A MASS FOR THE DEAD

by Susan McDuffie

  “Aye, or Sheena’s kin, or even yourself. Crispinus had a rare talent for making enemies.” My uncle crossed himself and added, “God rest his soul,” in a rare show of piety, yet somehow I sensed it was heartfelt. Then he stared at me suddenly with those remarkable eyes he had. “Where were you, the last night?”

  “At home, drinking.”

  “Alone then.”

  “Seamus was with me. And Aorig saw me.” I was suddenly angry. “What are you saying, Uncle? By Christ’s Holy Blood, I had no reason to love my father, but I did not kill him, if that’s what you’re thinking.”

  Brother Augustus looked up at us sharply as he heard my outburst, but my uncle continued without sparing the monk a glance.

  “No, now, Muirteach,” Gillespic said soothingly, “I’m not saying that at all. Muirteach, you must control yourself the now, and not be swearing here in the Priory. You’ll be giving the poor brothers here fits, as if it were not bad enough for them to have a dead prior to be dealing with.”

  Brother Augustus returned to his prayers and after another minute my uncle continued. “Every man knows you had little reason to love your father, what with the way he treated your poor mother, God rest her soul. And you, as well. And for that, I’m thinking you might come under suspicion, that’s all of it.”

  “Well, Uncle, you can rest your mind. I did not do it. And whyever should I, with half of the population of the Isles ready to do it for me?”

  Gillespic shook his head. “It’s a bad thing, that it is Muirteach. And I’m thinking you should be the one to carry the news to His Lordship himself.”

  “Me?”

  “Aye, whoever better to do it than the man’s oldest son.”

  And whoever better to do it than someone not my uncle, I thought, but I kept my thoughts to myself. Gillespic had that amazing quality, he could get you to do something you had no desire to do, and somehow you’d find yourself happy to be doing it for him. And, even though I protested, I knew I’d be setting sail before much more time had passed, southward towards Islay, to take the news to the Lord of the Isles.

  Chapter 2

  Gillespic had a small bìrlinn readied, twelve oars only, and we set off from Oronsay, after a hurried meal. Or rather, I set off, accompanied by four other men to crew the galley. Seamus was eager to come along, and a good hand with the oars. Gillespic stayed behind.

  Clouds obscured the early sun of the day, and soon it started raining, a misty drizzle that strengthened, soaked through my shirt and cloak, and made me shiver. The iorram sung by the crew was sad one, suited to the day, and the dreary errand we were on made my mood worse.

  When I tried to imagine him gone, I found that I could not fathom life without my father. He had loomed large in my life. As a child I tried to win his approval, but had never found it coming.

  My thoughts were bitter and I took a swig from the flask I carried by way of escaping them, then munched on a bannock when I wasn’t rowing, tasting the salt from the sea spray in my mouth along with the oatcake.

  Despite the rain we made good enough time and by the time we reached the Sound of Islay the rain let up a bit. You could just make out the Paps of Jura, gray-humped through the mist on our left, but looking behind us the green bulk of Colonsay had vanished in the clouds.

  It was getting on towards the evening when we beached the bìrlinn at Coal Ila, wet, cold, and hungry. The few small stone huts, their thatch dripping wetly after the rain, looked quiet. We could find no one there to rent us horses and so we set off on foot towards Finlaggan, where we would find John MacDonald, Lord of the Isles.

  We made good enough time, and I kept up well enough with the others, at a walk. The hills of Islay gleamed green after the rain and the air smelled fresh and cold. I had been born here, but remembered little of it for all that. After my mother had died, and I’d been sent to Uncle Gillespic’s for fostering, I hadn’t returned often and this side of the island was far from the Rhinns, where my mother and I had lived with her family. But Finlaggan I knew well enough, having often accompanied Gillespic here in these last years since I’d left the Priory, and it was with a sense of dread that I saw the loch and the islands grow nearer as we walked.

  The track grew busy as we neared the settlement, and the smell of peat fires rose from the cluster of houses by the loch side. We saw miners, along with others, craftsmen and lead workers, returning to their homes and their evening meals after the day’s work.

  I was feeling an uncomfortable knot in my stomach. I cursed Gillespic for sending me on this errand, and cursed myself for accepting it. Not that I would have refused Gillespic, I admitted to myself wryly after I had finished cursing. I worshipped my foster father. But now I had to tell the MacDonald about the death of my own father.

  The stone and wattle houses of the village spilled over on both sides of the causeway and down along the sides of the loch. Many of the homes belonged to His Lordship’s own elite bodyguard, the luchd-tighe, while others housed craftsmen serving the castle, and miners from the silver and lead mines. On the loch itself, nestled like jewels in a blue setting, we saw the two islands that formed the Lord’s castle of Finlaggan—Eilean Mor, the big island, and beyond that the smaller Council Island, Eilean nan Comhairle.

  The Lord of the Isles, a descendant of that same Somerled my dog was named for, ruled a vast confederacy of clans in the Highlands and Hebrides, foremost among them his own Clan Donald. In his own territories John Mac Donald had nearly as much power as the Stewart monarch himself, for the King in Edinburgh was a distant figure who had little to do with our life in the islands. However, with that same canniness that he had shown when he put aside his first wife, Amie MacRuairi, to marry the Stewart’s own daughter, John MacDonald signed his documents and decrees merely Dominus Insularium, the Lord of the Isles, and had sworn at least nominal fealty to the Stewart king.

  The pit of my stomach felt worse with thinking about it all, and my leg started to ache again as we neared the causeway. The sentry by the entrance was my distant cousin, Fergus, and he let us pass by without protest. We passed the kitchen buildings, where the aroma of roasting venison mingled with the smell of peat smoke to make me aware of how hungry I was after the long day, and then the jetty and the stone bulk of the Great Hall reared before us. The MacDonald’s men waited by the door, idly fingering their broadswords when they saw us.

  “We’re needing to see the MacDonald,” I said. “It’s the MacPhee sent us, with news from Colonsay.”

  The sentry raised an eyebrow. “News, is it then?” I nodded, but didn’t enlighten him as to what it was. “He’s away. Hunting,” he added, after a minute.

  “Come away in, then,” he continued, looking a bit disappointed, when we still did not enlighten him. “Perhaps himself will be seeing you when he returns. Or perhaps he will be wanting to wait until after the meal.”

  We were settled and brought some food and drink. After waiting for over an hour in the smoky, crowded hall, drinking claret, watching some MacNeills playing at draughts, His Lordship’s grizzled hound scratch at his fleas, and half-listening while a harper played idly in a corner of the hall, I concluded that himself would be seeing us after the meal. Or I hoped so. The rumbling in my stomach had grown more insistent, despite the bannocks and cheese we had been given, and I hoped the meal would come first and that the telling of our news, and my encounter with His Lordship, could wait.

  There was a stir in the hall and the MacDonald entered, followed by his tail of retainers, his gille-mor, or sword bearer, members of his luchd-tighe, and a number of other clansmen and followers, all talking roisterously of the hunt they had had and calling for ale.

  Two of them struggled to carry in a dead stag, which they heaved to the floor of the hall. The old hound got up and sniffed interestedly at it, but the men shooed him away, and he limped over to rejoin the other hounds, now settling in a corner of the space.

  The MacDonald was not a tall man, dark haired and dark eyed, showing more
of the Celt than the Norse in his looks. He was dressed for the hunt, but the wool of his brat was of a fine weave, fastened with a large jewel-encrusted pin of gold, and he wore boots of the finest leather. His keen eyes sought us out in the hall. Apparently the sentry had told him of our arrival. After a moment he signaled for me to join him where he sat on a finely carved wooden chair before the peat fire, drinking ale from a mether made of silver and ivory.

  “Your Lordship,” I began, not knowing if he would remember me, but he did.

  “Muirteach, is it? What is this news from Colonsay?”

  “It’s Prior Crispinus. My father.” I stopped speaking a moment to swallow, my throat gone suddenly dry.

  “Well, what of him?”

  “He’s dead. He was murdered.” I heard the silence behind me, followed quickly by the beginnings of shocked converse in the hall.

  “Saint’s blood,” he swore, almost starting up out of his chair. His eyes narrowed, and he settled in his seat again. “Who did it?”

  I shrugged my shoulders in answer to his question.

  “Rome will not be happy. Nor the King, I’m thinking.” He thought, taking a sip from his glass. “Especially if no one is held accountable.”

  He looked at me, his gray eyes keen. “Tell me what happened,” he commanded.

  I told him, at least what we knew of it all.

  “His fingers just touching the Sanctuary Cross.” His Lordship drained his ale. He wiped his mouth with a fine napkin of richly embroidered linen. “It’s an abomination, that is. Sacrilege.”

  He looked at me again, and I felt like a bull at a summer cattle fair. “Muirteach, you are his son. And you’ve a good mind in you, and are not ill favored, for all that you—” He hesitated, his eyes going to my leg for a moment.

  “For all that I cannot run,” I finished for him.

  “Aye, well, there is that. But, as I’ve said, you’ve a good mind, and you can read, and write. Aye, you’ll be just the man I’m needing.”

  Now my eyes narrowed. For when the MacDonald said he needed you, you got suspicious, for all that he was called Buachaill nan Eilean, the Herdsman of the Isles.

  “Yes?” was all I said.

  His Lordship called to his henchman for claret, but did not answer me immediately. The man brought the wine, and set it on a small table within easy reach of His Lordship’s chair.

  The Lord of the Isles poured wine into two silver goblets and offered me one.

  “Aye, you’ll be the man for it, being his son and all as well.” He looked at me, measuring me. “I want you to find the killer. And once justice is done, then we can write to Rome. And the King. There’s no need to be troubling them before we know who killed him.”

  “They’ll hear, at least the King will, in Edinburgh, with his daughter your wife.” There was no point in arguing about the other. I would have to find my father’s killer. The MacDonald was right, it was my duty as a son, for all that I had not loved my father. And now it was my duty to my clan’s overlord as well; he had just made it so.

  His Lordship smiled. “Aye. Best you write the King, then, and bring it to me when you are done. Away in the back room with you now. I’ll see to it that you’ve parchment and pen. And a light. You can be writing to the King before the meal, and then—”

  “What am I to write?”

  “Simple.”

  I groaned. It did not sound simple to me, but the MacDonald continued. “Tell him the Prior has been killed, and that we are close to finding the murderer. And when we have brought him to justice we will be letting him know of it. Oh, and send greetings from my wife.” He beamed. “I’ll send Fergus with the letter. He’s been wanting to see Edinburgh. Or is the King at Rothesay the now?”

  He left. My stomach growled. A servant ushered me into the back room of the hall, where I found a table, illuminated by the fading evening light shining through the slit window, and the same henchman soon brought writing materials and a candle, just as the MacDonald had promised.

  “And bring some more claret,” I told him, as I sharpened the quill and attempted to compose the letter. The end result, I told myself, was none so bad, for all that I had never written to a King before.

  To His Majesty King Robert II the Steward of Scotland

  From John MacDonald, Dominus Insularium, Lord of the Isles

  Greetings: We desire you to know as soon as ever we could inform our Royal Father of the sad events which have here transpired at Oronsay Priory on this day June the 27, 1373. Our beloved Prior of Oronsay, Crispinus MacPhee, has been found done to death in a cruel manner by some criminal as yet unknown. As we do not wish to cause any undue concern to our well loved royal father, we hasten to assure him of our intent to bring the perpetrator of such an infamous deed to justice, and that right soon, and communicate with you at such time as that has been done. In addition I hasten to assure you that my ladywife, your own daughter Margaret, rests well and sends you all kind greetings.

  Now it only remained to catch the murderer, I thought wryly. The servant reappeared and, finding I had finished, left again to summon the MacDonald. He inspected the letter and was well pleased, clapping me on the back, and walking with me to the main room where the tables had been set up and the meal already underway.

  Seated at the far end of a lower table, I ate my fill at last. Venison, salmon, oatcakes, bannocks, cheese, honey and curds. Mead and claret. I had just about reached my limit when I saw the MacDonald gesture to a tall, thin, older man and motion in my direction. By this time the pages were removing the dishes, and people had begun to mill about. So I was not too surprised when the man approached me a short while later. He had a slight stoop, from time spent over books perhaps, and blond hair going a bit to gray, but his blue eyes when he looked at me were clear and penetrating, his manner calm and soothing.

  “You are Muirteach MacPhee?” he inquired.

  “Aye. I am.”

  “Himself was wanting myself to accompany you back to Colonsay. I am Fearchar Beaton, the physician.”

  We knew of Fearchar Beaton, in Colonsay. He was famous all over the Isles, as all the Beatons were, for their knowledge.

  The story goes that one of them, while walking down the road carrying a fine hazel staff, had been approached by a strange gentleman. The man asked where the Beaton had gotten his hazel staff, then asked the Beaton to return to that same hazel tree, and watch a hole beneath it, where he would see six serpents leave, and then return, the white adder coming last. The Beaton was to catch this last serpent and bring it to the gentleman.

  The Beaton agreed, and found all as the strange gentleman had promised at the hazel tree. When he returned to the gentleman, with the white adder carefully stopped up in a bottle, the man was delighted. Opening the bottle, he flung the serpent into a pot he had boiling by the roadside. He then asked the Beaton to watch the pot for a wee while, as he had to leave, and on no account to let it boil over.

  The Beaton did so, but the pot boiled furiously, and he could not stop it. He reached for the lid, burned his finger with some of the potion, and put his finger in his mouth. The eyes of his wisdom were opened, and he understood the language of beasts, and plants, which were helpful to the sick and infirm, and the healing of every ache and pain that man is known to suffer.

  I am not knowing if that story is true, but sure enough it is that all the Beatons are renowned healers and physicians. None are better. Some have even studied in far off Spain, and in Paris. But whyever would the MacDonald be wanting the Beaton to return to Colonsay with me?

  The Beaton himself answered my question, before I could ask it.

  “Himself is wanting me to look at the body, to see what I can tell about the manner of his death,” he said. “The body of the Prior. Is it your father, lad?”

  I bristled a bit, whether it was from being called lad, or from the kind tone of voice the man had, I did not know.

  “Aye. I am his bastard.”

  “No shame in that. It is the m
an who makes his own way in the world, not his father.”

  I shrugged my shoulders. Perhaps. “When do you want to be going?”

  “First light tomorrow. I’m not wanting to wait too long to see it. We could almost go tonight.” For this close to midsummer the sky still held some light, even so close to midnight as it was.

  “The crew is tired. As I am.”

  He did not rankle at my tone. “Well, then, you will sleep, and we will leave in the morning. Tell your crew. Was no one telling you where you can bide?”

  “In the hall here, I’m guessing. Or in the guest house.” The feast showed no signs of stopping at any point soon.

  The Beaton nodded. “That’ll be the way of it, for sure. Here. Come with me. You can stay at my house, and we’ll be away early in the morn that way. Get the others.”

  That last proved no easy job, as most of the crew were just getting started on the uisgebeatha, and finally we left Eachann there, drinking and arguing with a redheaded MacLean, and Gillecolm flirting with a dark haired MacDonald girl. They both absent-mindedly agreed to meet us at the causeway at first light. I doubted whether either of them would sleep this night, but for myself, I was ready to.

  The Beaton, as the MacDonald’s physician, had a small house just on the mainland, past the causeway, close to the houses of His Lordship’s bodyguard.

  I stumbled once on the slippery stones of the causeway, and he looked at me sharply but said nothing, not asking how I had come by my limp.

  We reached his house and he said, before opening the door, “I’ll just be calling out to Mariota, my daughter, to apprise her of the fine guests I’ve brought with me from the feast at the Hall.”

  This brought a snort of laughter from Seamus, who had drunk a little too much of the claret, what with his father not present to watch over him at the feasting.

  I didn’t care. I just wanted to sleep. From dawn, when Seamus had first wakened me, until now seemed a lifetime and more. And so I did not look too hard at Mariota as she bustled about in the Beaton’s tidy whitewashed house, putting more bedding down by the fire, but merely sat idly, yawning. Finally I lay down on some soft linen covered mattress—stuffed with heather and bracken I’m sure it was, but not a twig poking me anywhere—and remembered nothing else.