A Secret and Unlawful Killing Read online

  His mantle was not torn; Mara noticed that immediately. It was made of finely woven grey cloth, but then most people on the Burren wore grey made from the wool of the mountain sheep. These produced the most rain-resistant wool and that was important here on the edge of the Atlantic where rain showers swept in almost continuously. Perhaps he had another mantle, though. A family of this wealth could easily afford two or even three cloaks for the son and heir of the family.

  ‘Ah, Donal,’ she greeted him, looking closely at the handsome, sullen face. ‘I thought I saw you in the yard. I want you to pass on a message to your father. Ragnall MacNamara has been killed and I will be making an announcement at Poulnabrone at twelve noon.’

  ‘Yes,’ he said, his eyes refusing to meet hers. ‘The news came a while ago. My father has already gone up to Poulnabrone.’

  So Maeve’s mission was unnecessary, thought Mara. Or perhaps it was more to tell her young lover that no awkward questions had been asked by the Brehon. She wondered how to deal with this young man. Perhaps being direct would be the best method.

  ‘I saw you with Ragnall’s daughter, Maeve, at Noughaval market, yesterday,’ she said rapidly.

  His face paled slightly, but then he nodded.

  ‘I understand that Ragnall had refused permission for any betrothal between you and Maeve,’ she continued. ‘So what happened when he turned up at Noughaval yesterday? That would have been a surprise to you; you would have expected him to be on the road all day and I suppose so he would have been if the fog had not been so dense. He must have decided to turn back when he reached the sea.’

  Donal said nothing, but a spark of anger smouldered in his eyes. Was it anger against her or against Ragnall? Mara wondered.

  ‘So what happened when he arrived?’ she asked abruptly.

  He licked his lips, thought for a moment and then explained hurriedly: ‘Nothing happened. When we saw him, Maeve and I went away. I took her home to Shesmore and then I came back here.’

  ‘What time did you arrive home?’

  ‘Mid-afternoon,’ he said, after a moment’s pause for thought. That would be about right if he had done what he said, thought Mara. Either he was telling the truth or he was quick-witted enough to tell a plausible lie.

  ‘Did anyone see you arrive home?’

  He licked his lips again. His dark eyes were wary. ‘No,’ he said. ‘No one was about. Everyone was either at the market or else out in the fields. I went up to my room and I stayed there until suppertime.’

  That would be fairly unlikely, thought Mara. An active young man, and a beautiful afternoon with the golden September sun warming the fields … Surely he would have gone out with his dogs and his horse if he had no tasks. However, it might be possible. The boy was obviously very much in love and miserable at the denial of his request by the father of his sweetheart. Perhaps he did lie on his bed and brood. Or perhaps he did come back and then go out again She decided rapidly on her course of action. It would be best to surprise the truth out of him now, if possible, before he had time to think up a story.

  ‘You lost your brooch,’ she said, delving into her pouch and producing it.

  He held his hand out instantly.

  ‘It is yours?’ she asked, still retaining it in her own hand, but angling it so that he could see the three tiny lions enamelled in red.

  He hesitated then, and a look of fear came into his eyes.

  ‘It is yours, isn’t it?’ she persisted.

  He made no move to take it from her now. His dark eyes were hooded by a fan of downcast black lashes, so she could not read their expression, but his mouth was tight.

  ‘Any of your servants will know whether it is your brooch or not,’ she told him bluntly.

  ‘Where did you find it?’ he asked. He was looking at her now, but his expression was guarded. His young face looked suddenly aged and wary.

  ‘Where did you lose it?’ she countered sharply.

  He shifted his position so that his face was no longer lit by the sun but was shadowed. The wariness had intensified.

  ‘I lost it somewhere,’ he said hesitantly. ‘I don’t know where I lost it, exactly. We were hunting … myself and the three O’Lochlainn lads … We were hunting foxes with a pack of dogs. We took the dogs and we went out after foxes.’

  ‘And did the O’Lochlainns help you to search for your brooch?’ she asked with an air of concern which rang to her ears as showing a satisfactory degree of friendly interest.

  ‘No.’ He replied to this promptly as if he had guessed that the question would be coming. ‘I didn’t realize that I had lost it until I came home.’

  ‘And where were you hunting?’ asked Mara.

  He shrugged. ‘Can’t remember really — it was a few weeks ago — all over the High Burren, I think … You know, from Slieve Elva over to Carron.’

  She considered this. ‘Did you go through Noughaval?’

  ‘Yes,’ he said eagerly. ‘Yes, we went through Noughaval.’

  ‘What about the churchyard? You didn’t go through the churchyard at Noughaval, did you?’ she asked, looking at him keenly. It would be strange for a hunt to go through the churchyard. There was a great respect for the bodies of the dead on the Burren. Even if the hounds went through the churchyard, the riders would usually circle outside calling off their dogs.

  He hesitated for a moment and then bowed his head. ‘No,’ he said. ‘We didn’t go through the churchyard.’

  Mara allowed the silence to linger for a few moments before turning the mare’s head towards the north.

  ‘I must go now,’ she said. ‘I will see your father at Poulnabrone. Are you coming too?’

  He shook his head. ‘No, Brehon,’ he said warily. ‘I have tasks to do here.’

  After Mara had ridden through the gatehouse and had turned her mare’s head towards the north, she turned back. Donal O’Brien was still standing, very still, in the spot where she had left him. He looked, to her, like a man who was bearing a heavy weight of anxiety on his broad shoulders.

  FOUR

  BERRAD AIRECHTA (COURT PROCEDURE AND JUDGEMENTS)

  A court shall be held in a place that is sacred within the kingdom. That is to say it should be by a great rock, known as the Brehon’s chair, or on the top of an ancient mound, or beside an ancestral burial place.

  THE FIELD AROUND THE dolmen of Poulnabrone was full of people when Mara arrived. It was almost as if the birds of the air had carried the news of the secret and unlawful killing of Ragnall MacNamara. It would have been natural for the MacNamara clan to be there, she had appointed this time to hear the case about the blacksmith’s candlesticks, but the other three clans, the O’Lochlainns, the O’Connors and the O’Briens were there also, in strong numbers. With one of the rapid weather changes so customary in the west of Ireland, the sun had disappeared and the sky had turned the colour of polished pewter. There was no wind, but the atmosphere held the ominous promise of a storm to come. The air had turned chill, but no one in that huge crowd moved.

  The ancient dolmen with the four upright stones and the jagged tip of the soaring capstone was silhouetted against the leaden sky, dwarfing the humans who surrounded it. It had been the burial mound of the ancient inhabitants of the Burren and then the hallowed place where the people of the kingdom came to hear the judgements and pronouncements of their king and of his Brehon. Mara had already been Brehon of the Burren for fifteen years, but when she spoke at Poulnabrone she never failed to feel thrilled and yet humbled by the strength of the tradition in this sacred stony place.

  Cumhal, her farm manager, was there, as he always was whenever he was needed, and he took the mare from her as soon as she dismounted. The six scholars, neat in their white léinte and polished leather sandals, were lined up beside the dolmen. Mara smiled at them as they bowed to her. There was an air of suppressed excitement about them; judgement days were often tedious, filled with small wrangles over boundary stones and cattle trespass, but this one would be full o
f drama. However, she was glad to see their faces were grave. She always insisted on the highest level of decorous behaviour in public, but inside, she knew, they were bubbling with anticipation. As her scholars they would be closely involved in the investigation. What an exciting start to the Michaelmas term for them.

  ‘Brehon, this is a terrible, terrible thing to happen.’ Garrett MacNamara pushed himself through the crowd followed by a tall, brown-haired man, who stood affably behind him, looking around at the crowd in a friendly fashion. Mara recognized this man instantly although it was a while since she had seen him.

  Murrough, the younger son of King Turlough Donn, greatly resembled his father. He had the same light green eyes, the same war-like moustaches curving down from either side of his mouth, the same brown hair, though his father’s was greying. However, the son looked quite different to the father in his dress. While Turlough wore the léine and brat of his ancestors, Murrough was dressed in the latest English fashion of skin-tight hose and very short velvet doublet barely reaching to the top of his legs. He looked very out of place, thought Mara, in this assembly of clansmen. The O‘Brien clan, in particular, viewed him with a certain disdain; Teige O’Brien, with a broad grin on his face, was whispering behind his hand to his cousin, Cian, the silversmith.

  Mara came forward to meet the young man. ‘Murrough!’ she said. ‘You are well? And your family, also?’ She did not enquire about his father; Turlough, she knew, was not getting on well with this son, though previously Murrough had always been the favourite, and still was, she suspected, despite his infatuation with all things English. She wondered briefly whether Murrough knew of his father’s hopes to marry Mara, Brehon of the Burren, and what he thought of it. However, their relationship had always been warm and friendly and she was pleased to see that there was a beaming smile on his face as he greeted her and asked after her family.

  ‘Do you think you can handle this affair?’ he asked teasingly.

  Mara smiled at him sweetly, raising her dark eyebrows in a look of polite enquiry. She always enjoyed his wit and his sense of fun.

  ‘Handle?’ she asked in a puzzled tone of voice.

  ‘This is a very serious matter,’ he said with an amused glance at Garrett. No doubt Garrett had been pouring out his thoughts to the king’s son.

  ‘Every death is a serious matter,’ said Mara gravely.

  ‘Oh, the death, that, of course,’ said Murrough, his green eyes dancing with mischief, ‘but there is also a matter of stolen goods, a pouch full of silver; not just an ordinary theft, but a theft from a taoiseach.’ Again, he gave a quick amused glance at Garrett.

  ‘The law makes provision for all theft, and for all cases of serious injury and of death,’ said Mara evenly, ignoring the irony in his tone. She did not wish Garrett to feel that he was being laughed at by this boy. Without waiting for an answer she addressed Garrett.

  ‘I agree, Garrett, this is, indeed, a terrible matter. There is no doubt, I think, that Ragnall’s death is a secret and unlawful killing, but I will make the announcement now and call for evidence.’ She moved a little closer to Garrett, deliberately turning her back on Murrough, and said in a low voice: ‘Of course the people were called to Poulnabrone to hear this case between Fintan, the blacksmith, and Ragnall, the steward, but now that Ragnall is dead I think we can let this matter drop, do you agree? Ragnall had no right to take those branched candlesticks from Fintan’s man, Balor; the whole of the Burren knows that Balor was classified as a druth and, as such, he could not have had the authority of his master to give the candlesticks. I assure you that is the legal position.’

  She waited calmly, looking up at him. Garrett was a tall man, who looked more than his thirty years. He was staring down at her with his prominent gooseberry-coloured eyes and furrowing his brow. He would look better with the hairstyle of his youth, she thought. The English fashion for hair curled back, on him, revealed an abnormally high, white forehead which had until recently been covered with the Irish glib (fringe). The height of his forehead seemed to accentuate the size of the huge fleshy nose and the heavily swelling lower lip. An unattractive man, she thought, despite his fine English-style clothing, and yet, he was reputed to have married well. Slaney, his wife, came from one of the most important families in Galway and bore the reputation of being a magnificent specimen of womanhood.

  ‘Balor?’ he queried.

  She nodded. ‘Yes, the bastard son of Aengus the miller, Niall’s younger brother,’ she said calmly. ‘I classified him myself. I can assure you that the law is quite clear on this point. Ragnall had no right to remove those candlesticks without the permission of their rightful owner. I think that the easiest thing would be just to give them back quietly, don’t you?’

  Eventually he nodded reluctantly.

  ‘Good,’ she said. ‘I’ll tell Fintan that he may have them back.’ She had no notion of revealing that Fintan had possibly already removed the candlesticks. She waited for a moment to see whether Niall had told his taoiseach about the missing candlesticks, but he made no answer, just nodded his head again. It was good that Niall had kept that matter to himself, she thought. There was going to be trouble enough over this secret and unlawful killing; she did not want any more. She moved towards her traditional place, just beside one of the huge upright stones of the dolmen. Fachtnan, the eldest scholar at the law school, handed her a scroll and she raised it. Instantly silence fell.

  ‘Dia’s Muire agat,’ she said in the traditional greeting and back came the answer: ‘God and Mary and Patrick be with you.’

  ‘I, Mara, Brehon of the Burren, announce to you that a killing took place of the steward, Ragnall MacNamara, at Noughaval on the evening of the feast of Michaelmas.’ She paused; a little ripple ran around the crowd with those nearest repeating her words so that those on the outside of the crowd could hear.

  ‘I now call on the person who killed the steward, Ragnall, to acknowledge the crime and to pay the fine. Ragnall’s honour price as a steward is half the honour price of his lord, Garrett MacNamara, so it is the sum of seven séts or three and a half ounces of silver. The éraic, or body fine, for an unlawful killing is forty-two séts, or twenty-one ounces of silver. The whole fine, then, is forty-nine séts, twenty-five ounces of silver, or twenty-five milch cows.’

  There was no sound; no one moved and no one spoke.

  ‘For the second time, I call on the person who killed the steward, Ragnall, to acknowledge the crime and to pay the fine of forty-nine séts,’ said Mara. She waited, surveying the crowd, but no one stirred.

  ‘For the third time, I call on the person who killed the steward, Ragnall, to acknowledge the crime and to pay the fine of forty-nine séts,’ said Mara, but she knew by now that no one would reply.

  ‘As soon as forty-eight hours have passed since this killing took place,’ she continued, ‘I will declare it to be a case of duinetháide, a secret and unlawful killing. The éraic will then be doubled to eighty-four séts. Add to that the victim’s honour price of seven sets and the fine will then be ninety-one séts, forty-five ounces of silver, or forty-five milch cows.’ She waited for a moment, now she could hear a low murmur of conversation. Heads were turned, one to the other. This was a huge amount of cows for any single individual to be able to afford. The whole fine (family group) would have to come to the rescue of the murderer. She held up her scroll again, and again silence fell.

  ‘I will now take evidence about this case,’ she said. ‘First, I call upon my two scholars, Aidan and Moylan, to give evidence as to how they found the body.’

  The two boys managed a more coherent account than usual, she thought. They even managed not to interrupt each other. While she kept a respectful face turned towards them, her eyes were busy scanning the crowd. The O‘Lochlainn’s clan was there in almost full strength, she thought, as she saw them grouped around the tall figure of Ardal, their taoiseach, a fair number of O’Connors also, and plenty of the O’Brien clan. All of the MacNamaras, of cour
se, that could be taken for granted — or were they all there? Suddenly her attention sharpened. Quickly her eyes went from face to face, all faces were concerned, all grave, but none bore any sign of sorrow, she thought. This was what had alerted her to look for the miller from Oughtmama; she had been looking to see what emotion Aengus MacNamara showed at the news of his enemy’s death.

  But Aengus MacNamara was not there.

  ‘Has anyone else any evidence to give,’ she asked, after she had thanked the two boys. Silence greeted her. She had not expected anything of importance to be volunteered. Every tongue would be guarded in this public place. No one would want to implicate a friend, a neighbour, a relative, or a member of the clan. These enquiries would have to be made quietly and privately and the truth would have to be discovered as soon as possible for the sake of everybody in the kingdom. For over fifteen hundred years they and their ancestors had lived by this system of justice that relied on the goodwill and the co-operation of the clans to keep the peace within its community. The truth would have to be acknowledged here at Poulnabrone, the fine paid, and then the community could go on living at peace with their families and their neighbours.

  ‘Fachtnan,’ she said when the crowd had begun to disperse, ‘do you see Aengus the miller anywhere?’

  ‘No, Brehon,’ said Fachtnan, standing on a nearby rock, brushing his rough curly dark hair out of his eyes and scanning the closely massed MacNamara clan. ‘He doesn’t seem to be here. Would you like me to ask Fintan MacNamara, the blacksmith? He’s his cousin.’

  ‘No, I’ll talk to him myself,’ said Mara. ‘Would you ask him to come over, Fachtnan?’

  Fintan came willingly. When she had seen him yesterday at the head of the dissident clansmen he had looked like an angry bull, his dark eyes sparkling with rage and his broad chest lifting with the long breaths he sucked in, but his eyes were peaceful now. He was looking tidier than usual, she thought. He had shed the blacksmith’s leather apron, and his high-coloured face was cleansed of the usual spots of soot, though it still bore the scorch marks and scars of old burns. A hard trade, thought Mara, though a highly valued one, as no community could manage without its blacksmith. Fintan was busy from morning to night with making, mending and repairing. Every house and every farm bore examples of his work, but nothing she had ever seen previously was as fine as that magnificent set of candlesticks. She had only glimpsed them briefly in the bottom of Ragnall’s cart, but they had stayed in her mind. Each candlestick had been moulded in the shape of a gnarled oak tree with the branches springing from it. Every branch ended in a cluster of perfectly formed oak leaves and this cluster held the candle in its midst. A wonderful piece of work, a piece of work to be prized by its maker: but would he have killed to recover it from the clutches of the greedy steward?