Chain of Evidence (8 page)

‘No, I’m off home,’ said Teige. ‘They didn’t steal any of my cows – they came across from the west. O’Donnell had the nerve to drop off men secretly at the same time as he dropped off Garrett’s visitors. The plan was to pick up the cows in Galway Bay where he had more ships lying in wait, ready to bring all our good fat cattle back to his own sour land. Well, we foiled them – and they’ve had a few sore heads to take back to Donegal.’

The riches of a man and his status in the kingdom depend on his cattle. For that reason it is illegal:

Anyone who drives another’s cattle without permission must also be liable for any damage that they cause, even after he has left them.

A
n awkward fact is like a thorn embedded in your finger, thought Mara. Unless you dig it out, it goes on making its presence felt. Garrett’s broken body had been washed and tightly bound with a winding sheet by the time that she and her scholars had arrived at Carron Castle early in the morning. She had commanded that the sheet be undone, and had to force herself to gaze down at the remains of what had once been Garrett MacNamara. The body had been terribly
mutilated
though it still possessed the remains of its four limbs. But there had been no trace of a piece of chain around what had been a leg. The blood-soaked clothing had been burned or thrown out and presumably the chain had gone with
everything
else. No one seemed to know anything about it.

Slaney, Mara was interested to see when she arrived at the castle, was playing the part of a grief-stricken wife, sitting over a fire in the hall and sipping mead while various maids hovered around her. She accompanied Mara on her mission to see Garrett’s body, crossing herself and issuing sighs that turned to gulps as she struggled to contain her emotions. Only when Mara mentioned the chain around the leg that Ardal had seen, did Slaney revert to her usual self and she snapped out the words, ‘no such thing’ with such rapidity that it was no wonder that the servants immediately denied having seen any such thing.

And what could be done? Mara asked herself. Nothing for the moment, was the answer. Against that solid bank of women who had cleaned and bound up the remains of the body, it was one man’s word – and the word of a man who, moreover, had just seen the body lying in mounds of filth and dust and blood. And yet, thought Mara, I have known that man for the whole of my life, we were brought up as neighbours, I have never known Ardal to be inaccurate. He was not a talker; he said little, but that which he said was always carefully considered. Mara passed between her fingers the rosary beads which Slaney had handed to her and mechanically made the responses to the prayers while thinking hard.

From a distance she could hear sounds of merriment in the hall. It had been full of silent men and women when she had arrived, but the removal of Slaney’s presence had unlocked tongues and probably the mead had been flowing. There had been no sign of Stephen Gardiner, the Englishman – perhaps he had retired to his room to write up his notes – but Jarlath had been there, moving among the clansmen and women, already, in their eyes, invested with the status of
taoiseach
. The man Tomás had been whispering in his ear and there was an eagerness on the faces of all as they looked at the handsome, amiable young man. Rhona and Peadar were still outsiders, though. Once again they had withdrawn to the seclusion of a window seat and Peadar’s young face wore an expression of angry embarrassment which made Mara feel rather sorry for him. What would be his position now? The question must be troubling both, but it was not the most urgent problem to be solved at the moment so Mara turned her thoughts back to the terribly mutilated dead body in front of her.

A chain around the leg? Was there any possible reason why Garrett himself should tie a chain around his leg? She could think of none. Garrett was a pompous man, a man who always dressed well for his role as
taoiseach
of his clan. During his four years of office she had never seen him engage in any work on his land – and even if he were dragging something, surely the chain would have been wound around his shoulders. She dismissed that thought from her mind and went back to Shane’s suggestion. A lunatic, or a fierce dog, might be tied in order to prevent him from escaping. But a man in possession of his senses would not be detained long by a chain around his leg unless his hands also were bound. But Ardal had not mentioned a chain around the wrists – more shocking and more noticeable than one around the leg.

‘The third sorrowful mystery: Jesus is crowned by thorns,’ announced Slaney. ‘Let us consider in silence for a moment the agonies of our saviour.’

Another thirty ‘Hail Marys’, not to mention the ‘Our Fathers’ and ‘Glory be to the Fathers’ and the other prayers that Slaney kept inserting, thought Mara, hearing an impatient sigh from Shane. She rose resolutely to her feet and beckoned to Slaney and withdrew to the window, waiting for the woman to follow. Let her servants go on praying; the Brehon had work to do. The scholars had not hesitated but had immediately got to their feet and clustered around her. She did not wave them away. This was law school business. She waited grimly until the sour-faced Slaney approached.

‘I’m sorry that you cannot spare the time to pray for the soul of—’ she was saying in a furious whisper, but Mara silenced her with an imperative gesture.

‘Make no arrangements for the wake or the burial at the moment, Slaney,’ she said sternly. ‘I am not satisfied that this was an accident. It may be that it was a secret and unlawful killing – one that I and my scholars must investigate. I want
this body moved to a small room and the keys of it handed
to me until my enquiries have finished.’

‘What!’ Stony-faced, Slaney glared at her, and then gulped
and clutched at her heart. Mara ignored her. Maol the
steward had just entered the room and she beckoned to
him.

‘Have the body of your
taoiseach
carried to a small wall chamber,’ she said.

He stared at her and she stared back – all the authority of her eighteen years of office in her gaze. The light was poor in this north-facing room, but she had an impression that he had paled.

‘Immediately,’ she said in a peremptory way. ‘This terrible death must be investigated.’

‘I am to be nobody in my own house,’ exclaimed Slaney bitterly.

‘This is now a matter for the king and his officers,’ said Mara. She spoke more gently than she had done to the steward. Though a tall, heavily-built woman Slaney seemed to shrink and there was a look of terror in her very blue eyes. She was clutching the back of a large oak chair for support and Mara thought she saw a slight tremor in the sturdily built piece of furniture.

Garrett’s body lay on a wooden pallet and within minutes it was being carried to one of the small wall chambers that were slotted in, here and there, by the sides of the spiral
staircase
in the old part of the castle. Its window was not much bigger than a loop hole for an arrow to pass through, but the place was small enough to be well lit by a couple of candles. Once the pallet had been placed on a pair of trestles, Mara ordered a double candlestick and positioned it in the deep sill of the tiny window. There would, she thought, be enough light. She nodded her thanks to the servant and then held out her hand for the key, waiting until Slaney summoned her housekeeper and handed over the second key, also. The room was freezing cold, but so much the better to preserve the corpse.

With a great air of ceremony Mara watched Fachtnan lock the door, melt in the flame of Maol’s candle a piece of sealing wax from his satchel and then paste it over the lock. While it was still warm Mara scratched her initials into the wax with a quill pen from her own satchel. The pen would be ruined, but if anyone in the castle were guilty of having anything to do with Garrett’s death, then these elaborate preparations should alarm them.

‘I shall be back,’ she said to Slaney. ‘Do nothing about this death until I give permission.’

And with those words she went soberly down the wide staircase followed by Fachtnan and her scholars who were exchanging slightly over-awed looks. Mara said nothing to them until they were all outside the iron gates and then she spoke.

‘Fachtnan,’ she said. ‘I want you to ride to Thomond as quickly as you can safely do so. Tell the king about the death of Garrett MacNamara. He will want to attend the burial and conduct the inauguration ceremony for the new
taoiseach
as soon as possible. Oh, and Fachtnan, I have one other task for you. Bring back Nuala. Tell her I need her urgently. I want her to give an opinion on the cause of death, and on the time of death. Nuala will do that better than any other physician.’ Her mind went with tolerant scorn to the young man at Caherconnell; he would not serve her purpose.

‘Is Nuala a qualified physician now? She’s only about my age, isn’t she, or not much more?’ asked Fiona rather sharply and Mara suppressed a grin as Aidan and Moylan informed her how talented Nuala was and how she had done so well in her final examinations that the king’s own physician, Donogh O’Hickey, had spoken of her in Rome.

Fachtnan said nothing, just looked at Fiona with concern in his dark eyes. What a tangle that was, thought Mara impatiently. Nuala adored Fachtnan and, herself an heiress of valuable property on the Burren, was willing to share her considerable wealth with him in marriage, but Fachtnan worshipped Fiona who thought of him purely as an elder brother and comrade, though she enjoyed his homage. Still they would have to work matters out for themselves so Mara dissipated the slight atmosphere of embarrassment among her scholars by giving some crisp commands to Fachtnan and checking that he had silver with him and instructing him to request a meal when he arrived at Turlough’s main castle in Thomond.

‘Now,’ she said to her scholars as he set off towards the west, ‘I have a task for your young brains.’ She looked around but there was no one on their road back to the law school; she could speak without being overheard. ‘First question is this: why should that chain have been removed from Garrett’s leg? The second question is: why was a chain tied to his leg? No, don’t answer now, wait until we get back to the law school.’

And I must ride over to Baur North to see my little Cormac for a few minutes, she thought as they rode in silence. The next week or so would be busy. The life of a law enforcer and judge for the whole kingdom, as well as being the wife of the king, meant that her moments with this late-born second child of hers were rationed. She was grateful to his foster parents Cliona and Setanta O’Connor, but there were times when, secretly, she felt an angry jealousy rise up within her – especially when she heard Cormac address Cliona as ‘Mam’.

And yet, she knew that she had done the right thing, and that her active, masculine little boy was having a wonderful time playing with his foster brother, only a few months older than he, helping on the farm, driving sheep to new pasture, guarding the newborn lambs with the aid of the long-tailed sheepdogs, scattering straw for beds for the lambing sheep and soon there would be all the excitement of the sheep shearing to look forward to. He was a strong-willed, happy boy and she would not have him different in any way.

Cliona, her son Art, and Cormac were nowhere to be seen when Mara rode onto the small farm. Only Setanta, her fisherman husband, was there vigorously pulping some unsold fish into a smelly paste to put onto the land as a fertiliser. He did not know where Cliona and the two little boys were, but he was eager to go in search for them.

‘No, no,’ said Mara hurriedly. ‘I can’t stay long in any case – he’s well?’ she enquired trying to keep a wistful note from her voice.

Setanta grinned. ‘Bursting with health, and mischief,’ he added. ‘Wait till you hear his latest. Cliona had shut some of the sheep into the cabin to wean the lambs who were born early in the year. The rest were out in that field on the top of the hill and what does young Cormac do, but put a cat on the neck of one of the sheep – “just being kind to it and giving it a ride” – that’s what he told her, of course. Well, the sheep ran, the cat hung on, and would you believe it every single sheep in the place started running and that was not all; the sheep that Cliona had shut in the cabin – she mustn’t have shot the latch through properly – well, they burst out of the cabin and joined their sisters and cousins. Took Cliona an hour to round them all up!’

‘I hope she punished him,’ said Mara, trying to stop a smile.

‘Well, she told him that he would have no honey on his bread at suppertime, but he came out with so many arguments about not being anywhere near the sheep when they started running and being hundreds of miles away from the ones that burst from their cabin, that by the end of it all she told me she didn’t know if she was standing on her head or her heels. “What do you expect?” I said to her. “His mother is a lawyer and his grandfather was a lawyer – bred in the bone it is for him to argue.” ’

‘Tell him that anyone who drives another’s cattle or sheep must also be liable for any damage that they cause, even after he has left them, and that is the law,’ said Mara severely, but she chuckled to herself when she left him. Turlough, she thought, would enjoy that story.

When she arrived back at the schoolhouse it was to find the scholars, including Fiona, playing a game of hurling and Brigid, her housekeeper, standing at the door to the kitchen house and determined that Mara should eat something before settling back to work.