An Unjust Judge

by Cora Harrison

  ‘But when Ríanne woke you up, what time was that?’

  ‘After sunrise. So then I went out. At least I could see everything, then, not like the night before, stumbling around in the dark. The sun was up. And I went to the cliffs and I found him, all trussed up in the lobster pot.’ There was a slight choke in the boy’s voice, almost as though he suppressed a fit of giggling, but Mara ignored that. It’s a funny age, Brigid would say when discussing the behaviour of one of the fourteen- or fifteen-year-old scholars. There had been no doubt that the boy had been deeply shocked by the finding of the body and shock in that age often ventilated itself in nervous laughter. That fit of vomiting had shown that the boy was deeply upset by the discovery of the dead body of his master. She would ask no more about the lobster pot or the predatory birds.

  ‘And you came across to find me, then.’ It was very odd thought Mara, that the boy had not gone straight back to Ríanne. Or was there a possibility that he had been involved in the murder of Brehon O’Doran? Had he gone back out again that night? Could he have done this? Did Ríanne really stay awake all night? Could Niall have gone back out, found the body of his master, tied up and helpless, and then had slit his throat. And, yet, unless Ríanne and Niall had a very poor sense of time, when he went up to his bedroom must surely have been well after the finding of the body by Peadar and his friends.

  ‘That’s right,’ said Niall. ‘I went up to Ballinalacken Castle first of all, but a man in the stables told me that you had already gone so I just went after you.’

  ‘I see.’ Mara rose to her feet and went to the window looking out, thinking and speculating. There was, she noted, a dead silence behind her. What were they thinking, these two young people. Were they exchanging glances, wondering whether their stories were believed? She turned her head, but both were gazing into the fire.

  ‘Go back and help Brigid, now,’ she said. ‘Tell her that we’ll have dinner as early as it suits her, will you?’

  Both of the young people were very white-faced. A cup of Brigid’s ale and some hot food would be good for both, she thought as she watched them go from the room with bent heads and then turned back to the window again, looking over the smooth green grass and the ploughed-up surface of the small field beyond it. Niall had got as far as there the night before. He had a lantern in his hand and that would have made him very visible to Ríanne. He could not have gone further without her knowledge. Were they both telling the truth? If they were, then neither could have been involved in the murder of the man whom they both named as master. As she watched, Cian came into view, carrying a leather bucket and he upended it over a small weedy patch where some lanky onion leaves straggled through the surrounding vegetation, spilling out a bucket-load of soot. The vegetable patch did not look as though there had been any attention paid to it for a long time. Poor Fergus, he had been neglected, she thought with a stab of compunction and then she put him from her mind and returned to the fate of his successor.

  ‘Cian,’ she called. ‘If Brigid can spare you, would you walk to the cliff with me?’

  He gave her a grin. ‘Be with you in an instant. I’ll hand over the honour of chief bucket man to Niall. That will please his lordship.’

  Mara waited by the gate. The sun was warm on her back. It had been a wet summer, but the autumn seemed to be making up for it. There was a sparkle on the sea and the three Aran islands, normally so misty, were now clearly outlined against the skyline, even showing here and there the long, low shape of a whitewashed cottage, distinct against the grey stone.

  Cian was back in an instant as he had promised, pulling up a bunch of coarse blue grass and scrubbing the soot from his hands with it.

  ‘You should have seen Niall’s face when I handed him the bucket and the scraper,’ he chortled.

  ‘You don’t like him, do you?’ queried Mara. She was careful to keep her voice non-judgemental. It was important, she always felt, that her scholars could be open and honest with her.

  ‘I think that he’s a fraud and a liar,’ said Cian bluntly.

  Mara turned to look at him. Art, she had observed, did not like Niall, but she had put that down to the fact that he was missing his foster-brother, Cormac. Now it appeared that Cian was strongly opposed to him, also. Was it because they both suspected that she might invite Niall to join the law school and, with the conservatism of boys who had grown up in one small community, they did not want that.

  ‘Why do you say that?’ she asked with interest.

  ‘This vomiting business. I don’t believe it.’

  ‘He did get sick, violently,’ said Mara.

  ‘Yes, but did you look at it?’

  ‘I smelled it.’

  ‘Yes, so did I and I looked at it, too. I could see what he had for breakfast. And perhaps what he had for his supper last night, too.’

  Mara turned to look at him. ‘And why does that make him a fraud? He didn’t pretend to vomit, he really and truly did vomit.’

  ‘Easy to make yourself vomit. Stick your fingers down your throat. Or drink saltwater. Probably, though, he stuck his fingers down his throat just after he came through the gate.’

  ‘But why should he do that?’

  ‘Sympathy,’ said Cian. ‘He probably thought you looked as if you’d be sympathetic when he saw you at Judgement Day.’

  ‘But why should he want me to be sympathetic?’

  ‘So that you wouldn’t accuse him of murdering his master. It makes sense.’

  ‘Sounds a bit far-fetched to me,’ said Mara dubiously.

  ‘No, it’s not,’ said Cian holding the gate to the oats’ field open for her. ‘Think about it. When are you most likely to throw up? When you see something disgusting and horrible like a dead man and birds pecking his eyes out – or two hours later? Wouldn’t you have expected him to have spilled his guts when he saw the dead body?’

  ‘But perhaps he did. And then when he was faced with telling his story, the horror overwhelmed him and he got sick again.’

  ‘No,’ said Cian impatiently. ‘I told you, Brehon. I looked at it before Cumhal got the lad to cover it over. I’m telling you. He got up his last meal. There’s no chance that he had thrown up an hour or so earlier. It would have been just bile in that case.’

  ‘I see,’ said Mara slowly. ‘That’s rather clever, Cian. You are going to make an excellent lawyer. You know, that did not occur to me. And, yes, you are right. It did make me feel sorry for him and it did make me feel that he had had a terrible shock and that the discovery of the dead body had shaken him badly. But would that have been enough to make him do that?’ She thought about it for a moment. If Cian was right and Niall had voluntarily made himself sick, what did that imply? ‘But why should he need sympathy from me? He was doing all the right things, reporting a murder. He didn’t need sympathy, just action. He couldn’t have been afraid of me, for any reason, could he? He was not a small child, though he did behave a little like one.’

  ‘What if he did the murder,’ said Cian energetically. ‘Then he would want to deflect suspicion from himself. He would want to give the impression that he was a poor fellow who just stumbled on a body.’

  ‘Why come and fetch me at all? Surely it would have been more sensible to have allowed someone else to find the body?’

  ‘On the other hand, he might think that it would assure his innocence. When did he say that he had found it?’

  ‘He said that he went out last night, urged by Ríanne, but he just got as far as about where we are now and then he dropped his lamp, it went out, so he decided to go back.’

  ‘Hmm.’ Cian sounded sceptical.

  ‘I don’t think that his heart was in it. Ríanne thought that he should, not because she wanted, what she calls her master, back but because she thought that he might wreak vengeance on them if he had fallen and no one came to look for him – he, Brehon O’Doran, according to Ríanne, had a habit of punching her. She has the marks of a bruise under her eye.’

  ‘I no
ticed that, too,’ said Cian. His lips twitched in a smile. ‘When I brought my bucket back into the kitchen, I threw it at Niall, just fooling around, and a smut came out of it and went onto Ríanne’s cheek. Cael did the usual girl business of “Oh, Cian!” and all that sort of thing and she got a rag and dipped it in the water and washed Ríanne’s cheek.’ He paused looking at Mara expectantly and she looked back at him pretending to be puzzled as she did not want to spoil his story.

  ‘And a miracle cure! You can have me canonised as a saint. I throw a flake of soot at a girl, say a quick prayer, and the big bruise on her cheek disappears.’

  Mara laughed. ‘You’re sure?’ she queried, but he was quick and observant. She had little doubt but that he was reporting the truth. And that had been a very interesting point about Niall’s attack of vomiting.

  ‘Easily done,’ said Cian. ‘Bit of blackberry juice, I’d say. Cael noticed, too. I saw her look at me.’

  ‘So you think that both of them are lying, openly or tacitly?’

  ‘I do,’ said Cian bluntly as they passed through the gate that led from the oats’ field to the cliff side. And then, he said quickly, ‘Look, Brehon, there’s Brehon MacClancy.’

  The tide was fully in, the waves crashing against the cliffs and there was a jet of seawater spurting up through the blowhole. Fergus stood to the side of it, but the sea wind blew the spray inland and the old man’s hair and beard were soaking wet with seawater. He was not alone. Donal the songwriter was there and Fergus was holding his hand.

  Eleven

  Berrad Airechata

  (Shearings of the Court – Court Procedures)

  The old term for a witness is Fiadu, meaning one who sees. A witness must be sensible, honest, conscientious and of good memory. A person can only give evidence about what he has, himself, seen or heard and must be prepared to swear in support of this evidence. What does not take place before a witness’s eyes is deemed to be ‘dead’ and he may only swear about what he has seen or heard.

  Mara’s first instinct was to breathe a sigh of relief that the young man was there in order to protect Fergus from absent-mindedly stepping into the blowhole on the cliff. The ground around it was probably not too safe either, it was littered with rock and broken stone, making it very possible that the elderly man might trip and break his leg or worse. But then a glimpse of Donal’s face showed rather a different story. The young songwriter looked embarrassed and angry and seemed to be struggling to release himself from the grip on his wrist.

  ‘I saw you, Donal. I saw you,’ the old voice quavered on a high note. ‘I saw you, boy. I was up on the hillside. I saw you. I saw you creep up there and I saw the knife. I saw the knife flash in the moonlight.’

  ‘What did you see, Fergus?’ Mara had reached the old man’s side in a couple of quick strides. Cian, fingering his own knife, was standing beside Donal.

  It was one of the old man’s good days, apparently. He recognized her instantly.

  ‘I’ve got a problem on my hands, Mara. And in this lovely peaceful part of the world. Do you know, Mara, I could count on the fingers of my hands the murders that I have seen in my long life.’ Fergus’s voice took on a sing-song note. ‘Drunkenness, oh yes, plenty of that, especially at the time of the fairs, fights, trespass …’ Fergus laughed on a high, shaky note but then bit his lip and looked sternly at Donal. ‘But, murder, and the murder of a stranger to our kingdom. You must make full and open confession, boy,’ he said severely. ‘You must confess to me now, and then you must repeat your confession to the people of the kingdom. And then you must pay retribution. I will have to fine you, Donal. That man left a widow, a little girl, a nice little girl. She’s left without her husband now and you will have to give her …’ Fergus searched his memory and then came triumphantly out with: ‘You’ll have to pay her six milch cows and …’ This seemed to be the end of the spurt of energy. His hand fell away from Donal’s sleeve and he stared at the ground, mumbling to himself.

  ‘I didn’t do anything, Brehon,’ said Donal in a low voice to Mara. ‘I didn’t come up here with a knife. I wasn’t the one that killed the new Brehon. I swear to you. He must be mistaking me for someone else.’ His handsome, highly coloured face was now pale in patches and there were beads of sweat on his forehead. ‘He’s just a daft old man,’ he said angrily. ‘He doesn’t know what he’s talking about.’

  ‘Don’t speak of Brehon MacClancy in that disrespectful manner,’ snapped Mara. There was, she noticed, a sound of panic in the young man’s voice and she wondered why. Most people in the area knew quite well that their Brehon’s wits had been wandering for some time. Why was Donal worried about that? And, of course, there were times, increasingly fewer in number, when Fergus made perfect sense. She decided that she could not ignore this.

  ‘Where were you when you saw Donal with the knife, Fergus?’ she asked in a low voice.

  ‘Up there.’ Fergus turned and pointed without hesitation. ‘Up on the Pooka Road.’ He looked slightly embarrassed and then said in her ear, ‘I like to climb onto the big stones up there. I like sitting up on high and watching the world go by.’ He half-sang the last few words in a trembling falsetto.

  Mara tightened her lips. The Pooka Road was a flat stretch of limestone pavement on the cliff beyond the harbour. From where they stood, it towered high above them, a pale grey expanse of stone, littered with enormous stray boulders. It was rumoured that the Pooka had used fairy magic to roll those stones along and to crush all of their enemies beneath them. Whether Fergus was still agile enough to climb on one of those rocks, well, she doubted that. But even standing up there on the limestone pavement he would have had a clear view of the cliff on the opposite side of the harbour. Yes, she thought, the cliff with its waterspout would certainly be visible to him. But would he have been out that night? This was something that she would have to check. She saw Cian’s eyes thoughtfully scan the Pooka Road and then turn back to Donal with a tough look on his young face. It did seem to him, as it had seemed to her, that if Fergus had really been up on the Pooka Road he could definitely have seen something if he had looked across at the waterspout.

  And it had been a night of a full moon.

  And that made her think of something else.

  Why had a lamp been so necessary for Niall when he was sent out by Ríanne to see where Gaibrial O’Doran had gone? She shelved that query at the back of her mind and turned back to Fergus. ‘You saw a young man, Fergus. Could it have been him?’ She pointed straight at Cian.

  Fergus smiled gently. ‘That’s only a boy, Mara. That’s one of your boys.’ He hesitated for a moment, his eyes troubled as he searched for a name and then sighed as he gave up the struggle. ‘That’s your boy,’ he repeated. ‘He’s a good boy. And so is this young man here.’ He patted Donal on the shoulder.

  ‘Young men make mistakes,’ he said. ‘They do things that are evil, but they are not evil themselves. The law gives them a chance to pay and to …’ His voice faded out and Mara realized that whatever had been in his mind had fallen into the void.

  ‘Let’s all walk together up to the Pooka Road,’ she suggested and his old face lit up.

  ‘I’m a great walker,’ he said.

  ‘You’ll come with us, Donal, won’t you?’ suggested Mara and he nodded. There was a sulky irritated look on his face, but the initial panic seemed to have subsided and his colour had come back.

  ‘Do you need someone to give you an arm, Fergus?’ she asked.

  ‘No, no I’m a great walker,’ he repeated and strode out.

  ‘Go after him, stay with him,’ said Mara authoritatively to the songwriter and Donal obediently caught up with the old man.

  ‘Cian,’ began Mara.

  ‘Go down to Gobnait and check whether he was out that night,’ put in Cian quickly and she nodded, pleased as always at those signs of independent thinking and quick wits when shown by her scholars. He was off instantly, taking the small blackthorn shrouded lane, which would shield him f
rom the sight of both Fergus and Donal.

  Mara waited until he was out of sight and then moved quickly ahead to join the other two on the way down to the harbour. There was no doubt that Fergus was, as he had claimed, a very good walker. She would almost have had to run to catch up with him. However, she was happy to walk behind and leave to Donal the burden of making conversation with Fergus. After a few minutes she heard the sound of a favourite song:

  Beidh aonach amárach i gContae an Chláir

  Cén mhaith dom é? Ní bheith mé ann.

  A Mháithrín, an ligfidh tú chun aonaigh mé?

  A stóirín-ó, ná h-éiligh é.

  Donal sang the old song well and to her amazement, after a minute, Fergus joined in with his high quavering voice, singing the lines where the lovesick girl pleads to be allowed to go to the fair with her beloved, the shoemaker, while Donal sang the mother’s refusal in a pleasant baritone. The song lasted until they reached the harbour and then Donal began it all over again. They had hardly gone more than a few yards when a deep bass voice joined in, singing the words in English:

  There’s a fair tomorrow in County Clare

  What good it’s to me, I won’t be there!

  Oh, Mother, will you let me go to the fair?

  My dearest dear, I do not dare!

  I’m in love with a shoemaker.

  If I don’t get him, I won’t live!

  Oh, Mother, will you let me go to the fair?

  My dearest dear, I do not dare!

  ‘I’ve entertained a whole table at Hampton Court with that song,’ said a voice from behind her and Mara turned around to see Boetius smiling affably at her. ‘The Cardinal, himself, was very taken by the tune when I sang it in Gaelic and he urged me to change the barbarous and uncouth words. And so myself and Thomas Wyatt got together and hammered out a few simple words to match the tune. We all thought it was a great improvement to hear it in English.’

  ‘We,’ queried Mara. ‘So you count yourself as an Englishman, now, Boetius?’