Cross of Vengeance (15 page)

‘Mór wouldn’t murder him; why should she? She liked him. He was cuddling her in the kitchen.’

Fachtnan’s eyes went towards Mara and she gave a slight nod. Neither said anything, though. This was a chance for the boys to think things out for themselves. They seemed puzzled, though, so after a minute Mara said, ‘Do you think that Mór was sorry for Hans Kaufmann? And if so, what might she have done about it?’

‘I know,’ said Cormac triumphantly. ‘She might have given him a chance to escape during the night.’

‘That’s clever,’ said Domhnall. He took his duties as head boy of the law school very seriously, and although he would reprove the younger boys, he was quick to give praise when praise was due.

‘She gave him the key,’ said Slevin.

‘But he wasn’t locked in,’ said Cormac.

‘Or just told him a time to go,’ amended Domhnall. ‘Told him to wait until after midnight or something.’

‘Perhaps she was going to help him to escape by the river,’ said Slevin suddenly. ‘Blad has a boat, isn’t that right, Cormac?’

‘That’s right,’ confirmed Cormac.

‘She would have made an arrangement to sneak back for him when no one was around; perhaps when Ardal and Danann were handing over the guard duties to Nechtan and his steward.’ Domhnall nodded his head with satisfaction at the neatness of the explanation.

‘And then got a terrible shock when she saw him lying out there on the tomb with no clothes on,’ finished Cormac.

‘I remember that I thought she looked very pale,’ said Mara, ‘and, of course, that could have been just shock, as you say, Cormac. I think it is quite possible that she was sorry for him and that he persuaded her that he was afraid of Father Miguel.’

It would have been, she considered, a valid fear. There was a large network of Dominican abbeys in Ireland, and doubtless Father Miguel would have found fellow countrymen who were willing to assist him.

‘Who shall we question first – Mór or Brother Cosimo, Brehon?’ Slevin was a boy who liked action.

‘Brother Cosimo,’ said Mara. ‘Fachtnan, would you fetch him and all of his baggage, whatever he has with him? And I think it might be best if the boys go with you and bring back the baggage of the other four pilgrims, the three women and Father Miguel. I’m doing that,’ she explained, ‘because if anyone has anything to hide they might get rid of it before we get a chance to talk to them.’

‘The women wouldn’t be guilty, would they? After all, they couldn’t have lifted him up on to that slab. Women aren’t strong like us men,’ said Cormac with a swagger.

‘Still, if they were all three in it, well, that would be three times the strength,’ pointed out Slevin. ‘They could be suspects, you know. That prioress is very holy and she might have said to her sisters:
this man deserves to die
!
Let’s see to it, sisters,
and so they did,’ he finished, reverting to his own voice after giving the prioress’s words in a high-pitched tone which was a particularly good imitation of the lady’s voice.

‘And the widow is quite a strong-looking woman, though the prioress is a bit dainty. And the other sister, the one with the scars on her face, she mightn’t look too strong, she’s very thin, but she is quite tall.’ Domhnall backed up his friend.

‘But in the meantime,’ said Fachtnan gently, ‘we must investigate all of the pilgrims, so we’ll go over now and collect their baggage, and, who knows, we may pick up some clues from it.’

‘Don’t forget to be extremely polite to everyone,’ said Mara as Fachtnan gathered them up and ushered them from the church. She spoke automatically and knew that she sounded absent-minded. Her whole attention was focused on Brother Cosimo, remembering his fury when he heard that the man who had been blackmailing him was the one who now was, in his eyes, guilty of a greater crime. Did he take the opportunity of getting rid of Hans when the man was alone in the unlocked church? And did he really think that everyone would believe that the death was an act of vengeance by God – that God, who in the words of St Paul, was ‘
not mocked
’?

(Judgements of Bloodlettings)

There are two fines to be paid by a person who murders another. The first is called the
éraic
, or body fine, and this is paid to the nearest kin of a murdered person. It is forty-two
séts
, or twenty-one milch cows, or twenty-one ounces of silver. Added to this is the second fine, also paid to the nearest kin, and this is based on the victim’s honour price.

In the case of
duinetháide
, (a secret killing), the
éraic
is doubled.

F
achtnan, side by side with Brother Cosimo, led the little procession back to the church. He was chatting about the Aran Islands and the many churches there. Mara could hear the Italian monk asking some question about the age of the church of St Enda and she half-smiled to herself. Fachtnan was very good at this sort of thing. He carried the monk’s satchel as if he were performing a normal courtesy to a guest, not as though he were a lawyer taking possession of possible evidence. The young scholars trooped behind him at a respectable distance and each had a bag to carry: Domhnall with a rather battered bag which probably belonged to Father Miguel, and the three other boys carrying the more ornate bags of the women pilgrims.

‘Perhaps you would be good enough to unpack your bag,’ said Mara gravely to the monk. ‘Please put all of your clothes in one pile, here on this bench, and then everything else on this bench beside me.’ It was only right, she thought, that some privacy should be afforded to the pilgrims and she had no wish to be fingering through the man’s undergarments.

Mara was uneasily aware that it would be hard to justify a search, but then remembered that she could be looking for a weapon. Nuala had made no comment on the size or shape of the death-dealing instrument – and, knowing Nuala’s cautious nature, Mara had not wasted time asking her before the complete examination of the body had taken place – however, Brother Cosimo and the other pilgrims were not to know that. To her, the stab wound in the left side of the pilgrim had looked like a knife wound, and every one of the pilgrims had a serviceable knife – she had seen each produce one during the meal yesterday, and even those belonging to the women had a long blade and sturdy handle.

Brother Cosimo was surprisingly willing to obey her. He picked out the garments one by one, and one by one he stacked them on the bench that she had indicated. Fachtnan, without being told, had taken up position near to it and, in the background, four sharp-eyed boys had their whole attention glued to his movements.

Finally everything was removed from the bag, the clothes on the one bench, and on the other, near to her, were his rosary beads, his prayer book, his small travelling lamp, a package containing ginger, figs and some lozenges – ‘for my health,’ he said, when she picked up the small cloth bag that contained the large-sized medical potions.

Mara nodded at his explanation, sniffed the lozenges and handed them ceremoniously to Fachtnan, who also sniffed at them in a non-committal fashion and then retained the bag in his hand.

‘You will get them back before you depart,’ said Mara curtly as she saw the very black eyebrows of the Benedictine monk draw together in a frown. All such medicines, she had determined, unless instantly recognizable, should be retained to be tested by Nuala. The guess that Hans Kaufmann must have been drugged heavily before his clothes were stripped from him seemed, in the complete absence of any bruises or blows to the head, to be the only possible theory at the moment. And there was, she thought, an unusual smell from the medicine.

‘Anything else?’ she asked as Brother Cosimo stood back and thrust his hands into the large sleeves.

‘Nothing, my lady – Brehon, I mean,’ he said in a voice which he strove to make sound ingratiating. He picked up his leather satchel, pulled it open and showed her the inside. It was completely empty. Mara’s eyes met Fachtnan’s and instantly he left the church.

‘What do you think happened to the dead man, Brother Cosimo?’ she asked quickly, hoping to cover the sound of Fachtnan’s departing footsteps. ‘You must have some guesses, you and the other pilgrims – it seems such an extraordinary thing to happen. I’m sure that you must have some theory, an intelligent man like you,’ she continued.

He shrugged. ‘I have no knowledge of the working of the mind of God,’ he said.

‘So you think that God struck him down, or did God work, in mysterious ways, through a good servant of his – perhaps God put it into the mind of one who loved him well to avenge the desecration of a relic. Do you think that was what happened?’

Her scholars, Mara was amused to notice, were staring at her wide-eyed, Finbar looking confused, Slevin interested, Cormac slightly scornful, and Domhnall, eyes narrowed, mouth compressed, his face full of thought. Brother Cosimo did not answer for a moment. She could see him wavering, uncertain whether to encourage her in this idea, or to stick to the original theory that this murder was an action by the Almighty himself.

‘It is written,’ he said eventually: ‘“
Vengeance is mine; I will repay, saith the Lord”
.’

‘I see,’ said Mara. ‘So you would have left revenge to God and would not have killed the man to punish him for what could perhaps be an act of sacrilege?’

‘No, I would not.’ His voice was curt and he stared at her resentfully and then looked around the church, and seemed to notice for the first time that Fachtnan was missing.

‘I hope that young man of yours is being careful with my lozenges. They are very important to me.’

‘Why?’ Mara asked the question in a careless way, glancing idly around the church, but very quickly she brought her eyes back to his face. He did not look disconcerted, she thought, and he answered quickly and readily.

‘I sleep badly when I am in strange places. The herbalist in our monastery in Rome gave me those lozenges. I take one at night in order to help me to sleep.’

‘I see,’ she said, her eyes on the fat purse which lay beneath the prayer book on the pile before her. ‘Could you take out your coins and stack them here,’ she said.

He was more hesitant about that, but eventually took them out. ‘You have a rather small amount of Italian coins,’ she remarked. ‘You may be interested to know that we found coins like these in Hans Kaufmann’s purse. How do you think that he came by them? Was he planning a pilgrimage to Italy?’

‘It is possible.’ He shrugged and then swung around as the door to the church opened and Fachtnan came in, breathless and panting. Held in his hand was an elaborately carved and jewel-encrusted crucifix.

‘Where did you get that?’ The fury was barely contained. A man of a savage and ungoverned temper, thought Mara – possibly a temper which, if provoked, might lead to murder.

‘Does it belong to you?’ she countered quickly.

That made him stop and think.

‘No,’ he said after a minute.

‘I found it in Brother Cosimo’s room; Blad had a spare key.’ Fachtnan addressed himself to Mara.

‘But, of course, you are right, it does not belong to you, although it was found in your room,’ said Mara affably to the monk. ‘I understand that it belongs to the Shrine of the Holy Virgin at Bern in Switzerland. I was curious to see it when I read what Hans Kaufmann had written,’ she continued. She took the letter from her pouch and read it aloud to him.

‘Of course,’ she said when she had finished it, ‘you never got that letter; before it could be delivered to you, the man was dead. In fact, he may not have sent it even if he had lived. However, he had, as he mentions, already extracted blackmail from you about this matter and that accounts for the Italian coins in his bag.’

If Mór had offered to assist the German to escape, then Hans would probably have thought twice about bringing his flight to the attention of Brother Cosimo. In any case, if he had departed in the middle of the night then there would have been no trial, no fine to be paid. He had plenty of coins in his pouch and would easily have been able to purchase a horse once he was in Thomond. From there he would have gone to Limerick, English-owned and dominated and may well have reached that city before his absence at Kilnaboy had been noted. That letter would not have been sent and Brother Cosimo left in possession of a valuable crucifix which he had stolen.

But, of course, if the theft was reported to Martin Luther or to any of his followers who were pouring out leaflets about the corruption of the Roman church – well, then Brother Cosimo’s crime would have been made public and that may have meant the loss of his position in his monastery, of his means of living, or perhaps even of his life if someone like Father Miguel of the Spanish Inquisition had got hold of him. There was, thought Mara, ample motive for Brother Cosimo to get rid of Hans Kaufmann if he thought that he could do it safely under the guise of the vengeful God.

It would be interesting, once she got an approximate time of death from Nuala, to find out what Brother Cosimo had been doing at that time – and to find out what his lozenges were made from and whether they would have been enough to drug Hans Kaufmann to the extent that he did not struggle when his clothes were removed, allowing himself to be arranged in ghastly semblance of the crucified Christ.

‘One last matter,’ she said. ‘I see that you have no knife here. Presumably it is on your belt. Could I please see it now?’ She held out her hand, giving him no chance to deny possession of a knife. No traveller ever omitted to carry a knife on a voyage. Even the genteel prioress had produced hers when the food was brought to table at the inn.

It was an ordinary knife and she took it from him and brought it to the door, inspecting it keenly, then called her scholars to her.

‘Any trace of blood?’ she queried, and handed it first of all to Domhnall, who took it to the light outside the church. He inspected it keenly and then passed it on to Slevin. Nothing would be found, she was almost sure of that. The knife was a plain one, the steel shining and polished, the leather of the cross-guard and of the handle also well polished, soft and supple – treated with oil, she imagined. Suspiciously well cleaned, but then how could one fault a man for keeping his knife clean and in good condition? She looked along the row of faces, but each boy shook his head in turn, and then she took it back from Cormac, who was reluctant to let it go, and returned it to the clergyman.