Eye of the Law (7 page)

‘Saoirse managed to get a message to me yesterday evening,’ said Mairéad. ‘I came down to Lemeanah. I brought a bag with my nightgown and everything with me today and I pretended to Saoirse’s mother that it had been arranged that I would stay.’

‘And what did she say?’ Mara smiled. She was beginning to like Mairéad; she thought her a girl of enterprise!

‘Oh, she was fine; there was no problem with her.’

There wouldn’t be, thought Mara. Ciara O’Brien was very easy-going. In fact, she had always thought Teige was the same, but perhaps his fatherly feelings were outraged by the attack on his daughter.

‘And I had a word with Saoirse’s father today after he had his dinner,’ continued Mairéad. ‘He was all right, then. I just chatted, but I made it plain that Saoirse and I had been together all the evening and that we had been dancing with my brother, Donogh Óg and your Enda, Brehon. He seemed to be fine then and when Enda and Fachtnan came and invited us to supper, he didn’t mind a bit.’

‘Was that the truth – about you and Saoirse being together all the evening?’ asked Mara, suppressing a smile. ‘No dancing with boys, no flirting in dark corners?’

The two girls exchanged glances. Suddenly Saoirse’s eyes filled with tears. A repressed sob escaped her. She got to her feet and walked over to the bedroom window, opening the wooden shutters and peering out. Mairéad looked at her with exasperation.

Mara understood her feelings. It was no good Mairéad valiantly lying to protect her friend if Saoirse did not play her part. What was the truth about that evening, she wondered. Saoirse had a heavy, ripe sexuality about her, though she lacked the glamour of Mairéad. As far as Mara knew, there was no involvement with any young man on the Burren, though Donogh Óg would be a good match for her. However, Donogh Óg had been a familiar figure from the days of her childhood, while Iarla from Aran would perhaps have appeared as a romantic figure that night with the story of his relationship to Ardal, the richest man in the kingdom. Looking from one young girl to another, Mara had little doubt that Teige’s suspicions of his daughter had some grounds. There was no need to probe any more now. Most of the kingdom had been present that night at Lemeanah Castle. Sooner or later she would find out the truth.

‘Well, I think I’ll get the boys to escort you back now,’ said Mara, getting up from the bed. ‘We must get you home in good time so that he hasn’t time to start being anxious about you.’ She looked at Saoirse’s downcast face and said gently, ‘Don’t worry, Saoirse, there was no justification for what Iarla did, no matter whether you had been friendly with him or not. No one could blame you. But that’s the way with fathers – he was upset, so he became angry. Things will soon be back to normal again.’

When they got downstairs, Enda and Fachtnan were at the gate of the law school gazing down the road. All four ponies were tied to the rail and ready to go.

‘I think Aidan and Moylan are coming now, Brehon,’ said Fachtnan, politely holding Saoirse’s pony while she climbed on to the mounting block. ‘I can hear Aidan’s voice.’

‘Good,’ said Mara vaguely. She, too, could hear a loud raucous laugh followed by a joyful bark. Bran would have enjoyed the run to the coast. ‘Goodbye, girls. Come again soon. Get back to Lemeanah as quickly as you can, Fachtnan. Don’t stop to chat with the boys.’

It was unfortunate that Saoirse should have to meet with Becan, but hopefully Fachtnan would take the hint and quickly pass on. Mara began to walk down the road after them, narrowing her eyes against the setting sun.

But there were only two ponies coming towards her. She stopped and waited. Yes, it was just Aidan and Moylan on their own.

‘Becan didn’t come with you?’ Her voice held a note of query and she waited while they sprang off their ponies with quick lithe movements. She patted Bran who was ecstatic to see her again and looked enquiringly at the two boys. They both looked excited.

‘No, Brehon . . .’

‘Brehon, we have something very interesting to tell you,’ Aidan interrupted his friend.

‘You’ll never guess.’ Moylan’s voice was dramatic.

‘Tell me about Becan first,’ said Mara. ‘Is he coming for the funeral?’

‘No, he’s not,’ said Moylan. ‘He told us that he would look after himself and that he had enough of the people of the Burren. The ferryman said that he told him that the lad was no blood kin of his.’

‘No blood kin,’ repeated Mara.

‘But that’s not the interesting bit.’

‘Let me tell it, I’m the eldest.’

‘No, I’m going to tell it. I was the one that the ferryman told. You were chatting to that girl at the time.’

Mara gazed at them in exasperation. ‘Stop being silly, the two of you! You are both training to be lawyers and perhaps Brehons. You should know by now that the important thing is to establish the truth. Tell me what the ferryman said and try to behave like fifteen-year-olds, not five-year-olds.’

Moylan and Aidan glanced at each, their colour rising.

In a tight voice, Moylan said, ‘Go on, then. You tell it.’

‘Thank you, Moylan.’ Mara felt a little sorry for her impatience. This pregnancy was making her more tired than she would have expected. It was only just after vespers’ time; there were a good two hours of daylight still left. Nevertheless, she felt a great longing to go to bed and sleep for twelve hours. She didn’t remember this feeling of exhaustion when she was expecting Sorcha. Then she smiled. She had been fifteen then; now she was thirty-six. There was a difference, she told herself with resignation.

‘Well, it was like this,’ said Aidan. ‘When the ferryman had finished giving the message from Becan, he turned away. He was fiddling with the sail on his boat and I went over and I was asking him how the sails worked when there was a headwind and we got talking and he invited me to come over one Saturday and he would teach me to sail.’

Mara nodded and forced a look of encouragement. Aidan would tell the story in his own way.

‘And then when he was showing me the mast, he just sort of muttered to me, “Does the Brehon know that, before the two of them left Aran, Becan arranged a marriage between Iarla and his daughter, Emer?” He told me that everyone in the island was talking about it – what with them being cousins and everything. But be that as it may, the match had been made up before witnesses and Iarla had not said no to Emer at the time.’

‘What?’ Mara exclaimed.

Aidan and Moylan both nodded. The suppressed excitement bubbled up in them.

‘That’s right, Brehon,’ Moylan said, continuing the story. ‘And you remember how there was a fight on Monday night when Iarla attacked Saoirse? Well, later on, when we were all going home, as we passed the Lissylisheen road, I heard Becan and Iarla. And Becan was saying something to Iarla, he was sort of hissing it and then Iarla shouted out: “Oh, shut up and leave me alone. I’ll choose my own girl.” And then he dug his heels into the pony and galloped on ahead of Becan.’

‘And we just thought that he was talking about what happened that night,’ supplemented Aidan.

‘But you see it might have been that Becan was saying to him: “
Fan bomaite
, what about my Emer?” The ferryman said that it just happened on the day before they came across.’

‘And,’ said Aidan slowly, deliberately and with great drama, ‘while we were riding back from Doolin this evening, Moylan and I were saying, “How about Becan for a suspect? They could have had a row, the two of them, and Becan could have killed Iarla with his dagger and then put his body outside Balor’s Cave to make it look like it was the god Balor that killed him.

‘And then Becan cleared off and went back to Aran. He had his own boat, waiting there at Doolin, so he could go back whenever he liked. Perhaps he expected that Balor would be blamed for the death.’

‘Would he know that it was Balor’s Cave, though?’ asked Mara with interest. ‘I know that he would probably have heard the story of Balor, but would he know where Balor’s Cave was on the Burren? I think they came in after the storyteller had finished the tale of Balor.’

‘That storyteller told the same story about three times that night,’ said Moylan triumphantly. ‘People kept asking him to tell it again. And Becan could have found out exactly where the cave was just by asking anyone. Even a child could have told him that.’

‘I see.’ Mara was silent for a moment. ‘The only problem is that no one saw either Iarla or anyone else go along the laneway to Balor’s Cave. Fiachra O’Lochlainn was ploughing from sunrise in the field opposite the turn-off for the lane and Dalagh the basket maker was there all the morning and so was his wife and his ten children.’

‘Perhaps Becan murdered him somewhere else and then threw the body across a horse and took it over to Balor’s Cave,’ suggested Moylan.

‘No, that wouldn’t work,’ said Aiden. ‘Anyone working in the fields would have noticed him leading a horse with a dead body on top of it. I know how it was done.’ Aidan’s voice rose and then cracked badly with the force of his enthusiasm. ‘He could have put the body on one of those turf barrows, you know how low they are, then he could have thrown some old sacks over the body and people meeting him would have thought he was just wheeling along a pile of winter cabbages, He could have bent double over the barrow, bent down lower than the walls, so that he wouldn’t have been seen from the fields.’

Mara thought about the idea with as much gravity as she could command. She was always careful to encourage her scholars to think for themselves; throwing too much cold water on their ideas would just make them reluctant to venture an opinion. However, she could not quite see why Becan should go to so much trouble to hide overnight, kill Iarla in the morning and then creep along the roads in that furtive way just so as to place the body by Balor’s Cave.

‘Thank you, boys,’ she said eventually. ‘That’s an idea worth thinking about and you have brought me some very useful information. You have done very well and have helped me considerably. Now take Bran into the stables and Seán will feed him while you are rubbing down your ponies. Then go in and have your supper. Brigid will have kept something for you.’

After they had gone she stood for a few minutes wearily watching the sun sink down behind the hill. She wished for a moment that she were at Ballinalacken, the castle on the top of the hill near the sea. She could sit on the window seat and watch the sunset colours streak across the sea and perhaps forget about this puzzling murder and wipe her mind clear of the task that had to be done. She shook herself resolutely and turned to go into the schoolhouse. This was her choice to keep working, her choice to do everything: to be a teacher, a Brehon, the king’s wife and the bearer of the king’s child.

She wanted to have it all; that was her problem.

‘Brehon.’ Brigid emerged from the kitchen house.

‘Ah, Brigid.’ Mara forced a smile and straightened her back. ‘I told Aidan and Moylan that you would have kept them some supper.’

‘Don’t worry about them. That will be the day when they starve!’ Brigid narrowed her small green eyes against the sun and fixed them on Mara’s face. Her sandy-coloured hair was sticking up in spikes – always a sure sign that she was perturbed. ‘Don’t worry about them,’ she repeated. ‘What about you? You look very tired. Why don’t you go and have an early night? Cumhal and I will see to the lads.’

‘I can’t,’ said Mara. ‘I really should go over to Lissylisheen. I was just wishing that I could ride, but I don’t suppose that it’s a good idea at the moment.’

‘What’s there that can’t wait for the morning?’ asked Brigid sharply. ‘You should go over to your house now and just get straight into bed.’

‘You could be right,’ said Mara resignedly.

Brigid had looked after her when she was little and had not got out of the habit of treating her mistress as if she were about five years old. It was usually easier to follow Brigid’s commands than to argue with her.

‘Though I suppose you’ll toss and turn all night unless you get your own way.’ It was Brigid’s turn to sound resigned. ‘I’ll tell you what I’ll do,’ she continued. ‘I’ll send young Donie over to Lissylisheen to ask the
taoiseach
to come and see you. Will that satisfy you?’

‘There’s someone coming now.’ Mara’s quick ear caught the drumming of hoofs on the stone of the roadway outside.

‘Well, well, it’s himself,’ murmured Brigid with satisfaction. She walked quickly to the gate.

‘You’re very welcome, my lord,’ she said as Ardal dismounted with a neat swing of one leg. ‘I was just saying to the Brehon that she was looking tired and that she should leave her visit to you until the morning.’ Her voice had a warning note of emphasis.

‘I won’t keep her long.’

Ardal had a smile on his attractive face; it was easy to read Brigid.

‘I wondered whether Becan had arrived from Aran,’ he continued, looking around the courtyard.

‘He didn’t come. He refused.’ Mara told him the fisherman’s words – she didn’t mention the betrothal between Becan’s daughter and Iarla, though. This was something that she would keep to herself, she decided.

‘Strange!’ Ardal shook his head in disbelief. ‘I never heard of such a thing. To allow your own nephew to be buried without a friend or kin to be there to pray for his soul. And yet he seemed fond of the young man to come all the way here with him. Mind you, we didn’t see much of him. Liam told me that Becan went off on Tuesday morning to visit relations of his at Kinvarra and he didn’t come back until late on Wednesday.’

‘Borrowed your horse too, didn’t he?’ Brigid’s tone was sharp. ‘Cumhal told me that he met him on one of the Lissylisheen horses.’

‘Let’s come into the schoolhouse, Ardal,’ said Mara. ‘Will you have a cup of ale or wine?’

‘Nothing at all,’ he said firmly. ‘I really won’t keep you long, Brehon. You’ve had a tiring day.’ Adroitly he had moved ahead of her, opened the heavy door and ushered her into the schoolhouse, placing her chair by the fire and putting a cushion from the window seat at her back. Then he stood by the fireplace, a look of indecision on his handsome face.