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  Mara kept her eyes on him for a long minute and then included Caireen in her glance, as she finished, in a firm and resolute voice, with the words: ‘Nuala’s property must not be touched.’

  Seven

  Maccslechta

  (Son Sections)

  On the death of a father, the land and property is divided among his recognized sons, from all of his unions.

  To ensure fairness, the rule is ranaid osar agus dogoa inser (the youngest divides and the eldest chooses). As the youngest son gets the last choice he will be careful to ensure that the shares are equal ones.

  ‘You go on ahead, all of you. I feel like walking slowly.’ Mara’s back was aching and her six scholars seemed to be even more full of life than usual. Enda and Fachtnan were daring each other to leap from boulder to boulder. The four other boys copied them for a while, but then tired of the game. When Mara next noticed them, Aidan had Shane on his back and Moylan had Hugh. The two younger boys, mounted on their human steeds, were hitting at each other with the dried stems of giant hogweed in mock semblance of jousting. So far this game was fairly good-natured, but it could soon end in bad temper and the trial of strength and agility between the two elder boys might result in a broken leg for one of them. All six had brightly flushed cheeks and Mara felt annoyed with herself that she had not kept a check on how much cowslip wine they had been fed by Malachy’s housekeeper. She had been too preoccupied with Malachy’s and Nuala’s affairs to keep her usual watchful eye on her scholars.

  ‘Just walk sensibly back to Cahermacnaghten and then you can have the rest of the day to yourselves,’ she continued. ‘And if you’re hungry by the time that you get there, Brigid will have something for you to eat.’ Hopefully the extra food would mop up the excess of wine, she thought as they set off. At least they were all on their feet and on solid ground now.

  Mara did not follow them on the most direct route to Cahermacnaghten, which would be across the clints and grykes of the stone-paved land of the High Burren. She turned to the left and made her way down to Green Valley. She would go by the Kilcorney road, she decided. It would be easier walking on that smooth, solid surface than across the uneven surface of the stone pavements.

  Just as she entered Green Valley, she heard a rhythmic clinking of a hammer against stone. She hesitated for a moment. To go to the quarry would take her slightly out of her way. However, it would be a good opportunity and she was never one to allow opportunities to pass her by.

  As she came nearer, her leather boots echoing on the limestone road, she heard a pause in the hammering, which then resumed and then stopped again. This time there was no further sound. The hammerer had heard her coming. Perhaps if she passed by the work would recommence but she wasn’t going to do that, not after her trouble in taking the road to the east instead of the road to the west. She took another few steps and then moved on to the grass verge where she could walk without sound. Once she had done this, she heard the hammer blows start again.

  The opening to the quarry was wide enough to admit carts collecting the cut and dressed stone, so as soon as she reached this he saw her.

  ‘Brehon!’ Donogh Óg came forward instantly with a broad smile on his face. ‘I thought you were the priest for a moment. You put the heart across me.’

  ‘Why should you worry about the priest, Donogh Óg?’ There was no trace of guilt or self-consciousness about him and his eyes were merry and mischievous.

  ‘Oh, Sunday and all that!’

  ‘The better the day, the better the deed. That’s what Brigid always says if she finds it necessary to do some mending on a Sunday.’ Mara kept her voice light, but she continued to scrutinize the young O’Lochlainn carefully. Would Fiachra, busy with his ploughing, have noticed if Donogh Óg were working in the quarry on the morning of the murder? It may be that he worked there every day and the tapping of chisel against stone would have formed a background to the vehement bursts of birdsong from courting couples of blackbirds and thrushes. She looked around. There were plenty of stones heaped up in piles: good, solid, well-cut, box-shaped stones, carefully sorted by size and shape.

  ‘You’re a good workman,’ she said with approval, noting the clean edges to the blocks.

  ‘Thank you, Brehon.’ He was completely at ease with her. There was not a trace of hesitation, no shadow of worry in those blue eyes. He was the same as he always was.

  Could he have been guilty of the murder of Iarla? Somehow, she did not think so. He showed no signs of guilt and the prospect of Iarla inheriting the wealth of Lissylisheen would probably have seemed quite remote to him. After all, Ardal was not yet forty – he could live another twenty or thirty years and that was a very long time to someone of Donogh Óg’s age. Iarla from Aran, or even Donogh Óg himself, could be dead before Ardal died. Many of these young men would take part in clan warfare and would not live to see out their futures.

  In any case, Donogh Óg had a wildly optimistic nature. Whenever he visited the law school, larking around with Fachtnan and Enda, he was endlessly making plans for the ultimate wolf hunt. Instead of returning tired, happy, soaked in sweat, but empty-handed from their mountain stalk, the next hunt was going to yield such bounty that they would have to summon carts to bring the carcasses home and the following winter they would all be warm in cloaks of wolf fur. There was always the next hunt for Donogh Óg; he was always sanguine that this would bring the booty.

  No, thought Mara, unless I am very wrong Donogh Óg is not the murderer of Iarla. She had another man in mind now though, and her gaze went back to the well-cut blocks of stone. If these were all for Malachy, then the work was well advanced on this new extension of the house at Caherconnell.

  ‘I’m thinking of having a new building at the law school,’ she said thoughtfully.

  ‘Oh.’ He looked immediately interested and then his face fell. ‘I suppose you’d get Cumhal and Seán and your other lads to build it for you.’

  ‘Well, I did think of that – then it would be just like the other buildings at the school – just stones piled on top of each other and then fitted together, big thick walls, but seeing the cut stone here made me wonder about asking you to do it. I’ve seen the horse cabin that you built for Ardal’s best stallion. It looks very good.’

  ‘What do you want a new building for?’ he enquired. ‘Will it be a new guesthouse?’

  ‘No, no, what we have is fine – it sleeps three and that’s enough. No, I was wondering about having a girl scholar next year and I would have to have a separate house for her.’

  ‘A girl scholar!’ Donogh Óg was open-mouthed with astonishment. Mara gave him a stern glance. This was the sort of attitude that made life so difficult for poor Nuala. No one expected a girl to have a craft or a profession. Nuala’s own mother should have been sent to bard school and would probably have risen to the highest grade of file, but her father married her off to Malachy at the age of fourteen and that was the end of the dreams for the beautiful and talented Mór O’Lochlainn.

  ‘I was once a girl scholar myself,’ she reminded him.

  ‘I know, but that was different. Your father was the Brehon.’

  ‘Well, this girl that I am thinking of is the daughter of a Brehon. Anyway, it would be a small house, just enough for a sleeping place and study place for one or two girls. What would that cost me?’

  Immediately a businesslike look came into his amused eyes. Suddenly he looked a lot more like his uncle Ardal. He paced the ground, obviously measuring. ‘Round or square?’ he asked over his shoulder.

  ‘Round,’ said Mara decisively. She didn’t care – the new house was just something very much at the back of her mind and she had plenty to do and little time to waste, but there was a piece of information that she needed and this was the best way to get it.

  ‘I could do it for ten ounces of silver if Cumhal and Seán would thatch it for you.’

  Mara blinked. That was quite a large sum, far more than she had expected. Ten ounces of silver –
ten cows, her mind translated the price automatically. If Malachy wanted to use this boy in order to extend his house to make provision for three extra people – and perhaps an extra room for servants and also stillrooms and perhaps a fancy parlour for Caireen – well, the cost of this piece of work was going to be well outside any savings that he had from the living that he made as a physician.

  ‘And of course, I’d probably have to employ a man to help me. All labour and carriage of stone would be included in that price,’ put in Donogh Óg rapidly, disconcerted by her silence.

  ‘Well, I’ll think about it and have a chat with Cumhal and see what he feels,’ promised Mara. ‘I know that you would do a good job. I must be getting back now, so I’ll leave you to your work.’

  He had resumed whistling happily before she reached the entrance and as she walked down the Kilcorney Road, the melodious dance tune, punctuated by the tapping of a chisel, followed her until she reached the graveyard.

  Becan was there, still sitting on the wall. For a moment she was startled, thinking that he had not moved since she had left him several hours ago, but then her eye went to his boots and saw that they were covered with heavy, wet clay.

  ‘You’ve been back to Balor’s Cave, Becan,’ she said after greeting him and was absurdly pleased to see a flash of surprise in his eyes. Childish and silly, she told herself severely, but somehow she felt now as if she needed to prove that, even if her body had began to slow up, her brain was as quick as ever. She smiled benignly at him.

  ‘You’ve got that yellow boulder clay on your boots,’ she observed. ‘The dathbuidh, they call it on the Burren. You don’t get it normally on the limestone, but it’s around here in parts of this valley and especially around the cave.’

  He didn’t answer that and she looked at him in a kindly manner. Despite his spirited outburst at Poulnabrone he had a miserable look about him.

  ‘All this has been a terrible shock to you, hasn’t it?’

  ‘I suppose so,’ he said dully. ‘I knew him from the day that he was born, of course. I saw him grow up and now he’s dead and it was a sad day for him that his mother opened her mouth at this late stage. She should have done it twenty years ago, or else kept quiet for ever.’ He had a heavy brooding look on his face, the look of a man who has something on his mind.

  ‘Had she kept quiet all those years?’ Mara asked the question with a certain amount of curiosity. As he said, twenty years was a long time to keep silent. She moved impatiently. If she were not pregnant, she would have waited for a fine day, taken her scholars off to Aran and found some woman who had been friendly with Iarla’s mother and probed her way towards the truth.

  ‘Were she and your wife friendly?’ she asked. It would have been normal; two women married to the two blacksmith brothers.

  ‘They were sisters, his mother and my wife were sisters,’ he said, and then looked surprised at her expression. ‘Did I not tell you that? I told you that he was my nephew.’

  ‘Yes, but . . .’ She decided not to argue. This was good news. ‘They’d have been close then,’ she asserted.

  He nodded indifferently. Of course, they would have been close: two sisters marrying two brothers. Then she suddenly thought of something else. Aidan’s story about Becan wanting Iarla to marry his daughter Emer came to her mind. Of course, marriage between first cousins was not unknown, though frowned upon by the church, but marriage between double first cousins would be a risk that most people would be unlikely to take.

  ‘But you were happy for your daughter Emer to marry Iarla,’ she asked bluntly.

  He looked surprised at her knowledge, quite taken aback for a while and then he shrugged his shoulders. What did it matter now? She could almost hear him say the words.

  ‘Emer was very in love with Iarla and determined to marry him. I saw no harm in it.’ The explanation was given quickly and without any apprehension.

  ‘So you did not believe that Iarla was your brother’s son.’

  He said nothing, but it had been a statement, rather than a question, so she followed it by asking: ‘Did your wife believe that story about the O’Lochlainn being the father of Iarla?’

  Becan looked at her angrily, but that was understandable. He had done his best for young Iarla; it would have been a splendid thing for all of the family if his future son-in-law had been accepted as the only son and heir to the wealthy Ardal, but now that prospect was in ruins.

  Mara waited quietly, her eyes on his boots. Why had he gone to Balor’s Cave, again? Was he intent on finding out what happened to Iarla and perhaps felt that the secret lay in the place of his death?

  Eventually he answered her. ‘I don’t listen to women’s chatter,’ he said loftily.

  ‘So your wife believed that Iarla was truly the son of your brother, the blacksmith’s son. And you were not worried about Emer marrying a double first cousin.’

  He turned a surprised eye on her. ‘I didn’t say that.’ His tone was alarmed more than angry.

  ‘No, but you implied it. That was the meaning that I took from your words. If there was no talk about it to her own sister; then it was unlikely to be true.’

  ‘Well, you took the wrong meaning then. There was plenty of talk.’

  Mara waited. Becan bore the expression of one who wanted to say more. On the other hand, he didn’t want to leave her with an impression that he had no interest in the dangers to his grandchildren from a union where the parents were so closely linked by blood, but on the other, he was reluctant to open his mind fully to hers.

  ‘My brother never believed the boy to be his,’ he said after a moment.

  ‘Really, but he accepted him.’

  ‘Life is hard for us,’ he retorted bitterly. ‘The lad was a strong lad. From the start he looked as if he would be a help to him. He was well made, stout, healthy and after him came a string of girls. My brother had no choice, you could say. Just the one to choose from and if he were a cuckoo in the nest, well, he was a fine strong fellow.’

  ‘I see,’ said Mara. It was true that life was hard for the people on that barren island. Even the sparse earth in their fields of oats or of vegetables had to be built up, painstakingly, year by year, gathering any little scraps for soil from among the rocks, pounding boulders of limestone until they were reduced to fertile dust, and above all by carrying tons of dripping seaweed in baskets on their backs from the rocky shores up to the small wall-enclosed fields. Without that fertilizer there would have been no possibility of growing oats or vegetables. No doubt Iarla and been hard at work from an early age. It slightly disgusted her that a human child should be regarded as a possible beast of burden, rather like a donkey or a mule, rather than a member of the family, a son to be cherished. However, her task now was to establish the truth of Iarla’s death so she carried on with her questioning.

  ‘You must have heard the rumours though. Your wife would have told you. Don’t ask me to believe, even if she were sworn to secrecy, that there wasn’t an exchange of information when you were both in your sleeping place and there was none nearby to hear.’

  He hesitated, looking down and then furtively peeping at her from the corner of his eye. They both sat so still that two young hares shot out of the hedge almost at their feet, bounded across the road with fast jerky, rocking movements from their over-long legs and then fled up the steeply sloping field opposite. Mara waited patiently, her eyes fixed on the pale-green, heart-shaped leaves of the lords and ladies plant at her feet. The coiled centre was still tightly closed but soon it would open and show its golden heart. Another spring would flower in the Burren and on the islands, but the young man, Iarla from Aran, would never see it. She wondered if those thoughts had been going through Becan’s head when she had accosted him.

  And then, just as Becan seemed about to open his lips, there was a sound of horse hoofs drumming. There was no sign of them yet – the strengthening westerly wind blew the sound to them – but it was enough to break the mood.

  ‘
I’d better be going,’ said Becan, getting to his feet. ‘I have things to do, people to see, places to visit.’

  ‘Could I offer you any hospitality? You’re welcome to a meal and a bed overnight in my guesthouse.’

  He hesitated a little at that and then shook his head firmly.

  ‘No, Brehon, I’d best be on my way.’

  And with that, he was off, striding determinedly down the road back towards Caherconnell.

  Mara almost called him back, but the horse hoofs were coming nearer. This would be no time for a delicate conversation, where silences had to be allowed to stretch to their limit and nothing could be forced, just waited for and patiently coaxed. Moreover she guessed who was coming, that loud laugh was unmistakable.

  Mara was on her feet and striding vigorously along the road by the time that they met. She could not afford to show any signs of fatigue in front of Turlough. She had no intention of allowing him to dictate to her as to whether she should work or not, but it seemed easier not to have an argument about it.

  ‘So there you are!’ Turlough had spotted her as soon as they rounded the corner. He was riding ahead of his bodyguards as usual. Mara smiled as she remembered his indignation when Fergal had once hesitantly suggested that it would be best if he led the way, that Turlough should come next and Conall, the second bodyguard, should guard the rear. Like his kingly ancestors, Turlough led from the front and would never condescend to hide behind any man. He rode and the bodyguards followed, anxiously scanning the hedgerows and the fields.

  ‘Don’t tell me, you were getting hungry,’ she teased, spotting her servant, Cumhal, following the bodyguards, leading her golden-skinned mare, Brig.

  ‘We were getting worried about you, weren’t we, Cumhal?’ said Turlough. ‘Brigid sent me,’ he added defensively.

  ‘Oh, well, in that case . . .’ said Mara sweetly.

  Cumhal had already dismounted and throwing his own reins to Fergal, walked the mare over towards the bank.

  ‘Hold my hand,’ said Turlough protectively. ‘That’s it, carefully now. Let me do it.’