Gillecristus consented to see me in the Prior’s small withdrawing room. There was a table in the room, and a large carved chair, while the walls were painted with scenes showing the last judgment. On one side Christ reigned over the chosen, while on the others black and blue devils poked at the damned with pitchforks and pushed them in to the yawning maw of Hell, filled with fiery flames. It was not a peaceful picture and I confess I felt like one of the damned as I stood before Gillecristus.
“You may sit there,” said Gillecristus, indicating a stool in front of the table. I sat down and waited a moment before I spoke.
“There are a few things I am needing to ask you,” I finally said. “His Lordship is aye anxious to have this completed and to find the killer of my father.”
“As are we all,” said Gillecristus.
“You were hearing that Columbanus’s sister was murdered?”
Gillecristus turned a shade paler. “The whore. It is better than she deserved. Aye, I had heard. That is why Columbanus was gone the past two days.”
“She leaves three bairns.”
“Bastards. As are you, Muirteach.”
I flinched. I could not help it. I breathed in deeply before I replied, hoping my voice sounded calm.
“What reason have you to hate Sheena, so, Gillecristus?” I asked the sub-prior. “She was not the only hand-fasted wife my father had.”
“Aye, but she was the only one he flaunted so. She took him away from his duties. It was here he should have been, Muirteach, seeing to the Priory and the spiritual needs of this community. And it was she who tempted him to such evil, with the sinfulness of her body, like Eve’s, which tempted Adam away from Paradise.”
“I am thinking that the sin was not all on Sheena’s side,” I interjected, and watched Gillecristus’s Adam’s apple bob up and down in his throat as he struggled to reply.
“If it had not been for her temptation, Crispinus would not have strayed so from his duties. Nor would he have flaunted his misdeeds so. It was as though he enjoyed it—others knowing that his mistress lived just across the strand, there, a short walk away. I would know whenever he went to her; he would not hide it.”
I watched Gillecristus knot his hands together, so tightly that his bony knuckles went white, and waited for him to continue speaking.
“Indeed he seemed to enjoy taunting me with it. ‘I am just going over the Strand this evening, Gillecristus’ he would tell me, and then he would give me a leer and a wink, and leave the prior’s house. I would imagine him swiving her, again and again, tupping her as an old ram does a ewe, for all the hours he was gone from here. It was a whore of Babylon, she was, and no mistake, dressed in her cloth of scarlet and gold, seducing him from his duties here.”
Whenever I had seen Sheena she had been wearing rough wool, not silks of scarlet or cloth of gold, but I somehow resisted pointing this out to Gillecristus.
“I have heard you were not seen the morning Sheena was murdered, Gillecristus. Where were you?” I asked.
I watched his choler grow. “You are not accusing me!”
“Och, no, I am not, Gillecristus, but you have just made it clear you did not like the woman. Where were you on that day?”
“I was fasting, doing penance for my sins. I did not leave my room that day.”
“What sins, Gillecristus?”
He did not answer me.
I guessed his whereabouts could be proven or disproven, somehow, if I questioned the other canons. Surely someone would have seen him if he had left his chamber.
“Were you knowing that Sheena was with child, Gillecristus, when she was killed?”
He blanched, swallowed, then finally spoke, his voice harsh. “Then that is what comes of her whoring with him. Four times a whore, that makes her.”
I said nothing for a moment, then spoke. “I was hearing that you had quarreled with my father shortly before he died. Something about the masons, it was?”
Gillecristus did not deny it. “Aye, I did, and to my great sorrow. It was that Calum Glas. A fine enough mason before the drink gets to him, but then he becomes careless. But your father would hear nothing against him, for they are kin. And poor Tormod suffers now because of it.”
“You are kin with Tormod, are you not?”
“Aye, on his mother’s side. But what of that?”
I let that go. It would not do to be openly accusing the next Prior of Oronsay of murder, at least not until I knew for sure he had killed my father. But Gillecristus caught my thread of thought.
“Surely Muirteach you cannot be thinking that I had anything to do with your father’s death.” His face blanched white, then reddened, then paled again with the force of his emotions. “God forgive me, Muirteach, I loved your father. He was my soul friend. I would not kill him, not over a silly quarrel over some construction.”
“But, as you say, Tormod now suffers due to my father’s negligence.”
“No, that is putting too strong a point to it Muirteach. Tormod is suffering now because it is God’s will he do so.”
“Well, then,” I asked, feeling suddenly reckless, “if you would not kill to revenge Tormod, would you kill to become the next Prior? Would you kill my father out of your own ambition? Is that the sin you did penance for?”
I thought the man would have a fit. As he sputtered his denials I felt the time had come to take my leave, and did so with alacrity.
I sought out Brother Donal, finding him in the Scriptorium. I confess I found comfort in speaking with him, as there was much in these murders that troubled me. I first told him of my conversation with Gillecristus. Donal looked doubtful.
“I know they quarreled Muirteach, but I do not think Gillecristus has it in him to kill over that. Nor do I think he would do so to avenge a foolish, headstrong boy to hasty to check the safety of his own scaffolding, for all that the lad might be his kin.”
“And what of his ambition?”
“He was close with your father, Muirteach, and had been for many years. The two of them have been here since Lord John endowed the Priory, more than twenty years ago now. They often disagreed about the best way to do things, but, no, I do not think Gillecristus would murder his soul friend over such matters. Why now?” He sighed.
Then there was the matter of Sheena’s murder. Brother Donal could not see Gillecristus lying with a woman, then strangling her, but was unable to say for sure whether Gillecristus had left his chamber that morning. Although I myself, remembering the force of Gillecristus’s speech, thought he might well kill a woman if he knew she was pregnant by him, or felt himself ensnared by her wiles.
Columbanus’ comment in the boat nagged at me, and I asked Donal about the runaway novice.
“Och yes, I remember him well,” he answered. “Your father was aye upset when the lad left, and I confess I was surprised myself to hear of it.”
“And why was that?” I asked.
“When he first came here the boy seemed to have a true vocation. But so young he was, perhaps it was just a fancy on his part, for after he had been here a few months, something changed in it for him. And, as soon as he could, he ran away. Stole a coracle, he did, and fled back home—was it Kintyre he was coming from? It was just shortly after you came here, Muirteach, that all of that happened.”
For myself, I did not remember the boy at all, but when I thought back on how trapped in my own misery I had been at that time, perhaps that was not to be wondered at.
The talk turned back to finding my father’s killer. We both agreed that although Gillecristus had been back for Matins, he could still have found my father crossing the Strand a few hours before, killed him there, and gotten back in time for the service.
“But then why would my father have run towards the cross? I would think he would have been trying to run the other direction, had that been the case.”
“But perhaps whoever murdered him hid on the shore, and attacked him as from behind as he crossed the strand.”
�
�Then it would not likely be someone from the Priory.”
“That would be a blessing,” Donal said.
I looked at him sharply, seeing him for a moment as if I did not know him. The man had spent most of his life here, at the Priory. He was devoted to it. Could Donal have killed my father for some reason, to protect the Priory? Or perhaps he schemed with Gillecristus? I shook my head. This search was making me a crazed amadan. Then I realized I had not told Donal of my vision.
I did tell him then, all of it, even the words of Muirreadch Albainnich that my father had quoted. Donal shook his thin face, crossed himself, and looked distressed.
“‘The sins a man does in secret,’” he mused. “Sure and your father had his share of sins, Muirteach.”
“I am knowing that.”
“Still, it is a sad thing he is not resting more quietly, now that we have buried him. We must be praying for his soul, I am thinking.”
I agreed with that, and then realized the tide was turning, and unless I went quickly it would be a hard thing to take the boat back to Scalasaig. So I bid Donal goodbye and returned to the main island.
* * * * *
Pray for my father’s soul, I thought to myself as I worked the oars. Now that is something I would never, just a few days ago, have ever imagined myself doing. And yet, the odd thing of it was, when Brother Donal had suggested it, I had agreed. I did not know if it was the vision I had had, or the wild beauty of the music the bard had played the night before at Aorig’s, or what it was that caused it, but my hatred for my father slowly seemed to be transforming into something else. Shedding its skin, somehow, in the manner of a selkie, but what the new shape of it all would be I could not yet tell.
The fancy made me feel a little calmer, and I was able to put the need to find a killer—any killer—which His Lordship had impressed upon me when last we spoke, out of my mind for the time. I lost myself in the light spilling over the water, the feel of the oars, and the sun setting over the western sea in a blaze of glowing clouds as I rowed back to Scalasaig that evening.
But Mariota Beaton I could not put out of my mind so easily. She had returned to Islay, on some business of her own. Whyever should she not? And why should the thought of it rankle? Yet rankle it did, pricking against me like a nettle scratch, while I sailed home through that russet and gold colored sea.
Chapter 12
After I beached the boat at Scalasaig I fetched Somerled from my house, then we climbed up Dun Evin to Uncle Gillespic’s. It had grown late and the sun finished setting as we climbed up to the old hill-fort. Somerled, glad for the excursion, ran ahead of me, yelping excitedly, and then circling back to encourage me as I followed more slowly. The watch had lit the torches at the gate, against the night. I saw them glimmering brightly in the gloaming as I neared the top, my leg paining me, and my breath coming quickly after the climb.
I had hoped to find my uncle’s household still eating the evening meal, and luckily enough, I was not disappointed. As I entered the hall the aromas of peat smoke, roasted venison, bannocks and Euluasaid’s good ale swirled together, tantalizing me. I sniffed the air, and I realized how hungry I was. My aunt welcomed me, and grudgingly allowed Somerled to join the other dogs in the hall. They settled down, after the requisite sniffing and circling, before the fire. I sat down gladly on a bench near my uncle, and fell to with a will, not pausing to speak with Gillespic until my belly was full.
Over another mether of ale I told him what I had learned since last we had talked, of Tormod and of Calum, and of Sheena and her pregnancy. How Columbanus most likely would not have murdered his own sister. Of Gillecristus, his hatred of Sheena, and of his quarrel with my father before his death.
If I had hoped for great wisdom from my uncle I was to be disappointed this evening. He leaned his back against the wall, for we were sitting on a bench at table still, and stroked the chestnut hairs of his beard as he listened to my story.
“So you are not thinking it is the Islay MacDonalds, then?” he asked.
“Whatever reason would they be having to kill Sheena—” I started to say indignantly, then I looked at my uncle again and discovered the twinkle hiding behind his eyes.
“No, now uncle,” I answered then, more easily. “For whatever reason would they be having to come skulking here in the dead of night and killing my father, eighteen years too late, as it were? A cold revenge that would be. And even less reason would they have to be killing his leman. I am thinking the each-uisge did it. It swam up onto the strand and choked my father with his own bowstring.”
I saw Aunt Euluasaid cross herself quickly when she heard my mention of the water horse. She claimed to have seen it once, swimming in a loch on the mainland, but for myself I was not certain that I believed her story.
“Excepting for the fact, of course, that my father did not have a bow with him that night.”
“Aye, Crispinus was never one for the hunt,” returned my uncle dryly, while my aunt shook her head at our levity.
“So you are no closer to knowing who has done this, Muirteach?” she asked, while she filled my glass of ale from a clay pitcher.
“Aunt, I have no notion. And it is not helping that himself on Islay is wanting it solved as quickly as ever might be, which means yesterday, or better still, last week.”
“You will be finding the black-hearted one who did this to us, mo chridhe,” my aunt said comfortingly, before she left us to our ale. “It is certain I am of it, knowing you as I do.” A good woman was my aunt. Why she believed in my abilities to solve this puzzle, I did not know. It was my mother, not myself, who had had the Second Sight, and my mother was long dead.
“So you have no music tonight?” I asked Uncle Gillespic, after we had drunk the last of our ale.
“No, White Aengus is over at his sister’s sons wedding for some days, and taking his harp with him. And the traveling bard has moved on, to Mull I think it was he said he was going to. Why the man wanders so, I cannot say, with the gift that he has, he could be the bard for His Lordship himself. But he does not bide in one place for long, he chooses to wander.”
“What do you know of Tormod?” I asked my uncle after another swig of ale. “And of his kin? What of Calum? Is he a competent craftsman?”
My uncle thought a moment before he replied. “Young Tormod is headstrong, and always has been. He would be a bad man to have on the hunt with you. He would be shooting before the deer was there. And then the arrow would be hitting you, and he would say that someone else had the firing of it. Although I do not think the man would be limping all the miles down to the Strand to be killing your father, not now, when he can barely be leaving his bed to take a piss.”
“Tormod told me he was injured the day before my father was murdered. But wasn’t Alasdair Beag saying he had seen him crossing the Strand that night—”
“Surely the entire mason’s village will not be mistaken about the day, nor would an entire village lie,” my uncle replied. “Especially not for Tormod. He is a troublemaker, and that is a fact. Perhaps Alasdair got his days confused.”
“Perhaps,” I said doubtfully. Alasdair Beag was old, but he still had his wits. “He must have. But what of Tormod’s kin? Are you thinking they would they have done it for him?”
“Why not be killing Calum?” returned my uncle reasonably. “It makes no sense to be killing the Prior over that. It is Calum’s responsibility, as head mason, to see that his workers are safe.”
“And what of Calum? Is his work shoddy?”
“Och, no,” said my uncle easily. “He has work aplenty in Kintyre, and Iona, and even some work in Edinburgh and Rothesay for the King. But he does like the drink, now and again. It is a failing among our men, that,” he said, eyeing me where I sat sprawling against the wall of his hall.
I did not feel I could argue the point with my uncle, as the ale I had drunk seemed not to be helping my logic much, so I just asked him if I could spend the night in his hall. When he said yes, as I knew
he would, I curled up on a bench with Somerled snoring next to me, and drifted off, watching the shadows the flame from the firepit cast on the rafters and the thatch.
Chapter 13
I lay on my mattress, trying to ignore the bracken that poked me, and stared at the blackened thatching which formed my ceiling through the dim afternoon light filtering in from the door. My mood matched the blackness of the thatch.
My investigation seemed at a dead end. Despite what Alasdair Beag had said, Tormod’s injuries were such that he could not have moved from his bed when the killings took place, and I was beginning to believe that the old man had been mistaken. Gillecristus was not accounted for, but in truth, I really did not believe he had killed my father and then Sheena. Nor did I believe Columbanus would have killed his own sister. Angus and Alasdair also had alibis, for Rhodri and Malcolm had returned from Barra and had vouched for them.
And so my thoughts turned to the Islay MacDonalds. Perhaps after all they had killed my father. And perhaps I should visit Islay to discover what I could. That Mariota Beaton was on Islay also I dismissed as mere coincidence.
It did not help that my half-brother, still at Aorig’s, was playing a loud and unruly game outside. I surmised, from the sound of it all, that the boy was re-enacting the routing of the English at Bannockburn. He was hitting against the stone side of my humble home with some stick, and the noise of it did little to improve my mood. I heard Somerled barking furiously, it seemed Sean was chasing him, pretending the dog was a knight on a charger, or some such thing. Finally, my head pounding from the clamor, I went outside to intervene.
“Sean,” I yelled at him, “You be stopping that now!”
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