Looking out through the wildly waving stems of marram grass at the tumultuous sea, at the almost sky-high waves, feeling the howl of the wind, she knew that no child could survive in a small boat out there.
‘Come,’ she said to Cael who was still clinging to Cormac. ‘Come, Cael, let’s get you indoors and dry. There is no more that anyone can do until this storm dies down.’
On the following morning Mara came to the sands at dawn. It would be just before the hour of six in the morning, she thought, looking back up at the pale sun looming in the sky over the mountains. The storm had blown itself out, culminating in a spectacular high tide at midnight and then subsiding gradually. By six o’clock the sands were bare and almost immaculate. Not completely immaculate because two bodies were swept ashore on the morning after the day of the great storm. One was that of a giant pilot whale and the other was the small thin body of a boy who had, thought Mara, as she knelt in tears beside him, been failed by all of the adults who should have cared for him. Why had she not given hope to him after that visit to Galway, why had she not taken him aside before she spoke to someone else, talked with him once the whole picture had become clear within in her mind? His crime was not a crime; not a crime in the way that the adults in his life had sinned against him. She tried to suppress her sobs, but they came and then she allowed them to come. It was the least that she could do for him now and her dignity did not matter to her. Her sins had been great and his, given his temperament and his dilemma, had been comparatively small.
Others had come down to the beach, also, but they stood apart, uneasy, unsure as to what to do. She would have to face them in a moment, she would have to tell them what had happened but she found it hard to move from beside the small thin body. If only time could have been rewound, if only the last week could have been relived and events differently handled.
And then she sensed someone who knelt down beside her. She felt a hand upon her shoulder and knew that it was time to stand up. The hand was firm and for a moment she almost thought that her husband, King Turlough, had returned unexpectedly, but a word was spoken: ‘Muimme,’ said the voice and Mara reached out and put her arm around Cormac and for once he allowed himself to be held by her. She stretched the moment out, before releasing him and getting to her feet. Feeling that her son was still beside her, her courage flowed back and then she knew she would be able to tell the story. These people, the fishermen and shore-dwellers, deserved to hear the truth from her before the formal statement was made at Poulnabrone. She got to her feet and turned to face them.
‘I have to announce to you all, who have been involved in this affair, what happened in the matter of Niall Martin, the goldsmith from Galway City,’ she said steadily.
It was a very different environment from the usual judgement place at Poulnabrone where the enclosed space focused all attention on the ancient dolmen and on the figure of the Brehon handing down judgements from a law that was as old as that burial place itself. Here on these vast and level sands, bordered by the glittering sea and with the gulls shrieking overhead, she found simple words to tell the story of the boy who found the gold, accidentally killed the man who had been seeking it for months and then, bewildered and afraid, sought the help of his friends. Mara was moved to see her own sorrow, even her own tears reflected on many of the faces in front of her. No one asked about the gold and that was the way that it should be. That affair could await her judgement at Poulnabrone. Now, on the cliff top overlooking the vast Atlantic, she and her scholars, with the help of this compassionate community of fisherfolk, would bury the boy, Finbar, who had condemned himself to death, but who would live in all of their memories.
Condemned to Death Page 23
