A MASS FOR THE DEAD (19 page)

An older man wearing the robes of a priest looked up from the garden he had been tilling. “Whatever is it, then?” he asked, a quizzical expression on his weathered face. Briefly I explained, leaving out the bit about the sabotage. Let him think us incompetent sailors if he must. Best not to give too much away, I thought, not sure myself why I was not so forthcoming.

“Well then, you first must be getting warm,” said the man practically. He led us into his house, sat us before the peat fire, and gave us a drink of
uisgebeatha
mixed with hot water, as well as some porridge, which helped to stop Seamus’s teeth from clattering so and brought a bit of color back into his cheeks. The lad still coughed now and again, and I did not like the look of him.

“You will wanting to sleep, I am thinking,” said our benefactor, whose name was Father Padraic. “And then tomorrow we will be seeing about getting you back to Colonsay. Perhaps one of the fishermen will be taking you over, if not to Colonsay, at least to the main island and you can be hiring a boat from there.”

I nodded, suddenly too exhausted to puzzle it all out, and thankfully laid myself down on the pile of bracken the priest provided, covered myself with a woolen plaid, and sank into a profound sleep.

* * * * *

When I awoke the next morning I could see that the sun, its beams shining in through the narrow slit window, had already risen high in the sky. I looked for Seamus but did not see him and wandered outside to find him.

Seamus was helping Father Padraic with his gardening. He looked much better, thankfully; the recuperative powers of the young I supposed. I was feeling much better as well. The sky was clear today and the sea calm, and Nave Island looked much more pleasant, with the little wildflowers blooming in the machair here and there, and white clouds, like young lambs, frolicking in the blue sky over head. Father Padraic looked up and greeted me.

“And so you are awakened after all. It is a sound sleep you were having, and no mistake.”

I nodded, and wondered about a boat back to the main island. “Who is it that lives here with you?” I asked.

The old man nodded with his chin towards the other small huts. “There is Iain Mor, the fisherman, and his brother Niall Sgadan. He is called so because he is such a great one for the fishing of herrings, is Niall,” added the priest by way of explanation.

“And do they have a boat? Would they be taking us to Islay, or even over to Colonsay?”

“They will take you to the main island with no trouble, I am thinking,” said Padraic. “As for Colonsay, they might be taking you there if there was something in it for them.”

I nodded, but my few coins had been lost in the wreck and so I doubted we would be getting a lift to Colonsay with Iain and Niall.

“And no one else lives here?” I asked.

Padraic nodded his head no. “Their mother passed away last winter. A dreadful cough she had, before the end. And their father was lost at sea some years ago. They are bachelors. They have no wives to do for them, but I am thinking they will be finding some before much longer.”

“There are no other people on the island?” Seamus stopped his weeding and looked curiously at me but I had my reasons for asking.

“Och, we get the odd visitor now and again, and some poor wounded beings in need of solitude and healing, but no one else makes their home here.” A gannet cried overhead, emphasizing the isolation of the spot.

“So now tell me of yourselves,” Padraic continued after a moment. “What was bringing you here to Islay? And how did your boat happen to go down yesterday? The weather was not as bad as all that.”

I said we had been visiting relatives on the Rhinns, to bring them the news of my father’s death. As for the boat, I just said it had sprung a bad leak, one that we had not been able to plug. Seamus shot me a confused look, and I sent him a telling look back, hoping he would not contradict me. The story was true, as far as it went.

Padraic nodded. “Well,” he said, “Iain and Niall are out away in their boats the now, taking advantage of this fine day. You must be waiting until they return, and then you can be asking them about it all.”

We helped Padraic with his gardening awhile longer, and then he went into the chapel to say Mass. We followed, and the three of us were the only celebrants. The chapel had a peaceful feel to it, and I was surprised to find the service brought some calm to my soul. Perhaps the Lord would help me to find my father’s killer, I mused as the Mass ended, for I myself was making a fine hash of it all.

We shared Padraic’s simple noonday meal of cheese and bannocks, and then I said I had a mind to explore the rest of the island.

“It will not be taking you long, I think,” observed Padraic dryly, “but sure and it will give you a chance to be stretching your legs.” So Seamus and I set off.

“Why were you not telling him about the holes in the boat?” asked Seamus. I told him my reasons and we explored the island. There was a small hut towards the southern end, by the beach, with a small boat pulled up onto the white sands.

“Who is living there, do you think?” asked Seamus.

“I do not know,” I answered. “Perhaps it is a fisherman’s hut.”

We did not intrude and quickly ended our circuit of the small island at the chapel and Padraic’s own house. The island was small, as he had said, and it took little time to walk around it.

Padraic greeted us, then said, “Iain Mor and Niall are back. You can be asking them about the boat, if you want.”

We walked down the machair to the house Padraic indicated, a low, long, stone dwelling, thatched, with one door for both beast and man. Although we saw few beasts there. Iain and Niall, being fishermen, kept but one cow. A tall man, whom I guessed to be Iain for his height, was driving it into the byre as we approached.

I explained our request and he nodded. “Come away in then, and we shall speak of it.”

He ushered us in, and offered us some
uisgebeatha
, then sat, nodding over his mazer while we explained again what we wanted. Outside I heard voices, his brother Niall, I guessed, and another voice, lower, which I could not catch; it must have been Padraic.

“I am not knowing about Colonsay,” Iain Mor finally said. “There is a good run of fish on the now. We are not wanting to miss them, for they fair jump into our nets. But we will be taking them over to the main island—the day after next, it is, for the market. You can be going with us then.”

It was not what I wanted to hear but perhaps it was all that we would be getting. “What of your brother?” I asked. “Would he be willing to take us over before then?”

“I am needing him to help with the nets,” replied Iain.

“Who is living in that small hut on the end of the island?” I asked. “I saw a small boat there this morning. Perhaps they could be taking us over, at least to the main island.”

Iain looked uncomfortable. “That is just an old boat, I am thinking. There is not likely to be anyone staying there the now.”

“Who lives there?” I pressed.

“Och, it is just someone from the mainland. They are staying there from time to time, when they are traveling. They will be leaving their cows here for the pasture, that is all of it.”

So at length it was agreed that we would ride over to Islay with Iain and Niall and their fish the day after tomorrow, when they went to market. I did not feel resigned to yet another day of inactivity, but neither did I feel like swimming to the main island.

* * * * *

The second day passed much as the first had, but at last the third day, market day, arrived, and Iain and Niall took us with them to the mainland
—
a trifling distance, really, but far enough if one had no boat. Once at the market in Kilnave, it was easy enough to find someone willing to carry us over to Colonsay, especially when His Lordship’s name was mentioned. And so, some five days after we had left, we returned to Scalasaig, alas, without my uncle’s small boat. But my dog greeted me with enthusiasm, while Uncle Gillespic took the loss of his boat philosophically.

“It is a sign you are getting close to the black heart of the matter, Muirteach,” he said, as we walked up to Dun Evin in the evening after I had returned. “And whoever is at that heart is not wanting you to get any further. Who would that be, I wonder? That old woman, do you think she did it?”

“She would have had to walk some distance to find our boat. But that daughter of the Beaton was saying her humors are out of balance, and that she is daft. So perhaps she drilled the holes in the boat out of spite. I can think of no one else there who might have done such a deed.”

There was another thing I had wondered at, and so I returned to the Priory early the next day, to speak with Brother Donal.

“Are you knowing of Father Padraic, the priest who lives over on Nave Island?” I asked him.

“I have heard of him, Muirteach, but he does not come here and I do not leave the Priory often. So no, I do not know him. But I have heard he is a kindly man and a good priest. He is an Islay man, himself, born and bred in the Rhinns I think it was.”

“And who is his parish?”

“He is more of a hermit than a priest of a parish, on that little rock. Some fishermen bide there, that is all.”

That accorded with my time on Nave Island. I did not tell Donal of our wreck, I only said that I had been to Islay to visit my mother’s kin, and had seen the island on our way back, and been curious about it.

“And what is happening here?”

“Calum is acting strangely. He is always checking the scaffolding like a mother hen, and he and Gillecristus are at each other like hounds. He is saying that Gillecristus is wanting the work done too quickly, that he is rushing the construction, while Gillecristus is saying that Calum is out only for the money he and his masons will be making if the work lasts longer.”

Construction had been going on at the Priory for as long as I could remember and it did not seem likely to me that Calum would be needing to make the work last even longer. It had been at least ten years since His Lordship had endowed the latest construction, the cloisters, and the new church, and work had not stopped on them since then.

“And Columbanus?” I asked.

“He is the same. He bakes his bread, but now with such a mournful, sour and sad look to him that I am wondering how the bread is as good as it is. He cries during the Mass, grieving for his poor sister I am guessing.”

“Have you heard aught of Tormod?” I asked.

“We have not seen him here at the Priory,” said Donal. “He has not been back to work yet, although I have heard he is walking again. Thanks be to Our Lord.”

“Aye,” I muttered, with less enthusiasm. I had found young Tormod to be a singularly unlikable fellow. And perhaps not honest either.

I left Donal and found the masons. As the sun had climbed high in the sky they had stopped working and sat among piled stones, eating their noonday meal. I greeted Calum and explained whom I needed to speak with, and he pointed me to an area where some younger lads sat, chewing on bannocks and white cheese.

A gangly boy, a few years younger than Seamus by the look of him, looked warily at me as I approached them and asked for Eogain, Tormod’s brother.

“I am he,” he said. The lad was tall and sharp featured like his brother. “You are Muirteach, are you not? The man looking into the murders for His Lordship?”

I agreed that indeed I was.

“What were you wanting?”

“I was speaking with your brother a while back, and was needing to ask you a few questions, that is all.”

Eogain’s eyes did not loose the suspicious look to them, but he consented to stretch his legs with me a bit and answer my questions.

“There is just one thing that I am wondering. Alasdair Beag was saying he had seen your brother down on the Strand, the evening that the Prior was murdered there. Yet that was the day your brother had his fall, so I am not thinking he could not have been there. Unless he was not so injured as we thought.”

Eogain flushed and ground an unoffending clump of wildflowers into the dirt while he looked at the ground.

“I am not thinking he could have been walking that day,” he finally said. “We carried him back to Kilchattan the next day on a litter.”

“But Alasdair Beag is certain it was your brother. He recognized the cloak.”

Eogain remained silent.

“Surely you are knowing where your brother was that afternoon,” I pressed. “Calum told me you stayed behind at the mason’s village to tend to him, after the accident, when the other men had gone back to work.”

“Aye, so I did.”

“Well, could he move from his bed or no, that afternoon?”

Eogain shook his head.

“How was it then that Alasdair was seeing him down on the Strand? If you are knowing anything of it, you must tell me Eogain.”

Another clump of flowers vanished under the boy’s foot.

“His Lordship is needing this solved. If it was not your brother, who was it down there that Alasdair saw?”

“It was myself,” the boy finally admitted.

“What were you doing?”

“Fishing.” The boy flushed scarlet again and kept his eyes on the dirt beneath his feet.

“What is the shame in that?” I asked.

Eogain shook his head. “He had often boasted of it. Of what there was on the far side of the strand, how fine it was there. And so I took his cloak and went, after he had fallen asleep.”

“Is it the fishing you are speaking of?”

The lad nodded, but still did not look up.

“Well that is not so bad, is it? Were you catching any fish?”

Eogain shook his head no and finally met my gaze. “I was supposed to stay and watch him,” he said stubbornly.

“Well, and so you were, but if your brother was sleeping I do not wonder you wanted to be out and away.” I wondered at the boy’s reaction, for surely there was nothing so shameful in borrowing a cloak and going fishing. “How long were you gone?”

“Not so long as all that. I went down to the Strand and returned before the masons quit for the evening.”

He glanced to where the other workers were standing, preparing to resume their labor. “I must go back, they are starting again.” I nodded my consent and the boy sped back like a rabbit towards the construction.