Chain of Evidence (2 page)

‘You’ll be staying with Garrett, will you?’ she asked. It would not be ideal so she was not surprised when he shook his head.

‘Not for long, not here, not in this castle,’ he said. ‘Things are none too pleasant here at the moment. I didn’t get much of a welcome when I arrived. But perhaps I will build myself a new house on one of the farms that belong to me, that were left to me when my father – may God have mercy on him – died. Anyway, I am home for the moment, not sure what I’m going to do next – in any case, I need to replace my ship; get a few repairs done to the fleet – it will take a while and I don’t want to impose too long on Garrett.’ His smile
broadened
. ‘Things are a bit tense here. You see two of the three visitors I brought with me have caused a bit of an upset. Let me introduce you to them.’

Without saying any more, he took her arm and steered her across the room and towards the window that overlooked the valley. There were two people sitting on the window seat, almost hidden by the splendid curtains of woven brocade. One was a tall, strongly made woman, probably in her middle
thirties
, and the other was a thin boy of about fifteen. They were talking – or at least the woman was talking, whispering the words in the boy’s ear, while he sat, head averted, sulkily gazing at the ground. From time to time she patted his hand as though he were a toddler, not an adolescent. He didn’t look strong, Mara thought. He was very bony and his shoulders were bent over a hollow chest.

But then he looked up and at the sight of his face, Mara stopped abruptly. Not a good-looking boy, though adolescent boys of that age seldom were. But this boy with his fleshy, protruding nose and his heavily swelling lower lip jutting out from the receding chin bore a strong resemblance to someone else in the room. Mara’s eyes turned towards the
taoiseach
, Garrett MacNamara, still greeting the visitors and accepting their condolences on the death of the
tánaiste
. The boy was the image of him.

‘This is my brother’s son, Peadar, and his mother Rhona,’ said Jarlath with the air of someone enjoying the shock that he was causing. ‘They are from Scotland; come and meet them,’ he added and then introduced Mara to the woman, Rhona, whose eyes sparkled with interest as she heard Mara’s office.

‘We have a Brehon in the mountain area that I come from,’ she said. ‘I clean his house, help to milk his cattle and he gives me food and information. He it was who told me of my rights and what my son could expect.’ She laughed suddenly, ‘But I have never heard of a female Brehon. It’s good to see a woman doing a job like that. Mostly it’s the men telling us what to do and we knowing the right way to go before they even open their lips. That’s what we say in Scotland, anyway,’ she added.

‘Well, then, if you come from Scotland, you must meet my scholar, Fiona,’ said Mara, smiling. ‘She, also, comes from that country and I think she gets homesick sometimes for it.’

‘Come on, young Peadar, I’ll introduce you to the beautiful girl scholar from your native land and we’ll leave your mother to chat to the Brehon.’ Jarlath took command in a lordly way, signalling to a maidservant to bring refreshments to Mara and taking his nephew by the arm and steering him across towards the group of scholars.

‘You are surprised to see my Peadar!’ Rhona eyed Mara appraisingly. Her Scottish accent was stronger than Fiona’s but the Gaelic was near enough to the Irish form to make her quite comprehensible.

‘Very,’ said Mara frankly. ‘I did not know that Garrett had a son.’ She looked across at Garrett and his wife Slaney. Slaney had come from the English city of Galway, twenty miles away – not from the MacNamara clan or from any of the other three clans on the Burren. They had married quite soon after Garrett had succeeded to the office of
taoiseach
, but over four years had now passed and there was no sign of a child. Slaney, thought Mara, looked white and ill. She had never liked the woman much, finding her arrogant and intolerant, and
uninterested
in the customs and laws of her husband’s clan, but now she felt sorry for her. This must be a terrible blow to her.

‘Garrett has acknowledged Peadar as a son.’ Rhona broke into her thoughts. ‘And,’ she added, watching Mara’s face, ‘he has invited me into the household as his second wife. There is talk of a divorce from his chief wife, but I don’t know whether he’s serious about that or not.’ She shrugged her wide shoulders with an air of indifference.

I wonder what Slaney had to say about that?
Mara suppressed the question and tried to smile in a natural fashion. ‘You met in Scotland, did you?’ she asked politely.

Rhona shook her head. ‘On board ship we met; out in Spain. I was the ship’s captain’s wife. My husband’s dead now.’ Her voice was harsh and indifferent when she mentioned her husband’s death, but Mara offered a conventional expression of sympathy. Her mind was whirring. Why had she not heard of this before now?

‘When did you arrive, you and your son, Rhona?’ she asked.

‘Just recently,’ the woman replied. ‘We came on the same ship that Jarlath travelled on – from the north of Ireland. We had crossed over from Scotland a week ago with Jarlath when we heard that he was making the journey. Jarlath had already arranged to sell his ship to O’Donnell and in return to be allowed to journey down to the Burren on one of O’Donnell’s boats.’

‘So you came with Jarlath?’ asked Mara, her mind grappling with the problem of Garrett taking a second wife. It was quite a common occurrence in Gaelic society, especially among the wealthy who could afford the expense, but Slaney had never been part of that society and she would find this even harder to accept than most wives would do.

‘That’s right,’ said Rhona. ‘O’Donnell was sending someone down here, and there was plenty of room for three more. Look, there’s the man, over there. Jarlath invited him to come to stay with his brother. He’s called Stephen Gardiner, that Englishman over there, the one that has gone over to talk to Slaney.’ She pointed across the room to where Slaney, rigid and pale-faced, was endeavouring to smile upon the stranger.

Definitely English, thought Mara. This Stephen wore a small pointed beard, instead of Irish moustaches, and he was dressed in tight-fitting brightly-coloured hose, and an elaborate, bulky tunic, with a short cloak swinging from his shoulders. Middle to late twenties, thought Mara, about the same age as Jarlath, his travelling companion, who must now be at least
twenty-fi
ve; she dismissed him from her mind and turned back to the woman beside her.

‘If you only arrived a little while ago,’ she said, ‘this explains why I have not heard of the matter. If Gareth has the
intention
to declare you formally as his wife of the second degree, then this should be done as soon as possible – preferably tomorrow – at the judgement day at Poulnabrone.’ She hesitated a moment, her eyes going to Garrett – was the man really going to impose a second wife into the household? Slaney would find that a barbarous custom. Or did he intend to get a divorce from Slaney? And on what grounds? Infertility, perhaps; that was certainly grounds for divorce for either party in a marriage. It was obvious, now, that Garrett had fathered at least one child, so the fault must lie with Slaney. Still she would hear when he had made up his mind. She wouldn’t disturb him now in the midst of this mourning for his cousin, the
tánaiste
, she decided. However, the legal status of this son and new wife would have to be ratified and the sooner the better.

‘I think you should remind him of his obligations to put this on a legal footing, so do make sure, Rhona, that he, you and your son are at Poulnabrone for the judgement ceremonies tomorrow. He needs to declare in public to the people that Peadar is a true son of his and that you are his wife.’

When Rhona said nothing in reply to this, Mara wondered whether she should ask the question in her mind; decided that it was none of her business, but still could not resist it.

‘Is Slaney staying on at the castle?’ she asked.

Rhona hunched an indifferent shoulder. ‘You’ll have to ask her that, Brehon.’ Her smile broadened. ‘Jarlath tells me that she comes from a family of wealthy merchants and I’m just the daughter of a poor cattle dealer in the mountains of Scotland. I know more about cows than I do about golden sovereigns. She doesn’t even speak to me.’

Not surprising, thought Mara. She liked Rhona, she decided. She was no beauty with her broad, weather-beaten brown face, and her slightly rusty-blond hair but she had a straightforward, honest look in her grey eyes. Her position in the household would not be an easy one. The position of a wife of the second degree seldom was. And then there was Garrett himself. Mara wondered whether an independent-looking woman like Rhona would be able to stand Garrett too long – not to mention his unpleasant wife, Slaney. Still mother-love was a potent force and no doubt Rhona was doing this for Peadar’s sake and might only stay for long enough to make sure that he got his dues.

However, Mara had many people to greet so with a nod and smile at the Scottish woman she moved on to speak to other mourners. The MacNamara clan had turned out in big numbers for this wake – perhaps the rumour about the newcomers had spread and all had been curious to see the newly discovered son and the wife of second degree. Many of them were unknown to her as they came from the bordering kingdom of Thomond, rather than from the Burren. The MacNamara clan had moved east, though their
taoiseach
’s place of residence remained here, high on the rocky cliff that overlooked the fertile valley at Carron.
But whether they came from Burren or Thomond, all seemed eager to find out how the wife of Garrett was taking the arrival of these two from Scotland.

Mara began to feel rather sorry for Slaney, who was pretending to make indifferent conversation with this Stephen Gardiner from London. Slaney had ridden high and had ridden rough-shod over her husband and his clan since their marriage four years ago and now she had to share the position of wife with this stranger from Scotland. She had, poor woman, proved barren and another’s son would inherit what should have been given to her offspring. Would Slaney wait for Garrett to divorce her? Or would she, now before there were any scandals aired, go straight back to her people in Galway? She would get plenty of sympathy there; the right of a man to take a second wife would certainly be declared to be a pagan custom in that anglicised city which regulated its conduct by English laws and English customs.

‘Not too happy,’ said Maol MacNamara, Garrett’s steward, breaking into Mara’s thoughts. He gave a nod towards Slaney. His face wore a malicious smile.

‘A death is always a sad occasion,’ said Mara coolly,
deliberately
misunderstanding him. She had no very high opinion of Maol. A steward should be loyal to his master. Maol was a poor manager, a gossip and a spreader of information. He was honest enough, she reckoned; at least she had not heard any rumours to the contrary, but that might not be any credit to him. Garrett, with his obsession about money, would be a difficult man to cheat and Maol would not have the brains to deceive him.

‘What do you think about this terrible weather, Maol?’ she said briskly. The weather was usually a safe source for
conversation
in this land of farming, but it didn’t seem to work well this time. Maol’s face darkened.

‘Nothing I can do about the weather, Brehon,’ he said with the air of one who was glad to air a grievance. ‘It wasn’t my fault that the spring sowing of the oats failed.’ He cast a furious look across the room at his
taoiseach.
‘How could I know that the weather would take a turn for the worse? If I sowed too late then I would be found to be in the wrong, too.’

‘As the good book says: “He that observeth the wind shall not sow; and he that regardeth the clouds shall not reap,’” said Mara with a bland smile. She had often found that a store of quotes from the Bible had been of great use in situations like this; a respectful pause usually ensued and the subject could be changed.

Maol, however, did not avail himself of this opportunity.

‘I feel that I have been very badly treated, Brehon,’ he pronounced ponderously.

Mara sighed inwardly, but after all her years as Brehon of the Burren, she was well used to the way that people brought up the trickiest of law problems on these social occasions. She hastily banished from her memory the scorn expressed by her own farm manager at Maol’s poor judgement and of how Cumhal had laughed when he saw the MacNamara fields sown with oat seed on a blustery day of freezing north-easterly winds.

‘You feel that your
taoiseach
has not been fair to you,’ she remarked mildly, observing that Maol’s face had darkened to an almost purple shade.

‘He has threatened to dismiss me,’ said Maol bluntly. She noticed that his right hand had doubled itself into a fist, clenching so tightly that, when he undid it and held the hand dramatically out to her, she could see nail marks on his palms.

‘I ask you, Brehon,’ he said, his voice breaking with emotion, ‘what am I going to do if he carries out his threat? I will be disgraced entirely. He’ll do it, too. He’s a hard master. He dismissed his cowman, Brennan, just because the dun cow miscarried of a heifer calf – so he said.’

Mara thought about it; Brennan would probably go back to stay with his brother over the border with Thomond, but for this man to lose the job of a steward was a more serious matter. Maol had been a small farmer at the foot of the Oughtmama hills to the north of the kingdom of the Burren and he had given that farm up when he had been appointed. Most had been surprised when Garrett had chosen him as steward; openly hinting that Maol had gained his position, less by ability, than by his shameless flattery of the newly-appointed
taoiseach.

‘Come and see me at Cahermacnaghten,’ she said with an inward sigh, but a firm resolution not to be pushed into giving an opinion before she was in position of all the facts. ‘We’ll talk it all over then and you can tell me what you feel and what has been said. After that I will see your
taoiseach
and hear his side of the story.’