Verdict of the Court: A mystery set in sixteenth-century Ireland (A Burren Mystery) Read online

  To her surprise and fury, Maccon burst into an enormous laugh, the sound pealing against the stone walls all around.

  ‘By the lord, that’s good. It’s him to the life.’ He said the words with warm approval and the twins smirked.

  ‘We’ve been using it for target practice, Father,’ said Cian in the tones of one who knew that he could not fail to please.

  ‘That’s my knife through his heart,’ said Cael.

  ‘And mine through his neck – that’s just as good – that would kill him immediately – and there would be a fountain of blood,’ said Cian.

  ‘Iontach!’ exclaimed Cormac looking up with admiration at the knives inserted into the dangling figure in the oak tree.

  ‘I think it should be removed before it causes offence,’ said Mara firmly. She was tired after her long journey and had no great affection for Brehon MacClancy, but right was right. A man, and especially a Brehon, should not be exposed to ridicule in that fashion. In any case, badly behaved children always annoyed her.

  Maccon ignored this. His attention was on a figure coming through the gate.

  ‘Fionn,’ he called, ‘come and see. Look at what my two scamps have made! Guess who!’

  Mara knew Fionn O’Brien well. He was a cousin of Turlough’s – a hanger-on, she thought of him, someone whose people passed him over in favour of his younger brother and who had spent the next twenty years trying to pass his time by visiting more fortunate relations. Last year he had married a daughter of one of the MacNamaras – an only child – and had inherited a castle at Cratloe and some land with her. Mara had not met his wife but hoped that she was satisfied with her bargain. Not to her surprise, Fionn found the swinging effigy of Brehon MacClancy to be very funny also. Mara decided that the most dignified thing was to walk away as soon as possible.

  ‘Let’s go and greet the King,’ she said to her scholars. She had meant to make them attend to their own ponies, as they did back at the law school, but felt that it was bad for them, especially Cormac, to witness the amusement at the rather unpleasant prank of Maccon MacMahon’s twins. She hoped that someone would have the sense to remove it before the elderly Brehon of Thomond caught sight of it, but decided that it was really none of her business.

  Two

  Críth Gablach

  (ranks in society)

  The lowest grade of king has an honour price of 42 séts and he has direct control only over his own kingdom. A king who has control over three kingdoms has an honour price of 48 séts and can be called a great king.

  The highest king in the land has an honour price of 84 séts. He rules over a province and can be described as a king of great kings.

  The castle of Bunratty, seat of the court of the O’Briens, Kings of Thomond, Corcomroe and Burren, was the largest and finest in the whole three kingdoms. Unlike most castles it had two main halls – the great hall, where the King and his family and particular friends, as well as the most important members of his household, could dine and then below it the main guard hall, where the rest of the household could feast and dance and listen to music. The food for the main guard hall was cooked in the separate kitchen house within the enclosure, but the King’s meals were served in the great hall from a small pantry and buttery which had a hatch into the fifty-foot-long room, and that was where they feasted that night of Christmas Eve. There were only twenty of them to dine with the King that evening so they were all seated at one table which stretched across the width of the raised platform at the top of the hall. It was a magnificent room, one stone wall hung with an elaborately stitched tapestry, purchased by Turlough’s uncle from a French ship. The floor was paved with marble tiles and during daylight hours the room was full of light from five twenty-foot-high windows, facing south, east and west, that were set into recesses in the depths of the thick walls. Now, on this winter’s evening, the hall was lit by candles and by the enormous fire where a whole tree trunk, balancing on iron supports above fast-blazing smaller logs, sent out light as well as heat to the whole hall.

  ‘Murrough did not come,’ said Mara in a low tone to Conor. Murrough was Conor’s younger brother.

  ‘I sent a message by young Raour, but he refused to come. He is very high in the favour of the King of England, Raour said.’ Conor spoke in a low voice in Mara’s ear. There would be little apprehension that Turlough could hear the words above the tumult of voices and laughter and shouted remarks, but Mara could understand why Conor, a sensitive young man, made sure that his remarks reached her ear only.

  Murrough, a couple of years younger than Conor, had been Turlough’s favourite son but had been banished from the kingdom of the Burren and from his father’s court when he committed a heinous crime. Turlough, a man of strong affections, had by now forgiven his son and blotted out from his memory any wrongdoing of the handsome young man, but Murrough preferred to remain in London and to court King Henry VIII. He had reappeared once and had done his best to induce Turlough to accept King Henry’s proposition of ‘surrender and regrant’ which would have entailed the surrender of his three kingdoms and his title of king and taoiseach to his clan in exchange for an English earldom and the regrant of most of his land. Mara smiled to herself at the memory of Turlough’s rage and then grew serious as she took one look at Conor’s white face and emaciated form. Conor was Turlough’s heir, the tánaiste, but Conor was a sick man plagued by recurring bouts of the wasting disease which consumed his health and the clan would have been very happy to accept the vigorous and warlike Murrough, physically so like his popular father, in his place.

  And if that happened, thought Mara, it might be one more nail in the coffin of Gaelic Ireland and would certainly mean an end to Brehon law and all that she believed in so intensely. Though sorry that Turlough did not have both his sons with him to celebrate his twenty years of kingship, she was glad that Murrough stayed in London. And Conor had rallied before and could surely rally again. His disease was lingering but he was better than he had been ten years ago. She turned to Aengus MacCraith, the poet, who was seated across the table from her and began to discuss the ancient feiseanna of the past and their possible revival at the time of the horse fair at Coad. She kept that conversation going for a while until Conor had regained his cheerfulness and wanted to talk about his son Raour, recently returned from fosterage and looking to be a very promising young man with none of his father’s constitutional weakness. In fact, thought Mara, the young man could do with losing some weight. However she was sorry for Conor and praised his son enough to satisfy the proud father. And then he turned to Fionn O’Brien’s wife and made the same remarks to her. Raour was obviously the light of Conor’s life at the moment, the hopeful promise of the future. Aideen looked bored, arched her very black eyebrows, sighed, sipped from her glass, but Conor still continued, relating anecdotes about Raour’s prowess with the spear, his ability to judge a horse, his astuteness in business matters, his ability to master any stallion in the land. Mara smiled to herself, wondering how long Aideen, as a childless woman, would stand this outpouring of praise. It would be different if she, like many others, could wait for a gap in the conversation, and then insert a few anecdotes about her own children.

  And then she realized that Aideen was not in fact listening to Conor, but had her eyes fixed on the bottom of the table where Brehon MacClancy sat. What had attracted her attentive gaze in that direction? The Brehon was old, not attractive, not even a very pleasant man. Conor, for all his faults of partiality towards his own son, was an agreeable and a pleasant dinner companion.

  Mara sipped her wine, made light conversation, listened and thought her own thoughts until they had reached the second course of the elaborately cooked meal.

  The toasts to Turlough’s health and to another twenty years of reign had been numerous, but these were informal. The formal praise came when Seán Brody left his place at the table and went to stand beside his harp. Aengus MacCraith joined him, and, had, to the accompaniment of the harp, sung and spoke
n of the great love that all in the kingdom bore to Turlough Donn, descendent of the great High King, Brian Boru. Turlough, a modest man, had signalled to Rosta to serve the next course.

  And that was when Brehon MacClancy, sitting at the bottom of the table, suddenly exploded.

  ‘Ye all sit there and ye nod your heads and ye smile,’ he said maliciously when Aengus MacCraith finished and cheers had risen to the rafters. ‘Everyone loves the King; that’s what all the poets say, but I know better,’ he continued, gazing around, as knives ceased to work and Maccon MacMahon, sitting a few places down the table from the King, paused in his selection from a tray of roast goose.

  ‘I know that there’s one of ye here, one whom the King trusts and loves, and who declares his love for the King on all occasions, there is one person here tonight who is secretly cheating him and when Judgement Day comes then the name of that person will be revealed and the King will know the truth. And don’t think that I won’t inform him of all the scandals and evil-doing that go on in this place, too.’ Brehon MacClancy gave a triumphant sound which was half a grunt and half a suppressed giggle. Mara wondered whether the man’s wits were becoming addled with age. Why this public expression of malice? Perhaps he had seen the hanging effigy and that had angered him into this display. Perhaps it was aimed at Maccon; after all he was a great friend of the King’s. And Maccon, she thought severely, should keep those badly behaved twins of his under control. She looked at the Brehon’s assistant, Enda, who had once been a scholar at her school, but Enda’s eyes were averted from her and were fixed studiously on the polished oak surface of the table. One finger was tracing a circular motion, perhaps around a knot in the wood, and his slim young body seemed stiff with tension, as if awaiting some further revelation from his master.

  But Brehon MacClancy had finished. He beckoned impatiently to Rosta, the King’s cook, to bring him some of the goose, and the conversation resumed.

  There was an uneasy note in the voices, though. The harpist, Brian MacBrody, endeavoured to break the tension by strumming a few notes from the strings of his instrument and beckoned to Mara’s grandson and the eldest scholar at her school to come across to try out his harp, telling him how the instrument had been made from one piece of wood as the front was carved from a branch protruding from the tree trunk which formed the back of the harp.

  ‘Feel those strings,’ he said to Domhnall. ‘What do you think that they are made from?’

  ‘Brass,’ queried Domhnall. He was a very well-mannered boy, but his attention was focused on the roast goose.

  ‘Gold,’ said the harpist triumphantly, but his eyes were not on Domhnall, but had gone across the polished boards and were looking intently at the elderly Brehon.

  And so was, noticed Mara, Maccon MacNamara. She began to think about the man. One of Turlough’s best friends and taoiseach of Clann Baiscinn from the western tip of the kingdom; his lands lay only a few miles away, further west and just where the huge River Shannon entered the sea after it had passed through the city of Limerick and passed the Castle of Bunratty, perched on its promontory. Maccon was a great man for boats and he and Turlough enjoyed fishing together. Mara had met him on previous occasions, but this was the first time that she had met his three children – the eldest, like her deceased mother, Mara guessed, a beautiful dark-haired girl of about sixteen and two red-headed twins not much older than her own son Cormac. He had been hilariously funny earlier, telling stories about narrow escapes that he and Turlough had when their net got tangled in the weir and teasing his daughter about being in love. A nice man, probably, even though he should have shown himself a bit more authoritative with those twins, she thought. However, she told herself forgivingly; perhaps he spoiled them because he saw little of them and because they had no mother. Otherwise she had always liked him; a man who was a good companion to her husband who was a fun-loving, easy-going ruler. But now Maccon was silent and his eyes were apprehensive as he glanced across at Brehon MacClancy. It would be worrying if the Brehon had something to disclose about Maccon. Turlough would be most upset if one of his best friends had betrayed him.

  Mara allowed her glance to wander around the table. There was certainly a feeling of uneasiness among the guests seated around the long table spread with so many splendid dishes. There was a long silence, a silence when people looked at each other, looked at the elderly Brehon and then back at their platters again. And then, too quickly and too loudly, Fionn O’Brien, Turlough’s cousin, called up from the bottom of the table.

  ‘Turlough, let’s go hunting tomorrow. That marsh at the back of the castle is full of birds. I swear I heard a bustard outside my bedroom window. Rosta, you’d cook bustard for us, wouldn’t you, if we managed to get a few for you?’

  ‘One would be enough, my lord; these things weigh nearly as much as this young gosling here,’ said the cook readily. He poked Cormac in his skinny ribs and chuckled. He had once been a foot soldier in Turlough’s army, but an injury to his leg had made him lame and he had turned to cooking. He was a great favourite with Turlough and quite at home with all the company and Cormac was so taken by his mastery with pots and pans that he had informed his mother on his return from his last visit to Bunratty that he thought he’d rather be a cook than a lawyer.

  Turlough laughed uproariously at the mild joke from his cook and the mood changed. Everyone seemed to have a story to tell about bustards, or a method of catching the huge birds, and Mara relaxed. She watched Enda, though. She was worried about him. It had seemed a wonderful position, nine years ago, for a seventeen-year-old boy to become an assistant to the Brehon at the King’s court, but now she wondered whether he had done the right thing. By now, with his brains and his qualifications, he could be holding a position such as she held, dealing with all the legal matters, solving crimes, keeping the peace between neighbours. Even in a kingdom as small as the Burren, the satisfactions of the job were immense and Enda could open his own school to train boys. She resolved to have a talk with him afterwards – this business of waiting around to fill dead men’s shoes was not good enough for one of her cleverest scholars. She was not the only one who looked at his downcast face, she noticed. Maccon MacMahon’s pretty sixteen-year-old daughter kept stealing glances at him and then blushing and looking away.

  ‘If you can kill two or three bustards, then I’ll have the feathers for a cloak,’ said Ellice, the wife of Turlough’s eldest son. She was ageing quickly, thought Mara. Nine years ago she had been a very pretty girl, but now she had a sour and discontented look. Her husband, Conor, suffered from poor health and she probably did not have much fun out of her life, being tied to a sickbed for long periods every year. Still she might be better now that her seventeen-year-old son, Raour, was back from fosterage. There was talk that the young man might replace his father as heir to Turlough if Conor continued to suffer from these continual fevers. He was certainly a fine, sturdy-looking fellow, thought Mara and she resolved to have a chat with Turlough about him. A king had to be warlike, had to be a leader of his people and the delicate Conor who coughed and shivered his way through every winter would not be acceptable to the clan. Turlough was now over sixty years of age, and the clan would be looking attentively at his appointed successor. It was important to groom a man for the position of king. If Conor agreed to step aside and allow his son to be elected as tánaiste in his place, then the youngster could live with Turlough and be educated into all the subtleties of friendliness, good manners, good humour and a thorough understanding of his fellow men which had made Turlough such a very successful ruler over three kingdoms.

  It was just as she was considering the question that Brehon MacClancy spoke again.

  ‘I’m an old man now,’ he said heavily, ‘and some of ye like to make a game of me.’ He glared around the table and Mara felt her heart sink. She should have stayed and made sure that the offensive effigy had been removed. She had been tired, but if it had been her own territory she would not have allowed that to dete
r her. No, she acknowledged to herself, she did not like Brehon MacClancy and had just used the presence of the children’s father as an excuse to go away. Now the elderly man was going to allow a piece of childish spite to prod him into disturbing Turlough’s peace of mind in the midst of the celebrations of twenty years of successful kingship. Perhaps she could talk to him after the festivities were over, could suggest that he prepare the King for anything which would concern a near relative or close friend, make sure, perhaps, that he had firm evidence for the accusation. She watched him carefully now as he chewed his way through a mouthful of roast curlew and was devising an innocuous remark when suddenly and disgustingly he spat out what remained in his mouth and shouted out:

  ‘I can see your eyes on me; I know you’d like to kill me, you’d like to stick a knife in my back, but I’ll tell you something; whenever you are around I’ll have my eye on you and I have a fine strong lock on my bedroom door so don’t think that you’ll follow me up there. You can just sweat in your guilt until the moment is right to inform your king and the people of the kingdom about your treachery.’

  And then he got to his feet unsteadily, thrust Enda, who had risen also, back into his chair and stumped out of the room. The company around the table fell silent, listening to his heavy footsteps going up the spiral staircase of the south-east tower to the bedroom which was reserved for him whenever he stayed at Bunratty Castle. The remaining guests looked at each other and looked away and Rosta called to his kitchen boys to bring in the third course of the meal.

  Mara turned to Maccon. ‘Are both of your sons destined for the law?’ she enquired.

  ‘Both,’ he said, looking puzzled and then laughed. ‘I have only one son, Brehon; just this fellow, here,’ he said, tousling Cian’s hair. ‘Cael is a girl, but she likes to dress up as a boy; she and Cian have always been together and she enjoys what he enjoys. As good at throwing a knife as any boy, aren’t you? Shona doesn’t approve, do you?’ He looked across at his eldest daughter and she hoisted her shoulders and pouted but made no remark. She, also, had been fostered by the MacClancy family at Urlan Castle, Mara seemed to remember.