My Lady Judge Read online

  ‘Yes, Brehon,’ he said indistinctly.

  ‘Fachtnan, you organize a chess tournament for the lads,’ said Mara. ‘Tell them that there will be a prize for the winner – some silver to spend at the fair this evening.’ I’ll have to make sure that Hugh gets a prize, she thought, and little Shane also. These two had been with her since they were five years old and they had a special place in her heart. She would probably end up giving prizes to everyone, she thought wryly, but it would be worth it to keep them clean and tidy until noon.

  Mara joined the farmer. ‘I’ll walk down with you, Diarmuid, I may as well take a walk. I’ll be sitting for most of the afternoon and perhaps the early evening. There are quite a few cases already for judgement day and we may have yours to add to them also.’

  He smiled with pleasure and she smiled back. She was fond of Diarmuid and at times she suspected that he was more than fond of her.

  At that moment a huge white wolfhound came lolloping across the road to join them. ‘No, go back, Bran. Stay at home, good dog.’ Bran’s tail drooped; he was a very sensitive and devoted dog, but he obediently turned back and went towards the kitchen house.

  ‘Yes, better not take him,’ said Diarmuid, ‘my dog is a bit of a fighter. A lovely dog to me, but he doesn’t like the rest of the world too much. Is King Turlough Donn himself coming today for the judgement day?’

  ‘He is, indeed,’ said Mara, smiling with satisfaction. She always enjoyed a visit from Turlough Donn O’Brien, king of three kingdoms: the large kingdom of Thomond and the two smaller kingdoms of Burren and Corcomroe. They would have supper together after the judgements were over — Brigid, her housekeeper, had orders to cook a couple of wild duck and they would have a fine flagon of French wine to go with it.

  ‘You won’t be going up Mullaghmore tonight, then?’ said Diarmuid after they had climbed a few unstable stone walls and set off striding across the stone pavements of Baur North. The heat of the sun was bringing out the sharp bittersweet smell of the ground-hugging juniper growing in the grykes between the slabs of rock that paved the fields.

  ‘No, I won’t,’ said Mara, neatly jumping the gryke and then bending down to pick a few needles of juniper. She pinched them between her thumb and forefinger nail and then held the little bundle to her nose. ‘I’ll have to entertain the king. Colman will look after the lads for me when they are on the mountain,’ she said, trying to include her assistant in the conversation. Her consciousness that she disliked Colman, and that she had always disliked him, made her make more efforts with him than she did with Fachtnan. ‘Are you going yourself, Diarmuid?’ she asked.

  ‘I thought I might,’ he admitted. ‘It’s time that I gave the old fiddle an outing. The evening promises fine.’

  ‘Of course I knew you would be going; they wouldn’t be able to do without you. I’d dance myself if I heard a tune from your fiddle,’ she said with a smile. Colman, she noticed to her annoyance, was staring into the middle distance with his usual air of slightly despising the company that he was in.

  ‘Rory the bard has made up a new song – there’s a bit about your garden in it; the garden from heaven tied with a ribbon of blue, he calls it in the song – and I’ve been practising a tune to go with it,’ said Diarmuid. ‘It’s a great tune, as lively as yourself. Are you sure you won’t come tonight? You do every year.’

  ‘I’ve promised King Turlough a good dinner, otherwise I might, just to hear your tune,’ she said. ‘I can hear your dog bark,’ she added. ‘He knows there are strangers coming. I always hear him if I go along this road.’ She half-glanced at Colman to see if he had picked up the clue, but no trace of interest showed on his narrow face. No doubt he wished he were back in the schoolhouse studying Latin or the wisdom texts, she thought. He would not make a good Brehon. Probably he would be better off staying in a law school as an assistant master. Not my law school, though, she thought with exasperation. She wondered whether she could get Fergus, the Brehon in the kingdom of Corcomroe, to take him on.

  Diarmuid’s dog was huge: huge and ferocious. Mara surveyed him with interest, avoiding eye contact so as not to excite him too much. He lunged against the gate and his bark reverberated off the slopes of the Aillwee Hill. She turned away, but the dog still continued to deafen them with his barks. Mara nodded to herself. Yes, she was right. This was not a rival clan raid.

  ‘Wait a minute,’ said Diarmuid. ‘I’ll shut him up in the cabin.’ He squeezed his bulky frame through the narrow gate, taking extreme care not to allow the frantic dog through, and then shut the gate carefully after him. It had a large bolt on the inside, just at the top of the gate, noticed Mara, easy enough for a man to open it from the outside, but then what man would dare to do this with such a ferocious guardian inside the gate? The dog, she noticed with interest, was not barking now but was jumping wildly around Diarmuid, licking the man’s hands and wagging his tail as a puppy would. He was a beautiful dog, almost as tall as a wolfhound, black and tan in colour with an enormous ruff around his neck, pricked-up ears and a large domed head.

  ‘Where did you get him from, Diarmuid?’ she asked, speaking softly and keeping her eyes averted from the dog so as not to provoke another storm of barking.

  ‘I got him from my cousin, Lorcan,’ said Diarmuid.

  Mara gave herself another congratulatory nod. Her memory had not failed her.

  ‘Lorcan had him for a year,’ continued Diarmuid, ‘but he was getting too much for him. He was great with Lorcan himself; you can see what a loving fellow he is with his own family. But he’s a difficult dog and Lorcan wasn’t good at fencing him in. He did a lot of damage and people were scared of him. He’s half-wolf, you know. Lorcan had a big sheepdog bitch that was in season so he staked her out by Mullaghmore, there where the lake is, at the bottom of the mountain. A wolf mated with her.’

  ‘Took a bit of a risk with his dog, didn’t he?’ said Mara tartly, furious at the thought of the unfortunate dog left staked out there at the mercy of the wolves. But she knew from long experience that everything she said or did was of great interest to the people of the Burren, who were proud of their woman Brehon. Her slightest word was taken up, inflated and blown all over the Burren. So, as she had done so often, she bit back the angry words and watched Diarmuid fondle the wolf-dog.

  ‘You could say that,’ agreed Diarmuid. ‘You see, the puppies were all too big for the poor bitch. They all died except for this fellow, and the bitch died after she had given birth.’

  ‘What’s his name?’ asked Mara.

  ‘I call him Wolf,’ replied Diarmuid. ‘He looks like a wolf, though he’s finer than any wolf that I have ever seen.’

  ‘And he didn’t bark last night,’ stated Mara.

  ‘No, he didn’t,’ said Diarmuid with surprise. ‘How did you guess that?’

  Mara smiled. ‘I think we’ll take a walk down to Lorcan’s farm, Diarmuid.’

  ‘But … but what about the cow?’ asked Diarmuid, staring at her in bewilderment. ‘Don’t you want to see the cabin? And what about Eoin MacNamara?’

  Mara smiled sweetly at him. ‘Come on, Diarmuid, you know what I’m like about dogs. I’d like to find out more about Wolf. Let’s go down to Lorcan; it’s not far. I’m not forgetting about your cow, I promise you that. You come, too, Colman.’ There had been no need to add that, she thought. Colman would not have liked to stay there with that ferocious dog, called Wolf.

  Lorcan’s farm was at Cregavockoge, a lush valley below the flat, high tableland that spanned the three miles between Cahermacnaghten and the dolmen at Poulnabrone. The grass in this valley, growing thickly in the well-drained rich soil that lay above the limestone, was a deep, soft green. There were several small farms there, but Lorcan’s stood out from the rest by the dark brown muddy fields and the broken-backed walls. His cottage was small, as were most of the cottages on the Burren. Lorcan’s cottage, however, was not snowy-white like the other cottages, but a dingy grey with moss growing on the badly thatched
roof. It looked as though he had not repaired the thatch nor limewashed his walls for years. Mara looked at it with interest. Lorcan O’Connor was obviously a poor farmer. The fields were over-grazed and thistles and ragwort had seeded themselves everywhere into ugly clumps.

  Lorcan himself was in his yard. Mara moved quickly, striding out ahead of Diarmuid and Colman. She passed the bemused Lorcan with a friendly smile and went confidently through the filthy yard to the small cabin beside the house. There was a cow there. It was a handsome, well-fed large brown cow, quite unlike the small dark cattle that she had seen in the fields. The cow was obviously in calf.

  ‘Diarmuid,’ she said over her shoulder. ‘What do you think of this cow?’

  Looking puzzled, Diarmuid came forward. He still suspected nothing, thought Mara. He was an honest man himself and he expected the world around him, especially one of his own kin-group, to be equally honest. The cow, however, had no doubts. She gave a robust ‘moo’, lumbered out of the cabin and put her head affectionately on Diarmuid’s shoulder. Diarmuid patted her absent-mindedly and stared speechlessly at his cousin.

  Mara looked at Lorcan. ‘Can you explain what Diarmuid’s cow is doing in your cabin, Lorcan?’ she asked quietly.

  Lorcan stared back at her but said nothing. There was a flare of panic in his widely opened eyes.

  ‘Well,’ said Diarmuid. Words seemed to have left him and it took him a few minutes before he said with dignity, ‘I’m sorry that you did a thing like that, Lorcan. It wasn’t very neighbourly and it wasn’t very cousinly. I’ll be taking the cow back to my place now and it will be a miracle if her calf is born safe after all of this.’

  ‘I found her straying,’ muttered Lorcan.

  ‘No, you didn’t,’ said Diarmuid scornfully.

  ‘And, Lorcan, I’ll see you today at Poulnabrone,’ said Mara firmly. ‘I’ll hear the case and I’ll apportion a fine.’

  ‘I’m a very poor man, Brehon,’ said Lorcan piteously. ‘The young master here knows that,’ he added, looking at Colman.

  ‘That’s true,’ said Colman unexpectedly. Mara shot him an irritated glance, but kept a firm grip on her rising temper. She marched back out of the dung-filled yard and waited at the roadway. Diarmuid followed, leading his precious cow carefully with a handful of hay to her nose. Colman, noticed Mara, had stopped for a quick word with Lorcan before picking his way carefully out to join them. She concealed a smile as she watched him. His rather sharp nose was twitching uneasily and his narrow shoulders were contracted as if he shunned his surroundings. It was easy to see that he had never been a country boy.

  ‘Well,’ said Diarmuid heartily when they were out of Lorcan’s hearing, ‘I don’t know how you guessed that, Brehon. You’re a great woman entirely. That was the last person that I would have thought of. My own cousin!’

  ‘Ah, well, it was easy,’ said Mara modestly. ‘That’s a good dog you have there, Diarmuid. Some day when I have a bit of time on my hands I’ll come over and try to make friends with him. I’d say he would have been better if you had had him when he was a puppy. He needs to learn to trust people that you trust. He needs to get out and about a bit more.’

  While she spoke, Mara’s mind was busy with the problem of Colman. It was odd how he was only now beginning to show himself for what he was. It was as if, while he was a student, he had kept a close guard on himself and tried his best to fit in with her way of thinking. Otherwise, she would never have appointed him. Luckily it was only for a year and the year would end soon. I’m not going to have him behave like this, though, she thought with determination.

  After they had parted from Diarmuid and his cow, going shoulder to shoulder down the road to Baur North, Mara said mildly, ‘It was not a good idea to agree with Lorcan there, Colman. You can rely on me to apportion a just fine. Now he may think that he can twist and wheedle his way out of anything.’

  ‘I was just following your instructions to be sympathetic and understanding to people, Brehon,’ said Colman smugly.

  Mara tightened her lips, but said no more. They walked in silence along the road and then turned into Cahermacnaghten.

  Cumhal, Brigid’s husband, was sweeping the flagged surface of the enclosure. Brigid herself was scrubbing out the kitchen and singing loudly and the schoolhouse rang with the shouts of the boys playing chess in their usual exuberant way.

  ‘Thank you, Fachtnan,’ said Mara as she entered. She could see that Fachtnan had worked out an intricate tournament on the whitewashed piece of board that she used for her lessons. Each boy was allocated points according to his age. Unfortunately Fachtnan had managed to get some black specks from the charred stick, which he had been using to write on the board, on to his clean léine, but no doubt Brigid would manage to make the tunic presentable before the judgement session.

  ‘You touched your castle; you must move it now,’ yelled Shane.

  ‘No, I didn’t,’ yelled Hugh. ‘My hand just hovered; it didn’t touch.’

  And then, quite suddenly, Hugh caught sight of Colman emerging from behind Mara. His eyes locked on Colman’s with the look of panic that comes into the eyes of a baby rabbit in a snare. What had Colman done to that boy? thought Mara. She scowled and then her lips relaxed into a slightly vindictive smile. Let Colman have a taste of his own medicine. It would do him good to know what it was like to be terrified. At least she would get rid of him for the rest of the morning. She turned to her assistant.

  ‘Colman,’ she said. ‘I think we should probably have the dog at the judgement session, don’t you? After all, he may be an important witness. Go back and tell Diarmuid to bring him to Poulnabrone. Wait with him. Stay at the farmyard all the morning and take note of the behaviour of the dog when strangers come near to him. Come with Diarmuid to Poulnabrone and you can give evidence, and of course you will be able to help Diarmuid to control the dog. It’s an interesting case.’

  This should amuse King Turlough Donn, she thought with a smile. This case may go down in the history of judgement texts. The case of the silent witness: the dog who did not bark.

  TWO

  CASE NOTES AND JUDGEMENT TEXTS FROM MARA, BREHON OF THE BURREN, IS MAY 1509

  Judgement day: last day of April 1509. On the eve of Bealtaine I judged the case between taoiseach Garrett MacNamara and his kinsman, young Feirdin MacNamara. Garrett MacNamara swore that his kinsman’s behaviour was so wayward that he should be kept in the close curtody of a male cousin. Feirdin’s mother, Gráinne, pleaded that her son be allowed to live with her and that she be held responsible for his behaviour …

  THIS WAS THE CASE that worried Mara the most. And so, on that morning of the eve of Bealtaine, she left Fachtnan to look after the younger scholars for a little while longer and went across the fields to Caherconnell. She wanted to see Malachy, the physician, a distant relative of hers, and she wanted to discuss this boy, Feirdin, with him.

  Malachy’s house, at Caherconnell, was a handsome two-storey building set within the rounded enclosure wall of an old cathair. Several other old forts lay around it, all in a ruinous state. In the near distance was an ancient circle of thirteen tall stones.

  Nuala, Malachy’s daughter, a pair of small sharp shears in one hand and a basket in the other, was working in the herb garden at Caherconnell when Mara arrived. Nuala was a tall girl for thirteen, her skin tanned to a deep brown and her glossy black hair neatly braided into two long plaits. Her face was intent and serious as she industriously sheared off the soft grey-green tops of the rosemary in her herb garden, but she lifted her head at the sound of footsteps and when she saw Mara she ran to open the gate, her brown eyes shining with welcome.

  ‘Mara, I was hoping you would come,’ she said with pleasure. ‘I really need your help in talking sense into Father. You will talk to Father, won’t you? He’s got this idea in his head that he doesn’t want me to be a physician. He’s been talking about Mother all the morning, about how she had planned this marriage with Naoise O’Lochlainn as soon as I
was born. He wants me to get married on my fourteenth birthday but I don’t want to! It’s all so stupid. Just because we are second cousins! Why can’t I decide for myself?’

  The words poured out of her and Mara smiled. Nuala was always like this, always bubbling over with excitement, anger or fun. Mara was very fond of her. However, she had to remind herself that this was Malachy’s daughter and that this marriage would have to be his decision.

  ‘Well, your mother’s wishes would be very important to your father,’ she said diplomatically. ‘You know how much he misses her.’

  ‘At least he’s stopped drinking himself silly in alehouses now,’ said Nuala sternly. ‘And besides’ – her clear strong voice wobbled slightly – ‘I miss her too.’

  ‘I know,’ said Mara, putting her arm around the slim shoulders. Mór O’Connor had died of a malady in her breast over a year ago. She had only been twenty-seven years old and her death, though a merciful release from intense suffering, had had a devastating effect on Malachy. Strong drink seemed to be his only way of enduring the unendurable. The people of the Burren, compassionate towards a man who had suffered such a great loss, had looked after him, taking him home night after night and making sure that no harm came to him. Even Colman, she had heard, had been seen taking him home one night.

  The effect on Nuala must have been great, although the housekeeper had done her best to shield the child. Nuala herself had seemed to deal with her mother’s death with a show of almost frightening maturity, but Mara had kept an anxious eye on her.

  ‘Be a sensible girl, now,’ she said, stroking the shining hair. ‘Say nothing, and leave your father to me. He wants the best for you. Your happiness is the most important thing in the world to him at the moment.’

  ‘Well, he must be pretty stupid if he thinks I will be happy married to that stupid Naoise,’ said Nuala with her usual forthrightness. ‘That stupid boy thinks of nothing but hunting. He’s such a show-off, too, and he has nothing to show off about. He’s just stupid.’