Chain of Evidence (12 page)

Slaney, she knew, benefitted considerably under Garrett’s will made after the first month of his marriage, but that was not a matter for the clan. Garrett had personal wealth from his enterprises as a sea-merchant, and that wealth had been his to do with as he pleased. Who knows whether, if he had lived, that he might not have changed this will and given that silver to his newly discovered son, or, indeed, to the mother of that son. For a moment Mara speculated about Slaney. Had she, indeed, played a part in urging her husband to confront the herd of cows?

Rhona was looking indifferent to her pronouncement. She appeared an intelligent woman and she was acquainted with a Brehon in the Highlands of Scotland where the law was the same, so, no doubt, she was prepared for Mara’s announcement. She showed no particular signs of sorrow at Garrett’s death; in all probability she had just come to seek him out in order to give her young son his rights.

‘And,’ said Mara loudly and clearly, ‘I now need to ask the clan, and as I know that at least one member of each branch of the
derbh-fine
is present here today, whether you are satisfied that the
tánaiste,
Jarlath, be declared to be your
taoiseach
.’

There was a full-throated shout of ‘ay’ at that and several exuberant members of the clan drummed their feet on the ground. Mara held up a hand for silence. She had not liked Garrett particularly, but she found the lack of sorrow for his terrible death and the lack of sympathy for the widow to be slightly distasteful.

‘I shall speak to the king of your wish and, if he approves, the ceremony will take place within the next week if possible, at the ancient burial place outside the tower house and all members of the clan will be invited to attend,’ she said curtly. It would be, of course, unknown for the king to go against the wishes of the clan in such an important matter of the election of a
taoiseach
, but she was pleased to see the slightly startled look in the eyes of Tomás.

Mara beckoned to Jarlath. ‘Where can we speak alone?’ she asked. Until, and not until, Tomás was elected by the clan as
tánaiste
he had, in her view, no special place, so Jarlath the inheritor of his brother’s position was the one to talk to.

He led the way in silence to a small room leading off the hall. He did not, she thought – as she beckoned her scholars to follow her – have the elated look of a man who had suddenly, and unexpectedly succeeded to high office at a young age. It must have come as a shock to him – and perhaps not a pleasant shock. There had been just a matter of about ten years between the brothers and Jarlath had been leading an adventurous life on the high seas where death could come at any moment, either from attacks by pirates or from storm-force winds and tumultuous seas, while Garrett cosseted himself in the warmth and comfort of his newly furnished castle. There would have been no guarantee that Jarlath would have ever been
taoiseach
of the clan. In any case, he had been so recently elected as
tánaiste
that he had hardly had time to reflect on the future.

‘I just wanted to ask you about yesterday, Jarlath,’ Mara said as soon as the door was closed by Fachtnan. ‘I seem to remember when you left us on the mountain you had determined to go down to Carron – you used some such words as “root Garrett out”. Did you, in fact, see your brother?’

‘I didn’t, Brehon,’ said Jarlath, his tone sounding sad. ‘There wasn’t a sign of him anywhere. I suppose he was already dead.’

‘But you didn’t see the body, did you?’

He looked startled at that. ‘No, of course not,’ he said indignantly. ‘You don’t think that I would go off on a hunt after cattle thieves and leave my only brother lying dead on a mountainside road. No, I came from the easterly direction – I came by way of Knockanes and then down; the cattle had passed – I could hear them thundering down the road at a distance so I went straight to the stable and got my horse and followed instantly. By that stage, I suppose, poor Garrett was dead on the Castletown road and I could have done nothing for him.’

‘And all was quiet at the castle when you arrived,’ suggested Mara.

Jarlath stared at her with an expression of astonishment.

‘What? Quiet!’ he exploded. ‘You can’t know much about cattlemen, Brehon, if you think that. The whole place was in uproar. They had been in the middle of their supper when the news came. The women were dashing around like headless chickens and the men were pelting down the road, which was just plain stupidity, because any man that got in the way of that herd would end up like poor Garrett.’

Mara suppressed a smile. She liked him for his frank
indignation
and his youthful energy. He was on his feet now, striding around the room energetically.

‘What did you do?’ she asked.

‘Sent them through the fields to get ahead if possible,’ he replied impatiently, ‘told them that if they couldn’t get ahead, then to be on hand to get as many of them back as possible. Of course it didn’t help that Garrett, silly id— . . . that Garrett had quarrelled with his chief cowman and dismissed him so that there was no one on hand to give orders to the others. For a moment I thought he might be going to help but when he saw me there he just went back into his cottage and shut the door – can’t blame him really. By all accounts, Garrett had no right to dismiss him from his position. They lost a few cows because Garrett refused to rebuild a cattle cabin that had blown down and so there was nothing but that rickety old place on the hill which only held one calving cow at a time.’

‘And had Garrett’s body been discovered by the time that you got back?’ Mara guessed the answer before he nodded in agreement. Ardal would have been ahead of him. Ardal was a solitary man who had little interest in cattle – his main livestock were either sheep or most importantly horses. He had left as soon as the cattle had been recovered and rode on ahead of the crowd. Jarlath was a more convivial type who would have enjoyed the company of the other men and would, no doubt, have jogged along, exchanging tall stories and jokes with Turlough, Teige O’Brien and Finn O’Connor,
taoiseach
of the O’Connor clan. Ardal would have been the first back and the first to discover the body.

‘That’s right,’ he said. ‘Slaney –’ he wrinkled his nose with distaste – ‘well, she was useless, prostrate with grief, according to herself. She had told the maids to clean him up and—’

‘And to burn his clothing,’ interrupted Mara.

‘It had to be done,’ he said. ‘The body – well, I’ve seen some terrible sights at sea, but never anything as bad as this.’ For a moment, he almost looked sick and then shook off the memory. ‘It had to be done,’ he said firmly. ‘When I arrived, they had got as far as removing him from the road and putting the remains onto a pallet and carrying it into an empty cabin to keep the dogs and pigs away. He was lying there when I arrived and I told them to carry him into the house.’

Mara’s heart sank. So the body had been left unattended for probably about an hour. Before Jarlath arrived, there would have been opportunity and time for anyone to have removed the chain – if indeed there was anything suspicious about its presence. However, she asked the question and he stared at her blankly.

‘A chain, Brehon, why, on earth, would anyone tie a chain around Garrett’s leg?’

And so the question was still left unanswered.

A witness must be sensible, honest, conscientious and of good memory.
A person who gives evidence in court can only give that evidence on matters seen or heard and has to swear that his words are true. No evidence can be accepted which has not been seen, personally, by the witness. If possible there should be two or three witnesses, but the evidence of one trustworthy witness is superior to the evidence of several untrustworthy witnesses.

M
ara had a practical mind and seldom spent too long on questions that could not be answered. Jarlath’s evidence, she told herself, had neither confirmed nor denied the presence of a chain. She had, she admitted to herself, puzzled over the evidence of Ardal O’Lochlainn that he had seen a chain around the leg of the trampled body of Garrett MacNamara. But that had been denied by his wife Slaney and by the
maidservants
who had stripped and washed the body and burned the remnants of clothing. And Jarlath seemed to have no knowledge of it, either.

And why should they lie?

Mara moved the affair to a back shelf in her mind as she returned to the great hall and sought out Tomás. She watched him unobtrusively for a moment. Jarlath was on friendly terms with all, popular and unassuming, slapping a back of one man, bestowing a warm smile on another and then cracking a joke with a group who were gathered around a large flask of mead. Tomás, on the other hand, appeared to have taken over the position of host, of master of the house, directing one servant to refill the almost empty wood basket and another to light the candelabra on the wall, a third to pull across the heavy velvet curtains. A fourth servant, who had just entered the room, made straight for him and whispered something into his ear. He it was who seemed to be in charge at the moment and Mara approached him.

‘I need to speak with Slaney, now,’ she said firmly.

He frowned slightly. ‘I feel that you may be wasting your time, Brehon. I have just received a poor account of her state of mind.’

‘I shall be judge of that,’ snapped Mara. ‘Please summon a servant to show me the way.’

‘I had better go with you myself, to make sure that you are admitted,’ he said weightily after a moment’s pause

And this was another puzzle, thought Mara as, followed by her scholars, she was ushered ceremoniously by Tomás up the stairs, past several men-at-arms who were lounging on window seats and who straightened abruptly at the sight of Tomás. Why was Slaney being confined to her bedroom? How could she be under suspicion, in any sensible mind, of having a hand in her husband’s death beneath the hoofs of the cattle? After all, at the moment, only the tiniest suspicion that Garrett’s death might not have been an accident existed in Mara’s mind alone, and none but her own scholars were aware of her thoughts on this matter.

And yet it did appear that Slaney was confined and under guard.

Tomás tapped on a richly carved door. Almost immediately there was a loud click in the door lock and then it was opened to him by a woman with a key in her hand. Mara acted quickly, took the key and then instead of entering the room, she pushed the door shut again, right in the face of an astonished woman.

‘Why is Slaney locked in her bedroom?’ she asked Tomás calmly, suppressing the anger that she felt. She placed her back against the door and kept her voice down to a low level so that none other than Tomás could hear her. Facts before
feelings
, was what she always told her scholars and she was continuously aware of her duty to give them the best of examples in dealing with the people of the kingdom. She would deal with this matter coolly and sensibly.

Tomás hesitated. He looked at her scholars with a frown and she gestured to Moylan to move them back to the window. She would not give this man any excuse not to tell the truth, she thought.

‘There’s an ugly rumour that Slaney is responsible for the
death of her husband,’ he said eventually in a low tone. ‘The clan are very angry about this. She is locked in for her own safety.’

‘A rumour,’ she repeated. ‘What is the rumour?’

‘It is said that she goaded and shamed the man into going out and trying to stop the cows,’ he said eventually.

‘A man is responsible for his own deeds,’ Mara retorted. ‘Even if this is true, and I have heard that there were quarrels between them on that day, no sane man would face a herd of stampeding cows. If your cousin Garrett did do this, did go
down and face the stampede, then the responsibility was his
and the consequences, God have mercy on him, had to be borne by him.’

‘The clan don’t think like that.’ Tomas was stiff-necked and hostile. ‘They feel that his wife is responsible. It was not like him to do a thing like that. He must have been forced to do it. That is what the clan believe, Brehon,’ he added.

‘The clan, like all other clans in the kingdom, will keep within the letter of the law,’ snapped back Mara. She was losing her patience with this man. Quickly she twisted open the handle of the door and once inside did not return the elaborate key to the door, but brushed past the woman with the outstretched hand.

‘Slaney,’ she said in loud clear tones, as she approached the carved and curtained bed, followed by her scholars. ‘Slaney, I am very sorry for your trouble.’

The traditional greeting to those in mourning had no effect and there was no reply.

A woman who was sitting beside the bed stood up quickly, looking uncertainly at Tomás, and without a glance at her Mara took her place and bent over the statuesque figure lying inside the elaborate draperies.

She had been drugged or deliberately fed too much mead, Mara guessed as she looked into the very black centres of the woman’s prominent blue eyes that stared at the draperies overhead. It was ridiculous to say that sorrow had reduced her to this. Mara had seen her a few hours after the discovery of her husband’s body and Slaney had been her usual authoritative self, bullying people into saying rosaries and very much in command of her household.

‘Slaney,’ she said. Her voice was low, but pitched to the woman’s ear and Slaney turned her eyes on her. For a moment there was a flicker in them and then the eyelids shut.

I wish Nuala was here, thought Mara as she reached over and took the woman’s hand in hers, her finger on that spot in her wrist where, according to Nuala, the heartbeat could be counted. If that was true, Slaney’s heartbeat was very slow, not agitated in the way that a bereaved wife’s should be.

‘She’s not well,’ said a servant on the other side of the bed. Her voice was low and she cast a quick, almost guilty look at Tomás. She spoke Gaelic but with a strong English accent. Mara recognised her. She had come from Galway with Slaney, and unlike the rest of the servants at Carron Castle, appeared to be devoted to her mistress.