From Athens!’ Mara was startled. ‘Where is it going?’

  ‘Following the route of Christopher Columbus – lots do,’ said Valentine with a shrug. ‘The new world, they are calling it. Making Spain very rich! Doing well for Galway, too; lots of ships from Europe are stopping for a few days in Galway to get fresh water and provisions, smoked fish, that sort of thing. Christopher Columbus has done well for us. He came to Galway once, you know, Brehon. My father used to be telling me about it – no one knew then that he would get to be so famous afterwards, of course.’

  ‘So the gold merchant may have been talking to a Greek merchant, perhaps something about gold,’ said Mara after Joan had gone back to the kitchen. That, she thought, might be a reasonable explanation of the fact that Niall Martin had not taken off his wig in order to disguise himself from the fishermen of Fanore. Perhaps on this occasion he had visited Fanore in the company of this Greek merchant. Perhaps the gold had been found and Niall Martin had lost his life at the hands of the man whom he had thought of as a customer. It would be a neat solution and would absolve her of all responsibility since neither victim nor criminal was under her jurisdiction.

  ‘Then it might be a crime that you should be dealing with, Valentine,’ she said aloud and smiled at his raised eyebrows.

  But it seemed to be an enormous coincidence that Etain O’Connor, sister of Brendan and soon to be married to Fernandez, had been in the pie shop on the Monday before midsummer’s eve, at the same time as Niall Martin was conversing with the sailor from Athens.

  And, if Nuala was right, and Mara had never known her to be wrong, then Niall Martin was killed at Fanore, probably, late on that Monday night or else in the early hours of the Tuesday that followed it.

  So, she thought, after she had said goodbye to Valentine and ridden out through the city gates, followed by the now-silent Finbar, Niall Martin perhaps got a fisherman from Galway, or even one from the Aran Islands who could drop him off at Fanore on his way back to the islands which stood about six miles west of Fanore across the sea.

  Or else he went back with Etain O’Connor.

  Ten

  Di Chetharslicht Athgabálae

  (On the Four Divisions of Distraint)

  If a person destroys a man’s cliabh (a wicker-frame boat) the fine is two and a half pieces of silver, or three milch cows.

  If a person destroys a náu (a boat made from wood) then the fine is five pieces of silver or five milch cows.

  When Mara emerged from the mountain pass on the following morning she found that there was a group waiting for her. It was a misty morning and for a moment she had a fright, wondering whether something had happened. But then as she came closer she was able to count heads, seven of them – the two tall older boys, the MacMahon red-headed twins, still so alike, the sturdy, broad-shouldered form of young Art and her own son, Cormac, lighter, slimmer and slightly smaller than his foster-brother, and the seventh was, of course, not Finbar who was by her side, but Séanín who had been left behind by Brigid, ostensibly to help with the fish, but also because, according to Brigid, he was driving her husband wild with his non-stop questions about everything and his continual suggestions of a better way of doing things.

  ‘You had a successful journey, Brehon,’ said Domhnall politely.

  ‘Very,’ said Mara heartily. ‘And Finbar had a nice time seeing over a pottery belonging to a friend of mine in Galway. You’ll have to tell them all about the pots and the ceramic plates, Finbar.’

  She said no more about the murder case just then because of Séanín. Though he had been informed about their treasure hunt by one of the younger members of the law school and she was fairly certain that the fishing community had guessed why they were all searching along the beach and by the riverside, she did not want to discuss other matters in front of him so she waited until she could get rid of him.

  ‘Brigid has given me a bagful of goods for you, Séanín. She says you are to build a big fire and then when it’s hot enough that you are to toast those pasties over it; the round ones have goat’s cheese, the square ones have venison pieces and the long ones have minced pork in them. She says there is plenty for all.’

  Séanín went off with the bag and a disappointed expression. He probably preferred going around with the scholars to cooking. However, once the smell of the savoury pasties arose from the beach then he would be the centre of attention and would enjoy patronizing all the young fishing lads. Mara herself was looking forward to the venison pasties. She had been up early, but Brigid had been even earlier, cutting the strips of venison into cubes, sprinkling them with pepper, boiling them in some vinegary wines, shredding them and stuffing them into the delicious pastry shells.

  ‘We have a lot of things to show you, Brehon, when you have time to look,’ said Domhnall as they followed Séanín down the road, the well-bred horse keeping a steady pace beside them. ‘We have taken notes from all the boats of where they went on the days before the storm and perhaps you would like to read the result sometime. I have everyone’s script here in my satchel.’

  ‘Excellent,’ said Mara and she meant it. This painstaking seeking of information was very usefully done by her scholars and it was only by fitting these things together that in the end the whole story could be known. Nuala had put the day of death as being probably on either Monday or early on Tuesday, and yet, on Monday Niall Martin, the goldsmith, was having an apricot pie in Blake’s Pie Shop in the presence of Etain O’Connor, sister of Brendan the samphire-gatherer, who was talking to Joan at the time. She looked around her. The mist was thick, just a sea mist, but everything was very wet. She did not fancy exposing the map that she had borrowed from the goldsmith’s premises to this damp.

  ‘Where is Fernandez?’ she asked.

  Her question was answered by Domhnall with a smile that showed he had read her thoughts.

  ‘I wondered, Brehon, whether it might be more comfortable for you to be indoors this morning until the mist lifts,’ he said, ‘and I had a word with him and he was delighted to lend you a room. He even gave me a key to it in case you wanted to leave any of your belongings there in perfect safety.’ Domhnall seemed to feel this needed an explanation as he handed over the massive key and added, ‘People are in and out of the Cathair Róis all day long, they take fishing equipment and nets and whatever they require. Fernandez encourages them to do this. The castle is for the clan, that’s what Fernandez says, and he and Etain make everyone welcome.’

  Fernandez sees himself as the new leader of the O’Connor clan, thought Mara as she accepted the key with thanks and walked her horse down the road towards the newly built Cathair Róis. The othe
r scholars, she saw with pleasure, were pestering Finbar for details of his visit to Galway and there was a note of envy in Cormac’s voice. He had never been to the city and continually pestered to be taken there. However, Mara had no intention of permitting the son of Turlough Donn O’Brien, hated by the English, declared to be the greatest enemy in Ireland by their Lord Lieutenant, the Earl of Kildare, to ever go there, just in case that he might be taken hostage. No, Cormac would stay safe within the Gaelic Kingdom of the Burren.

  When Mara entered the castle of Cathair Róis, Etain was running down the steeply spiralling staircase. She greeted Mara with a wide smile and accompanied her into the room that had been set apart for her. Mara was touched and pleased to see that all arrangements had been made for her comfort. The young couple, Fernandez and Etain, had gone to quite a bit of trouble. A fire blazed in the hearth and there was a cushioned bench drawn up in front of it, and over by the window that at the moment just showed mist, but would once that cleared show the Atlantic Ocean and the Aran Islands, there was a solid table drawn up, with chairs and stools arranged around it. In the background, cut off by linen curtains, was a bed.

  ‘We hoped that you would be comfortable here and that you will stay the night, if you need to, while your investigations are going,’ said Etain and the note of anxiety in her voice made Mara immediately reassure her that all arrangements were perfect. There was even, she saw, a horn filled with jet-black ink and mounted in a silver stand. In front of it, on a long tray made from alder twigs, were a group of pens, the quills from eagle, goose, and crow neatly trimmed and sharpened to a point. Mara thought that if this mist persisted it might be sensible to send Séanín off after the midday meal to bring back a change of linen and perhaps anything that the scholars might need so that she could stay the night in this cosy room.

  ‘I’ve been to Galway City,’ said Mara sinking down upon the couch and stretching out her hands to the comforting flame of the fire. ‘I don’t think that I slept so well last night, so it’s lovely to see everything so ready for me.’

  As she had hoped, Etain took up the mention.

  ‘Galway City – that’s a long way on horseback,’ she said.

  ‘I’d have been better off to have gone by boat,’ said Mara, shaking her head at herself. ‘My scholars told me that. How long does it take you to sail across the bay?’

  She only half-listened as Etain discoursed knowledgeably about wind, tide, sail and routes, waiting with a skill born of years of experience, to slip in a question without alarming the person in front of her or making them defensive.

  ‘I suppose the people in Galway are surprised to see a woman sailing a boat by herself,’ she said with a smile. ‘I gave them a shock as a woman lawyer – and I suppose that a woman sailor would come as a shock, too. In fact, Joan in Blake’s Pie Shop remembered you very well.’

  ‘I think that she was more interested in samphire than in sailing,’ said Etain without hesitation. ‘She drove a fairly hard bargain, too. Wants absolutely prime quality. She’s thinking of using some of it uncooked, so it has to be perfect for that. Whoever delivers it, whether it’s Brendan or myself, well, they’ll have to go there first of all in the morning.’

  Etain’s voice was quite unconcerned and completely natural. Mara nodded her appreciation of the point and went swiftly on to her next question.

  ‘Did you see the gold merchant, Niall Martin, there?’ she asked casually. ‘He was there at the same time as you were.’

  ‘No, I didn’t.’ Etain frowned a little, her black brows knitted together above her very brown eyes. She, like her husband-to-be, Fernandez, was almost Spanish in appearance, but then there were many along the coastline who had those sort of looks – whether from a mixture of blood from trading Spaniards or from an earlier race than the red-gold haired, white-skinned Celts. ‘The place was full,’ she added, ‘she does a great trade there. I’d say that every table was occupied.’

  ‘You wouldn’t have noticed his bald head?’ asked Mara innocently.

  Etain’s expression didn’t change. ‘Lots of them there,’ she said briefly. ‘Bald heads and large stomachs; that’s the way that it goes when they are sitting at desks for most of the day and then eating big slices of pie in between. Now, I’ll leave you to yourself, Brehon, and get on down to the beach. I want to make sure that those barrels are properly packed. Fernandez says that it would very bad if customers complained that the barrel was not completely filled.’

  Her manner was completely natural and she had shown no sign of resenting the question or seeing any significance in being asked whether she had seen the murdered man on the day before his death.

  And yet, when Mara looked across the room she saw that Domhnall’s eyes were on her with an expression of curiosity in them. He, certainly, had seen the significance of the question.

  ‘Come around the table, all of you,’ she said and waited until her scholars had dragged stools from the corners of the room. Cormac, Art and Cian perched on the high windowsill, their legs dangling, and Mara took her place at the head of the table, bending down and taking the scroll from her satchel.

  ‘I found this under the counter in the goldsmith’s shop – just where Ardal O’Lochlainn saw him put it when a stranger entered.’ She unrolled it as she spoke and hands came forward to hold the corners flat to the table. Eyes widened and she heard Slevin draw in a breath of excitement.

  ‘It’s very well drawn,’ said Finbar.

  ‘I was looking at it last night and wondering whether we were searching too near to the beach,’ said Mara. She pointed to a spot higher up the hillside. ‘Whoever drew this map seems to have made a sharp wiggle just here and that might well be a spot and look, he has drawn a small circle just near it. What do you think that might mean?’

  ‘An enclosure,’ said Slevin doubtfully.

  ‘We’d remember that,’ said Cael instantly. She did not look at Slevin, but peered earnestly at the small circle. ‘Perhaps it’s something else. I think that we should go and have a look.’

  ‘In a minute,’ said Mara. She sympathized with Cael’s impatience. When she had studied the map last night in her bedroom she had known that if the beach had been beside her she would not have been able to help going down there and beginning the search.

  ‘Anyone notice anything else of interest?’ she asked.

  ‘You see that little mark here, it’s a little question mark, isn’t it – it’s right down on the sand, not on the dunes,’ said Cormac. ‘I think I recognize that place. I noticed it on the first day that we were here, before we ever found any dead bodies or things like that, when we were collecting driftwood for the fires. Do you remember, Art?’

  ‘You said that it might have been a house once,’ said Art.

  ‘Looked like cut blocks,’ said Cian.

  ‘What! As near to the sea as that! No one would be as stupid as that, birdbrain!’ Cael was definitely on bad terms with her brother – and with the others, also.

  ‘Michelóg told me that his grandfather’s house was a hundred yards nearer to the sea than his and that he worries sometimes in the winter storms it will be destroyed entirely. He said that his father built the new house, much further back, further away from the shore. Do you remember, Art?’ said Cormac. ‘Do you remember the way he was going on about how God created the sea before the land and that eventually the sea will take back everything – “And the spirit of God was hovering over the surface of the waters”,’ he intoned and Mara bit back a smile while Art and Cian giggled and Cael looked scornful and said:

  ‘He’s just making that up to sound important. You believe everything you hear.’

  ‘It’s true, actually, Cael. You’re right, Cormac; Brigid was saying the same thing,’ intervened Mara. ‘She was saying that when she was young the sea did not come in at all as far as it does nowadays, and she, too, pointed out to me the old house belonging to Michelóg’s father. She said it was right back on the sand dunes when she was a child, and now
it’s very close to the high-tide mark, so I suppose it’s possible that there was another house, even older, down there at some time in the place that Cormac is talking about,’ said Mara. ‘I must say that I didn’t notice any cut stone on the beach, but we’ll certainly take a look.’

  Privately she thought that Cormac was probably wrong about this particular house that he had discovered. It did seem too far down for a dwelling to have been built; it must be almost at the low-tide mark. It was probably not cut stone that he had found as the sea itself did very good work in shaping boulders. The limestone seemed to split evenly, often along seams of some clayey material – perhaps it was the rain that did that as miles away from the sea one could find these solid, square or oblong rocks, and then, of course, when it came to shoreline, well the force of the waves and the washing of the water smoothed and shaped those massive stones.

  ‘So today we will have another search to see where the treasure, if there was a treasure, was hidden. But of course the most important thing has to be finding out who killed the man. We must never forget that. Someone took a heavy instrument, probably padded, and hit a man so hard that he killed him. And it’s up to us, who uphold the law in this kingdom, to find out who did this deed.’

  There was a moment’s silence after she spoke and then Slevin said: ‘Surely the two things are connected, Brehon. If the goldsmith drew this map of the shore and visited it here continually during the last few months, it seems likely, doesn’t it, that there were some objects of value brought to him at his shop in Galway and that the coincidence of these fishermen coming from the same place on the Burren made him guess that there may be a source of treasure there. Does anyone disagree with that?’ He gazed around him in a challenging way and after a minute was answered by shaken heads. ‘So my case is,’ he went on, ‘that the murderer found Niall Martin at the moment that he discovered the treasure and then he murdered him and took the gold.’