A Fatal Inheritance Read online

  And how had the dog, Ug, managed to convey to Finnegas that he was wanted by his brothers and make it sound urgent enough for the man to leave his business and come across the hills? Unless, of course, Finnegas had been awaiting the summons.

  Finnegas was, she noted with interest, when he arrived, the only one of the family who did not express horror, pity or even voice a few words of sorrow. He surveyed the body from foot to head, walked around the back of the stone pillar, noted the bound hands and the dangling key and then came back again. Now he spoke, but only a monosyllable came from him: ‘Well,’ said Finnegas, cousin to the dead woman. And then, after a minute during which no one spoke, he added in a conversational manner, ‘What do you make of this, Brehon?’

  There was, thought Mara, an almost challenge in his words. She did not reply. The first discovery of the body was a time, she had often found, when the relatives and the friends of the murdered victim often said too much and it was always important to note their words and do nothing to stem the flow of speech. Now she simply looked from brother to brother and waited.

  ‘Nothing to do with any one of us, Brehon,’ said Finnegas after a minute. He was quick and sharp, she thought. He was remembering, as she had done, that on St Patrick’s Day, on the seventeenth of March, the four brothers had battled with their cousin for the custody of the land where they now stood. And perhaps they, also, were remembering the curses that they had shouted at Clodagh. The words came immediately to her memory: ‘May it never bring you a day of luck and may you rot in hell for all eternity!’ That had been Pat, she thought, remembering the deep, rough voice. ‘And may the land rise up against you and be barren for you and yours.’ Gobnait had screamed that after Clodagh as she had brushed past the people standing by the entrance to the field where the dolmen of Poulnabrone stood. ‘May the curse of the stone god of the old people take the breath from your body.’ Dinan had uttered that last curse.

  Mara had a sudden sharp vision of him on that day. He had gone very pale, she remembered, his face in contrast to his brothers’ flushed visages, his brown eyes burning with intensity, his mellow, musical voice uttering the virulent words. Did he now feel that his curse had come true? Or had the curse put an idea into his head? She watched him now for a moment, but he wasn’t looking at her, or even at his brothers. He seemed to be mesmerized by the solitary crow and so she turned back to the youngest brother.

  ‘How do you know that, Finnegas?’

  He was too clever not to see the implication and he came back immediately with: ‘You saw me arrive, yourself, Brehon. I haven’t been near this place for days, weeks, really, but I know my own family better than you do and I know that none of them could be guilty of an act like this.’

  ‘No accusations have been made, Finnegas,’ said Mara mildly.

  ‘But you are bound to think that,’ he retorted quickly. ‘We all lost what we thought we possessed and we lost it to her.’ He jerked his thumb towards the body and then looked at Mara. ‘I’m not saying that you should not have given that verdict. The Brehon of Corcomroe being out of his mind, and his memory going was neither your fault nor was it ours. We told you the truth. We told you that our uncle had made a will leaving the land to be divided between the four of us and all four of us saw that will being locked into the chest in the Brehon’s house at Corcomroe.’

  ‘The will was not found there, Finnegas.’ Mara was determined to keep her temper, though she did not relish the reopening of this argument when she had a murder on her hands. Finnegas, of course, was correct. She was bound to suspect one or all of the four brothers. The land would now come to them, just as they claimed was stated in the will made by their uncle and stored in the chest of the Brehon of Corcomroe.

  It had been a painful scene on that morning at Poulnabrone, the place of judgement. Justice under the Brehon law system was a communal matter so the courts were always held in the open in order that all could attend. There were no savage punishments, no prisons; no force was used so the judgements and the fine for any crime committed had to be reinforced by the clan of the guilty person. It made sense, therefore, that all the people of the kingdom should not just be allowed, but encouraged to attend and to express an opinion if they wished. The only practical solution was to hold the courts in the open air – and pray for fine weather, Mara always told her scholars.

  And when the matter of Clodagh O’Lochlainn’s inheritance was held, on the seventeenth of March 1523, the day promised to remain fine. It had been a beautiful spring morning and everything had a look as though spring-cleaned by an army of servants. The strengthening sunshine of mid-spring brought a gleam from the three limestone slabs that formed the dolmen and the swirling terraces of the mountains that surrounded the Kingdom of the Burren shimmered silver in the strong March sunshine. In the hedgerow beside the road new bright green leaves of the woodbine twined among the black winter twigs and here and there a starry clump of white blossom glowed in the sunlight and formed a perch for a newly returned willow warbler that was singing his appreciation. Mara remembered poor old Fergus, the Brehon of Corcomroe, gazing up at the little songster and gently calling the attention of Fachtnan’s little daughter to the pretty bird.

  But Fergus, when called to give evidence, remembered nothing. Did not remember making the will, had no idea what had happened to it. Did not even appear to have any memory of Clodagh O’Lochlainn coming to see him.

  And yet she must have, thought Mara, and probably at least twice. At the hearing at Poulnabrone, Clodagh had given evidence that she had brought the taoiseach of her clan, Ardal O’Lochlainn, to the Brehon’s house to look for the will her cousins claimed would show that the land had been left to them. Ardal O’Lochlainn had verified her claim that there was no will in the strongbox at Brehon MacClancy’s house. Clodagh had been astute when she requested the presence of the taoiseach when the box was opened and, moreover, had shown an astonishing knowledge of the law when she had asked Ardal to assess her land and to give evidence that the land was no more than a daughter’s portion. She had also brought the priest of the parish along to testify to the fact that she had gone through all the correct procedures when she laid claim to her father’s lands.

  No, Clodagh had won all the battles on that day and she had won them with the unwitting assistance of the Brehon of Corcomroe. Fergus, though vague and forgetful about events that had happened even days ago, had, like many elderly people, retained a sharp memory of what he had learned in his youth. Clodagh, she guessed, had been quick-witted enough to exploit the senile old man.

  But now Clodagh was dead and it was the responsibility of the Brehon to find who had done the deed, to enforce public confession and the payment of retribution.

  ‘I will need to ask some questions of you all so that while we are waiting for my scholar to fetch the physician, perhaps we could move into shelter. Is Danu’s house open, do you think, Pat?’ Deliberately averting her gaze from the stone pillar and the woman tied to it, she glanced down the pathway leading to the gap in the stones that encircled Dunaunmore, the home of Clodagh’s father.

  ‘We cleaned the place after the old man moved in with us and we closed it up. After you gave the judgement against us, we handed the key over to Clodagh,’ said Deirdre after a minute. Her eyes slid in the direction of the hands tied behind the stone pillar. ‘She and Aengus have been living there ever since.’

  ‘And is that the only key?’ asked Mara pointing.

  ‘It is.’

  Cael gave a brief shudder and Art looked slightly sick.

  ‘In that case,’ said Mara decisively, ‘we cannot go into Dunaunmore. I don’t want the body touched until the physician arrives.’

  She waited for Pat to offer the shelter of his own house. It was only a few hundred yards from where they stood. She could leave Cormac and Cian to guard over the body. However, Pat, after a quick glance at Deirdre, made no such offer. Mara wondered why not. The people of the Burren were, in her experience, unwearyingly hospi
table – in fact, she spent most of her days dodging invitations to partake of a mug of ale, a pie, a cake, a cup of blackberry wine – invitations which would take up most of her spare time if she accepted them. Why did Pat and Deirdre not want her in their house? Deirdre was a notable housewife, famous in these regions for having sorted out the terrible mess in Pat’s uncle’s house, and for keeping the senile old man as neat and presentable as possible. No, Mara could bet that Deirdre was one who was always ready for company.

  Did they perhaps have something within the house that might throw suspicion on them? Perhaps a coil of similar rope? Without touching anything, Mara moved a little closer to the body and, averting her eyes from the tortured face, gazed at the rope that was wound around the woman’s neck.

  ‘Nettles, ivy and brambles,’ said Cormac in her ear and she nodded an acknowledgement. These ropes were all homemade and in this barren region very little flax was grown and no hemp at all, so each householder wove his ropes from whatever was readily available to him. Nettles grew profusely on dumps of household rubbish. Ivy would be plentiful on the hundred-feet high rock faces to the north of Oughtdara, where it grew in immensely long strands and, kept pliable until it dried, would make a good base for a rope, and, of course, brambles colonised the stone heaps where the animals couldn’t browse. Any one of the four men facing her could have a rope like that in their possession.

  She looked across at them and then said with a sudden shock, ‘But where is Aengus?’

  It was unforgivable. She had completely forgotten about Clodagh’s husband. The fact that most people forgot about him for most of the time did nothing to excuse her. In her exasperation she blamed this ridiculous idea of Turlough’s, this elaborate celebration of her fiftieth birthday, for her forgetfulness, but in her heart she knew that was no defence. When she had agreed to marry the king more than twelve years ago, she had sworn never to allow that fact to interfere with her position as Brehon of the Burren and on the whole she thought that she had kept that oath.

  ‘God, I forgot about Aengus,’ said Gobnait, his frank admission slightly salving her guilty conscience. Aengus, unlike his tough, energetic wife, was easy to forget. Although he was, in fact, fifty-four and Clodagh was forty-seven, his appearance could have made him twenty years older than she, a small man, prone to rheumatism, with pale blue eyes that blinked continuously and a shy, hesitant voice that he seldom exercised, he was completely overshadowed by his dominant wife.

  ‘I haven’t seen him since about dawn,’ said Pat. ‘I saw him climbing the path to Ballynahown, then.’

  ‘Didn’t see sight nor sound of him and I’ve been up on Ballynahown all day,’ said Gobnait. ‘And there were none of the taoiseach’s sheep there, neither.’

  ‘Doesn’t sound as though he would have stayed there, then; surely he’d have gone to where the sheep were, higher up the mountain, I suppose,’ said Mara. Ardal O’Lochlainn, the taoiseach of the O’Lochlainn clan, employed Aengus as a shepherd and had, Mara remembered, a good estimation of the little man, saying that he understood sheep and was gentle and competent with them. ‘I think that the easiest thing would be to send a message to Lissylisheen – either the taoiseach or his steward will know where Aengus is. I think that the news should be broken to him before he sees the body, sees Clodagh.’ She wondered whether to ask one of the six people in front of her to break the news, but then decided against it. This was law school business, she thought. It was a pity that Fachtnan, her assistant, was not here; she would have to choose one of her scholars.

  ‘Cael, I think that you would be a good person to do this,’ she said. ‘And I’ll send Art with you.’ Cael was an intelligent girl and she would keep her wits about her. Aengus would be more at ease with her than with Domhnall who had now grown to man-size and had become a rather redoubtable figure with his quiet self-assurance and formidable intelligence. And, of course, Art was the son of Cliona, a local sheep farmer, someone Aengus knew. He would feel much more at ease with a neighbour’s son than he would with Domhnall, who, though the grandson of the Brehon, was born and brought up in the English city of Galway. And certainly a confused old man would be better with a pretty girl, as Cael was beginning to turn into, than a handsome, self-possessed young man, like Domhnall.

  It occurred to her that Aengus was actually only about three years or four years older than Mara, Brehon of the Burren, but she swept that thought aside with a new wave of irritation as to the amount of her time that these fiftieth birthday celebrations had taken up. No more wasting of her time, she swore to herself. They can all get on with it as they wish. In any case, there were plenty of barrels of wine sent by her son-in-law, Domhnall’s father, and there would surely be enough for everyone to eat. She turned her attention back to the more important things and walked over to stand beside Cael as she mounted her pony.

  ‘Just lead up to it carefully, Cael, give him time to weep and perhaps bring him back to Lissylisheen Castle rather than to here.’ Ardal, she reflected, would probably be compassionate to the old man and make things easy for him, would lend a pony for the old man to ride back upon. He had plenty of accommodation for workers in a house behind his barns and Aengus would be better off there with some of the other herdsmen.

  And then she turned back to the place where the brothers and their wives stood gazing at the figure of their cousin Clodagh. It was, she reflected, almost like a mirror image of the scene a fortnight ago, on the feast of St Patrick, when she had held court at Poulnabrone, the judgement place of the Kingdom of the Burren.

  Except that Clodagh had been vociferously alive on that day.

  Two

  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 16 séts, eight pieces of silver or eight milch cows.

  The Brehon has the power to judge all cases of law-breaking within the kingdom, to allocate fines and to keep the peace.

  To keep the peace within the kingdom, that was something that every Brehon bore in mind. This murder case, thought Mara, this finding of a strangled body tied to the stone god, was going to cause a wave of superstitious horror to sweep through the kingdom. Everyone had heard the words of Dinan on that day, almost two weeks ago. Once the news got out the people of the area would be terrified, would credit Dinan with supernatural powers; would be afraid to anger him. Mara looked across at him. It was odd, but he looked the least worried of the four brothers, almost like a man who has successfully accomplished a difficult task. An interesting man, Mara had often thought. Whenever she had met him on her journeys between the law school at Cahermacnaghten and Ballinalacken Castle, Dinan had always a question for her about some of the ancient legends. The gods in the stories of Tuatha Dé seemed almost as real to him as his neighbours in Oughtdara and he chuckled over their exploits and seemed to retain every word that she had dredged up from her readings from books in the library collected by her father, being especially interested in his own father’s namesake, Danu, but also fascinated by such powerful beings as Dagda, Lugh and Lir. She wondered whether he had convinced himself that the stone god had actually done this deed, or whether he was just good at concealing his feelings. In any case, it was strangely uncanny that the death of Clodagh had occurred exactly as he had wished for: May the curse of the stone god of the old people take the breath from your body, he had said and Clodagh had died almost in the arms of the god, with her breath cut off by the rope around her neck. A guilty man would have feigned shock that his words had been fulfilled; an innocent man would surely have been worried and frightened by the coincidence, but Dinan seemed calm, and, yes, there was a certain air of satisfaction about him as he stood there unconcernedly watching the crow that circled over their heads.

  Pat appeared to be the most worried of the brothers and nervously licked his lips every few seconds, but, by contrast, his wife, Deirdre seemed, now that she was
recovering from the shock, to be relaxed, slightly bored, gazing cheerfully up the hillside from where the shrill cries of the kids and the deeper toned notes of the nanny goats rose up, undaunted by the rain. Soon the kids would be strong enough to fend for themselves and all of the goats’ milk could be churned and then formed into small cheeses that Deirdre would sell at the markets. Her mind had, it appeared, strayed from the dead woman to the living creatures on the rainy hillside and it was with a visible effort that she turned it back and gazed at the body appraisingly.

  ‘It’s a terrible thing,’ said Deirdre in an undertone to Anu, ‘for a body to anger a god.’ Did she mean the Almighty in his heaven, or the stone god here, before them, wondered Mara. The latter, she thought.

  ‘Lord have mercy on her,’ returned Anu, and both women seemed to look interrogatively at Mara as if in hope of an opinion on this death.

  Mara made up her mind. This was ridiculous. They could not all stand around forever in the mist and rain waiting. She had to take a preliminary statement from them all while their morning was fresh in their minds and then organize her lines of enquiry. But there was no possibility of her scholars being able to write in this weather; the rain would soak into the parchment and wash the ink away. She wondered whether they hoped to be invited to Ballinalacken Castle, high up on the hillside. But the castle was part of her private life as wife to King Turlough and played no part ever in the legal affairs of the kingdom and she had no intention of setting a precedent by using it this morning.