Scales of Retribution Read online

  ‘I’m sure that Ollamh MacClancy knows all about this; it would have been part of his training,’ said Mara sweetly, and saw Enda give her a long look.

  ‘May I write on the board, Brehon?’ Aidan raised his arm politely.

  But Mara said coldly, ‘I think on this occasion, I will choose Hugh. His handwriting is very clear.’

  Hugh’s delicate white skin turned slightly pink as he came out to the whitewashed board and picked up the stick of charcoal.

  ‘Any comment from anyone?’ Mara looked around the room.

  ‘I think we should make a list of reasons why anyone might want to kill Malachy,’ said Enda, with a quick glance at Fachtnan. ‘It seems too early in the investigation to start writing down names.’

  ‘My own feeling exactly!’ Mara beamed at him. ‘This is just the beginning of the enquiry. It would be a great mistake to rush towards picking out something obvious, wouldn’t it? What should we do first?’

  ‘Explore the means to commit the murder,’ said Shane tentatively. ‘But perhaps you could tell us the facts, first, Brehon. No one has talked to us about the murder. We haven’t had any discussions about it or anything.’ He cast a sidelong look of dislike at the man sitting on the stool beside him and then turned an attentive face towards Mara.

  ‘Well, the facts are that on the morning of June 11, the physician Malachy was found dead in his stillroom by his wife, Caireen. On a table was a half-emptied glass of French brandy. It is presumed that some poison had been put in the glass – I’m not sure what—’

  ‘Impossible to tell,’ interrupted Boetius. ‘Could be anything, according to Caireen, the man’s wife.’

  Fachtnan raised his hand politely and Mara nodded at him.

  ‘Nuala, the physician’s apprentice, has told me that she can guess which poison was used.’ Fachtnan tried to keep his voice unemotional, but his dark eyes were worried.

  ‘Could you fetch Nuala, please, Fachtnan,’ said Mara politely.

  ‘Interesting that she knows . . .’ commented Boetius, but Mara ignored him and nodded toward Shane who was waving his hand in the air.

  ‘Should Hugh put a drawing of the stillroom on the board while we are waiting,’ suggested Shane. ‘We’ve all been in that stillroom, so we should be able to remember between us.’

  ‘Good idea,’ said Mara.

  ‘Draw a square,’ ordered Moylan. ‘It’s a square sort of room.’

  ‘D for door,’ said Aidan.

  ‘W for window,’ said Enda. ‘The window could be important. It looks over the road, doesn’t it, Brehon?’

  ‘And the door is next to the stairs, isn’t it?’

  ‘And that sort of couch thing where he examines his patients – that’s over against the wall opposite the window.’ Now the suggestions were pouring in as fast as Hugh could draw.

  ‘Shelves on either side of the door.’

  ‘Poisons on that top shelf, by the fire – mark in the fireplace, Hugh.’

  ‘And the table!’ Enda was as sharp as ever. ‘Does anyone remember where the table was in that room? My own feeling was that it was next to the window. If that’s right, I think that is very significant.’

  ‘You’re quite right,’ said Mara triumphantly. Suddenly back with her sharp-witted boys, she felt a surge of energy and well-being. ‘And why is it significant, Enda?’ She gave a triumphant glance at the puzzled frown on the face of the stout, self-important figure of Boetius MacClancy, but managed to refrain from suggesting that Enda might explain the significance to the young man.

  ‘Because the window is by the roadside and anyone, with very little risk, could drop poison into the brandy.’ Enda addressed his words to Hugh, thinking that only to him would this need to be spelled out.

  ‘Ah, here is Nuala,’ said Mara, as Bran got up with a wag of his long muscular tail and went towards the door.

  Nuala looked wretched. Always very slim, she had lost weight in the last week and now appeared quite thin. Her tanned face had a sickly, yellowish tinge and her brown eyes had dark shadows beneath them. Mara greeted her with a brisk, matter-of-fact manner and respectfully asked for her opinion as to the poison.

  ‘I have been thinking about that.’ Nuala’s voice was dry and her manner professional. Mara turned a composed, interested face towards her, but her heart ached to listen to the child calmly and dispassionately account for her father’s death, and explain about poisons to her audience.

  ‘I thought of digitalis, made from the seeds of foxgloves. This would cause death by excessively speeding the heart beats until the heart collapses, but there were signs of acute vomiting, burns around the mouth and the dead man had sweated badly – his clothes were quite damp with sweat, so I came to the conclusion that the most likely poison was aconite, wolfsbane it is known as.’

  ‘And is that a poison that you grow in your herb garden?’ Boetius asked the question in a mild tone of voice, but his green eyes were keen and he raised his sandy eyebrows with an air of mock innocence. ‘Something perhaps that you have handled, made medicines from, is that right?’

  Nuala faced him. ‘My father’s herb garden has a section for poisonous plants. But most of them, including digitalis, can be beneficial if given in tiny quantities. Aconite, wolfsbane, was only introduced recently from the garden in Galway belonging to Caireen’s first husband. It was not something that I would have chosen to grow as its only medicinal use is when it is used with goose grease to rub into rheumatic joints – and even then there are better herbs. Aconite is a deadly poison and to my mind the dangers outweigh the benefits. I have never made any medicines from it and I never shall.’

  Well done, Nuala, thought Mara with a feeling of pride.

  ‘But you knew where it grew,’ stated Boetius.

  ‘It could not be missed,’ said Nuala briefly. ‘It has tall, blue, hooded flowers at this time of the year.’

  ‘So anyone could have picked them?’ asked Fachtnan, gravely.

  ‘The poison is made from the root, not from the flowers – in any case, I think that it is unlikely that someone took some from the herb garden,’ said Nuala. ‘It would not be necessary. My father had a large jar of aconite poison which he sold to farmers and shepherds to get rid of wolves. This is why he had it.’

  ‘And you knew where it was kept?’ asked Boetius.

  Nuala nodded in a perfunctory manner and turned to Moylan who was waving his hand in the air.

  ‘Could you test the brandy to see whether it held aconite, Nuala?’ he asked.

  ‘No,’ Nuala’s voice was expressionless. ‘Caireen poured out the brandy and rinsed the glass with water from the jug. She said she wanted to give him a drink. Apparently,’ the girl’s voice was dry, ‘Caireen did not realize that he was dead.’

  There was a silence for a moment. All the boys looked sympathetic. This was desperately hard for Nuala, Mara knew, but she also knew that nothing would be as hard as brooding silently and not knowing what was going on.

  ‘Do you know whether any other accidental deaths occurred from farmers putting aconite around their farms? Or from the misuse of medicines?’ asked Fachtnan.

  Mara looked at him with interest. He had a fine, intuitive intelligence. He had gone straight to the heart of the matter. Of course, there had been several deaths in the kingdom during the last couple of months and rumour had it that relatives had blamed Malachy’s poor doctoring for these.

  However, this was not a matter to discuss in front of Malachy’s daughter.

  ‘As far as I know, not from the use of aconite,’ said Nuala briefly. ‘That is, not humans, I mean.’

  Mara rose to her feet.

  ‘I fear I must leave you now, boys. I am not fully recovered as yet but I hope to be back at work with you quite soon. Fachtnan, could I ask you to continue with this investigation? Aidan, will you make notes and bring them over to me after dinner?’ She turned to the young Boetius with a smile which she strove to make friendly.

  ‘Perhaps I could as
k you to go across to Caherconnell and to make an inventory of all the medicines on Malachy’s shelves. It is not a task which I would like to entrust to any of my scholars when it’s a case of handling jars containing poisons.’

  And that, she thought, as he bowed without comment, should keep him busy for the rest of the afternoon.

  ‘Come with me,’ she said to Nuala.

  Five

  Córus Fine

  (The Regulation of the Kin Group)

  The possessions of an individual are divided into two categories. First, there is the land that he inherits through his membership of a kin group. Secondly, there is the wealth that he accumulates by virtue of his own endeavours. Land can be included in this category if it has been bought and not inherited.

  On the death of the individual, inherited land is divided equally between the sons of all marriages. If there are no sons of the blood, then the land is divided between the brothers; in the case of no brother, the land goes to the eldest male descendent of his great-grandfather. Failing that the land reverts to the clan.

  A female heir will receive the house that she lives in and enough land to graze seven cows.

  The sun shone with the intense heat of mid-June as Mara and Nuala walked together down the road towards the Brehon’s house. The day was hot with that particular scent which was, in Mara’s experience, found only in the Burren. It was a scent of damp vegetation mixed with the clean, slightly acrid aroma of baking limestone. The clints that paved the fields as far as the eye could see sparkled almost silver in the sunlight, and the deep grykes, or cracks between the slabs, were filled with bright colour from the clear, intense magenta of summer flowering cranesbill and the delicate pale blue of the fragile harebells.

  ‘So it was just Caireen that was there when your father’s body was found, is that right?’ Mara kept her voice unemotional and matter-of-fact.

  ‘That’s right.’ Nuala used the same tone. She stared across the grykes towards the distant pale blue swirls of Mullaghmore mountain.

  ‘No sign of Ronan or of any of his brothers, then,’ stated Mara, and then when Nuala did not reply she said quietly, ‘Just tell me everything that you remember about that morning.

  ‘I know what you’re thinking—’ began Nuala.

  ‘No, you don’t,’ interrupted Mara. ‘No one, but I, knows what I am thinking. Now come on, Nuala. Just start at the beginning and go through it again. You left here quite early, walked across to Caherconnell. And then?’

  ‘And then,’ said Nuala with an impatient sigh, ‘I went into the little stone shed where the gardening things are kept – I didn’t want to see any of them at the house, so I just took out a basket for the weeds and a small fork, and I set to work. Nobody had bothered doing anything so there were weeds everywhere.’

  ‘Which part of the garden were you in?’ asked Mara.

  ‘I started off at the far end with the bed of woundwort and then I had just moved down to work on the camomile when Caireen screamed. I don’t want to talk about it . . . shouldn’t you go indoors and rest?’

  ‘I can’t bear to go on into the house again,’ said Mara. Nuala was stubborn; there would be no point in pursuing the questioning for now. ‘Let’s go and join Sorcha and the children,’ she suggested. ‘They’re having their dinner over there on the field. It’s such a treat for them to have meals out-of-doors. Collect Cormac, will you, Nuala? Brigid is looking after him. The sunshine won’t do him any harm, will it?’

  ‘I’ll bring a piece of linen to shade him and then he will be fine,’ said Nuala running down the road, her long legs covering the hundred yards’ distance in the same time that it took Mara to open the gate and start to cross the field.

  ‘Mamó, Mamó,’ shouted Domhnall and Aislinn as they came running towards her.

  ‘May I come into your dining hall?’ Mara asked politely. A large clint had been spread with a piece of linen, and wooden plates and wooden goblets had been laid out on it. In the centre were flat baskets of food and a big flask of milk for the children. Mara smiled when she saw the milk. It had been coloured pink. This was Brigid, she knew. When she herself had been young, Brigid had coloured the milk with a few raspberries and had persuaded her that it came from a magic pink cow, owned by the fairies. The same story had been told to Sorcha, and now Domhnall and Aislinn were the latest believers. Would little Cormac grow up to enjoy this same treat, she wondered, her eyes going to the Brehon’s house where Nuala was walking carefully down the path holding a heavily swathed bundle in her arms.

  ‘Thank goodness this fellow’s not crawling yet,’ said Sorcha with a glance at plump little Manus in her arms, ‘these two have me worried enough, leaping from stone to stone.’

  ‘I should get Cumhal to drive you to Fanore beach one day. It would be lovely for the children to run around the sands. I meant to arrange it, but the baby coming so early put everything askew.’ Mara watched her grandchildren with a smile. Sorcha had no reason to worry about them. They were as sure-footed as the wild goats that roamed the High Burren and the mountain sides. Both looked very well, she thought; the pure Atlantic air of the Burren had tanned their skins to a gorgeous shade of deep brown which went so well with their short white léinte.

  ‘Yes, that was a shock. A whole month early! Never mind, it’s all for the best; now you can enjoy him for the two months of the summer holidays,’ said Sorcha, who had a happy nature that always saw the bright side of everything.

  ‘Here’s a plate for you, Mamó, but you’ll have to share with Nuala.’ Aislinn arrived back with some harebells and carefully arranged the flowers around a plate for her grandmother, and placed a wooden cup beside it. ‘That was Dat’s plate but he didn’t stay for the meal.’

  ‘Where is Oisín?’ asked Mara, admiring the nodding heads of the harebells.

  ‘Oh, you know Oisín,’ said his wife tolerantly. ‘He can never sit still for long. After five minutes he was off, striding across the fields to Kilcorney. He wants to look at those oak trees in Malachy’s woodland.’

  ‘Why?’ asked Mara casually. Her attention was on the bundle in Nuala’s arms. She held out her own arms, a slight ache of love trembling through her whole body. She curved around the light weight and held the tiny baby against her cheek for a moment.

  ‘He’s making plans to fell the trees and use them for making wine barrels,’ said Sorcha. ‘He’s been thinking about that for years. I used to laugh at him and tell him that Malachy would probably outlive him, but there you are! Oisín always get what he wants, sooner rather than later.’

  ‘Of course,’ breathed Mara. ‘He’s Malachy’s heir, isn’t he?’

  Almost absent mindedly she held out a finger for the baby to clutch.

  How could I have been so stupid, she thought, exasperated with herself. Of course, under Brehon law, Malachy’s heir was neither his daughter Nuala, nor his wife Caireen. No doubt Caireen, who had lived under English law in Galway, expected to inherit, but Brehon law, though making provision for a daughter (and not a widow, who was expected to return to her own family), firmly gave the inheritance of the clan land to the nearest male relative if there were no sons nor no brothers to inherit. The Davorens had been a clan where males were in short supply. Her own father had just a daughter to inherit, but she had been lucky enough to keep his farm because the land at Cahermacnaghten had been presented directly to her father by the king as part of the payment for his services as Brehon of the Burren, and so was not clan land.

  Malachy, on the other hand, had no official status as a physician and possessed only a small amount of clan land. And of course, clan land in Malachy’s case was not farmland, but a woodland comprising twenty acres of mature oaks.

  ‘Nuala, did you know that Oisín was Malachy’s heir?’ She asked the question casually, arranging the linen folds above the baby’s face to protect his delicate skin against the intensity of the sun’s rays.

  ‘No, I didn’t.’ Nuala sounded hostile. It was impossible to speak to her
of anything to do with Malachy. She immediately seemed to assume the air of suspected person, and turned sullen and uncommunicative.

  If Nuala did not know, then Caireen did not know either, thought Mara, tenderly exposing her son’s stick-like legs to the air, and then carefully draping a piece of linen so that the sun did not burn his delicate skin. It had never been mentioned, she suspected. Malachy had no interest in that oak woodland. He sold the odd tree to Blár O’Connor, the wheelwright, or had one of his men cut up a few fallen trees after a storm, but that was all.

  So it was likely that Caireen, new from Galway and used to English laws, thought she would inherit all. Mara disliked Caireen immensely, but, still, was it even sensible to suspect her of murdering her husband?

  Probably not. Malachy alive was at least making money and could sponsor her three sons through to physician status. Suddenly a thought came to her.

  ‘Do you know when Ronan, Caireen’s son, will qualify as a physician?’ she asked Nuala.

  ‘Ronan is already a qualified physician,’ said Nuala in a surly manner. She looked away from Mara, but not quickly enough to hide the expression of rage on her face. She picked up a honey cake that Aislinn had put on the shared plate and snapped it in half with her strong white teeth, staring across the stony fields with an expression that she strove to make indifferent.

  ‘That was quick!’ exclaimed Mara. ‘I thought he had another year to go.’

  Nuala shrugged her shoulders and then turned away from Sorcha’s curious eyes. Mara knew why her daughter looked puzzled. Nuala acting as physician was mature, poised and communicative. Nuala speaking of her father turned into a rude, angry adolescent.

  ‘It just happened a couple of weeks ago,’ she said.

  ‘So that’s why I didn’t know about it. I should have been informed. Did Malachy feel that he was ready?’

  ‘He examined him, got a physician from Galway, a friend of Ronan’s late father, to moderate the results; Ronan was declared a full physician two weeks ago.’ Nuala’s voice was toneless and lacking in any emotion, but Mara could imagine how she felt. Malachy was doing his best to deny his own gifted daughter the opportunity to achieve the ambition that had possessed her since she was a child, and yet he had gone to great extremes to rush forward the appointment of his stepson. Mara gave a quick glance at the tight-lipped face as she patted the girl’s hand with unspoken sympathy.