Condemned to Death

by Cora Harrison

  ‘I had nothing whatsoever to do with all of this, Brehon,’ said Cael. Her disdainful face showed that she understood what had happened and how false trails had been laid. She gave a glance of scorn at the other three and she shifted away from the boys sitting beside her on the floor as if physically to mark her separation from their nefarious deeds.

  ‘I know that, Cael,’ said Mara. ‘I hope that if you had been present, if you had not been sleeping in the wall chamber, looking after Síle, when this was all planned, I do believe that you would have been far too mature to try to throw dust over an enquiry into a death.’ Her eyes met those of three boys, two pairs of eyes fell before hers but the third pair, pale green, fringed with gold eyelashes, looked at her steadily.

  ‘My father, the King,’ said Cormac, ‘says that the hinges of friendship should never grow rusty for the lack of the oil of assistance when help is needed.’

  Mara did not respond. Cormac had two parents, two very different parents, with different principles, different traditions, who surprisingly managed to be at ease with each other because each respected the other’s point of view, but he was perhaps too young to understand what his mother felt about the law. The creed of a warrior was probably easier for an eleven-year-old boy to comprehend.

  ‘How did you guess, Brehon?’ asked Cael and the others looked at her with gratitude for asking the question that was on their lips.

  ‘Easy,’ said Mara, adopting the format of the question and answer volumes which taught the young to understand and memorize the tenets of the law which would become a life-long study for them. ‘Easy,’ she repeated. ‘Who suggested to Síle that she might find some pretty shells in the cove where the boat with its body had come to rest? Who was with Cael when she found the tracks, very obvious tracks, leading to the place, outside a farmer’s land, where the clothes of the dead man were buried? Why, if the goldsmith found the treasure, was it not placed inside his leather bag? Whose dog found the clue that seemed to point to the involvement of a Greek sailor – a man that I had mentioned a day previously – and above all, who had the legal knowledge to try to make the corpse look as though it was the result of a judgement of fingal?’ There were other things that she could have cited. The pulling out of the tongue to simulate death from thirst, the continual efforts to lead her astray, to distract her from the real culprit and she remembered all the occasions when, looking back on them, the conversation had been manipulated to lead her away from the subject and she hoped that an involuntary smile was not going to come to her lips or her eyes to show amusement. This, she thought, was a serious matter, as lawyers-to-be they should not, they must not behave like this, though she was touched and moved by Cormac’s words, and thought that his father would be proud of him. Turlough had a genius for friendship and his friends, going back over a period of sixty years, were numbered in legions.

  ‘I’ll leave you to think about these matters,’ she said, rising to her feet and waiting until they stood up also. ‘Now, Cael, would you please go and fetch Finbar. Bring him here to me.’ Cael was the best choice, she thought. Officially, as far as Finbar was aware, she knew nothing, and she was sensible enough not to speak of what she would guess needed to remain secret for the moment. ‘And you, others,’ she went on, ‘you will please get all your belongings together. We will be leaving here once Cumhal returns. Don’t forget to thank Etain for her hospitality, oh, and perhaps you could write a letter to Fernandez – that I feel would be a good idea. Let’s find a piece of vellum – one can write and the others can sign it afterwards.’ She crossed over to the table by the window, sorted through the articles that she had emptied out of her satchel and talked on at length, appointing a scribe, discussing what should be said, talking, not only to bring back a feeling of normality to their relationship, but also to give Cael a chance to fetch Finbar. She would keep these three under her eye until Cael returned and then she would dismiss them to go back and help on the beach and she would speak to Finbar alone and in private.

  Eighteen

  Maccslecta

  (Son Sections)

  A dependent child is classified as táid aithgena (‘thief of restitution’) from the age of twelve to that of seventeen. Any offences below the age of seventeen carry no fine, although restitution of stolen goods must be made.

  The letter had been written, signed, left in Mara’s possession for the signatures of the other scholars before being placed prominently on the table for Fernandez to see when he came back from Galway, but still there was no sign of Cael or of Finbar, either. Mara peered out of the front door a few times, noticing that the breathless calm had now gone. Suddenly the air was fresh, the wind had risen strongly and the rain had begun to fall. She looked out to sea and found that there was no trace of the Aran Islands visible now, just mountain-high waves, their top edges whipped to cream. The storm was coming up from the south-west; she could see the rain slanting across the seven-hundred-feet-high cliffs of Moher. The large black-backed gulls were flying in from the sea, borne aloft on the air currents, and their cries were carried across to where she stood. She strained her eyes and then with relief she heard the sound of voices. But it was just Etain who came running up from the beach, dragging a soaking wet Síle by the hand and then thrusting the child in through the door in front of her.

  ‘See to Síle, Brehon, will you, get her to change her clothes. I must get Brendan’s small boat up onto the dunes. That’s a hurricane wind getting up down there now. You can hardly fight against it. Pray God that Fernandez and Brendan are safely into Galway Bay by now and that they have the sense to wait out the storm there.’ And with that, she was off, running back down to beach, her long brown legs, beneath the hitched-up léine, covering the distance easily.

  ‘Síle, change your clothes; surely you’re old enough to do that for yourself,’ snapped Mara. ‘You boys, see to it that she does so and all of you stay within the castle until I come back.’ And she snatched her cloak from the top of the chest by the door and set off running after Etain down past the sand dunes. She spared a thought for her two eldest scholars, Domhnall and Slevin, but it was a sheltered passageway through the narrow valley between the mountains and they would be well inland by now. And the storm had only just hit the coast.

  But where was Finbar, and why had Cael not returned?

  She had gone halfway down the roadway to the beach when she heard running feet behind her. She turned and saw Cormac, his feet bare, his léine soaked, his green eyes blazing and rain dripping down from his bright gold hair.

  ‘Go back, Cormac,’ she said crossly.

  ‘No,’ he shouted, ‘you must listen to me.’ Despite the wind and the rain his voice rang out as though the blood of five hundred kingly ancestors had infused it with power. She turned back to him, trying to pull the heavy fur-lined hood of her cloak over her drenched hair.

  ‘Listen to me,’ he repeated furiously. ‘You must listen. Finbar didn’t mean to kill him. I judged him, I judged him not guilty.’ His eyes were blazing with passion. ‘Finbar found the gold. It was his gold. He saw it from the mountain. He was the one that found it. He thought it would save him from disgrace, from starving, if his father threw him out. And then that man from Galway, that strainséir who had no right to be in our kingdom, he tried to take the gold from Finbar. Finbar didn’t mean to kill him, Brehon!’ Cormac’s voice rose almost to a scream and he grabbed at her arm as if to stop her walking away. His hand gripped her sleeve, holding her with a strength that she had not known that he possessed. ‘He didn’t mean to kill him, just to stun him and to escape with the gold, but the man hit his head on that rock, he hit his head and he was dead immediately. And Finbar came to us for help.’

  ‘I know, Cormac. I guessed. You go back now. I’m not cross with Finbar. I want to help him too.’ Mara had to say the words right into his ear to make herself heard over the wind that tore along the path, shrieking, from the Atlantic, but he shook his head firmly.

  ‘I’m going to fin
d him,’ he yelled. ‘You can’t stop me, Brehon. He’s my friend. When he sees me, he’ll know that I’ll keep him safe.’

  ‘Very well,’ said Mara. Her son, she thought, was probably right. His presence would help to reassure Finbar, help to make him feel that all was not lost. Together they would set his mind at rest. She made an inner resolution that whatever the Brehon of Cloyne might think, even if he considered her to be an interfering woman, father’s rights, or no father’s rights, nothing, she resolved, would stop her now from telling the frightened and guilty boy that a bright future in the busy city of Galway was opening out in front of him. He had lost the gold, removed by Brendan when Finbar had gone to summon help from his friends, but then he had no right to that gold. Let him honestly earn some silver from the merchants of Galway and build up his self-respect and his belief in himself.

  But where was he? And where was Cael who had been sent to fetch him? Infused by the passionate fear, by the real anxiety in Cormac’s voice, Mara began to run after him down the path worn smooth by the feet of the fishermen and their families. Even on this sheltered passageway, hemmed in by head-high dunes on either side, the wind tore the breath from her lips. On either side of the path there were clouds of sand dust, blowing and swirling around the stiff pale green clumps of marram grass. They looked as though they were whirling sídhe gaoithe and their presence made shudders of ill omen run through Mara. It seemed only minutes since she had observed that she could not see the Aran Islands and now with the driving rain in her face she could not even see the sea itself. All that she was conscious of was a giant wall of foaming white cloud-like spray rising up above the height of the sand dunes and the cliffs. The tide must be at about the halfway mark; by full tide the inhabitants of the beach camp would have all been forced to retreat to their inland homes, or to seek shelter within the hospitable walls of Cathair Róis.

  They met a few men coming back with bundles of poles and others were pulling the boats up even higher, but the majority were frantically digging the dunes with their bare hands and desperately throwing handfuls of sand onto the bottom boards in order to weigh them down against the power of the sea. There was an air of urgency and panic about the fishermen and Mara decided against asking any questions. Her heart had begun to thud with a heavy, insistent beat and her lips tasted the bitter salt with a feeling of anguish

  There was a figure ahead, a figure that came running back up the path towards them, a figure that had black hair plastered against her skull, coming up from the sea and passing Cormac with a shrieked sentence. He shook his head, shaking the hair from his eyes and kept on his course, but Mara narrowed her eyes expectantly, trying to see through the rods of rain. It was just Etain, coming back. But she was alone and had no boat to drag up with her. Either Brendan had taken it and put it over near to the old house or else he had already lodged it among the sand dunes. Mara did not hesitate. She was beginning to get very frightened now. She had two children out there on that terrible beach and she had to get them back.

  ‘The boat’s not there, it’s gone!’ screamed Etain, and then she said something else, but the wind seemed to toss her words aside. Mara did not stop. She felt that she had no interest in Brendan or Etain’s troubles – let them buy another boat, if that one was destroyed in the storm. In any case eleven-year-old Cormac was running ahead and she was determined to try to keep up with him so she passed without a word, with not even a backward glance.

  Where had Finbar gone? He had been with the others outside Cathair Róis, he had been with the others then and by that stage Fernandez’s ship and Brendan’s hooker had already gone swiftly out to sea. She remembered seeing the white sails of the one and the dark brown sails of the other and the south-westerly wind, already very strong, made them fly like large birds over the surface of the sea towards Galway Bay. Finbar could not have been with either of these. Where could he have gone? He wasn’t with the men in the sand dunes; she would have seen his thin figure instantly.

  But Cormac had seemed to startle at Etain’s words; he had bounded forward and was now completely out of sight. His ears might have been quicker than hers.

  The wind caught her cloak when she came out from the shelter of the dunes and onto the beach. The hood was snapped from her head, filled with air, she felt it as a solid force dragging her back and then the cloak itself billowed out bringing her to a standstill on the edge of the beach. Without hesitation, she untied the string around her neck and let it sail backwards towards the cliff. She could just see, through the salt-tasting spray, a gleam of Cormac’s white léine – that also was blowing back, but he battled on. He seemed to know where he was going, seemed to have some purpose, aiming directly across the beach to the place where the newly built pier jutted out into the sea. For a moment Mara thought that she saw someone there, but then a tremendous wave, the dreaded seventh wave came, almost in slow motion, rearing up, with menacingly curled and froth-fringed edge, coming nearer by the minute.

  For a moment it appeared as if the tiny figure on the pier would be engulfed by that giant wave, but with incredible quickness it turned and seemed almost to fly as it was swept by the force of the wind up the grey, foam-besprinkled sand. It had got halfway up when it overbalanced and Mara heard herself scream, and in the maelstrom of wind and wave the sound was as thin and high as that of the soaring kittiwakes.

  But the wave had done its worst. It had engulfed the figure but then had withdrawn; leaving it sprawled on the sands like an abandoned piece of prey. Cormac reached it first, pulling it to its feet, putting his arms around the sobbing figure. For a moment Mara could hardly make it out, but then as she came nearer she could see that it was Cael. The girl was soaked to the skin, her hair plastered against her skull, her starched white léine just a sodden rag hanging around her. She was crying bitterly, in great noisy sobs that somehow rose above the crash of the waves.

  ‘Quick,’ said Mara. She wanted to take the girl in her arms, but the danger was too great. She grabbed one arm and Cormac took the other and then they retreated up the beach and crouched into the shelter of the sand dunes. It was only then that Cael managed to stop crying, desperately scrubbing at her streaming eyes and determinedly holding her breath until the noisy sobs ceased. She did not look at Cormac but up at Mara.

  ‘Brehon,’ she said. ‘Finbar is gone. I couldn’t stop him. I kept shouting after him, but I couldn’t stop him.’

  ‘Gone,’ said Cormac.

  Suddenly Mara knew what had happened and knew, with a terrible stab of guilt, that she was responsible. Finbar had despaired, had felt himself to be disgraced, had been filled with a sense of sin and remorse. Why had she not talked to him first of all, why had she not realized how vulnerable he was?

  ‘He took Brendan’s small boat, was that it, Cael?’ she said, steadying her voice as much as she could, but feeling overwhelmed with an enormous rush of contrition, almost as powerful as the gale that had battered them on the open beach.

  ‘I couldn’t stop him.’ Cael resolutely bit back the sobs. ‘He was in the boat before I got here, Brehon. I shouted to him, I told him that you were not angry, that you were just annoyed with Cormac and the others, I told him all that, Brehon, but he just didn’t seem to be listening to me, he didn’t even look at me, he just cast off and then the wind took the boat and I saw him just lie back in it.’

  ‘He didn’t raise the sail.’ Cormac’s voice was rough and broken. Cael shook her head. And then she leaned over and laid her face on Cormac’s shoulder and began to cry.

  ‘He didn’t do anything,’ she sobbed. ‘He just got in, cast off, and then he lay down and faced up to the sky. It seemed as if he didn’t want sails or oars.’ She hesitated for a moment and then said, between broken sobs, ‘It seemed as if he wanted God to judge him, Cormac, and I just can’t bear to think of it.’

  Mara sat there, helpless, looking out to sea, thinking about this boy, only fourteen years old, who had condemned himself to this lonely and terrible death. She
judged herself mercilessly, judged, and condemned: her overwhelming desire for facts, for evidence, her need to have everything tidy and well-regulated. Why had she not foreseen this terrible and tragic ending to a case that seemed to be half-serious, half-farce? Over the years, she thought, I have become complacent, have felt that I was very clever, and that I always knew the right way to do things. No one should feel like that. Every case should be approached with due humility and with a tentative and sensitive way of interrogation. She had realized the truth, had known that she was being systematically misled, but that should not have had any weight with her. Her duty as an ollamh, as teacher in charge of a law school, should have, she admitted, taken precedence over her work as a Brehon, over her desire to be the one who always uncovers a solution. After all, she thought, as she stroked Cael’s wet hair and tried to take the girl into her arms, after all, solving the murder of Niall Martin had led to no particular good. He had been a greedy man who had developed an obsession with finding the gold hoard of Fanore. Now his riches would go to enlarge the coffers of the wealthy city of Galway and a young life had been wasted.