Chain of Evidence (10 page)

‘I don’t think that we can speculate anymore until we look at the place where the body was found. Perhaps, while you are waiting, you’d better see to your ponies,’ said Mara. She guessed that Ardal, always the soul of politeness and
helpfulness
, would come straight back with Moylan. It would be just as well if they were all ready for him when he arrived. May was a busy time for him with lots of young foals being born. Especially with this very bad weather and the frequency of cold, wet showers, his valuable foals would be needing care and shelter.

Slaney, she thought, as she crossed the yard to have a word with Cumhal, was she perhaps a murder suspect? Well, that was an interesting thought. Mara examined the existing evidence with scrupulous care. The thought that she disliked Slaney made her take extra pains. Could the woman have been so full of anger against Garrett that she would go to the length of killing him? Mara considered the matter carefully. Divorce might not have seemed like a solution to Slaney. After all, Slaney was a Galway woman, brought up under English law. She would not regard a divorce as a possible solution to her fury and jealousy when her husband introduced another wife into his household. It would have no legality in the city of Galway so she would be merely a wife who had deserted her husband. And what if Garrett decided to divorce her for
infertility
? That would shame her dreadfully. Slaney was not a woman to flout conventions, definitely not an impulsive woman who would run off and turn up empty-handed at her relations. She was a shrewd woman who always knew how to turn matters to her own advantage.

And the trick of slipping the body onto the path of the marauders driving the herds of stolen cattle was a clever one.

A son by a woman other than the chief wife has full rights of inheritance as long as his father recognises him in public. If the father disputes the claim, then such matters as family appearance, voice and way of behaviour, as well as the sworn oath of the wife, is taken into account by the judge of the case.

A
rdal was already in the law school enclosure by the time that Mara came out of the kitchen house. He was tenderly helping Fiona onto her pony, and enquiring whether her cloak was warm enough for the cold wind. Mara surveyed the two with interest. Ardal had reduced to despair all of the mothers and their daughters of the Burren and of the surrounding territories. He was immensely rich, not just from his lands and rental on the Burren, but from the successful business which he ran, selling beautiful and well-bred horses to the whole of Ireland and to many people in England, including King Henry VIII himself. He would be a splendid match for Fiona, but did seventeen and forty-two go together? Still, thought Mara, I married at fourteen and I married a selfish, untalented and loud-mouthed schoolboy and after the first few ecstatic months was extremely unhappy with him. She smiled to herself, remembering how shocked the people of the Burren had been when she had successfully conducted her own divorce using a little-known Brehon law that a wife may divorce a husband, who, in a public ale house, discusses details of their love-making. Ardal would make Fiona a wonderful husband, and with his copper-coloured hair and blue eyes and tall, broad-shouldered figure, he was a handsome man still. But, apart from the age difference, would it be right for a clever girl, like Fiona, to give up her studies and her chance to become a Brehon like her father? And if she wanted to continue on her path to become a Brehon, would Ardal be happy to allow her? With a sigh, Mara shook her head and urged her mare Brig to go faster. I have enough to do without matchmaking, she told herself severely, and turned her mind away from Ardal and Fiona.

This murder, if it were a murder – and Mara had a strong feeling that it was an intentional killing – had to be solved quickly before there were any repercussions from the MacNamara clan. The peace of the kingdom, and the peace of mind of her husband, Turlough Donn, depended now on her ability to solve this secret and unlawful killing as soon as possible. The people of the Burren and its four main clans, the O’Briens, the O’Lochlainns, the O’Connors, as well as the MacNamaras, depended upon her tact, her brains and her ability to unravel clues. And all of these abilities had to be brought into play in order to solve this secret and unlawful killing of Garrett MacNamara.

‘Cold weather for the time of year.’ Ardal had moved up beside her and was surveying the fields, dotted with cowslips and pale mauve cuckoo flowers. ‘Very little growth in the grass, yet,’ he said gloomily. ‘Hard to realise that it is May. Not a butterfly to be seen. Usually those cuckoo flowers are covered in those orange-tipped butterflies at this time of year. And I’ve only heard the cuckoo once or twice. It’s more like winter than late spring.’

‘It will come in a rush when it does come,’ prophesied Mara. Cumhal had made that remark this morning and Cumhal was a good weather prophet and Mara often found that repeating his forecasts gave her an undeserved reputation of knowing about the land and the problems of those who farmed it. While trotting out a few more of Cumhal’s sayings her mind went back to that chain around Garrett’s leg and she interrupted Ardal’s account of a late spring when he was a young man to ask him about the length of the chain.

‘How long, Brehon?’ He was taken aback by her question.

‘Yes,’ said Mara. ‘A foot, a yard, three yards . . .? What would your memory of it be, Ardal?’ Her scholars, she noticed, had stopped chattering and teasing each other and had moved up close to them and were obviously listening to the conversation.

Ardal took his time before answering. It was one of the things that she liked about him. She could not have asked for a more accurate and careful witness.

‘The foot was broken in half, twisted, but the upper half remained,’ he said speaking slowly. ‘And, of course, most of the flesh from the leg was gone, trampled. Just the bone, quite dislocated from the knee, but still attached by some sinews, I’d say. I would reckon that the chain had been originally tied to the poor man’s ankle. It was quite a slender piece of chain,’ he went on, his blue eyes not looking at her, but staring straight ahead. ‘In fact, now that I come to recollect,
it may well have been one of those short lengths of chain that are used to lead a bull, to tie through the ring at the end of his nose, these ones with long, flat links which can be threaded through to form a noose – so, to answer your question, Brehon, altogether about three feet.’

‘Thank you, Ardal.’ Mara’s voice was sincere – certainly he was a good and careful witness, but inwardly she felt dismayed, and she heard a low murmur from the scholars behind them. There seemed to be no sensible explanation for a three-foot long piece of chain to be tied to a man’s ankle. She stared ahead, noting the black cloud in the distance and calculating how long it would be before one of those downpours of sleety rain would occur. Three feet of chain – that did not seem enough to tie an unconscious man to a rock by the side of the road. She thought of something then and turned towards him.

‘This is a lot to ask of your memory, Ardal,’ she said, ‘but did the end of the chain look broken, look as though it had been snapped?’

He answered her very readily. ‘No, Brehon, I could almost swear that it had not. That was probably why I thought of it as a bull chain – these chains, though short, are always strongly made to make sure that they will not break with the weight of the animal.’

Moylan, from behind them, cleared his throat in a diplomatic manner and Mara looked back.

‘Yes, Moylan,’ she said gravely, suppressing a grin at his tact and good manners. A year ago he would have impetuously joined into the conversation.

‘Fintan MacNamara at the smithy makes chains like that, Brehon,’ he said. ‘I’ve seen them on the shelves up there – and they would be about a yard long.’

‘That’s right, Moylan.’ Ardal nodded his approval. ‘And these bull chains are always made from slender flat links because it is much easier to slot them through than if they are thick.’

‘So a chain like this would be possessed by many people on the Burren,’ put in Fiona and Ardal gave her a tender smile.

‘You’re right,’ he said. ‘I would say that there wouldn’t be a cabin or a barn in the whole of the kingdom that would not have some of those chains stored in them. We’re just coming near to the spot, now,’ he added. With an air of relief, he said, ‘It looks as though an effort has been made to clean the place up.’

Bother, thought Mara, feeling annoyed with herself. I should have sent orders for the place to be left alone. It had, of course, at first seemed not to be a crime, but an unfortunate accident – in fact, it might still turn out to be that, but the more she thought of Ardal’s strange story about a chain around the leg of the dead man, the more she felt that this death would turn out to be a secret and unlawful killing, something that she, as Brehon of the Burren, would have to investigate and allocate a punishment to the guilty person.

‘Just about here,’ said Ardal, checking his beautiful mare with a gentle shake of the reins. ‘Yes, I remember that gorse bush was just in line with the body. You can see it is broken on the hillside edge of it. I reckoned that the herd of cows did that.’ He jumped lightly from the back of his horse, looped her reins over a stump of a willow bush and went to the head of Mara’s horse.

‘There’s a good stone here, Brehon,’ he said leading her towards a large flat boulder by the side of the road and helping her to dismount and then carefully performing the same service for Fiona while the boys leaped athletically from their ponies and stood looking in dismayed silence at the spot where Garrett’s body had lain.

About ten yards of roadway had been shovelled clean – had probably even been swabbed down with buckets of water from the nearby river – as the road seemed extraordinarily clean in comparison with the rest of the route. Mara compressed her lips, angry with herself for not being on the spot earlier, or at least not to have sent an urgent message.

‘We’ll search the sweepings, Brehon.’ Fachtnan was at her side and seemed to know her thoughts. He spoke consolingly and then ordered Shane and Hugh to use their knives to cut some strong twigs from the goat willow bush so that the scholars could rake through the debris at the side of the road.

Mara looked around her. The spot where Garrett’s body had lain was well chosen. It was on a small road that ran through a valley between the mountain sides. Looking around she realised that it would be completely hidden from the castle itself. Nothing but a small cabin could be glimpsed from that spot and on a day when most of the inhabitants of the Burren were up on the mountain getting ready to celebrate the festival of Bealtaine, there would be no one in the fields or attending to the calving cows.

‘Search carefully for the chain,’ she said coming over to her scholars and looking down at the cowpats that they were forking through with their sticks.

‘At least the wind has dried them out,’ said Ardal in a low voice. ‘The stench was terrible when I came upon the body. I had just called in at the castle and was taking this route as a short cut back when I saw all the crows pecking at something. I thought it was some unfortunate cow or a calf and then realised . . .’

‘A leather pouch with a broken strap, Brehon,’ shouted Fiona, unconcernedly picking it out from the mess with her dainty fingers.

‘The strap’s broken,’ said Shane. ‘I’d say that once the man was down and lying on the ground, a cow probably caught its leg in it and then broke the strap loose.’

‘A cow weighs about six hundredweight – that’s what my father says – think of that; they’re massive animals – about six times heavier than Fiona – well, they are massive!’ said Moylan, and the other scholars, by their thoughtful faces, were picturing the scene when the cows swept over and across the prostrate body of Garrett MacNamara.

‘Let’s look in the pouch,’ said Aidan impatiently and Fiona opened it.

‘There’s just this, Brehon,’ she said and handed to Mara a folded and sealed roll of vellum. Her eyes widened as she read the inscription. ‘It’s to Cardinal Wolsey,’ Fiona said. ‘Perhaps it belongs to Stephen Gardiner, what do you think, Brehon?’

‘He would just be the messenger, I believe,’ said Mara examining the small neat letters. ‘This is Garrett’s handwriting,’ she added as she broke the seal and unfolded the vellum. It only took her a minute to scan the words and then she rolled it up again and placed it within her own pouch. She would have read it aloud if only her scholars were present, but in front of Ardal, although he was discreet, she felt that she could not betray Garrett’s secrets to him. Back at the law school they would discuss the implications. For now she would keep in mind that Garrett had been a traitor to his king and to his clan; that he was planning to do service to King Henry VIII in return for the title of earl; that he would follow English customs, would wear English clothing and that his eldest and only son Peadar would be given the title of Lord Mount Carron and would, without any election, succeed his father to the title of earl and to the extensive property formerly belonging to the MacNamara clan and ruled over by an elected
taoiseach
. No mention, thought Mara, that this son had only just been discovered and that he was not the son of Garrett’s lawfully wedded wife, Slaney. The English minded about things like that, mused Mara, but Garrett had probably decided that nothing should be said on that score, and Stephen Gardiner had been too pleased at securing a convert to the English way of life to bother about a small matter like that. That would be Stephen. An ambitious man, a man with a twinkle in his eye and probably his feet set firmly on the first rung of the ladder to success.

‘I think, Brehon, if you have no further tasks for me, I will leave you now. I must have a word with my steward.’ Ardal’s voice broke into Mara’s thoughts and she smiled gratefully at him. He was such a well-mannered, sensitive man; he had immediately picked up on her slight hesitation and was now making haste to remove himself from the scene and leave her to consult with her scholars on business, which, for the moment, would have to be private. Mara thanked him warmly for giving up his time and when he was gone turned to her scholars who were looking at her expectantly. Briefly she summarized Garrett’s letter to Cardinal Wolsey, chief advisor to the English king, Henry VIII.