Chain of Evidence (7 page)

‘I stopped at Carron Castle to tell them the cattle were on the way back,’ said Ardal slowly. ‘There’s been an accident,’ he added. ‘A trampling . . .’

‘I know – we heard,’ said Mara, conscious that Stephen Gardiner was by her side, that her flush-leftly well-run school had dissolved into chaos and her scholars were all out on the road drinking in the news avidly, ready for any more horrifying details.

‘Brennan, the cowman, that was the word,’ said Brigid, giving a toss of her ginger hair. She liked to be the one who was always first with the news.

‘Crushed to death by the stampeding cows,’ said Aidan.

Mara looked severely at him. ‘A terrible death for a man, a man who was doing his duty and probably trying to save his cows from being stolen,’ she reminded him and then frowned. What was it that Maol, Garrett’s steward, had said to her two nights ago when she was up at Carron Castle attending the wake of the
tánaiste
? Something about Garrett having dismissed his cowman . . . Yes, the name had been Brennan. Surely, if he had already been dismissed, this man, Brennan, would not interpose his body between the raiders and the marauding cow thieves.

‘It’s impossible to recognise a face,’ said Ardal quietly. ‘Even the clothing is . . .’ He stopped with an eye on Fiona. Ardal was a very chivalrous man and he felt, thought Mara, that the small, sweet-looking Fiona with her primrose curls and large blue eyes looked too fragile to hear what he had been about to say.

‘Unrecognisable with blood and dust and cattle droppings, I suppose,’ finished Mara briskly. She had few worries about Fiona’s toughness; Hugh, perhaps, but then her scholars were training to be law enforcers and she could not shield them from the harsh realities of life.

‘That’s it,’ said Ardal, giving Fiona an uneasy glance. She stared back at him with her innocent blue eyes agog for more details.

‘So no one knows whose body it is,’ said Mara thoughtfully.

‘And I don’t suppose that we will know until all that
slógad
are back with the cattle,’ said Brigid briskly.

‘Is there anyone supposed to be missing from Carron Castle, my lord?’ Moylan asked the question respectfully. Horses were an obsession with him and he was a great admirer of Ardal who bred several very successful strains of horse and was a great buyer and seller of racehorses as well as of trotting horses.

‘Well, yes,’ said Ardal reluctantly. ‘There is, indeed, someone missing.’ He looked at Mara and she moved back inside to within the enclosure but did not offer to him the privacy of the schoolhouse. Whoever was killed, there was no doubt that the news would be all over the Burren soon and she did not want to deny Brigid the chance to be one of the first to have the story.

‘Who is missing, then?’ she asked and then, from his appalled expression, guessed the answer.

‘Garrett?’ she asked and he nodded.

‘It’s still very unsure,’ he said hastily. Ardal always liked to be certain of his facts. ‘No one seems to know whether he
was in the castle when the cattle stampeded past, not even the
taoiseach
’s wife knows that.’

‘Which one of them?’ Mara heard Aidan’s mutter, but ignored him. Her mind was busy. Her eyes met Ardal’s and saw her puzzlement reflected in his. Garrett MacNamara, she would have thought, was the last man in the kingdom to rush out in front of a herd of stampeding cows. It was one of the complaints about him that he had no interest in cattle, no knowledge of them and seemed to be only concerned with how much money he could wring from the clan in the way of rent. He would never have hazarded his life like that. Not even Muiris O’Heynes, the greatest cattle expert on the Burren, would have tried to do something of that nature.

‘In God’s name, what was he doing out on the road in the first place?’ asked Brigid. ‘We heard them over here. We heard them coming from Noughaval, heard them galloping down the road. Cumhal says to me, didn’t you, Cumhal? – “that’s a cattle raid if I’m a Christian” and out he goes and calls the cows into the barn and keeps them shut in there until the noise was well past.’

‘I can always rely on Cumhal,’ said Mara to Ardal, noticing that Stephen had gone back into the schoolhouse. No doubt he was filling another page on cattle raids among the ‘wild Irish’.

‘I guessed they were on their way to the border point at Abbey Hill, and that they wouldn’t come so far out of their way,’ muttered Cumhal, looking embarrassed at her praise. And then he added, ‘But Brigid is right, Brehon. It would be surprising that the MacNamara would go walking down the road with that noise approaching. As for trying to stop them, well . . .’

‘He was a terrible coward, anyway,’ said Aidan candidly. ‘Do you remember him when that bull got loose at the fair?’ He whistled loudly to express his disgust at Garrett’s lack of courage when faced with something as ordinary as a bull.

Mara looked at Ardal’s still hesitant face. ‘Go back inside all of you, I’ll be in within a few minutes. Aidan, while you are waiting for me, perhaps you could explain to our visitor the importance of cows and how various fines can be paid in either silver or using a milch cow for each ounce of silver.’

They all disappeared instantly. Stephen would be bombarded with information, she guessed. Cumhal went back to his work of mending a fence on a roadside field and Brigid, after a second’s hesitation, retired to the kitchen. Mara faced Ardal, looking keenly at his handsome face.

‘There is something that worries you about this terrible accident, is that right?’ she asked.

Ardal ran a hand through his copper-coloured hair and grimaced. ‘It’s probably nothing,’ he said. ‘The body is unrecognisable, but I suppose with washing we might be able to identify the clothes, but there is something else . . .’ He hesitated.

Mara waited. It was never any good to try to rush Ardal.

‘The body had a length of chain tied to its leg,’ he said eventually.

Mara stared at him. ‘Tied to his leg? His leg, is that right, Ardal? Well, that’s an interesting piece of information.’ She turned it over within her mind but could make nothing of it. The information that Garrett was missing was probably of more importance at the moment. If the tragic death by trampling was that of farm worker or cowman, well that was just a matter for the man’s own family, but if it happened that the mutilated and unrecognisable body lying in the dust and filth of the road below the castle chanced to be that of the clan’s chieftain, Garrett, then this matter concerned the Brehon and the king. A new
taoiseach
would have to be sworn in – young Jarlath would come to power more quickly than anyone could have foreseen – and a grand funeral would have to be arranged, the three other chieftains on the Burren, the O’Brien, the O’Connor and the O’Lochlainn all would have to be informed – as would, indeed, the whole of the MacNamara clan, many of whom lived outside the Burren in Thomond.

Thoughtfully Mara took leave of Ardal and went back into the schoolroom where Moylan, with a hint of condescension in his voice, was explaining the difference between cattle and milch cows to a rather bemused Stephen. She waited and he quickly finished and they all looked at her expectantly while Stephen made more notes in his book. Mara looked around at her scholars.

‘Can any of you think of a reason why the dead man on the road below Carron might have a chain tied around his leg?’ she asked. Her eyes were on Stephen when she said that. He looked at her wide-eyed, but then he seemed to have perfected that expression of astonishment at all of the strange goings-on in this western kingdom.

‘What, the man that Cumhal was telling us about!’ Aidan sounded pleased and excited by this extra spice to the story.

‘Did the O’Lochlainn tell you that, Brehon?’ asked Moylan curiously.

‘Might have been a murder if it had been his neck,’ said Hugh thoughtfully.

‘But just his leg,’ said Aidan with disgust. ‘Perhaps he . . .’ His voice tailed out. Not even Aidan with his fertile imagination could devise a reason for a man to have a piece of chain tied to his leg when chasing cattle raiders.

‘Perhaps he was an escaped lunatic,’ suggested Shane brightly. ‘Some people do tie up lunatics by the leg so that they go a certain distance but can’t stray and cause trouble. What do you think, Brehon?’

‘It’s in our laws,’ explained Fiona to Stephen. ‘We feel that the care of a mad person devolves onto the kin group. They must take it in turn to care for him, or her. They are then responsible for the lunatic’s actions and must tie them up if they can’t supervise them for a short period of time. A person may be excused for being late to a court hearing if he has to delay in order to tie up a lunatic. Let me explain to you the law about lunatics—’

‘I believe,’ said Stephen, clasping his head with mock horror, ‘that I will leave you now.’ He got to his feet after wiping his pen clean and replacing it, his ink horn and his notebook into his satchel. ‘I think that I will ride up to Carron and see what’s going on. I feel that I am suffering from an overload of information about Brehon law and its complexities. My studies of the law at Cambridge never seemed to offer so many difficulties.’

‘That’s a compliment, coming from a race that called Brehon law a set of rules for savages,’ said Mara with a smile and she escorted him to the gate of the enclosure and saw him leave – with a sigh of relief. She would prefer him not to be here when Turlough came back. Turlough was very indiscreet and Mara did not want the remarks that her husband would undoubtedly make about this cattle raid to be carried back to O’Donnell’s ears and to King Henry in England. The English, Mara thought, needed to be dealt with warily, treated with courtesy but kept at arm’s length.

‘What about this death, Brehon? Are we going to discuss this?’ Aidan, despite the fact that he would face his final examinations
in June, was eager for a change from routine.

‘Only when we know more,’ said Mara firmly. If it truly were the body of Garrett, she thought as she allocated tasks to her scholars, then why did not Slaney send a message to her – or had she already returned to Galway, perhaps she had planned a flight before her shame of being set aside by her husband could be made public in the Burren.

‘I don’t think that either Maol MacNamara, the steward, or Brennan MacNamara, the cowman, were at the Bealtaine Festival yesterday evening,’ said Aidan addressing his words to the air and then burying his nose in
Audacht Morainn,
a seventh-century text on kingship. ‘I just thought that you might like to know that, Brehon,’ he added hastily.

‘I think that we will have half an hour of silent study,’ said Mara turning the slimmest of the three sand glasses on its head. She had trained herself not to speculate until facts were before her and she would be doing her scholars an injustice if she encouraged them to conjecture before more was known. She took from the locked wooden press an enormous leather-bound book which contained notes on cases heard on judgement day. This book had been started over fifty years ago by her father who was then Brehon of the Burren and Mara, in her turn, faithfully recorded all her decisions. Now, with a faint sigh, she settled down to write up yesterday’s cases. If it were true that the dead body was that of the chieftain of the MacNamara clan, then the most interesting case, that of Garrett’s recognition of Peadar, his declaration that Rhona was to be his wife of second degree and his possible demand for a divorce from Slaney, would now never be heard.

Rhona, she thought and got to her feet. ‘Fachtnan, I will be back in five minutes,’ she said as she went through the door. How could she have forgotten about her other two guests? Had they heard the news? she wondered, as she hurried across the courtyard to the guesthouse.

Before she reached it Rhona with Peadar behind her came out through the door. One glance at the woman’s face told Mara that the news had reached her.

‘I wonder would you be kind enough to lend me a couple of ponies, Brehon,’ she began as soon as she saw Mara. ‘I must get back up there. I . . .’ She left her sentence unfinished, but Mara understood her concern. The future of her son was at stake. Garrett had failed to turn up to Poulnabrone and now what was to happen to young Peadar. Something I must consider, thought Mara as she cordially invited Rhona to take her pick from the stable and called Cumhal to attend to the pair from Scotland. No word of sorrow was expressed by Rhona and Mara liked her all the more for that and busied herself with practical offers of help when Rhona would have decided what she wanted to do. The woman seemed dazed by the sudden change in her son’s fortune and almost incapable of thinking until she returned to Carron and saw the position for herself. Mara waved a goodbye and then returned to her schoolhouse and her studious scholars.

The half hour had just finished when there was a commotion from outside. Several horses were rode straight onto the cobbled yard outside the schoolhouse, voices were raised. Turlough called to Brigid – something about being as hungry as a lion – his cousin, Teige O’Brien shouted out a joke to Cumhal, Mara’s stablemen exchanged words with men-at-arms – and then the door burst open and in came Turlough.

‘Mara,’ he shouted. ‘You’ll never guess what has happened. Garrett MacNamara is dead.’

‘We’re before you with that news,’ said Mara. ‘Ardal O’Lochlainn dropped in on his way home – he was the one who found the body. It sounds as if it were a terrible accident, but I’ll go up there tomorrow when you are off to Thomond.’ She smiled at her scholars. ‘You have worked well and silently,’ she said always happy to praise when they deserved it. ‘Now why don’t you have a short break?’

When they had gone out, Fachtnan following them, she said to Turlough. ‘Let’s put it from our minds now and enjoy the rest of the day. Come into the house; you can have a rest. I don’t suppose that you had much sleep last night. Brigid will bring the food across when the school is finished. Will you stay, Teige? We can give you a bed if you wish,’ she ended, rather insincerely. She and Turlough had little time together and she did not want that time to be occupied by raucous jokes and reminiscences of the cattle raid. Since her visitors had all left, Mara and Turlough, once school was over, could visit their little son and then have a peaceful meal together. The duck and the special sauces had not been served last night, so no doubt Brigid had reserved them in the underground storeroom until Turlough should be there to appreciate them.