But Mariota was there, along with her father, and she smiled at me a little when she saw me through the crush of people. I was surprised when she made her way to my side. She plucked at my sleeve and drew me towards the door of the cottage, away from the crush by the bier.
“I need to speak with you,” she said urgently. We went outside, and sat on a large rock overlooking the sound. The sounds of mourning and talk from inside Sheena’s cottage wafted out to us, mingled with the sound of the waves on the shoreline below, while the full moon had risen and its light glinted silver on the rocks and the water.
“And so?” she asked, expectantly.
“What?”
She frowned a little, but it looked more like a half-smile. “What were you finding out when you went to see Donal?”
“It was for that you needed to speak with me?”
“Aye.”
I did not then understand women. Nor, I can say, do I even understand them the now. But I answered her question.
“Gillecristus looks in a fair way to be becoming the next Prior. And Columbanus knew nothing of his sister’s death before I arrived.”
“Well, what of Gillecristus?”
“He was not seen this morning. He told the other canons he was alone in his chamber, fasting, and doing penance. So it could have been him, I suppose. He, or Columbanus, could have slipped away, taken the coracle across the Strand, met her, killed her, and returned with none the wiser. But did Sheena know Gillecristus? Sheena knew her killer, she was friendly with him.”
“And she could not have been friendly, as you call it, with Gillecristus?”
I scowled. “I cannot think so, Mariota,” I answered with some exasperation, as if I was speaking to a child. “He is a dried up old stick of a man, and neither Donal nor myself think that he would have abused Sheena before he killed her. Gillecristus continually spoke against her. He did not think it seemly for the Prior to have a hand-fasted wife. He felt it took him too much away from his duties. He felt it his mission, I believe, to point this out often to my father. Which he did do, repeatedly.”
Mariota just smiled, and I felt compelled to add something more to my speech. “Gillecristus is forever speaking about the snares and wiles that women use to entrap men and lure them into sin. For you do know, do you not, that Eve was the cause of Man’s fall from Paradise.”
Mariota continued to smile, more broadly now, and I got the distinct feeling she was trying to keep from laughing. For myself, I could not believe how much I myself had sounded like Gillecristus himself as I had spoken.
“And you, do you believe that, Muirteach?” she asked.
“Well, it is the teaching of the Church.” I felt myself flushing and felt my tongue all tied in knots. Why was she asking such questions? And why had I even brought up the topic, at all, at all? “But I left the order,” I continued somewhat lamely. “I found I would not make a monk.”
Chapter 10
“And why was that?”
I did not answer and then I thought I noticed that Mariota herself was blushing, although it was difficult to tell in the moonlight. But whether she was or no, it did not stop her from continuing to speak.
“Well, whatever, perhaps even such a pious man as Gillecristus might find himself ensnared by a woman’s wiles. It might not be impossible, no matter how unlikely.” Her eyebrows arched as she looked at me. “You do not think so?”
I stuttered a moment, red-faced like a lad, and then grudgingly admitted it was possible.
“Well, that is settled, then,” she said a moment later, her tone strangely brisk. “But that still is not to say that it was Gillecristus was the killer.”
“But you were just arguing that it was,” I said, bemused.
“No, Muirteach, I was speaking of something else entirely. But perhaps I had no business to have been speaking of it.” She paused.
We sat in silence for a moment listening to the waves, and the clamor from the house. People were drinking more now, and I could hear the voices of Angus and Alasdair and Columbanus as they mourned their sister.
“Muirteach,” Mariota asked abruptly, “When you were finding Sheena, was she wearing a fine brooch on her plaid?”
“No,” I answered. I thought I remembered the pin Mariota was thinking of. “That same fine silver pin she was wearing to the funeral? I do not think she would be wearing it to pick rush flowers.”
“No,” replied Mariota, “but she might indeed wear it if she was going to meet her lover. We did not find it, Muirteach, when we laid out her body. It is not here at her house. I looked for it.”
I was puzzled. “What of that? She could well have lost it.”
Mariota looked at me, and even in the dim light I could read her expression. “She wore it just the day before, at the funeral. A woman does not loose a pin like that, Muirteach, nor does she misplace it. And especially not a woman like Sheena, who has so little. I think she wore it to meet her murderer and he took it from her body after he had killed her. Find the pin and we find the murderer. I am thinking that brooch will tell us who the murderer is.”
“Aye,” I responded sourly, “and it will tell us that whoever killed her is a thief and stole her fine brooch out of greed.”
“There is another thing, Muirteach. Sheena was breeding, she was going to have a child.”
“How are you knowing that?” I asked. “And why were you not telling me earlier?”
“Muirteach, I was with the women when we were doing the laying out. There were signs, in her breasts and her belly. I am thinking she was three or four months gone, not so much as you might be noticing, but we could tell.”
“And so? Are you thinking that is why she was murdered? It makes no sense.”
“No, and she was not so large that people would know.”
“Unless she did have another lover, and he killed her, the child would have been my father’s.”
“And so it would have been your own sister or brother. It is a sad thing, indeed.”
Again we said nothing for awhile, each of us keeping our thoughts to ourselves.
“I will be returning to Islay soon,” Mariota said abruptly.
“Oh?”
“Yes, my father means to return tomorrow, and I will go with him then. Perhaps I can see if any of the MacDonalds from the Rhinns were missing when your father died, and again this morning. And there are other things I must be seeing to there, as well.”
I will own I felt strangely disappointed when she said she must leave. Although why it would be mattering to me, I could not at the time imagine. A woman with a sharp tongue, Mariota was—for all that she had a sweet smile, and cheeks like berries, and the long golden hair of her—but she had a sharp tongue, for all of that, and I always felt myself to be getting in the way of it. The way she smiled at me, I felt she laughed at me somehow, as if I amused her in secret.
So I did not ask what other business she had in Islay, only muttered something in reply. If I had asked, it might have saved me some grief. Or perhaps, even had I known, it would have made no difference whatever in the way things worked themselves out. But that bit of the tale comes later.
A figure left the house and approached us in the moonlight. I stiffened, fearing that Angus had decided to come out and stick his dirk in my back, but as the man drew closer I saw it was Fearchar. Then I wondered what he would think, to see me sitting here in the moonlight with his daughter, for all that there had been nothing whatever to it. For, I told myself sternly, she would never have a cripple, and I was not wanting her either. I would never be getting any rest from that tongue of hers, and that laughter that she had.
“Och, father,” said Mariota as he approached, “I was just telling Muirteach that I would be returning to Islay with you when you go tomorrow.”
“Aye?”
“Yes.” She sounded very decided. “I have business to see to, as you well know, Father. And I was promising Muirteach that we would look into the MacDonalds of the Rhinns, tho
se that were related to his mother, on that side, and be making sure that none of them were leaving oddly like, last week and last night, to be killing the Prior and poor Sheena. Now what were you saying their names were, Muirteach? And who would be most likely to be wanting revenge for your mother’s sake?”
I told her their names, although it had been a long while since I had seen my Islay relatives, and as to who would be most likely to revenge himself on my father I could not guess. Colonsay was my home now, and had been since I had been a child of five, when I had gone to live with Uncle Gillespic after my mother’s death.
“So that is settled then. I will go with you, Father, tomorrow.”
The Beaton agreed. “Fine I know that once Mariota gets an idea into her head, Muirteach, there is no talking her out of it. She was like that with learning the medicine from me, as a girl. She would not be taking take ‘no’ as an answer, but must be going with me wherever I went. And so many questions she had, even then.”
I saw him smile with fondness at his daughter in the moonlight. “And so she will be talking to your relatives, Muirteach, and woe to them if they were not where they should have been on these days.”
“When will you be leaving?” I asked, not smiling back.
“We will leave after Sheena’s funeral mass tomorrow.”
So that was that, then, and there seemed little else to say. After a time I left the Beaton and his daughter sitting in the moonlight, went back inside to the wake, and got myself very drunk on Angus and Alasdair’s whiskey.
* * * * *
Sheena’s funeral, the next morning, was a sad affair. The priest was hung over, as was I. He also had been at the wake the night before. Rain fell steadily, and the lowering sky blocked the view of anything more than a few hundred yards distant. The sound I remember the most is the sobbing of Maire and her brother when the first clods of earth fell upon their mother's shrouded body in the grave.
Mariota and her father took their leave soon after, and I retreated to Donald Dubh’s. I spent the rest of the long gray afternoon there, listening to the harper from Islay, telling myself I was listening out for any gossip or clues that might be revealed there.
When I emerged some four hours later it was still raining. The village of Scalasaig had become a fine morass, what with mud churned by the passing of villagers, mixed with cow and sheep dung. I headed for my house, unsteady on my feet as I was, berating myself. There was something I was missing, something I was not seeing, or I would have found my father’s murderer by now.
I thought that, if Mariota wanted to seek out clues among my long lost relations on Islay, she was welcome to the task. It would keep her from pestering me.
I wandered into my house, which was cold, and tried to light a fire on the hearth to drive some of the afternoon’s chill away. But the peats were wet, there being a hole in the thatch that I had not attended to, and so after shivering in the dark for awhile I left and went next door to Aorig’s.
It was cozy there, no leaking thatch, and Aorig was baking some bannocks. Seamus played with my half-brothers, crawling on all fours being ridden like a horse by Sean, which made Maire actually smile just a wee bit and the baby coo with laughter. They came in a fair way close to knocking over the dish of meal that Aorig had set on a stool next to the hearth where she was working, but she only smiled at me and did not stop them. It only needed Somerled to complete the picture of total chaos, but I had left him sleeping on my mattress, which I knew would smell of wet dog when I returned to lie myself down upon it later that night.
“It is a fine thing to see them laughing a bit, after the sad day they have had, poor bairns.”
“And so will they be staying with you, then?” I asked.
Aorig shrugged. “I am happy enough to have them, for the while. I do not see them doing well with those great louts of bachelors, their uncles. No offense meant to you Muirteach, but it is taking a woman to know how to be raising bairns.”
I had no wish to deny that, and no wish for bairns of my own, at all, so I said nothing much in reply, but listened while Aorig chattered and enjoyed the smell of the hot bannocks which soon filled the small house.
“And so you have no wish to marry, Muirteach?”
I snorted with what I supposed was a laugh, and banished the thought of Mariota’s face from my mind. “And who would have me, Aorig?” I said with some bravado.
“There are those that would have you, I am thinking,” said Aorig. “You are not so ill favored as all that, with that dark hair and those gray eyes that you have.”
“No, no, Aorig,” I denied, “I’ve no wish to be married.”
“There are some women,” Aorig persisted, “who would like a man with a good mind, one who can read and write.”
“Well, I am not knowing of any,” I said shortly, my mood darkening for some reason I did not completely understand.
Just then Seamus, acting far younger than his fourteen years, crashed against the bed in the corner and little Sean fell onto the floor, bumped his forehead and began to wail. In the ensuing confusion, to my great relief, the topic was dropped.
Aorig’s husband entered. He also had been at Donald Dubh’s but had the wisdom to return home for dinner. He had had enough of his wife’s tongue-lashings in the past, I guessed. Or perhaps it was that Aorig’s cooking was too fine to pass up. And he had brought a guest with him home, as well. The harper followed him in the door, his fine harp bundled up well against the rain on his back.
“Whist, white love,” said Aorig’s husband crossing to the hearth where she was cooking, and giving her a somewhat well whiskeyed kiss, “look who I am bringing back with me.”
“Fine I can see you are not alone,” said Aorig as she sighed and reached for more meal to make more bannocks. The children, meanwhile, stopped their playing and shyly watched the new arrivals from the corner.
“He said he would be playing for us in return for some of your fine cooking. And I was not such an amadan as to refuse such an offer. He is a fine harper, now Aorig, and you will be thanking me for this, do not fear.”
“I am sure that I will be,” said his wife, as she bent to stir the stew. “Here now, it is just ready. You can sit, and eat now. I am thinking you are needing some food in you, to sober you up. You are welcome,” she said to the bard. “Sit you down, and eat your fill.”
He was a fine figure of a man, the bard was, with long hair to his shoulders, a thin braid falling down one side of it. His hair and the beard on his face had a glint of bronze in the gold of it, while his nose was hooked like the beak of an eagle. I guessed he was about my own age, or perhaps just a few years older, although from the weathered look of his face he had spent more of his years out under the sky than I had, at my scriving.
“And are you liking our island?” asked Aorig, as the man ate.
“It is fine enough,” the harper replied, before he raised the bowl to his lips to drink the last of the good broth in the stew. “But I soon will be traveling onward, perhaps to Mull. The MacLean of Duart is kind to traveling musicians.”
We all ate our fill of the good stew, and afterwards, while her husband and I both basked in the glow of a full stomach and a mind eased by the uisgebeatha, we all sat by the fire, the bairns gathered around Aorig’s knees, and the harper played for us. Such sweet music he made with his strings. There was a wildness in his playing, just held in check, which roused all manner of longings in me, and I found tears rolling down my cheeks, tears even for my dead father, and other things which would never be.
“Such a talent you have,” Aorig complimented him after the last notes died away into the glow of the peat fire, like the twinkling of the last star when the sun is lightening the sky. “And you have no settled home? You are no Chief’s bard?”
“I am my own man,” replied the harper in a terse voice. “I belong to no one.” His tone made it obvious that no more inquiries were welcome, and so I left Aorig’s to return to my own mattress, and roused Somerle
d to move his great bulk onto the floor. As I lay there, the smell of wet dog filling my nostrils, I had no insight as to what would cause a man to lead such a life of wandering. But his music filled my dreams that night.
Chapter 11
The next day Aorig took Maire and Sean back to their mother’s cottage, to get some belongings. I took my uncle’s small boat and went back to the Priory, and Columbanus returned with me. He had stayed with his brothers the night after the funeral. His time away from the Priory did not look to have done him much good. His eyes were bloodshot and red, and he seemed to have a sore aching in his head, to judge from the way he squinted at the sunlight on the water, and the groans he uttered each time the boat leapt up in the waves.
“We heard some fine music last night,” I finally said, when the sound of his retching over the side of the boat had subsided a bit. “Aorig’s husband brought that harper home from Donald Dubh’s. A fine hand he has for the music, that one.”
Columbanus looked at me as he rinsed his mouth out with some salt water and spat it out over the rail.
“He puts me in mind of someone who once was a novice at the Priory, a long while ago. But he said nothing of it, so perhaps he is not the same man.”
“Oh?” I waited while Columbanus retched over the side of the coracle and a wave washed over the side. “Be careful,” I admonished. “You’ll be tipping us all in the water.”
Just then we reached the Priory, and Columbanus dragged himself off to his bakeshop. He would be having plenty to confess at the next chapter meeting, I thought to myself, and I felt a sudden surge of gladness that I no longer was a part of this community. But that realization solved no murders.
I asked to see Gillecristus. What with Sheena’s murder, I had not spoken to him of his argument with my father, or of Tormod’s accident. I felt the time had come, although the thought of it gave me a queasy feeling in my gut. I did not relish this, but sure with His Lordship breathing down my neck like MacPhee’s black dog himself, I felt I had little choice in it all.
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