A MASS FOR THE DEAD

by Susan McDuffie

  I had to agree with that assessment of my father. I changed the subject, saying nothing about my own relationship to Crispinus. Evidently Tormod had not heard of the Prior’s bastard son and I saw no reason to enlighten him.

  “Were you knowing,” Tormod continued, “that Crispinus was always after the masons, even after the boys who carried the stones, berating them, telling them to work harder. As though it was his business.”

  I shook my head. “I was not knowing that. Did he do so to you?”

  “Perhaps.”

  “Gillecristus is kin with you, is he not?”

  “Aye, on my mother’s side.”

  “But you were not hearing about the Prior?”

  Tormod’s eyes narrowed in a way I found I did not like. “What about him?” he asked.

  “He was found murdered on the Strand. Three days ago now, it was.”

  Tormod turned his head away a moment before he looked at us again. “The black heart of him. Well, he will not be bothering the workers anymore. Or anyone else, either.”

  He took a drink from the cup sitting near on a stool near his bed, his face pale. “I had not heard of it,” he added. “I have had a fever. Mayhap my mother knows of it.”

  “I would think young Eogain would have brought word.”

  “We have not seen him since I was brought home. He will be staying at the masons’ village there on Oronsay.”

  “But how are your injuries? Will you be working again?”

  “I am not knowing. They say my hand was broken in some three places, and there is a sore pain in my back, but I can move my legs so perhaps, once the bruising heals. . . they are thinking it is only a bad sprain of the legs and the back. At least I should still have the strength in my arms and shoulders for carving the stone, but I am not knowing if I will be able to hold the chisel.”

  It was just at this point that Chatriona returned. She took one look at her elder son’s white face and sent us on our way, telling us that himself would be wearing himself out now, with his visitors, and we must be off with him just getting over the fever and needing rest to heal from his injuries.

  It occurred to me that perhaps the Beaton could be of some use, and I offered to send him to look at Tormod’s injuries, for which his mother thanked me. Tormod however, just sat staring at the thatching while we said our good-byes to his mother, and did not respond to our farewells.

  “You’ve fair worn him out, the white love,” she said, firmly showing us the door. “Give Aorig this honeycomb, and thank her for the fine cheese, Seamus. We will be enjoying it, along with her kindness.” And with that we left.

  “It is plain to see that Tormod could not have killed your father,” said Seamus when we were some half-mile down the track leading back to Scalasaig. “With him being in bed and not able to walk and with the fever and all.”

  I remembered, then, how Alasdair Beag claimed to have seen Tormod on the strand the evening my father died.

  “Aye,” I agreed, “unless he is lying about his injuries. And what man here does not have kin to avenge him?”

  Chapter 6

  The voices of the monks echoed around me. I stood in the Oronsay Chapel, that next day, as they chanted the funeral mass of my father. The scent of frankincense almost covered the odor of decay emanating from the linen shrouded corpse, covered with an embroidered pall, which sat on a bier before the altar. Beeswax candles flickered in the chapel, their scent adding to the perfume in the air, the light from the flames glinting on the chased silver of the sacramental vessels.

  My father’s funeral. What was I feeling then, as the visiting bishop from Iona consigned my father to the earth?

  I told myself I felt little grief, and concentrated instead on my problem. Who among these people had wished my father dead? Or, I thought, remembering Columbanus’s mutterings, who had not?

  I stood in the crowded chapel, Seamus next to me, and watched the other mourners. Gillecristus, at the altar, assisted the Abbot of the Isles, who had come from Iona to officiate, with the Mass. His head lowered, he looked suitably pious and had I not disliked the sub-prior so much I would have said he looked grief-stricken.

  The Lord of the Isles stood in the front of the new chapel that he himself had endowed, and I thought I saw some satisfaction on his features as he surveyed the fruits of his generosity.

  His Lordship had dressed finely, in a garment of silk, although the cut of it mimicked a man’s linen great-shirt. A large gold brooch set with a ruby pinned his rich mantle, which was of finely woven wool but had a richly embroidered satin lining to it. His older son Ranald, the one he had gotten on Amie MacRuairi before he put her aside to marry Margaret Steward, stood slightly behind him, along with the two of his sons from Margaret not hostage with the King in Edinburgh.

  He himself had made my father Prior, and my father had been known as His Lordship’s man. Surely His Lordship had no reason to have my father killed.

  The other great chiefs of the Isles had voyaged to attend the funeral as well, the MacLeans from Lochbuoy and Duart, the MacNeills of Barra and Gigha, the MacKay and the MacGillivray from Mull, and the MacNicoll from Portree, along with their many retainers. All made a brave show in their embroidered saffron léines or great-shirts, covered with finely woven brats, which were pinned proudly with great brooches of silver, and even some of gold, set with fine gemstones and gleaming in the candlelight from the altar.

  But as little as I knew of my father’s dealings with these chiefs, I did not think murder on the Strand would be their way of killing a churchman who had angered them. More like it would be a sword in the chapel, as the English had killed Saint Thomas.

  Farther back in the chapel stood the masons, Calum Glas among them. I looked for signs of guilt on his face, but saw none, just his sharp eyes surveying the scene. My three half-siblings, with Sheena, her head covered by her plaid, stood alongside my Aunt Euluasaid and some of my cousins. Angus and Alasdair stood there as well, escorts to their sister, along with other folk who had traveled from the large island to attend.

  Sheena, Brother Donal told me later, had asked no one’s leave, but had simply arrived at the service, although Brother Gillecristus had declared in the chapter meeting the previous day that he would not tolerate that whore coming to the Mass. Apparently this had not been heard by Brother Columbanus, or had been deliberately disobeyed, and Sheena, ignoring the glares of Gillecristus, had entered the church, flanked with Angus and Alasdair for her luchd-tighe.

  They had arrived as the Bishop began to say the Mass, at the last possible moment. Columbanus had hurried to his sister, kissing her on the cheek, and showing her a place to stand in the back of the chapel, and so it was that she was there. And I found myself thinking that I would not like to be in Columbanus’s place, when Gillecristus became the next Prior of Oronsay.

  Also Mariota and her father stood in the Chapel, but I forced my thoughts away from them as I listened to the Mass. I tried to think of my father and his immortal soul, then tried to focus on the service, and then tried, yet again, to ponder who the killer might be, but it was soon enough that, for all my efforts at thinking, the Mass was over. The body of my father was deposited in its crypt in the church, the last wails of the keening women fell away, and we all filed out into the sunlit afternoon.

  I spied Mariota speaking with Sheena as we left the church. Sheena’s eyes were red, her face blotchy with grief, and her expression stoic. After a moment’s conversation with Mariota she turned and started walking back over the hills towards the Strand and her home, her children trailing behind her.

  I had not yet spoken with His Lordship about my researches, and had no chance to do so as we filed into the refectory for the funeral feast. I looked for Mariota. I told myself I wanted to ask her about her conversation with Sheena, but she was already sitting with her father next to some of the Islay MacDonalds. So I sat between Seamus, and Angus and Alasdair, who had not left with their sister.

  I tried again to as
k them about the deer, but they stuck stubbornly to their story, insisting Rhodri and Malcolm would vouch for them when they returned from Barra. They were friendly enough to me, for all my questioning, and did not seem consumed by guilt, eating heartily of their brother’s fine bread and the rest of the funeral feast. Perhaps, I thought sourly, they were happy to see my father in his grave.

  The food tasted good. Gillecristus and the other canons put on a great spread for the honored guests, for it was not every day that the Abbot of the Isles himself, as well as His Lordship and all the other great chiefs, came to the Priory. It was my guess, however, that the canons themselves enjoyed the beef in cameline sauce, frumenty, venison, and the other meats and delicacies served that day.

  In deference to the religious setting, the bards played only songs glorifying Our Lord, and songs of the more secular type were not performed, although some praises of the late Prior were performed. The feast broke up by late afternoon and the lords prepared to depart.

  I spoke with the Lord of the Isles as he walked down to the beach, now crowded with all the galleys of the chiefs. It was hard enough, what with all the clamor of leave-takings, to find a place to speak privately, but we walked a little down the shore and towards the black rocks in the west. The clouds stretched out over the sea towards Ireland, wisps of white against the blue of the sky. Gulls wheeled overhead, crying their short, sharp cries while I told His Lordship the little I had learned so far, my suspicions of Angus and Alasdair, of their sister, of Columbanus, of Gillecristus’s and Crispinus’s argument over the construction, and of Tormod’s injury.

  His Lordship listened gravely enough to my suppositions, his eyes alert.

  “So you are thinking it is one of the masons, then?” he asked, walking with me back towards the bìrlinns whilst his crew readied his galley. “Or perhaps his woman that did it, along with her brothers?”

  I confessed, my heart pounding, that I did not yet know for sure, and waited upon his displeasure. His Lordship frowned a bit, but then after a moment only clapped me on the back, with what seemed to me a somewhat false heartiness.

  “Sure, and we must be solving this, Muirteach, and that right soon. Already the Abbot at Kintyre has been asking me of it, saying that he will be writing to the Holy Father. Let alone that the King will be wanting it solved quickly enough, and we cannot be giving him an excuse to be bothering himself with these parts, as you well know.”

  To tell the truth it was little enough I knew of the moils of politics. Up until my father’s murder I had spent the majority of my days drunk either at my house, or at Donald Dubh’s. Still, it did not take a wise man to know that His Lordship would not be wanting King Robert to be sticking his nose into the business of the Isles, and so I said nothing, nodding my head in what I hoped His Lordship would take to be sage agreement.

  “So you see, Muirteach,” His Lordship continued, “You must be finding the murderer, and that right quickly. Or you must be finding someone you think could well have done the murder. Aye, that would do almost as well, I am thinking. Are you understanding what I am saying?”

  I felt a sick griping in my guts. I understood well enough. Either I must find the murderer or I must find a scapegoat for the murder of my father.

  “You are not saying I must accuse an innocent person of his murder?” I dared to ask. I heard my blood throb in my ears as I waited for his answer.

  His Lordship’s face clouded a moment.

  “No, now, Muirteach, I could never be saying that. What would be the justice in that? The murder price must be paid, and things set back to rights. I am saying that the murderer must be found, that is all. And,” His Lordship added, almost as an afterthought, as he turned to rejoin his retainers, “T’would be best if it were not one of the Canons.”

  I watched him stride away, and onto his galley, followed by his sons, other retainers, and his harper. The galley pulled away towards Islay, and I kicked at the sands of the beach in frustration before Seamus and I boarded my uncle’s galley for the short trip back to Scalasaig.

  * * * * *

  There was more food and drink at my uncle’s. It appeared Mariota and her father would be staying on Colonsay a bit longer. There were many on the island eager to call on the Beaton, such was his great fame as a physician, while Mariota had agreed to use her considerable expertise in helping my aunt put up some cordials and other remedies. I did not doubt they would be busy during their time here.

  Over a glass of claret, the Beaton professed himself curious to visit Tormod, and wondered if his injuries were in fact as severe as the man claimed them to be, especially when I told him Alasdair Beag claimed to have seen him that same evening.

  “And I will be keeping my ears and eyes open as well, Muirteach, in case I am hearing anything to help you.” Mariota’s blue eyes had a glint in them as she spoke that irked me, and I fear I spoke harshly in reply.

  “Such as what?”

  Her chin moved outwards a fraction. “Such as who was beating Sheena that night.”

  “Was it not my father?”

  “I am wondering, now, if it might have been someone else entirely. She spoke with me after the funeral mass.”

  I remembered seeing the two women speaking, after the mass, but had not yet had a chance to ask Mariota about it. It irritated me that she had mentioned it before I had asked her about it.

  “And?”

  Mariota caught at her lower lip with her small white teeth, and thought a moment.

  “She seemed aye remorseful, Muirteach,” she said finally.

  “Aye, perhaps she is remorseful because she killed my father. Along with those brothers of hers.”

  Mariota shook her head. “No, Muirteach. She seemed afraid as well. Although I do not believe she killed your father, I am thinking she knows something of it. She kept looking behind her, as though she did not want someone to see her speaking with me, but I am not knowing who that would have been.”

  “Her brothers more than likely,” I answered.

  “She asked me for more teething lotion for the bairn, so perhaps she will tell me more when I see her.”

  “And is there aught else?” I asked, for it seemed, from her look, that Mariota had more to say.

  “It was something I saw her wearing at the funeral. A man’s pin, a large and fine one, which did not look as though it had belonged to a prior. She had it on her plaid.”

  I remembered that as well. The pin she had worn when I had gone to see her at her cottage on the day my father had been killed.

  “I have seen it,” I replied. “Large, is it not? Silver, with a pattern of birds and a fine cairngorm on it?”

  Mariota nodded.

  “I am thinking my father must have given it to her.”

  “Perhaps,” said Mariota, but although I felt she was unconvinced we spoke no more of it.

  I drank too deeply that night, up at Dun Evin, listening to the songs of the bard, and my uncle telling stories of my father from his youth, as a way of mourning him. I had never known that he had had a puppy as a child, named of all most ridiculous things, Coinean, a rabbit, and for some reason the thought made me maudlin. I tried not to cry, but in that perhaps I was not altogether successful, and somehow stumbled down the hill to my hut to sleep much later that night.

  All too soon there was more trouble. Had I been knowing that was going to be the way of it, perhaps I would not have been drinking as much as I did that night.

  * * * * *

  That night I dreamed of my father. Wrapped in his death-shirt, he stood in front of my bed and looked at me accusingly, the windings of his grave-clothes flapping in some ghastly faerie breeze. I could see the bruises on his throat, and the mark of the string that had throttled him. All around him fey candles burned with a ghostly, glimmering light, the green flames flickering in that same silent unearthly wind, at times lit by flashes of a greater light, like some hellish lightning.

  “Muirteach,” he called to me in a hollow voice. “
Muirteach.”

  “What is it, Father?” I answered in my dream. “Are you not dead? We buried you today, a fine funeral mass. How is it you are speaking with me?”

  “Och, Muirteach, yes, I saw. Were you thinking I was not there? It was a fine funeral indeed, and it is dead indeed I am. A sad undignified death it was, too. Little did I think that I, the Prior of Oronsay, would die in such a sad way. It was a fool I was to think that I could avoid my fate.”

  And then my father started to quote the bards, and it was this that made me believe it was a true vision and not just the whiskey talking to me.

  “‘Carry not to the house of the spotless King aught that may thee expose to charge,’” the ghost quoted, “‘conceal not any of thy sins however hateful its evil to tell … The sin a man commits in secret, much is the debt his son incurs …’”

  I shivered.

  “And I was not being such a good father to you, either, Muirteach, neither to you nor my other bairns. I am sorry about that,” he added, holding up a small, round, crystal stone. It gleamed in that ghastly candlelight.

  “I have brought you a gift, by way of making it up to you. It is a charm, for protection, it is. But you must find my killer,”

  Even in my dream I grew irritated, with the poetry and the gift, which came too late.

  “Fine I am knowing that,” I replied to the phantom, “even His Lordship is telling me I must find your killer, Father. They are not wanting your death to go unavenged, nor the murder price to go unpaid.”

  “No, no, Muirteach. It is not the compensation I am worrying about. Such things as that are not mattering here, not at all. You must find the killer before—”

  The ghostly wind howled louder at this, and some of the candles surrounding my father flickered out.

  “Before what, Father?”

  “Before…” My father faded before my eyes. He receded from me, pulled back along some dark corridor. His voice grew fainter, but it seemed I heard him say, “Before Sheena—”