Cross of Vengeance (26 page)

‘You see,’ she said with the frank air of one putting all of her cards on the table, ‘if only you could tell me, Nechtan, that one of your turf barrows was left out after you shut and locked the barn, that would make my task easier. I am persuaded that the murderer must have used something like one of these in order to move the body from the church to the capstone of the old tomb. It would be just about the right size and shape.’

Nechtan shook his head. ‘No, I’m certain of this, Brehon, every one of my barrows was heaped with turf – and the turf was still there on them in the morning.’

‘And the barn was locked, that’s right, is it not?’

‘That’s right.’ There was a slight hesitation in Nechtan’s voice and Mara immediately understood.

‘Don’t tell me,’ she said with a groan. ‘You leave the key up on the eaves, or somewhere like that, and I suppose everyone knows about it?’

‘Under the stone outside the door, actually,’ said Nechtan sheepishly.

Mara thought for a moment. It was still possible for the murderer to have borrowed a turf barrow, even if they were locked up – the key could have been found easily and it would only have taken seconds to have thrown the load on to the floor, and not that long to have loaded it up again.

‘Perhaps,’ she said, ‘it would be possible for me to have a look at your turf barrows while the light is still good enough to see. Will you come too, Narait?’

‘No, I …’ Narait gave a long look at Nechtan, and Mara saw him stare back. He said nothing, though, and did not help his wife in her search for an excuse. ‘I think I’ll go up and see how the boys are getting on,’ she said eventually. ‘They may need some help.’ She got to her feet, looking uncertainly at her husband who had poured himself another cup of wine and did not seem ready to move until it had disappeared down his throat.

‘Of course,’ he said in conversational tones, looking straight at his wife, ‘the German pilgrim was not the first strange death to occur in Kilnaboy Church. There was the case of that woman who stuck a knife into her faithless lover just as he walked into the church. That happened a couple of hundred years ago. There is something about it in the church history. It was the time of the monks and they held a service of cleansing afterwards so as to rid the church of the sin that had been committed.’ The words came out fluently, too fluently, almost as though they had been committed to memory and practised beforehand. Nechtan had been drinking a lot of wine and it seemed to have altered his mood from genial host to a silent man who sat and stared ahead of him.

Mara cast a quick glance at him and then chatted easily with Narait about wolfhounds. A wolf had been sighted and several sheep found dead on the Roughan hillside. Nechtan, according to his wife, wanted to buy a fully grown wolfhound from Murrough who bred the animals, but Narait wanted a puppy. Murrough, she said, had a litter of four six-week-old puppies – two males and two females.

‘Why not get two brothers from that litter and then they would be company for each other at the puppy stage and would make a good pack to hunt wolves when they are a bit older?’ Mara was thinking that Narait, frustrated in her maternal instincts, might find some sort of outlet in mothering a pair of puppies. Nechtan said nothing. Narait glanced uncertainly at him again and Mara decided it was time to separate husband and wife before something was said that might start a quarrel.

‘It’s very kind of you to help the boys with their play. Don’t take any notice if they are all arguing,’ she said to Narait as she rose to her feet and walked decisively towards the door without waiting for Nechtan to lead the way. ‘Domhnall usually manages to sort them out, but there will be all sorts of disagreements first,’ she said over her shoulder.

‘I don’t mind. I like children. What a handsome boy your son is, Brehon.’ Narait’s smile was genuine, but it quickly faded at her husband’s expression as he got slowly to his feet. There was no doubt that this marriage was heading rapidly towards a divorce. A child would have united them, but now they had nothing to talk about, and even disagreed about what dog to get. Mara said nothing while they crossed the yard, but when she and Nechtan were almost at the doors of the barn, she thought that she would try to make him understand his young wife’s loneliness.

‘You would be much better off getting a couple of puppies if you want to keep the wolves away from your land, Nechtan. Murrough’s adult dogs will give their loyalty to him; a puppy that grows up in the house will give its life for you, if necessary.’ She hesitated a minute and then said, ‘And I do think that Narait would find a purpose in life while caring for them – she seems a little depressed.’

‘I’ll think about it. Your advice is always valuable, Brehon.’ His tone was polite, but she sensed little sympathy in him for his wife, and he immediately covered the awkward moment by shouting for one of his men to wheel out the turf barrows and to line them up in front of the barn.

‘I’m looking for traces of blood,’ said Mara bluntly once the barrows were in place, each one resting on its rear props as well as on the two wheels in the front. She addressed her remarks to the two men and the boy who had taken them out of the barn. The turf, she noticed, had still not been thatched, although her own farm manager, Cumhal, had already started on that task back at the farm in Cahermacnaghten. Once they had returned from the bog, Cumhal’s workers had been given a meal, a short break and then had immediately got to work with the already prepared bundles of dried rushes. Still, Nechtan’s farming practices were none of her business, she reminded herself, and asked the men to start searching the barrows.

‘The Brehon thinks that the dead man’s body might have been wheeled from the church on one of our barrows.’ Nechtan’s voice was neutral and she noticed that he did not, himself, take any part in the scrutiny.

‘But I need your young eyes to look at them,’ said Mara with an encouraging smile. ‘What colour would bloodstains be on the wood?’

‘Sort of dark brown,’ said the boy enthusiastically.

‘Brown – of course,’ said Mara thoughtfully. She remembered her daughter Sorcha, who had many more housewifely skills than she, lecturing her on different types of stain and how each should be treated. Of course, blood turned brown after it was shed. She watched while they searched, all of them showing an enthusiasm that probably indicated that if they weren’t doing this they would be undertaking a more unpleasant job. Her mind was not as engaged as theirs, though. A suspicion had occurred to her and she was glad that Nechtan had left her to explore her thoughts in peace.

And to think about blood.

No bloodstains were found, much to their disappointment, but Mara thanked the men profusely for their efforts.

‘It would have been the rain, Brehon, washed everything down,’ said one.

‘Terrible it was,’ said the other, glad to break off work for a chat. ‘I swear to God, I thought the heavens were opening. And there was that strange heat all day. And then the rain came.’

‘I was glad of it myself,’ said the boy. ‘After the work with the turf I was sweating so much that I went down to the river to have a swim. And then the heavens opened and I was so wet that I didn’t bother jumping in. By then I was cooled off nicely, just went off up the road to my mother’s place.’

‘Did you see anyone by the river?’ asked Mara casually.

‘Saw the three pilgrim ladies coming back from their walk – they were climbing up the steps towards their rooms. Blad was putting his fishing rod into the stable. I heard Mór call out something about the church – don’t know if she was going or coming. They say she brought him his last supper, so as to speak.’

The boy gave a nervous giggle and the older man said warningly, ‘Don’t let Father MacMahon hear you talk like that – sacrilegious, that is.’

‘What do you think happened to the German pilgrim?’ asked Mara, looking from one to the other encouragingly and hoping that Nechtan would keep out of the way for a while. This, she thought, had been an odd investigation; it had been centred on the pilgrims and she had not had the usual contact with the people of the area. The people of the Burren, she thought proudly, generally had a sensible outlook on life; there was, she reasoned, little chance of the involvement in the murder of anyone other than the pilgrims and those closely connected with the church of Kilnaboy and its famous relic. Nevertheless, those living in the neighbourhood must have some ideas about what had happened with this very strange death in their parish. Did they believe, also, that this murder was an act of the avenging God?

‘Don’t put any credit in angels and that like,’ said the boy daringly.

‘I told you to mind your mouth,’ retorted the man.

‘Father MacMahon believes that it was a divine punishment for the German pilgrim’s sin, doesn’t he?’ said Mara lightly, and the older man nodded seriously.

‘It was a judgement on him, Brehon. You can see for yourself. How else did he get from the church to the
gabhal
if it wasn’t done by the power of God?’

‘With no clothes on,’ sniggered the irrepressible boy, but he muttered the words in an undertone and the others ignored him.

‘Stands to reason,’ affirmed the man.

Gabhal
, thought Mara as she bowed her head in acceptance of this irrefutable logic – now that was an interesting word. It was an old word, little used in her own time. She had heard Brigid, her housekeeper, use it; it meant a junction or a joining between two parts. So this ancient tomb of their pagan ancestors was known to the people of Kilnaboy as a junction, a joining place between this life and the next – a waiting place, perhaps. Whatever it was, the unfortunate German pilgrim who had waited there all night perhaps now knew whether Martin Luther or Pope Leo X was right about whether purgatory existed. Or indeed, thought Mara daringly, whether heaven or hell was as represented in the Bible – or did, in fact, exist.

‘You’ve been very helpful,’ she said to the men. ‘I won’t detain you any longer.’

Nechtan, she saw, was striding towards her, but she did not await his arrival. She went over to the church door and quickly paced out the distance between it and the tomb. Not far, she thought, when she reached the
gabhal
; ten paces to the end of the graveyard enclosure and then another three or four up through the bushes until the little circle, with its impressive stone monument, was reached. A man or a woman could traverse this distance quite quickly – though not, of course, if heavily burdened.

Mara stood for a while gazing down on the heavy capstone that spanned the tomb and imagining how the murder might have taken place. By nine o’clock that night, on 14 September, that day of the Feast of the Holy Cross, the sky had been dark, with thick clouds covering the moon – yet the church had been brightly lit and there would have been pools of light spilling out from the windows. No windows, of course, on the west-facing gable with its spectacular, double-armed cross, so that part of the pathway would have been obscured, but coming out of the south door, beneath the carving of the
sheela-na-gig
there would have been plenty of light from the windows; then a brief spell of darkness passing the west gable, and then some light, but not much, spilling across the churchyard from the windows on the north side of the church. Going the few paces up the bush-enclosed pathway to the
gabhal
– would that have had any light on it, or would it have been in complete darkness?

Mara gazed around her. This was a brighter day than the day of the murder, the day of the spectacular rainstorm, but the time must be about right. She could experiment and see whether that would confirm her suspicions.

A light suddenly showed from the small one-roomed cottage that stood beside Father MacMahon’s more impressive residence. A door opened and the glow from the fire inside revealed the heavy figure of Sorley. He was holding a lantern in his hand and he went out towards the round tower. A minute later the bell sounded – nine strokes, as Sorley pulled the rope nine times. Nine o’clock. Hans Kaufmann had been given his supper about eight o’clock by Mór, so on that very hot night, anytime from nine o’clock onwards, if Nuala was correct, someone stuck a knife into his naked body.

Mara waited for a moment until Sorley climbed down the ladder again. He did not, she noticed, lock the door. Nothing there to be stolen now; the precious relic, the pride and joy of Kilnaboy, had been destroyed.

‘Sorley,’ she called. ‘I’m sorry to trouble you, but would you go into the church and light all the candles that were lit the night that German pilgrim was in there.’

He faced her with a frown. ‘All of them?’

‘All of them,’ confirmed Mara and waited, gazing at him steadily. He did not look well, she thought. A man of deep and sincere devotion to the church, he was, of course, of too lowly origin to have become a priest himself, but to serve a priest and to serve the church were the mainsprings of his existence. The destroying of the relic must have had a terrible effect on his life and his loyalties.

‘Very well, Brehon,’ he said abruptly and he went off with his lantern. A minute later the lights began to spring up, illuminating the windows. The unusual amount of light brought Father MacMahon to his doorway. He stared across at the church but made no sign. Had Father MacMahon come out that night, just as he had done tonight? Probably, but the candles had been lit earlier, perhaps while Hans was eating his supper. In any case, Father MacMahon had denied seeing anything untoward in the churchyard.

Mara ignored him now. She went to the south door of the church, tapped on it and Sorley opened it immediately, allowing a blaze of light to fall on to the pathway. Mara nodded and thanked him, but then turned and strode off, counting under her breath.

Yes, it was as she thought. Pools of light and dark. She moved quickly and easily between them and then up the bush-enclosed path until she reached the ancient tomb and laid her hand on the capstone; it had taken her less than two minutes. Then she went back to thank Sorley once more and to reassure Father MacMahon that his precious candles were no longer needed.