A Secret and Unlawful Killing Page 3

  ‘Well, that half-bred garron you gallop around on wouldn’t do for a king’s wife,’ he said gruffly, eyeing her hopefully.

  She rose to the bait immediately. ‘Oh, who is this king’s wife then?’ she asked, pretending to scan the Brehon’s house and garden, where her neighbour, Diarmuid, was waiting patiently for her. She had inveigled him into breaking a few pieces of limestone for her new flowerbed just before the king arrived. Her eyes surveyed Diarmuid with affection now. He would be the perfect husband for her, she thought. Tolerant, easy-going, he could move in to her house, carry on with his farm half a mile down the road, and she could continue with her busy life as Brehon of the Burren and ollamh, professor, of the law school at Cahermacnaghten. Turlough Donn O’Brien, king of the three kingdoms, Thomond, Burren and Corcomroe, was an altogether different matter.

  ‘You know that I want us to get married as soon as possible,’ said Turlough, lowering his voice slightly.

  He stopped at the distracted look on her face. Mara’s quick ear had caught the sound of ponies galloping at breakneck speed up the lane from Noughaval.

  Still holding the reins, she moved away from him with a worried frown as she recognized two of her law school scholars once they rounded the corner. ‘That’s a couple of my boys!’ she exclaimed. ‘What’s wrong?’

  ‘Brehon,’ shouted Aidan, as soon as he had caught a glimpse of her.

  ‘Brehon, we saw a man,’ shouted Moylan, desperate to get the information in before his friend could speak.

  ‘And he was dead,’ screamed Aidan.

  ‘Dead!’ echoed Mara. She hastily handed the reins of the new mare to Cumhal, her farm manager, and moved quickly down the road to meet them.

  ‘Slow down,’ she commanded as she came towards them. ‘You’ll kill your ponies; the news will keep for a few minutes. Now jump down and walk them sensibly.’ The boys’ faces were bright with excitement and both looked perfectly well so her initial worries were soothed. Her mind was clamouring for a name to this dead man, but her instinct, especially when dealing with the dramatic young, was to meet each crisis with calm.

  ‘Take some grass and rub down the poor beasts,’ she scolded. ‘They’re both covered in sweat. You shouldn’t have ridden them like that. I’m sure they are tired after your long journey.’

  She waited quietly while the two boys tumbled to the ground and snatched up handfuls of the bleached, dry grass from the side of the road and started to rub down the ponies.

  ‘Where did you see the dead man?’ she asked, her tone light and casual.

  They looked at her, startled by her lack of alarm, and then Aidan said: ‘At Noughaval.’

  She waited. Moylan would fill in. This was the way they always talked: each taking turns.

  ‘He was in the churchyard.’

  ‘Someone had buried him.’

  ‘Well, half-buried,’ amended Moylan. By now there was an interested audience of the bodyguards and the king himself, to whom the boys made rapid sketchy bows before returning to their exciting news.

  ‘Not enough earth to really cover him properly,’ said Aidan with relish.

  ‘Some soil had been taken from another burial pile.’

  ‘It was fresh earth.’

  ‘That would probably be from the burial of old Domhnall,’ said Mara calmly. Her mind was seething with questions and suspicions, but she would let them tell their story. ‘He died on Friday and was buried on Sunday.’

  ‘The shovel was still there, stuck in the ground.’

  ‘We thought it was two new graves, but then we saw his feet sticking out.’

  ‘We were tossing a hurley ball to each other as we were riding along and Aidan missed it. It went over the wall and we got down off our ponies and went into the churchyard. We were hunting for the ball and then we saw the feet under the trees.’

  Mara thought for a moment and then decided what to do.

  ‘When you’ve seen to your ponies properly,’ she said in steady, quiet tones, ‘go inside and Brigid will give you breakfast and help you to put your things away. Hugh is here already and the others will be along soon.’

  The two boys stared at her open-mouthed. ‘But you’ll need us to come with you. We know where the body is,’ said Aidan.

  Mara looked back. Cumhal, as always, had anticipated her need and was walking up the road with the horse, and Diarmuid was coming out of the gate. She would have plenty of assistance without Moylan and Aidan.

  ‘Now go inside, you two,’ she said.

  They looked at each other in desperation.

  ‘We know who it is,’ blurted out Moylan. ‘We uncovered the face.’

  ‘And he didn’t just lie down there and cover himself with soil,’ added Aidan with emphasis.

  ‘There’s a big lump of dried blood on his forehead.’

  ‘You’d better let us come with you. You’ll get a shock when you see him.’

  She gazed at them with an air of mild interest and they couldn’t resist the final piece of information.

  ‘It’s old Ragnall MacNamara,’ Moylan announced.

  ‘The MacNamara steward,’ said Aidan.

  ‘The MacNamara steward,’ echoed the king.

  Mara stood very still for a moment. Ragnall was unpopular, many hated him; she had seen that yesterday. But enough to kill him?

  ‘Cumhal,’ called Mara. ‘Go back and get the cob, and bring the leather litter with you. We need to go to Noughaval churchyard. Now see to your ponies, you two, and then have your breakfast.’ She looked at their downcast faces and then took pity on them. Her warm heart could never resist her young scholars. ‘You know your ponies are blown,’ she said gently. ‘You have to see to them, now, and I’m sure that you want something to eat, yourselves. Anyway, you are the first, except for Hugh, to arrive for the Michaelmas term, so you can tell the news to everyone else when they get here and, of course, you two will be important witnesses when I announce the death at Poulnabrone dolmen this noon.’

  They knew there was no use in further pleading so they went dejectedly through the great iron gates into the law school enclosure. The door to the scholars’ house stood ajar and smoke was rising from the kitchen house. Brigid would give them a good breakfast, avidly listen to their news, see that they emptied their satchels into the chest at the bottom of each bed, and then they would have the excitement of telling the dramatic story to each new arrival. Mara felt she had enough to deal with without their presence.

  ‘My lord, I will have to leave you,’ she said to the king.

  ‘I’ll come with you,’ he said, with a quick gesture of command to his two bodyguards.

  ‘You may need somebody to send on an errand, Brehon.’ Diarmuid was at her side. As always, quiet and unobtrusive, he swung his leg over his horse while the king assisted Mara to mount her mare. She smiled her thanks to both while her mind ran through the steps that she had to take. As Brehon she was responsible for all crimes on the Burren and this looked like a case of a secret killing. She looked regretfully back at her garden and at the exquisite flowerbed that she had been making. It was laid out in a series of small diamond shapes, each one outlined by the dark blue strips of limestone and filled with flowers of all the richest autumn hues. There were clumps of cranesbill, their intensely magenta flowers velvet-soft, then a patch of pale blue harebells and then, in the next space, some purple knapweed.

  Mara paused for a moment looking at the effect and watching how the colours blurred and merged with each other. She had once seen a stained-glass window in an abbey church in Thomond; the glory of the jewel-bright colours, each in its black-edged diamond, had stayed with her and this was the effect that she aimed at.

  ‘There’ll be a lot of fuss and bother from young Garrett MacNamara if someone has killed his steward,’ said Turlough. ‘Who do you think did it? Weren’t you telling me that there had been some bad blood between the steward and the MacNamara miller — what was his name? Aengus, wasn’t it?’

  ‘Yes,’ sh
e said absent-mindedly. ‘I judged the case between the two of them at the last judgement session at Poulnabrone. I fined Ragnall for hitting Aengus a blow on the leg. It was just a drunken quarrel, but the miller was still limping after a month.’

  There was another matter troubling her, though she tried to thrust it for the moment to the back of her mind. The situation yesterday, on Michaelmas Day, at the Noughaval Fair, had been dangerous and perhaps should have been resolved that afternoon instead of being postponed for judgement at Poulnabrone today. Anger had been seething in the MacNamara clan over the unjust tribute imposed upon them, and that anger had focussed upon the steward rather than on their taoiseach. She feared that she bore a certain responsibility for this killing. She had made the wrong decision. This happens, she tried to tell herself. She had done what seemed to be the best at the time; nevertheless it was a terrible thought that a death should have occurred because of a failure on her part.

  ‘Don’t look so worried,’ said the king, watching her affectionately. ‘You know you are looking very beautiful this morning. I love that gown — royal purple, just right for you. You don’t look a day over eighteen!’

  ‘I’m thirty-six,’ she replied tartly, but she couldn’t help a quick, satisfied look down at her new gown. The rich purple, over the creamy white of her léine, suited her dark hair and hazel eyes and it had been made according to the latest fashion, closely fitting with a row of small buttons at the front, its flowing sleeves caught tightly in at the wrist. The admiration in the king’s eyes warmed her, but she had a task to do.

  ‘Cumhal,’ she called over her shoulder to her farm manager, who was riding respectfully behind them. ‘Go ahead to Niall MacNamara’s farm. He was with Ragnall yesterday when they were collecting the Michaelmas tribute. Get him to send a message immediately to his taoiseach and then come and meet us at the churchyard. Actually, no,’ she amended with a rapid change of plan. ‘Tell him to bring his horse and meet us at the churchyard first.’ She would have to see the body for herself before she sent for Garrett MacNamara: she could imagine his fury if he were dragged from his tower house at this early hour of the morning because of a wild rumour from two fourteen-year-old boys.

  ‘I’ll go for Niall, Brehon,’ said Diarmuid, riding forward. ‘You may need Cumhal with you and Niall knows me well. His lands march with mine.’

  Mara gave him a quick nod and a smile. That would be best. Niall MacNamara, the illegitimate son of Aengus MacNamara, the miller, was a nervous, timid young man. She could rely on Diarmuid to bring him along without causing him any undue worry. And, of course, it still might be just a false alarm so the least fuss, the better. Aidan and Moylan were not the most reliable of witnesses.

  It was no wild rumour though. As reported, the body in the churchyard had been left uncovered, a shovel hastily thrown on the ground beside it. The dead face stared wide-eyed at the sky and a cluster of flies buzzed sacrilegiously around the clotted blood on the narrow brow. It was Ragnall MacNamara. Mara bent down and touched the hand. Stone cold. Yes, it appeared likely that he had been killed last night. She sighed sadly. There was something infinitely pathetic about a dead face shorn of all its defences, she thought. In life she had not much liked the man, but in death she mourned him and breathed a prayer for eternal rest for his troubled soul. She straightened up then and walked back to the gate where she had asked the others to wait. Turlough dismounted his horse as soon as he saw her and came to join her, while Cumhal and the two bodyguards stayed at a discreet distance.

  ‘Yes, it is Ragnall, the MacNamara steward, and he is definitely dead,’ she said, before he could ask. He took her hand and held it between his own two large warm hands.

  ‘Is there anything I can do?’ he asked quietly. ‘Do you want me to get Malachy, the physician?’

  Mara shook her head. ‘He’s in Galway. In any case I don’t think that there is much that he can tell me. It seems obvious that the blow to the head killed him.’

  ‘Would you like me to go up to the castle at Carron and let the taoiseach know about this? I can easily do it on my way back to Thomond.’

  She shook her head again. ‘You go on with your journey. I’ll have Cumhal and Diarmuid here with me,’ she assured him.

  ‘You’re not going to prefer to accept help from that bóaire instead of from me, are you?’ grumbled Turlough.

  Mara smiled with amusement. She enjoyed Turlough’s occasional growls of jealousy.

  ‘It’s more fitting for a farmer to be running errands than for a king,’ she told him demurely. She felt she sounded like a parody of her housekeeper, Brigid, who always had a keen notion of what was or was not fitting for various members of society to do, but Turlough continued to look at her suspiciously. He had not liked finding her alone with Diarmuid in the garden earlier.

  ‘Go n-éirigh an bothair leath [may the road rise up with you],’ she said smiling a farewell, and, despite the presence of the bodyguards, she reached up and kissed him on the lips.

  ‘I’ll be back as soon as I can,’ he said, holding her tightly in his arms for a few minutes. Then he climbed back onto his horse and, followed closely by his bodyguards, made his way down the road towards the east.

  Mara stood quietly, her thoughts lingering on Turlough and the complications, as well as the pleasures, that had resulted from his love for her. Her mind strayed back to her first husband; she had sworn never to marry again. Should she remain firm or accept Turlough’s offer of marriage? Then she dismissed the matter from her mind. This was not the time or place for speculations of this nature. Now she had to banish them from her thoughts and put all her energies and intelligence into solving this unexpected death.

  Niall was the first to arrive. He was mounted on a heavily built workhorse and he thundered along the road from Rusheen well ahead of Diarmuid on his slow-moving cob. Niall had obviously been told that something was amiss and his young, thin face was drawn and apprehensive as he swung his leg over the broad back of the horse and then came slowly across to her. He did not show any shock at the sight of the dead body of the steward, but his lips tightened. Mara noticed that he did not mutter the customary prayer either. She found that strange.

  ‘As you can see, Ragnall MacNamara has been killed,’ she said quietly.

  Niall moistened his lips and opened them as if he were about to say something and then shut them again.

  ‘When did you leave him last night?’ Mara asked. She had thought to postpone questioning until after Garrett had been called and the body removed to the church before being decently buried, but often a question when someone is shocked could provoke the truth while time for thought produced only silence. However, she was surprised and puzzled to note how shaken Niall looked. True, he was only in his early twenties, but he must have seen many dead people in his time: the Gaelic custom was to hold night-long wakes after every death and young children were routinely brought to these events.

  He raised troubled eyes from the corpse at their feet and looked at her. ‘I didn’t see him after I left him at the market square, Brehon,’ he said. ‘You were there yourself. You probably saw me go. I never saw him after that until this very second.’

  She frowned. ‘But what about the cart?’

  ‘Well, I was a bit late coming back for the cart. A cousin of mine was at my house. He had come all the way from Tuamgréine to see me so I didn’t want to rush away. I thought Ragnall would stay until the end of the market. He always likes to make sure that he gets the last ounce …’ His voice trailed away and his eyes went once more to the silent body on the ground.

  ‘So what time did you come back?’ asked Mara.

  ‘The sun was still up … well, I suppose it was setting … but it was before sundown … I remember my shadow being very large on the ground ahead of me as I walked towards the fair,’ said Niall defensively. ‘There were plenty of people still there. I passed the merchant from Corcomroe, Guaire, on the road when I was leaving Rusheen.’

  ‘And Ra
gnall had already gone?’

  ‘The cart was there and no one was with it.’

  ‘And his horse?’

  ‘That was gone, too.’

  ‘And what did you do then?’

  ‘Well, I waited for a while and then I crossed over and had a word with Liam O’Lochlainn, the O‘Lochlainn steward. He was still on that box of his, collecting the Michaelmas tribute from all the O’Lochlainns. He said that Ragnall had gone some time ago. So I took the cart back to my own place at Rusheen. That had been the arrangement: I would keep it overnight, and then drive it over to the tower house this morning.’

  ‘So it’s in your barn now?’ Mara asked thoughtfully. ‘Did you check it before you stored it?’

  Niall shook his head. ‘No, Brehon, I just put it in the barn, locked the door, released the dog and then went back indoors. That dog of mine is a great barker; no one could come near the place without him rousing me.’ He turned his head as the clatter of horse hoofs sounded on the stony road.

  ‘Here comes Diarmuid,’ said Mara. ‘You go now, Niall. Just knock on the door of the priest’s house and send him over here. Once we have brought Ragnall to the church you must ride as fast as you can and bring your taoiseach back here. He will want to make the arrangements.’

  She watched him carefully as he hurried across the churchyard. There seemed to be something always rushed and apprehensive about Niall. His early life as the illegitimate son of Aengus, a sour, difficult old man, and his servant, Cliodhna, probably accounted for that. Nevertheless, there seemed to be something unusual about the jerky way that his long thin legs crossed the churchyard, and he waited for a moment, standing with his head bowed, before pulling the bell rope.

  ‘Did you tell Niall that Ragnall was dead?’ she asked Diarmuid quietly as he came down the path to meet her.

  He shook his head. ‘No, I didn’t, Brehon. I just said that you wanted to see him and that you were by the church. He didn’t ask anything, but jumped on his horse straight away and was off down the road nearly before I had finished speaking.