A Secret and Unlawful Killing Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  ACKNOWLEGMENTS

  PROLOGUE

  ONE - CRÍTH GABLACH (RANKS IN SOCIETY)

  TWO - AN SEANCHAS MÓR (THE GREAT ANCIENT TRADITION)

  THREE - CÁIN LÁNAMNA (THE LAW OF COUPLES)

  FOUR - BERRAD AIRECHTA (COURT PROCEDURE AND JUDGEMENTS)

  FIVE - URAICECHT BECC (SMALL PRIMER)

  SIX - CRITH GABLACH (RANKS IN SOCIETY)

  SEVEN - DI CHETHARSLICHT ATHGABÁLA (ON THE FOUR DIVISIONS OF DISTRAINT)

  EIGHT - MACHCSLECHTA (SECTIONS ON THE RIGHTS OF SONS)

  NINE - TUAITHI (ON THE DIVISIONS OF THE KIN IN THE KINGDOM)

  TEN - DO BREATHAIB GAIRE (JUDGEMENTS OF MAINTENANCE)

  ELEVEN - BRETHA CRÓLIGE (JUDGEMENTS OF BLOODLETTINGS)

  TWELVE - CÓRUS FINE (THE REGULATION OF THE KIN GROUP)

  THIRTEEN - MÍASHLECHTA (SECTIONS ON RANK)

  FOURTEEN - BRETHA NEMED TOÍSECH (JUDGEMENTS OF PRIVILEGED PERSONS)

  FIFTEEN - AN SEANCHAS MóR (THE GREAT ANCIENT TRADITION)

  SIXTEEN - CÁIN LÁNAMNA (THE LAW OF COUPLES)

  SEVENTEEN - URAICECHT BECC (SMALL PRIMER)

  EIGHTEEN - CÓIC CONARA FUGILL (THE FIVE PATHS OF JUDGEMENT)

  NINETEEN - GÚBRATHA CARATNIAD (THE FALSE JUDGEMENTS OF CARATNIA)

  TWENTY - AN SEANCHAS MÓR (THE GREAT ANCIENT TRADITION)

  TWENTY-ONE - MÍASHLECHTA (SECTIONS ON RANK)

  Also by Cora Harrison

  Copyright Page

  For my husband, Frank; son, William;

  daughter, Ruth; son-in-law, Pete, and grandson, Shane,

  with all my love and thanks for their help

  ACKNOWLEGMENTS

  It gives me great pleasure to acknowledge, once again, a debt of gratitude to my agent, Peter Buckman, of the Ampersand Agency, for his unfailing support and encouragement, and to my editor, Julie Crisp, whose faith and enthusiasm are all that any author could wish for. She, Sandra, Ellen, Liz, Nicole and many others at Pan Macmillan have become friends as well as colleagues to me in the process of writing these books.

  I would, in addition, like to express my gratitude to those, such as Fergus Kelly, Daniel Binchy, Kuno Meyer, among many others, whose research made the fascinating subject of Brehon law available to the general public.

  Helpful staff at the British Library allowed me to handle and to leaf through the precious manuscript of over ninety folios written in the mid sixteenth century by Domhnall O’Davoren, of Cahermacnaghten law school and his scholars; many thanks to them, also. It was wonderful for me to see the different scripts, some neat, some slapdash, one obviously left-handed, and to speculate on the varying personalities of the students. It was great to read their comments in the margins, complaining of the bad food, commenting that the week felt so long that it seemed as if it had two Thursdays in it, and making jokes about Sémus and the drink! I felt as though the law school that I had created in my books had suddenly become real.

  PROLOGUE

  The kingdom of the Burren was then an isolated place, with the Atlantic Ocean guarding its northern and western coast, and the broad sweep of the River Shannon encircling its eastern and southern sides.

  Then, as now, it was a place of contrasts: rounded mountains flanked its borders, fertile valleys lay between the mountains and in the centre, on the High Burren, was a broad expanse of shining, bare limestone pavement. Then, as now, it was a land of grey stone, almost black in the winter rains and fogs, but sparkling silver in the sunlight, with tiny jewelled flowers and ferns growing in the grykes between the clints, and in summer the vivid green of the valley meadows was stitched with yellow, pink and purple flowers.

  Its people, the Burren clansmen, lived according to the ancient customs and Brehon laws of their ancestors. Their way of life, in this isolated spot, had hardly changed during the last one thousand years, but the end was drawing near. The threat to their traditions was not far away: the city of Galway, with its English laws and English-speaking, Anglo-Norman people, was only twenty miles across the bay.

  Nevertheless, it was King Turlough Donn O’Brien, not the ageing Tudor king Henry VII, who still ruled those western kingdoms of Thomond, Corcomroe and the Burren when in the spring of 1509 the elderly taoiseach of the MacNamara clan died and the tánaiste, his son Garrett, took his place.

  On the ancient Celtic feast of Imbolc, at the beginning of February, the MacNamara clan gathered outside the old tower house at Carron. Garrett MacNamara, dressed in a white léine and a mantle made from pure white lambswool, was led in procession to the cairn, a burial mound covered with small white quartz pebbles, a sacred place to the MacNamara clan. At the foot of the cairn, King Turlough Donn touched him on the head with a newly peeled white rod from the ancient ash tree that grew nearby. In a loud, steady voice, Garrett swore to be the king’s vassal in accordance with the ancient Brehon laws, to maintain his lord’s boundaries, to escort his lord to public assemblies, to bring his own warriors to each slógad and, in the last hour of his lord, to assist in digging the gravemound and to contribute to the death feast.

  Then Garrett bowed to King Turlough Donn and encircled the cairn three times sunwise before climbing nimbly to the top of the mound. He lifted up the white rod and held it high above his head. The clan of MacNamara named him in a thunderous shout as the MacNamara and Garrett swore to serve his people and to protect them in return for a just rent and a fair tribute. Thus was Garrett MacNamara inaugurated as taoiseach of his clan.

  No one then could have foretold the murderous events that happened almost eight months later, on the day of the Michaelmas tribute.

  ONE

  CRÍTH GABLACH (RANKS IN SOCIETY)

  Each kingdom in the land must have its Brehon, or judge. The Brehon has an honour price, lóg n-enech [literally the price of his or her face] of sixteen séts. The Brehon has the power to judge all cases of law-breaking within the kingdom, to allocate fines and to keep the peace.

  AS SOON AS DAWN broke on the morning of Michaelmas, the mist rose over the stony land of the kingdom of the Burren. It clung to the sinuous curves of the swirling limestone terraces on the mountains and filled the valleys with its thick, soft, insubstantial presence; it swathed the crenellated tops of the tower houses and wrapped the small oblong cottages in its feather-light folds; it encircled the walls of the great fortified dwelling places: cathair, lios or rath, and rested softly over the stone-paved fields.

  Mara, Brehon, or judge, in the kingdom of the Burren, a tall, slim, dark-haired woman, wearing the traditional léine, a creamy-white linen tunic, under her green gown, stood at the gate of the law school of Cahermacnaghten and for the fortieth time that morning peered hopefully through the heavy mist. She was expecting her six scholars back from their holiday and not a single boy had arrived yet.

  ‘You might as well stay warm inside, Brehon,’ said Brigid, her housekeeper, coming out from the kitchen house inside the law school enclosure. ‘The chances are that none of them will come today,’ she continued, brushing the drops of mist from her pale sandy-red hair. ‘The fog is bad enough here. It will be worse on the hills and the mountains. There’s even some frost about: Cumhal said that the grass was white on the north field when he and Sean were doing the milking.’

  ‘I suppose you’re right, Brigid,’ Mara replied. Normally she could see for miles across the flat tableland of the upper Burren but today she could barely make out objects only fifty yards ahead of her. The small sunken lanes that ran between the fields were blotted out and their red-berried hedges had become part of the grey landscape. There was no sound. Even the swallows, which only yesterday had been chattering busily on the rooftrees of barns and
houses, had now fallen silent.

  ‘Why don’t you come inside?’ urged Brigid. ‘They won’t come today. Cumhal brought a load of turf in and there is a good fire in the schoolhouse if you want to work there. It’s freezing weather.’

  Brigid and Cumhal had been the servants of Mara’s father when he had been Brehon of the Burren and now served the daughter with the same respect, commitment and fidelity as they had shown to the father. Nevertheless, Mara usually found herself obeying Brigid as if she were still four years old, so she turned obediently to go indoors. Then she stopped. Her quick ears had heard a creaking sound. She started to walk down the road, and Brigid trotted rapidly after her.

  ‘It’s just a cart,’ said Brigid after a moment.

  ‘It’s Ragnall MacNamara, the MacNamara steward,’ said Mara.

  ‘Out collecting the Michaelmas tribute for the MacNamara, I suppose,’ Brigid muttered sourly. ‘There was a lot of talk about that last night at the Michaelmas Eve céilí. The word was that the MacNamara is not content with the tribute that his clan usually give; he’s telling them what he wants from them. Giving them orders, no less!’

  ‘Really!’ Mara said no more because Ragnall, mounted on his white horse, was now quite near, but she was astonished. The annual tribute to the taoiseach, hallowed and shaped by custom and tradition, was normally conducted with grace and courtesy on both sides. The clansmen gave what they could afford from their year’s produce and the taoiseach thanked them and promised his favour and protection in return.

  She saluted Ragnall with the usual blessing. He muttered, ‘and St Patrick,’ without looking at her. Obviously he still resented the fine she had imposed upon him at the last judgement day for hitting Aengus, the miller, with a heavy stick.

  ‘I was wondering if you had seen any of my scholars, Ragnall,’ Mara asked him calmly. ‘I’m expecting them today, but none has arrived yet. Are the roads very bad over towards the east of the Burren?’

  ‘Bad enough,’ he grunted, without replying to her query.

  ‘But you’ve managed to get around,’ she persisted. ‘You came over the Clerics’ Pass?’ Her eye went to the heavily laden cart. She counted seven bags of wheat flour there, each with the milling date, 25 September, and over-stamped with the MacNamara insignia of a prancing lion. This meant that Ragnall had managed to get up the slopes of Oughtmama to take the annual tribute from Aengus. It would have been a pleasure to him, she thought, to watch the miller load the bags of unbleached linen with his precious flour. Wheat grew in only a few favoured spots here in the cool, moisture-laden, stony environment and wheat flour was highly valued.

  He grunted again, but still said nothing. He clapped his heels to the sides of his white saddle horse and jerked his head at Niall MacNamara, who was driving the cart, and continued on down the road without a backward glance.

  ‘Did you ever see such a man as that!’ exclaimed Brigid, her green eyes flashing with anger at the discourtesy. ‘You mark my words, Brehon, one of these days that man will get what’s coming to him.’

  By mid-afternoon the mist had begun to lift. Suddenly colour, shape and sounds came back to the landscape. The wet flagstones that paved the fields shone with a gleam of silver in the autumn sun, the magenta-coloured cranesbill glowed, beads of moisture dropped from the delicate, drooping heads of the pale blue harebells and the swallows gathered in large chattering flocks.

  Twelve-year-old Hugh, the son of a prosperous silversmith in the Burren, had arrived at the law school around midday, but there was still no sign of the other scholars. Now Hugh was getting restive and uneasy in the company of three adults without the other boys. Mara found him moodily kicking a stone on the road outside her house and cast around for something to make the day seem less long for him.

  ‘Shall we go to the market at Noughaval?’ she asked. ‘That might be fun. We’ll take Bran as well. Bran,’ she called, and a magnificent white wolfhound bounded out of the stables, tail wagging vigorously. ‘Run in and get his lead, Hugh. We’ll walk in case the mist comes down again at sunset.’

  Noughaval was a short walk to the south of Cahermacnaghten. It was a small settlement of a few houses, a church and a fine market cross at the edge of the square. The market square was crowded today. It seemed as if every trader in the three kingdoms of Burren, Corcomroe and Thomond had set up stall. Their wares were varied: the usual butter and cheese; fish fresh from the nearby Atlantic waters; leather stalls selling belts and satchels; wool stalls with lengths of rough fustian, honey cakes and hot pies for the hungry; and more-exotic stalls selling silks and laces brought in from foreign countries. In one corner of the square, near to the entrance gate, the O‘Lochlainn steward, a big genial man, was collecting the annual Michaelmas tribute from the many O’Lochlainn tenants. He was mounted on a tall box so that none could miss him and beside him, outside the market wall, was a cart piled high with sheepskins and firkins of butter and rolled hides of fine calf skin or goat skin.

  ‘God bless the work, Liam,’ called Mara and he grinned in answer as he stowed away some silver in his leather pouch before turning to greet her.

  ‘You are well, Brehon?’ he enquired. ‘The taoiseach is over there talking to the O’Brien. He’ll be glad to see you. He was saying last night that he was going to consult you about some point of law.’

  Mara groaned inwardly. Ardal O‘Lochlainn always did want to talk about some point of law. ‘Here’s some silver for you, Hugh,’ she said. ’You go and enjoy yourself while I talk to the taoiseach. Bran, go with Hugh,’ she added with a quick pat on Bran’s narrow hairy head, and Hugh and Bran galloped off through the crowds towards the honey cake stall.

  ‘You are collecting the tribute here at the fair?’ she asked Liam.

  Liam shrugged. ‘It’s the easiest way. Let them come to me.’

  ‘I met Ragnall MacNamara out on the road this morning,’ Mara told him. ‘He must have been out since dawn, his cart was already piled.’

  ‘Well, the MacNamaras don’t have too many families here on the Burren,’ Liam said dismissively. ‘If I were to do that I would be on the road for weeks, going from farm to farm. Besides, the O’Lochlainn likes it best this way: he wouldn’t want it to seem as if he were asking for anything; the tribute is for the clan to give.’

  Mara nodded. The O‘Lochlainn clan had been kings of the Burren in former days and the unconscious dignity of royalty had descended to the present chieftain, Ardal O’Lochlainn.

  ‘Anyway,’ continued Liam with an amused look, ‘it’s just as well that Ragnall is not here today. It gives his daughter, Maeve, a bit of time for courting. There’s going to be trouble about these two,’ he whispered, pointing to a young couple in the churchyard. ‘The O’Briens and the MacNamaras don’t get on too well. Ragnall MacNamara will never agree to a marriage between his daughter and the son of Teige O‘Brien.’

  Mara’s eyes followed his pointing finger. She knew young Donal O’Brien by sight; he and Fachtnan, the eldest of her law school scholars, had become great friends in the last few weeks of the Trinity term. Donal was a hot-tempered boy, inclined to drink too much and to get into fights; probably basically a nice boy, she thought indulgently, just the spoiled only son of a wealthy taoiseach. Maeve MacNamara she didn’t recognize. No doubt I have seen her before, thought Mara, but she was probably one of those girls who had suddenly blossomed into beauty with the dawning of adolescence and now was unfamiliar. She was quite small, but with a pretty, well-rounded figure and a face that, with its wide kitten-like eyes, delicate pink and white complexion and small pointed chin, reminded Mara of a heartsease pansy. Donal was bending over her, holding her two tiny fragile hands in his large ones and looking at her with adoration.

  ‘I suppose the O’Brien wouldn’t think it was a good match for his only son,’ she said sympathetically, but Liam shook his head.

  ‘No, it’s not that at all,’ he said emphatically. ‘That boy gets his own way about everything; his father would agree, but Ragnal
l won’t consent. He would have to give too many cows to settle his daughter with the son of a taoiseach. The man is so mean that he would skin a mouse to get the fat off it.’

  ‘Was it a good evening at the céilí, yesterday, Liam?’ asked Mara, changing the subject. After all, it was up to Ragnall to arrange a suitable marriage for his daughter. Liam, as she had planned, was immediately diverted.

  ‘The craic was mighty,’ he said, smiling happily at the thought of the fun and the conversation and the sallies of wit, which would have been accompanied by large amounts of ale and mead.

  ‘No trouble?’

  ‘Ah well,’ he said, with a hasty glance in Ragnall’s direction. ‘There was a bit of a fight between Aengus and Ragnall, again. There’s bad blood between those two. The MacNamara should sort it out before it gets any worse. They’ll be killing each other if this goes on. And then, of course, that young fool Donal O’Brien had to put his oar in.’

  ‘On Aengus’s side?’ asked Mara.

  ‘No, would you believe it. And after Ragnall turning him down when he wanted to marry the daughter! I suppose that Donal thought Ragnall might get to think better of him if he spoke up for him. Anyway, he took hold of Aengus, but Aengus flattened him. Donal was pretty far gone in drink, of course. Aengus cleared off after that and the O’Brien steward persuaded young Donal to go home, but I heard that the young fool would not be told and went flying after Aengus.’

  ‘Oh well, as long as no harm was done,’ said Mara tolerantly.

  ‘Brehon,’ called Ardal O‘Lochlainn, making his way through the crowd, which opened up respectfully to allow him to pass. ‘You are looking well,’ he added with his usual courtesy.

  ‘I’m very well thank you, Ardal,’ Mara replied. ‘Liam was saying that you might want to consult me on a point of law,’ she added, with her usual directness.