A few other groups followed them, obviously thinking of going around by the west-facing slopes at Feenagh. There was no hurry, though. Judging by the sun it was only about an hour after noon; the light would last another four hours or so and, with luck, the mist should not fall until dusk. The air was still balmy; as they rounded a bend on the narrow stony lane they surprised a mountain hare, sleeping peacefully against a warm rock. He bounded away merrily, his white tail waving an impudent salute to the indignant Bran, who strained at the leash until Mara admonished him.
‘It shows how warm the weather is still; that hare will be almost white all over when another month goes by. The king told me that our hares are different to the hares in England; they have much smaller hares which remain brown in winter and summer,’ Mara told her scholars. None of them was listening; they were all looking over their shoulders at the crowd that was now fanning out across the mountain slopes.
‘There’s Lios na gCat,’ said Shane thankfully. ‘Are we going to turn off here, Brehon?’
‘Let Bran smell that sweaty hair fillet,’ said Aidan eagerly. ‘It really pongs …’ He stopped abruptly because a slight figure had emerged from the filthy, derelict house. ‘I didn’t know anyone lived there,’ he muttered, looking around at the filthy farmyard and the moss-covered cabins.
Mara waited for a moment. The two groups behind them overtook and then turned right to go up the mountain slopes. She could hear them call to each other as they
separated, one going to the left and the other keeping straight ahead.
‘Ah, Cuan,’ called Mara, her tone bland and friendly. ‘Have you heard the news? Rory the bard has been missing since early on Thursday morning.’
He came towards them slowly. He had heard her; she was sure of that. It seemed more as if he were giving himself time to think before he replied.
‘No,’ he said eventually, ‘no, I hadn’t heard that.’
He was still dressed in the fine clothes that Toin had lent him, she noticed. They were no longer so fine, though. The red tunic was torn in one place and splashes of mud marred its smooth wool. The
léine,
which he wore beneath it, was grubby and soiled with yellow sweat stains. The hem was filthy and so were his sandals.
‘Have you seen him since Wednesday night?’ demanded Mara.
His eyes went from her to the listening boys and he flushed. His dull eyes suddenly became full of fury. She could see how the memory of humiliation was still fresh in his mind. She wondered whether Rory had come to apologize. And if he had done so, what had been his reception? If the apology had been accepted, there would have been no point in Cuan staying up here in his mountain farm. Where was the young bard, then?
‘No, I haven’t seen him,’ he said eventually.
‘We’re searching for him,’ persisted Mara, ‘would you like to join us? He’s been missing since Thursday morning, now.
‘No, I wouldn’t!’ he shouted, thrusting his face almost into hers and causing Hugh to step back in alarm. ‘Why
should I? Why should I look for that fellow? He’s done nothing but insult me and mock me from the day that my father brought him to Newtown Castle. What do you come bothering me like that for?’
It was like a small child having a temper tantrum, thought Mara, eyeing him severely. Her grandson, Domhnall, used to have fits of screaming like that, before he learned to talk properly and to argue with his mother, instead.
‘Don’t you dare speak to me like that, Cuan,’ she said sternly, once the sound of his hysterical outburst died down. ‘Now, I would advise you to clean yourself up and to go down and take your rightful place in your father’s house. It’s for you to uncover his hearth, as the law says, and to take possession of his goods.’
‘I’m sorry, Brehon,’ he muttered. His eyes sought hers, like an apologetic dog. She felt sorry for him and sorry for his humiliation. Perhaps she should have sent the boys away before speaking to him. She made them a quick signal and obediently they moved down the path towards the rusty gate. Mara waited for a moment then, but he said no more. It was time to leave; she would get no more out of him. The boys moved restlessly. They wanted to be off finding Rory.
‘I will meet you there tomorrow, Saturday afternoon,’ she said firmly giving him a quick pat on the arm. ‘We will settle everything, then. Don’t forget. I will be expecting you at Newtown Castle on Saturday afternoon.’ She repeated the words with emphasis. There were times when she began to doubt again whether he had all of his wits. There was something very unstable about him today.
Cuan stared up the mountain, almost as if he were looking at a distant figure. He kicked a stone violently,
clenched his fists as if about to hit someone and then turned on his heel and went back up the path and into the house. He slammed the door with such violence that the leather hinge, holding it in place, split and the door gaped open.
‘Whew!’ whistled Aidan. ‘Temper!’
‘Brehon, when are you going to release Bran?’ asked Shane impatiently.
‘Now, I think,’ said Mara. She took the purple fillet from her pouch and held it for a moment. It was woven from bright threads of purple with a few of red in the weft between. Was it Aoife that made it for the young bard? She held it out towards the dog’s eager nose. ‘Seek, Bran, seek,’ she urged and then bent down and released the leash from his neck.
The dog understood her; she was sure of that. He sniffed at the fillet, looked along the path to the house, took a few steps back and then started to smell the path behind, the way that they had come up. His nose travelled along the grass-covered middle of it and once again he started to move back down the mountain.
‘Rory didn’t come up as far as this,’ said Aidan impatiently. ‘I knew we had come up too far.’
‘Hush,’ said Mara. ‘Don’t distract the dog.’ She would slip on the leash when he had found the scent properly, she planned.
Bran was obviously confused, going back down the lane and then drifting up it again, his nose glued to the ground. Then he came to the gate and stood for a long time there, glancing up at Mara and then down at the ground again.
Mara’s heart sank. What was the dog trying to tell her? That Rory had come here, to the gate of this farm? That he
had stood there for some time. Stood in the shelter of the large hawthorn bush that grew by the gate. That was what Bran was trying to say.
And if the dog was indicating a true and faithful account of Rory’s movements yesterday morning, what happened next? Had Cuan come out? He would undoubtedly have done so. Very few people passed on this track. Surely Cuan must have come out. And if he did, what happened after that? Was there a fight between the two boys? They would have been evenly matched, both slightly built, neither used to hard labour. But there would have been a difference. Rory would have been unconcerned, slightly mocking, perhaps, but Cuan would have been filled with a murderous rage. She glanced around. The place was untidy, littered with farmyard utensils and tools – most of them covered with dung or even moss – but on top of a large boulder an iron rod was lying, and that had no moss on it.
And then Bran finally made up his mind. With a quick bark, he left the gatepost and began to zigzag up the hill. Mara followed as quickly as she could; the three boys were running but none could not keep up with the fast pace of the dog.
A huge enclosure stood to the left of the path on the brow of the hill, built into the face of the cliff. This was Lios Mac Sioda, the home of Sheedy. Mara had planned to call in there and have a word with him, but Bran was going too fast, scurrying along with his nose to the ground. She would not break his concentration now, she decided. In any case, it looked like a steep climb to get to the house within those ancient walls.
‘Bran’s turning, Brehon,’ shouted Shane.
‘He’s going the wrong way,’ wailed Hugh.
The path they were following would have still led along the old river valley between the two mountains, but Bran had turned left. The boys scrambled after him and Mara followed as quickly as she could. She had just rounded the corner in time to see Bran, no longer on the gentle slope, but now scaling the rocky surface of Gleninagh South.
‘Bran, come back,’ she called, breaking her own resolution. It would be impossible for them to keep up with Bran here; he had four legs, they had two. He was two years old, at the height of his strength and fitness. He was bred for chasing wolves and could outrun any one of them.
‘Bran,’ she shouted again, but he ignored her. It was useless, she knew that, but she toiled on, scrambling up the clints, which, like endless steps of stairs, scaled the heights of Gleninagh.
‘I can see him, Brehon,’ shrieked Shane who had got ahead of the others. Wirily built, like Bran he was supremely fit and could outrun others taller than himself. ‘He’s heading down to Formoyle.’
‘Formoyle!’ Mara stopped for a moment to draw breath. Formoyle was another one of these ancient settlements in the dry valley of the Caher river. What possible reason could Rory have for going to Formoyle? There was nothing there but ancient ruins. She sat down beside a small stunted juniper bush which was sheltering a clump of burnet roses. Amazingly one pure white flower bloomed among the black hips. She waited fingering the petals until Shane had climbed back down again.
‘I’ve lost sight of him,’ he said disconsolately. Shane was especially fond of Bran so Mara assumed a nonchalant air.
‘We’ll follow on across the saddle,’ she said. ‘He’ll slow down soon.’
The saddle was the high plateau of rock that lay between the two river valleys. The ground seemed as if some ancient plough worked by giants had chopped the stones into hundreds of small rocks. The flat slabs were heavily scored with lines as if a coulter had been dragged along their surface. Here and there, where goat droppings had fertilized the small hollows, there were exquisite little rock gardens of ferns and even, in one of them, three tiny white flowers of wild strawberries, warmed by the stored heat of the limestone, blossomed among them as if it were May again. But mainly it was just unrelieved boulders and crushed stone. The slanting sun made it a dazzling sight.
Mara did not rush. There was no possibility of anyone catching up with Bran; he would return once he lost the trail. In any case, the ground was treacherous and she had no wish for anyone to sprain an ankle.
‘I haven’t been up here for ages,’ she said looking around. ‘I remember that there was an old fort here, a huge one with a door high enough to let a giant walk through, that’s why it’s called Caher Ard Dorais. Can you see it yet, any of you?’
Shane, who was still ahead of the others, shook his head. Mara began to get a little worried. As she remembered it Caher Ard Dorais was about halfway on this rocky ground between the two river valleys. The sun was now directly in their faces. It was moving rapidly into the west. They would go as far as the ancient enclosure, she planned, but then they should turn back.
It took quite some time to reach the fort. They climbed
on the high banks and could see for a long distance from there. The green valley of the Caher river was quite visible, but there was no sign of Bran. A herd of cattle walked slowly along, pausing to take a bite here and there from the succulent clumps of grass beside the river. Bran had been trained to ignore sheep and cows, but it was unlikely that the cows would be so at ease if he were anywhere in the vicinity. They would have been glancing nervously over their shoulders at the slightest smell or sound of a dog.
‘We’ll have to turn back now,’ she said decisively as they scrambled down. ‘We came out to find Rory and there is no sign of him anywhere. We’ll find the others and join in the search around Cappanabhaile. That’s the place where he’ll be found.’
‘But what about Bran?’ asked Shane anxiously.
‘Don’t worry about him, he’ll be back soon,’ she said reassuringly and then raised her voice to summon Aidan and Hugh who had gone to explore inside the giant’s door. ‘Come back, boys, we’ll go back to Cappanabhaile,’ she called. ‘We’ll just see if Sheedy is at his place on our way back. He might have some more sensible news of Rory than Cuan had. In any case, he was at Father David’s burial so I do need to ask him a few questions. Bran will join us when he’s caught whatever he’s chasing, or when he gets tired of it.’
It was true, she told herself. There was no point in trying to follow the dog; he would come back when he had found his quarry. There was little doubt in her mind now; Bran had lost Rory’s scent when he had been hesitating around the gate of Lios na gCat. He had lost that faint twenty-eight-hour-old scent of the young bard and then picked up a newer
stronger scent – of a fox, perhaps, or even of a wolf. Either would have accounted for his sudden excitement. She wasn’t worried about the dog; like all of his breed he had a strong homing instinct; he would come home by nightfall. She dismissed the matter from her mind.
But had Rory come to Cuan’s gate? And if he had, where had he gone then? Was he really lying injured somewhere on Cappanabhaile Mountain? Or was there a more sinister explanation for his absence?
BECHBRETHA (BEE JUDGEMENTS)
Dírann
, unshared land, is land available for all to use. It is mainly mountainous land, deep forest land or marsh land.
A man is entitled to hunt freely upon such places.
If He finds a swarm of bees there, he may make it his own if he pays one-third of its value to the Church or to his taoiseach.
L
IOS MAC ZIODA had been built for defence. Its western face stood directly over a hundred-feet-high cliff of sheer rock, the small house dwarfed by the huge double walls that curved in a semicircle behind it. At first it seemed as if only an eagle could broach this impenetrable stronghold, but on the southern side there was a small gap in the wall and a well-worn track leading up showed this was the way that Sheedy himself entered the stronghold.
‘No one around, I’d say,’ said Hugh as Mara and her scholars dragged themselves up the steep path.
It was true that there was a deserted feel about the place. No cows lowing, no dogs barking, no geese cackling; everything was very quiet. Even though the path they followed was obviously used, the grass beaten down, yet it seemed to be the width of one man only with long thorny briars of dog roses reaching across their heads, and the tiny ivory heads of pointed ink-cap mushrooms remained unbroken in the cool depths of the mosses on either side of the path.
And yet there was someone living there. A pungent, bitter smell of peat filled the air and a plume of purple-grey rose from a hole in the roof of the cabin-like house. Beside the gap leading into the small haggard in front of the house was a pickaxe. It was thick in fresh mud and had a strange smell from it. Mara sniffed at it. The pickaxe had a smell of sulphur, just the same smell as they had all noticed when they had visited the silver mine.
‘Do you think that there is anyone there?’ Hugh spoke in a low voice. Mara wasn’t surprised to hear a slight tremor in it. There was something strange about this place. However, she had to see Sheedy again at some stage and it would be ridiculous to pass his door without making an effort. She raised a hand to tap on the door, but it suddenly opened and the man was on the doorstep staring at them as if he had never seen humans in this place before.
He was such a strange-looking little man – a small, neat man, with a bald head and watery blue eyes. He was not much above thirty, guessed Mara, but the loss of hair made him look older. He said nothing and made no gesture to invite them inside. This was strange in the Burren where the
words, ‘come in, come in,’ always seemed to be inseparable from the action of opening the door. This man just stood and looked and expressed no surprise at seeing a woman and three boys on his doorstep.
‘You are Sheedy?’ asked Mara in a friendly way. He still stared at her; it was obvious that he had not remembered her from the day at the silver mines so she added, ‘I am Mara, Brehon of the Burren, and these boys are my scholars.’
Was he going to ask her in, she wondered. And while she was wondering, he took one step forward, pulled the door behind him so vigorously that it slammed loudly and then began to walk down the path towards the gap.
‘I must be getting on with my work,’ he muttered, as if they had just finished a half-hour talk.
‘You’ve heard that Sorley the silversmith was murdered in the graveyard on the day of Father David’s burial?’ asked Mara quickly, raising her voice. She felt she needed to pierce through a fog in this man’s brain.
‘What?’ he stopped for a moment and then went on. Mara hastened after him.
‘You were there, on that Thursday morning, over a week ago. Many people testified that you were there. You came in late, didn’t you?’
‘That’s right.’ He gazed at her with annoyance, rather as one might look at a bee impeding progress.
‘When you were outside, did you see anyone? Did you see anyone near the graveyard, after the bell had gone for the service.’
He stopped then and considered the matter for a
moment. Then he spoke. His voice had the rusty air of one who did not use the organ too frequently.
‘I hold this land from the king,’ he said, a note of fanaticism entering his voice. ‘I, and my father before me, we held this land. We pay tribute for it, we pay tribute to the O’Lochlainn and he pays tribute to the king. What more can we do?’
‘No more, surely,’ said Mara soothingly.
‘I must get on with my work,’ he said again. It seemed as though he clung to the one sentence as his way out of this unexpected encounter.
‘Have you any milch cows?’ asked Shane, gazing around at the overgrown haggard. The question was understandable. It did not look as if there was any work in progress for Sheedy to do. There was no trace of any farmyard, no haystacks, no cow muck; the stone-girt haggard was filled with frothing masses of the small pink Herb-Robert flowers, each small blossom set daintily amongst its lacy foliage. No cow had tramped through here for months, or even a year thought Mara, as she waited to hear what the man would say; there was nothing here but a strange silence and emptiness.
‘Cows! How can I have milch cows?’ Sheedy stared at Shane with a bemused expression. ‘How can I have any cows, little gentleman, when all my land is poisoned by that man, Sorley? No grass can grow with that filthy stuff flowing down the hill. Cows need grass, you know, and they need clean water, too, you know that, don’t you?’ He spoke in the voice that would be used to a very young child, bending down slightly to look into the boy’s eyes.
Shane ignored that; he was a boy who was always confident with adults. ‘What’s wrong with your water, then?’ he asked with a puzzled frown.
‘The hill is poisoned, that’s what’s wrong, little gentleman. He’s poisoned the hill, the king’s own hill has been poisoned.’ He said the last words in a sing-song tone of voice. ‘My spring has been poisoned. Will you tell the king that, little gentleman? Even the bees will be poisoned soon and what will we all do, then?’
‘Bees?’ queried Shane. ‘How can the bees get poisoned?’
Sheedy said nothing. He did not appear to hear Shane’s question. He walked briskly down the feet-worn path, bent down and slung the pickaxe over his back.
‘I must be getting on with my work,’ he said again.
‘Wait a minute. You haven’t answered my question.’ Mara made her voice authoritative but it had little effect on this strange man. As if directed by an inner voice, he marched down the lane, calling over his shoulder, ‘I must get on with my work’.
‘You should answer the Brehon when she asks you a question,’ reproved Aidan, taking his responsibilities as a senior member of the law school seriously and dodging in front of Sheedy to block his progress.
‘It’s for the king to answer all questions,’ said Sheedy in a high-pitched, strange voice. He pushed Aidan aside with great ease and then went on down the hillside singing lustily in a strange, high-pitched voice: ‘The king is the king of all of the bees . . ’
‘Is he mad?’ Hugh asked the question in an awed voice.
‘He does seem strange,’ said Mara thoughtfully, ‘but
that could be because he lives alone. When you are Brehons you may have to decide if someone is a
dásachtach
and to do that you must hear all the available evidence and detach external mannerisms from real insanity.’
They received this in silence and she thought with some compunction that at times they must feel that there were too many laws for their brains to absorb.
‘What do you think Sheedy is doing with that pickaxe?’ she asked. That was a simpler and more down-to-earth question.
‘Perhaps he’s hoping to find silver on his land,’ said Hugh eagerly. ‘I’ve been wondering whether there might be silver on the land around my father’s place at Carron. My father says that it is very expensive to buy the ore from the merchant ships that come into Galway from Spain. If he could find silver he could have a mine.’
‘I reckon that Sheedy is going towards Sorley’s mine,’ said Aidan, stopping to listen. ‘He’s going down the Rathborney path, now. Listen, you can hear him singing his strange song about the king of the bees.’
‘Surely it should be the queen of the bees.’ Shane had a logical mind.
‘He’s definitely crazy, Brehon.’ Aidan sounded scared. Suddenly he had realized that he was the eldest scholar present. All of his years at the law school he had relied on the older boys and now a note of deep worry sounded in his voice. Mara decided to allow Sheedy to go. Her first responsibility was to her young scholars.
‘Perhaps you’re right,’ she said gazing after Sheedy. He had a lethal weapon there, slung carelessly across his back;
she had no right to expose these young boys to any danger. ‘Let him get ahead,’ she said in a low voice, ‘and then we’ll join the others on Cappanabhaile.’
‘Shall we go down the Rathborney path after him?’ asked Hugh in a slightly uncertain voice.
‘No, we’ll just climb up here at the back and go across Feenagh and then down the other side.’ It would be simpler to go by the Rathborney path, but Mara was determined to let Sheedy get well ahead and, if possible, have people like Cumhal and Muiris nearby when she encountered him again.
‘Yes, let’s,’ said Shane enthusiastically and, followed by the others, began the steep climb at the back of Lios Mac Sioda. They were all soaked in sweat and panting hard by the time they reached the top of the cliff face, but there was a disappointment ahead of them; there was no possibility of turning to go back towards Cappanabhaile and Rathborney as the cliff on the eastern side dropped down, sheer as the wall of a house.
‘What’ll we do, Brehon?’ asked Hugh.
‘I think we’d better go on up to the next terrace,’ said Mara, looking back down the way that they came. ‘I don’t think that I fancy going back down that way again. It was hard enough to climb up it, but I think it could be quite dangerous to try to climb back down.’
She was annoyed with herself. She wished that she had never bothered with Sheedy, or with Bran, either. Both of these had delayed her little group and now the sky had turned a pale shade of gold and the air was suddenly cooler and damper. When they reached the top of the next terrace the pale blue sea was visible with a streak of amber across
its smooth surface. The misty outlines of the Aran Islands were beginning to dissolve and merge with the sky beyond. The sun was near to setting.
‘If we go on up here a little this way, Brehon,’ said Shane returning from a quick reconnoitre, ‘we can actually get back down again – it’s quite an easy path, this way.’
‘We’ll follow you then, Shane,’ said Mara, trying to impress on her mind never to do this sort of thing again. Her great fault was her impulsiveness. It worked much of the time: a quick decision, and then a task was done, or a problem solved, but there were times when it got her into trouble and this looked like being one of those times. If she did get those boys back safely, she promised herself, she would send Cumhal and Sean to fetch, in a dignified way, any future suspects for questioning to Cahermacnaghten, and never go scrambling around a mountainside again after them.
Shane’s way down was a good one. It was steep, but the rocks were broken into slabs and they could go down, step by step, in perfect safety. However, the mist was now rising in erratic leaps and bounds. One minute they were gazing around an ocean of grey stone, the next they could barely see a few feet in front of them. Mara began to worry that her sense of direction, never her strongest point, might lead her astray. The trouble was that they could not steer a straight path; there was always a boulder to go around, or a small chasm to avoid. She prayed that they would reach the Rathborney path before the mist completely engulfed the mountain.
‘If we keep our face to the sun until we reach the path, we should be all right, Brehon,’ said Aidan voicing her
thoughts. She was touched by the reassuring air of hearty courage which he had assumed. At times he could be a nuisance, but today he seemed to be showing another side. The steepness was levelling off now and she wondered whether they had reached the path; however, the silent bank of fog was now completely wrapped around them.
‘Wait a minute,’ she said. ‘Are you all here? Aidan, Hugh, Shane, are you all there?’
‘Yes, Brehon.’ Three voices answered at almost the same moment.
‘I was wondering whether we have reached the path?’ Mara tried to keep her voice from betraying her anxiety. ‘Have any of you been as far up this path before? I think it leads right up to a gap in the mountain and you can look down and see the sea by Black Head. I’ve been along it once, but it’s twenty years ago.’
‘It doesn’t feel like a path,’ said Shane doubtfully, scuffing his feet on the stone.
‘We’ll go another bit,’ said Mara, ‘but make sure that you can see each other, there’s just enough light to do that.’
The ground began to rise a bit so that must have been the right decision. They could not have reached the path yet. She prayed that they would do soon, because the mist was disorientating.
‘Surely by now, we should have reached the path, Brehon, shouldn’t we?’ said Aidan.