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

  The strange thing was that her face, which had flushed a rosy pink earlier, when she had chatted with Enda, was now a stark white and her eyes were wide with apprehension. Only the children at the table seemed unconcerned by Brehon MacClancy’s threats.

  Three

  Uraicecht Becc

  (little primer)

  A physician has an honour price of seven séts. He is expected to apply herbs, to supervise diet and to undertake surgery. There will be no penalty for causing bleeding, but if he cuts a joint or a sinew he has to pay a fine and he will be expected to nurse the patient himself.

  A banliaig, woman physician, is a woman of great importance to the kingdom.

  Enda hovered at Mara’s side when they came out of church on Christmas Day. She had been looking for an opportunity to talk with him and instantly dropped Turlough’s arm and moved a little aside.

  ‘Come and look at my new horse, Enda,’ she said. ‘My dear old mare has gone into retirement now though I still use her on a few short journeys. This new fellow is splendidly strong. He hardly noticed the journey between here and Limerick.’

  The stables were a good choice. No one had taken a horse out as the church was only a four-minute walk from the castle so the place was quiet and deserted – even the stable boys were enjoying a chat near the well where most of the inhabitants of the small village around the castle gathered to exchange news.

  Despite the privacy Enda seemed reluctant to come to the point and spent such a long time discussing the horse and his breeding that Mara grew impatient.

  ‘Are you happy here, Enda, working with Brehon MacClancy?’ she said eventually breaking into a rambling discussion about Spanish blood.

  He flushed vividly. ‘To be honest, I’m not,’ he said. ‘I haven’t been for the last few years.’

  That surprised her. Enda, she thought, had always had a good opinion of himself. She was astonished that he hadn’t moved on to another post as soon as he had found the present one unsatisfactory and said so immediately.

  ‘Not so easy,’ he said cynically. He gave a quick look over his shoulder. There was no one near, but oddly he still hesitated.

  ‘Come on,’ she said. ‘You know that you can tell me.’ He had been such a brilliant boy, burning with intelligence and with assurance. He was still very good-looking, but somehow the burnish had gone from him and his blue eyes held a wary, defensive look which seemed to dim the perfection of their jewel-like intensity of colour.

  ‘I’ve applied to various clans all over the west and the midlands – every time that I heard of a death or of a move,’ he said after a minute, ‘but it has never seemed to work. No one was interested in me.’

  That surprised her; hurt her also, that he had not turned to her when in trouble. Her quick wits immediately recognized the problem. She spoke quickly and impulsively without taking time to think.

  ‘Why didn’t you send a message to me; you silly boy?’ she said and then she stopped. There was an implication behind her words and it was not one that she should, under normal professional rules, have given voice to.

  However, the words had been spoken and Enda nodded his head drearily.

  ‘I was going to; for the third position that I applied for; when Seán Barrett and his son, at Tirawley, were both killed in a raid – I told Brehon MacClancy that I would not trouble him to write a reference for me – that I would ask you – I’d begun to suspect that he was not saying anything very good about me …’

  ‘And what did he say?’ Enda had, of course, been correct in informing the Brehon that he was not going to ask for what her housekeeper, Brigid, called a ‘spake’ but nevertheless, Mara felt that he had been imprudent. A word with the King, a social visit to the Brehon at the Burren, an opening of his heart in confidence to a former Ollamh would have been the way she would have tackled the matter. But, of course, that was probably the woman’s way; Enda, as a young man, was more inclined to go headlong into the fray.

  ‘He was furious,’ said Enda. ‘He abused me, told me that I was a ne’er-do-good, that I would never be fit for anything other than to run errands, that he would certainly hesitate to recommend me for anything. He told me that he would tell the taoiseach at Tirawley that I was certainly not fitted for the post. He advised me to study more, to try to learn a little of the law, to study the Triads, and then he walked off.’

  ‘The Triads!’ Mara was bewildered. Enda had been such a clever scholar, with a wonderful memory. He had learned most of the Triads off by heart before his ninth birthday. These pithy, three-line summaries of the law were easily memorized by the young at a time when their memories were at a height, and were normally retained for the rest of their life.

  Enda smiled slightly at her expression and then shrugged his shoulders. ‘I do nothing here – just listen to Brehon MacClancy. He never even tells me anything about the cases that are coming up on judgement day, never shows me his notes or discusses his verdicts. The only way that I am involved is when he sends me to summon people to court – and he could use one of the stable boys for that,’ he finished. There was a note of depression and finality in his voice which worried Mara more than if he had shown anger and resentment. She faced him resolutely.

  ‘Listen, Enda,’ she said firmly, ‘you mustn’t sit down under this. You have brains and you have ability. It’s now nine years since you left my law school; you are a qualified Ollamh – you took and passed that examination two years after you left me. You should and could pass your examination to be a Brehon as soon as possible. Come back to me and you can study for it. I haven’t too much to do at the moment – Fachtnan does so much of the teaching of the younger children – and you know, Enda, I would love to have an advanced scholar again. I still miss Shane – we sharpened our wits on each other, but, of course, he is back in the north of Ireland now and will take over from his father next year.’ She saw him wince at that – Shane had been a youngster of thirteen when Enda had left her law school with very high marks in his qualifying examination to be a lawyer. Now Shane would have a position among the venerated Brehons of Ireland, while Enda would still be an errand boy.

  ‘Do come to me, Enda; give this up! It can be easily explained. You want to put your whole attention into this final qualification. King Turlough will soothe matters over so that no offence can be taken.’

  However, he shook his head. His face flushed a dull red and for a moment there was a glow in his eyes. ‘I need to stay here for the moment, Brehon,’ he said hesitantly. He looked at her in an embarrassed way.

  ‘I know,’ she said, jokingly, but inwardly she was conscious of a slight feeling of annoyance. ‘You’re in love. It’s that pretty girl Shona MacMahon, isn’t it?’

  He nodded. ‘I have been studying,’ he said in a burst of confidence. ‘Not the Triads, but the hard stuff. I sneak his books away when he is dozing after his dinner. I’m certain that I could sit the examination in front of any Brehon in Ireland, except Brehon MacClancy himself, and that I would pass. And if …’ He stopped, eyeing her rather uncertainly, and then said with an air of indifference, ‘The physician, Donogh O’Hickey, keeps warning him that the sound from his heart is very bad. Its beat is irregular. He told Brehon MacClancy yesterday that if he allowed himself to get into any more passions then he could throw a fit and drop down dead at any moment.’

  ‘I see,’ said Mara. She was conscious of a slight feeling of distaste. Enda, as she had suspected, was waiting for dead men’s shoes. She didn’t approve, but she could see the sense of it. If he did inherit the position of Brehon, then Maccon MacMahon, with the King’s approval, would probably be very happy to have his daughter betrothed to a young man with whom she was, fairly obviously, in love. Enda, from the time that he was fifteen years old, had always been prone to fall madly in love with various girls. It was probably time that he was married and this would be a suitable match. She would not meddle, she decided virtuously, and then smiled to herself. She would, of course; it was after all a qu
estion of one of her boys and she had known Enda since he was eight years old. She could never divest herself of maternal feelings towards those who had spent their childhood in her care. Perhaps a word in the King’s ear would be a good idea, she thought. He should be keeping an eye on his household.

  ‘Well, don’t forget that the offer stands,’ she said lightly. ‘We would love to see you again at Cahermacnaghten. Brigid would go mad with joy. She likes nothing better than to have one of her boys turn up. Well, we’d better go back and join the others.’ She led the way out of the stable without waiting for his reply and noted that the pretty girl, Shona, was lingering under the oak tree, from which, yesterday, the effigy of Brehon MacClancy had dangled with knives glinting from various parts of his straw-stuffed body. The girl was looking well this morning, she thought, and wondered whether she had just imagined the white face yesterday when Brehon MacClancy had made his pronouncement. Still it was unlikely that a girl of that age, just out of fosterage, had a secret of any particular importance.

  She did not walk with Enda, but parted from him with a reassuring nod and a pat on his arm. Then she went across the bailey to join the physician, Donogh O’Hickey, who, standing below the steps up to the castle’s main entrance, was solemnly and patiently feeling the muscles in the arms of four young people. She had almost said four young boys – there was no doubt that the two MacMahon twins looked like boys. Not even for the sacred ceremony of Christmas Day Mass had Cael deigned to put on the longer léine of a girl, and with her cropped hair and her short cloak, as well as the manly hose, she looked just like a boy.

  ‘This one has the best muscles,’ said Donogh, pointing to Art.

  ‘I thought he would,’ said Cormac enthusiastically, while the twins scowled. Her son was, thought Mara, quite disappointed that his muscles had not been deemed to be the best, but his loyalty to his foster-brother, Art, reigned supreme in Cormac’s life. ‘Art is always working on the farm belonging to his mother – he’s always carrying loads of hay and dragging hurdles around for sheep enclosures.’

  ‘Belonging to his father you mean,’ snapped Cian. The boy was annoyed and still kept his arm in the position where his muscles showed.

  ‘No,’ said Cormac with surprise. ‘It’s Art’s mother that owns the farm; his father owns the fishing boat. Art does the rowing in that. No wonder his muscles are so good,’ he said seriously to the physician and then with a quick glance at Mara, he said mischievously, ‘I’m forced to spend my nights and days studying, so that is what makes my muscles weak.’

  Mara ignored this. Art, she thought, did just as much study as Cormac, but he was an industrious child. Cormac was happy to wander around with his wolfhound puppy or chat to the farm workers in the evening, while his foster-brother went over to help his parents on the nearby farm.

  ‘Your pupil, Nuala, sends her greetings,’ she said to Donogh. Nuala, the physician at the Burren, was almost a daughter to her and she knew that the girl had been very grateful for the teaching that she had received from the elderly physician. There had been a time when she thought the thankfulness would overspill into a match between Nuala and the old man’s son, but in the end Nuala had turned to Fachtnan, the playmate of her early life and the object of her youthful adoration. It had been and was still a happy marriage, but Nuala, she knew, felt that she owed the O’Hickeys, both father and son, a great debt of gratitude for all that she had learned from the family. She watched the affection come to his eyes and hoped as hard as she could that Brehon MacClancy’s malice was not going to implicate this kind man. And yet, she remembered that he had worn a strained look at that unpleasant moment yesterday.

  ‘Tell me how Nuala is getting on,’ he said as he walked beside her up the castle steps.

  ‘Very well,’ she said promptly, ‘combining motherhood with work; still a great student; always trying to find out something more. The people of the Burren think highly of her. They have great trust in her and that is what everyone needs in a physician.’ And in a Brehon, she thought. Without trust, doubt and dissension step in and matters are settled with a knife or sword which could have been solved at the place of judgement.

  ‘I always hoped for a match between my wanderer of a son and Nuala,’ said the physician with a sigh as he pushed open the heavy front door, glancing upwards, momentarily, as everyone did, at the murder hole above. The castle at Bunratty had never been stormed, but the murder hole remained, ready for the defenders to pour boiling oil down onto the attackers.

  ‘One can never plan these things,’ said Mara. Privately she thought that the solid, reliable presence of Fachtnan and his lack of knowledge of medicine was probably a very good thing for Nuala. She was too serious, too inclined to be obsessive about her work. Married to another physician, the girl would never relax, she thought, as she said aloud, ‘Come up to the solar with me and I’ll give you all the news. I was going to ask you if you had any ideas about getting scholars for Nuala’s school. She has a great desire to set up a school for young physicians, just as I have a school for young lawyers.’

  ‘I thought that she already had a pupil,’ said Donogh O’Hickey, with a quick sidelong glance at Mara.

  ‘That’s right,’ said Mara readily. ‘But he is almost ready to qualify and she would like a group of young people to instruct. She is a very good teacher,’ she went on earnestly. ‘I remember her explaining to my young scholars how deaths such as Roman Claudius and King Henry I of England, who both died after eating a hearty meal supposedly poisoned by an enemy, might just have been caused by the food itself. Claudius who was supposed to have been poisoned by his wife had just eaten a dish of mushrooms,’ said Mara with a reminiscent smile. ‘Nuala told the boys how a poisonous fungus that looks just like a mushroom could have accidentally got into the dish, and the first of the many Henrys might well have been poisoned by the dangerous innards of the lampreys, so that rather than having a surfeit of them, or being poisoned by his nephew Stephen, as the story goes, he might just have been a victim to a careless cook. She is a wonderful teacher – the boys were testing poisonous fungi on trapped bluebottle flies for weeks after. She makes everything very interesting to them. I always get her to talk to them about the medical aspects of Brehon law.’

  ‘So she is still keen on the idea of a school.’ Donogh O’Hickey gave an indulgent smile.

  ‘That’s right,’ said Mara immediately. ‘And she has two little girls who will be trained up in the ways of medicine.’

  ‘Girls,’ said Donogh O’Hickey, making a slight face. ‘What a pity that she did not have a boy.’

  Mara bit back a sharp report. It was amazing, she thought, that someone like Donogh O’Hickey, who knew that Nuala was probably the cleverest, the hardest-working and the highest-achieving of any of his scholars, would still think like that. She thought thankfully of her father, who had made the best of having no son and had trained his daughter to be a lawyer.

  ‘Tell me, how are things going here?’ she queried politely. ‘Brehon MacClancy does not seem in too good a mood. Is there something wrong?’

  She had not expected him to tell her anything very much out here where people were passing continually and she was not surprised when he shrugged his shoulders and then began to talk hurriedly about the meal which was to be held to celebrate her arrival. She wondered what was going wrong in this castle that both he and the Brehon appeared to be tense and on edge. I must ask Turlough about it, she decided. But in the meantime she would try and get some more out of the physician so she invited him to join her in the solar for a drink. They could talk privately there, she thought.

  ‘I must just make sure that everything is in order for the boys,’ she said by way of excuse. He would have expected her to go straight to the great hall, but a private conversation there would be impossible.

  By the time they went up the stairs, the majority of the castle guests were going for a midday meal in the great hall. As she passed the great hall, Mara could see Rosta in the small
kitchen beside the hall rushing to and fro, firing orders at his helpers. This was a very busy time for the King’s cook, but the look on his face told her that he was enjoying himself immensely. He was a man who loved his art and loved to display what he was capable of. Although the Christmas night banquet would take place in six hours’ time, the meal being carried in looked every bit as elaborate as the feast last night.

  ‘There’s something in the solar for you, Brehon, if you would prefer it,’ he called out, seeing her pass his small kitchen. From the doorway of the great hall a malevolent face peeped around and then withdrew. Brehon MacClancy was used to being the only one bearing that title and he resented Mara’s use of it. She had, from the start, however, resolutely set her face against being known as ‘queen’ – her status, she reckoned, was that of Brehon, and only in private life was she the wife of a king. Brehon MacClancy would just have to get used to it – in just the same way as if Brehon MacEgan, or any other Brehon in Ireland, had visited the castle.

  The solar was part of the King’s private suite of rooms at the top of the castle and a staircase in the north-east tower led up to them. There was an elaborate bedchamber with a magnificently curtained bed, a fireplace, a clothes rail as well as a beautifully carved hanging press, some chairs and a door that led to the garderobe where there was a board covered with a green cloth and the opening to the shaft leading to the moat was plugged with a cushion in order to prevent any smells arising. Above this room were another couple of bedrooms, used for the King’s children when they were young, but now occupied by the law-school scholars.