A MASS FOR THE DEAD

by Susan McDuffie

  The men from Dunyvaig milled around, while I thought about what to do. There was much discussion, with some of them all for rushing into the church and extirpating the devil, while others crossed themselves, unwilling to breach sanctuary and whatever demon had claimed it.

  “Wait here,” I finally spoke, “and I will go into the church and see who is there. I am thinking it is Seòras himself, the harper, and if so it is no demon, nor devil, but a man only.”

  The men stood back to let me enter the church. I tried to walk confidently, despite my limp. I went unarmed and entered the chapel.

  “Seòras,” I cried into the darkness. “Is it you, then?”

  The man stood, and indeed it was Seòras, returned from the dead.

  “We were thinking the Cailleach had had you.”

  He spoke, finally, “Aye, I saw you there, looking for me, and not finding me. And I watched as you sailed away, leaving me there, snug in my tiny cave high up in the rocks of the hills.”

  “And how were you getting here from Jura?” I asked, approaching a little closer in the dim light of the chapel.

  “Walked along the coast until I was finding a small boat. And then I took it, and left the hunters there on Jura, and sailed here to Islay. I thought of this small chapel, and needed a place of sanctuary.” He laughed, and the sound of it chilled me to the marrow.

  “And what of Mariota?”

  “And wouldn’t you just be wanting to know?” He laughed. “Well, I will tell you, after all. She is here, with me, the now.”

  “Let me see her.”

  He gestured to what looked like a bundle of rags lying against the wall of the chapel, near the altar. I saw that the bundle was tied by a rope to his wrist.

  “Is she alive?”

  “Aye, she is. She is mine, Muirteach, for it was I that saved her from the Cailleach.”

  “Mariota!” I called. “Mariota, it is Muirteach here. Can you hear me?”

  The bundle stirred, and the ice that had frozen around my heart seemed to melt a little as I watched the bundle move.

  Mariota sat up. “Muirteach,” she said, and I felt the ice crack apart and my heart spring back to life like the stream does when the ice melts in the spring.

  Seòras jerked roughly on the rope, pulling Mariota to her feet, and then dragged her towards him and held her up for me to see. “You must not be speaking with him, mind, for you are mine the now. Are you not, Mariota?”

  Mariota nodded, a small, tight, motion, but I saw her eyes glance towards me.

  “Do not be worrying, Mariota,” I told her. “We shall be getting you out of here.” And I prayed that I was not lying to her as I said the words.

  “Do not try and speak with her again,” Seòras cautioned, tightening his grip on Mariota, “for I still have my knife, and will use it on her.”

  “Give yourself up, Seòras,” I said, “For we have sixteen men outside and you will not prevail against us.”

  “Ah, but I have Mariota, and my sharp knife as well.”

  “You cannot win against us.”

  “I have claimed sanctuary,” cried Seòras, “and none can gainsay that.”

  “You gainsaid my father, as he claimed sanctuary.”

  “He did not reach sanctuary, Muirteach, and he was deserving of none. So God punished him.”

  “He was not punished by God, Seòras, but he was killed by man. As you, of all people should know. But I am not understanding the why of it. All that, over Sheena. Was she worth it, then, Seòras?”

  Seòras laughed then, a wild laugh with the music of his harp in it. The sound of it echoed off the stone of the chapel, bouncing back and forth again over the rock walls until the last note of it died away. “Is that what you are thinking of it, Muirteach? Well enough, that is.”

  “And then you killed Sheena, because she saw the first murder.”

  He nodded.

  “And then you killed Father Padraic, there on the island, and your mother killed herself.”

  “I was not giving her much of a choice in it, after she heard what I told her.”

  “About the murders?”

  “That, and other things I had to say to her. She took the pin and opened her veins with that great sharp point of it, and I watched her as she did it.”

  “Your own mother.”

  “Aye.”

  Seòras suddenly pulled Mariota closer to him. “Now away with you Muirteach.” I saw his dagger blade flash as he held it out, close to her. “It is tired I am of speaking with you. And you cannot be touching me here, for I have claimed sanctuary,” he taunted. “Away with you.”

  I grew cold with the fear that he would use that bright blade against Mariota, and so I did as he asked me to. The light outside blinded me after the cool dimness of the chapel, but the sun did little to warm me and I shivered in the brightness of the light.

  I spoke with the men, and we made our plan. We asked the villagers for green wood, wood that would not burn, but would smoke, and built fires in the front threshold of the church. We would smoke them out of their sanctuary, like foxes from their den.

  And what if Seòras did not emerge? If that was the case, I told myself we would break into the chapel from the rear window, behind the altar, and in the smoke and confusion I swore I would free Mariota and let her captor burn to death in this Hell of his own making.

  The wood was brought and the fires were kindled. The thick smoke filled the air while we waited. Some of the sixteen men from Dunyvaig surrounded the doorway to the chapel, while others waited in the back, near the narrow windows behind the altar, and threw more burning brands through the narrow windows. The breeze blew from the sea, and drove the smoke back into the dark interior of the church. We waited, while the sun sank lower over the western sea, a red ball through the haze of our smoke.

  There came a noise, and the harper emerged from the doorway, looking like one of the demons from Hell, with the black smoke and the flickering light of the flames from inside the church surrounding him. The fire had caught on some of the altar cloths and the wooden rood screen within the chapel, and burned more strongly with each passing moment.

  He held a burning brand before him as he came out of the church and pulled Mariota after him, still tied to him with the rope around her neck. She retched and coughed from the smoke.

  Seòras, too, coughed, but his eyes gleamed white in the smoke smeared skin of his face, like a bright flash of lightening in the black storm of a sky, or like the flash of the blade of the dagger he still held against Mariota’s throat.

  “You must let her go,” I said, trying to reason with him. “We are many against you. You cannot be winning.”

  “Ah, but I can be using your own weapons against you,” he said, holding the burning torch before him like a sword and brandishing it into the faces of those men who tried to approach him.

  Seòras edged closer to the edge of the circle, then struck like a viper with his knife, darting through the ring of men, and a cry rang out. One of our men lay on the ground, with blood staining his tunic.

  “Where did they run?”

  The man pointed in the direction of the high cliffs, behind the chapel. I looked in the direction he pointed, and could just make out through the smoky dusk Seòras, dragging Mariota behind him. She fell to her knees, and I feared she would strangle as he jerked on the rope to pull her up again, before he reached the cliff and turned to face us.

  I gestured to the others to stand back, but I myself walked closer to them.

  “Not so close now, Muirteach,” he said. “Or she will be going over the edge. Will you not, mo chridhe?”

  Mariota’s face looked a ghostly white blur in the dimness but she looked at me and nodded. “He will do it, Muirteach,” she whispered, her voice hoarse and cracked from the smoke and the fire. “You must be believing him.”

  “I told you not to be speaking to him,” said Seòras, taking a step backwards, towards the edge of the cliff. The sound of the surf batterin
g the rocks below pounded in my ears, and I had to raise my voice as I answered him.

  “Seòras,” I asked, “what is the profit in this? You cannot win. We know you have done murder, but why? Surely the woman Sheena was not worth all this suffering.”

  “Aye, you were saying something of the sort, back there, were you not Muirteach? You are mistaken if you are thinking that is why I killed your father.”

  “Was it not for Sheena? She was your lover, was she not?”

  “Indeed, and she was, but I would not kill your father over her. Whyever should I, since I was already tupping his own mistress, and him none the wiser for it. No, now, that was not the way of it at all, Muirteach.”

  “Then why?” I saw that his hold on the rope had lessened, just a little, and felt a faint glimmering of hope. “Why, Seòras? For I confess I am not understanding this.”

  “For what he did to me. When I was at the Priory.”

  “But you were just a young boy.”

  “Indeed, Muirteach, and were you thinking that women were the only thing your father lusted after? I am surprised he was not buggering you, for all that you were his own son. But he liked well favored boys, and you were not so well favored as all that, were you? Not with your shriveled leg, and your limping, and your sniveling. He always liked my voice, like an angel’s he said it was. He used to have me sing for him, after.”

  His face contorted in a grimace, and I saw the wetness of tears on his cheeks. But I also saw he had dropped his hold on the rope. And from the change in Mariota’s expression, I knew that she had felt that slackness. I stepped closer, hoping to keep him speaking, and Seòras, intent on his own emotion, did not notice at first.

  “And it was for that you killed him,” I said, as Mariota shifted her weight a little, edging away from him.

  “Aye, indeed. For that. I was leaving Sheena’s that night. I would sail from the Nave Island to Colonsay, to visit her from time to time. I had known her since she was a girl. And we had your own father in common, for he used her poorly, as he had her brother, Columbanus, before her. And that is when I saw him, coming to her on the path in the moonlight. He had already crossed the strand, and the light glimmered on his footsteps in the sand. They looked like molten silver there.

  “I had not seen him in years, since I had left the Priory, but he still had that look to him, like a satyr or some lustful demon. And Sheena had been saying that she did not like it that he liked little Sean so, she would see him, fingering the boy’s hair, and him his very own son. But that was not why I was killing him.”

  “And why did you, then?”

  “I saw him, there, and he came towards me in the dark, and it was as though I was a child again. I stopped to speak with him, for he did not know who I was, I am thinking. After he had used me in that way as a child, he did not even recognize me, the now. And I remembering it, every day of my life.”

  “And so you killed him.”

  “Yes. I waited, and when he returned I spoke with him again. I took down my harp, and said I would play for him, but took a string from it, and sat down close to him, and played, the same song he had had me sing all those times so many years ago.”

  “And so then he knew you.”

  “Yes. He knew me at the last. I said to him, ‘It is the last music your ears shall hear,’ and I took the string out and made to put it around his neck, but he ran from me, coward that he was, across the strand back towards his Priory. He tried to claim sanctuary, and nearly reached the great cross standing there. But there was no sanctuary for him, just as there had been none for me there so long ago.

  “I took a rock, and threw it at him, and brought him down. I strangled him there with my harp string and stuffed his mouth with sand, to choke him even more. And then I took the rock, and pounded him with it as he lay there, until he did not move again. He died with his hand touching the cross,”

  “And Sheena saw you.”

  “Aye. She saw, and so she had to die as well, for all that I did not like the killing of her. She had been kind to me, but he had used her, too. I had to kill her, you see, I had no choice. He had used her, and so I could not let her live. She would have suffered from it, as I have. I had to kill her, to save her from that suffering. I killed her gently, for all that.”

  “Gently enough,” I said, horrified at his words.

  “She was not expecting it, nor did she suffer overmuch. But it had to be done.”

  “What of Padraic, on the island?”

  “My uncle. Oh, it was your sharp eyes that killed him, Muirteach. He told me of your visit. I feared what you might have told him.”

  “And Alsoon? Your own mother?”

  “Och, she spoke of you as well. And I told her, finally, after all these years, why it was that I ran away from the Priory those fifteen years ago, of what had happened to me there. And of what I had done to your father, and to her own brother, and to Sheena. She had wanted her son to be a priest,” he added. “After I ran away, I was not that welcome at her home, I am thinking. But she did not know the why of it all, not until that last day.”

  “And so she killed herself, when you finally told her of it. And you did not stop her from it.”

  “No, I did not. She had not saved me, why should I be stopping her? I watched her as she opened her veins, with that sharp silver pin. A fine lot of blood she had in her, my mother. But I took her arms and laid her out nicely, with the brooch on her chest, before I left her lying there and went on to Mull, where you were finding me.”

  I shuddered, and noticed that Mariota had moved even farther away from him, away from the edge of the cliff. And I saw that some of the men from Dunyvaig had come closer, listening to the tale. I jerked my chin to them, as Seòras came out of his reverie and went to take the rope in his hand again. But Mariota had picked up the end of it first.

  “Mariota, run-” I cried, fearing she would not move quickly enough, but she darted away from him before he could get his hands on the rope. I ran towards him, but he took another step backwards, laughing with that wild laughter. He took yet another step, over the edge, and vanished, and then my eyes saw only empty air before them, and my ears heard only the pounding of the waves against the black rocks.

  Chapter 22

  “Sodomy!”

  The Shepherd of the Isles was in a fine temper the next day, after I had told him of it all. He paced in his inner chamber, at Dunyvaig, and I stood by, awkwardly, watching. I had asked to see him alone, to tell him of what had happened. Although with so many of the local folk watching, most of the events of that night were known. Yet Seòras’s last confession had not been heard by most of the people there, and it seemed, from what I heard him say now, that His Lordship would insure it remained secret.

  “The damned Priory full of sodomites! Your father as well. And that was the motive for it all—”

  I nodded.

  “Well, at least he is gone, the now.”

  I was not sure if His Lordship meant my father or Seòras.

  “Now, Muirteach,” he considered, stopping his pacing and sitting down in a richly carved chair, “I will be needing you to write again both to the King and to his Holy Father. But I do not think you will need to be mentioning all of that to them. Just be telling them we found the murderer, and he took his own life, from the guilt of his misdeeds, perhaps, but that he confessed before he did so. Yes, that will do nicely, I am thinking.”

  He drank deeply from a goblet that sat on the table nearby, then paused, putting his drink down. His favorite hound looked up at his master a moment, then put his large grizzled head down and went back to sleep.

  “Now that is a fine thing indeed, Muirteach,” His Lordship continued, after another drink. “There need be no trial, and the story need not come out. And no honor price to pay, either. For you cannot be demanding restitution from the dead.” He smiled, displaying even, wolf-like teeth, and stood up.

  “So sit you down, then, and write the letters for me.”


  He turned and left the withdrawing room for the great hall, followed by his dog, as I seated myself at the table with parchment before me and took up the quill.

  I could have predicted that His Lordship would wish the true motive for my father’s killing to remain secret. It was not the kind of scandal so cagey a politician as His Lordship would want the King or the Holy Father to know of.

  Although the knowledge of that irked me, it seemed the shocking knowledge of my father’s worst misdeeds had not hardened my heart. Paradoxically, the horror of that last evening on the Oa seemed to have softened it. Seeing the suffering that Seòras’s crazed revenge had left in its wake had cured me of my own bitterness, and the hatred and anger I had so long felt towards my father had evaporated, like mist when the sun burns through it.

  You cannot demand restitution from the dead. I thought over His Lordship’s words. His Lordship, of course, had been speaking of the honor price, of cattle and gold. Yet, in another sense I felt my father somehow had made restitution, at least to me.

  I had dreamed of him again, that night after Seòras had leaped to his death. My father sat sorrowful, chained in stone. Immobile he rested, imprisoned in his strange rocky dungeon, in the deep, cold, heart of the earth, as it seemed to me in the vision. He raised his hand to me, and quoted again from the bard, and then he smiled at me despite his chains. I felt myself smile back at him, in my dream, until he wavered, like smoke from a fire, and vanished.

  The crystal I had found by me after that first vision I planned to have mounted in silver, to wear as a charm. I hoped I would find it in me to remember the giver of it with kindness, and to forgive all the suffering he had left in his wake, and the hurt he had done to so many, even to Seòras, who had lashed out and killed him in return.

  I finished the letters and put them aside in a casket for His Lordship to sign, then entered the Hall. A harper stood singing a song about a deerhound and the heroes of the past. I told His Lordship what I had written, and he counted himself pleased with it. And so I joined the feast, in progress already.