Eye of the Law (11 page)

‘I suppose the fact is that there was one man who would benefit most of all by this murder,’ said Turlough, breaking into her thoughts. ‘And that must be Ardal. He did not show any feeling for the boy, did he?’

‘No.’ Mara turned over the memory of Ardal’s face during the last few days. ‘No,’ she repeated thoughtfully. ‘No, he seemed puzzled in the beginning.’

‘And after the body was found?’ queried Turlough.

‘He seemed . . .’ Mara paused for the right words. ‘He suddenly seemed galvanized – full of energy, rushing around getting statements, organizing the burial tomorrow. You know Ardal – everything will be well done.’

Mara’s six scholars were all waiting, looking neat and tidy when she arrived at the little church of Kilcorney. Everything was, indeed, well organized. Ardal’s carpenter had quickly put together a coffin of pinewood. The wood smelled new and there were drops of resin oozing from the side of it. Nevertheless, it was perfectly adequate for burying the young man with decency. There were even a few bunches of primroses placed on it. Mara was glad that the lid had been closed; it was customary to leave it open until the last minute, but the less that was seen of that appalling injury to the eye, the quicker wild rumours would die down. No, she thought as she crossed herself and muttered a brief prayer, the god Balor was by all accounts responsible for many evil deeds during his lifetime, but she would not lay this case at his doorstep. Sooner or later she would solve this and do justice to a young man who had come to the Burren to seek his fortune and had not left it.

‘Not too many people here.’ Malachy was at her elbow; accompanied by Caireen, the widow of a physician from Galway, across the bay from the Burren. That woman must be staying at Caherconnell, thought Mara. There was no sign of Nuala. Obviously she could not bear to see her father and what would be her future step-mother together. Something would have to be done about Nuala, thought Mara as she agreed with Malachy and murmured a greeting to Caireen.

It was true that the funeral mass and the burial were not well attended. A sprinkling of people from all the four main clans of the Burren – not too many O’Lochlainns, noticed Mara, glancing around. No doubt, the O’Lochlainn clan had mixed feelings about attending this burial of a man who had claimed to be the
taoiseach
’s son. Ardal commanded great loyalty from his clan; that personal popularity would have been one of Finn’s reasons for approving of the choice of the younger son rather than the older. Donogh, though respected, was not popular.

Becan was there. He spoke to no one, and made no reply to the condolences that some made to him. After a while, no one approached him. He stood by the graveside, but made no response to the prayers, nor did he throw the first handful of clay on to the coffin. There was an awkward pause while everyone waited for him to perform this customary duty of the nearest relative. Ardal began to step forward, visibly squaring his shoulders, but Mara stopped him with a quick gesture. This would be too public a gesture of relationship. Rumours about his parentage of the young man from Aran would be stirred up again and would be slow to die down. Hopefully Ardal would marry again and have a son who would be the apple of his father’s eye and Ardal would live to see him grow up and be a better choice as
taoiseach
for the important O’Lochlainn clan than would the self-obsessed, bitter Donogh.

No, she thought, she, as the king’s representative in the Burren, would perform this last service for a stranger to the kingdom. Walking swiftly forward, she bent down, picked up the small handful of clay and dropped it on to the coffin.

‘In the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost,’ she said loudly and clearly, and, as she stepped back, thought, not for the first time, that a prayer was always an excellent method of ending a suspenseful situation.

Becan gave her a quick surly look. His face was heavy with suspicion as he turned and scanned the small crowd.

After the priest had finished his prayers and the small crowd had turned away from the grave, Malachy came over to her. ‘Come back and have a cup of wine before you walk back to Cahermacnaghten,’ he invited. As she began to form a polite refusal, he said quickly and quietly, ‘I would really value your advice about Nuala.’

‘Wait a minute, then. I’ll just have a word with Cumhal about the scholars.’

‘Bring them with you,’ said Malachy urgently. ‘We’ll manage Sunday dinner for them all – Brigid and Cumhal will enjoy an afternoon of peace and Nuala will be happy to see them all.’

It sounded as if the problem with Nuala was fairly acute, thought Mara as she went to tell the scholars. They cheered happily. Malachy’s housekeeper, though not as good a cook as Brigid, was notoriously free with her home-made cowslip wine and her notions of its valuable strengthening qualities for growing young men.

‘You can save the dinner and it will do for their supper,’ she said to Brigid. ‘They’ll be hungry again by the time we come home.’

Her eyes went to Becan, still standing undecidedly by the raw patch of earth where the boy that he had always known as a nephew was now buried.

‘I don’t like the thought of not offering hospitality to a man who has a long journey across the sea ahead of him,’ she said in undertones. ‘Could you bear it, Brigid? Would it be all right if I offered him a meal before he returned? You could just serve something to him in the schoolhouse.’

‘He doesn’t deserve it after that behaviour, shouting out like that at Poulnabrone and then not even bothering to throw a handful of clay on the coffin,’ muttered Brigid.

Mara waited for a minute and was not surprised when her housekeeper tossed her head.

‘Do what you like, Brehon, it’s no problem to me.’ Brigid always had to be allowed her grumble, but Mara knew very well that so far as Brigid was concerned her lightest wish had the force of a command. She went across and proffered the invitation, but was not disappointed when Becan shook his head.

‘I won’t,’ he said with a brooding look. ‘I’ve got some other business in hand before I go back. I’ve got something to eat here.’ Then, turning his back on Mara, he seated himself on the low wall that divided the graveyard from the church entrance, took a linen-wrapped package from his pouch and began to eat some coarse oat bread.

‘So had Malachy told you that we have fixed the date for the wedding?’ began Caireen chattily as they strolled along together watching the six young scholars running ahead, dodging in and out of the tall uprights of the stone circle set near Caherconnell.

Mara turned to look at her with an attentive air as she shook her head in response. She only half-listened to the plans, the wedding day on Easter Sunday, the gown that the best dressmaker in Galway was making, the feast that they would hold where they would introduce Caireen’s friends and relations from Galway to her new friends and relations on the Burren. There was something that she could not warm to about this woman. Perhaps it was the very tight mouth, unexpected in a face so dimpled and so full of curves. Or perhaps it was the coldness of the watery blue eyes. From a distance Caireen had a comfortable, motherly look, the ideal woman, perhaps, for Malachy, with his motherless daughter, to marry, and yet it was a strange choice, thought Mara, thinking back to Malachy’s first wife, the finely drawn, very beautiful Mór with her red-gold hair, her very white skin and her wonderful gift for poetry. Malachy had worshipped her and had broken his heart when she died of a lump in the breast before her thirtieth birthday.

‘Which of these two big boys is Fachtnan?’ Caireen was staring with interest at the golden-haired, handsome Enda.

‘The dark-haired one,’ said Mara briefly.

‘Oh, I see.’ Caireen didn’t seem to be too disappointed. ‘A little bird told me that he and my little Nuala have an understanding.’

‘Understanding about what?’ asked Mara blandly, thinking to herself that she sounded like Aidan in one of his more obtuse moods.

Caireen gave a forced laugh, but didn’t seem able to come up with a reply to this.

‘Fachtnan, Fachtnan,’ she called in her high, shrill voice. ‘Fachtnan, come and have a little chat with me. I’ll leave you to look after your other charges, Mara,’ she said sweetly with a meaningful glance to where Moylan was trying to push Aidan into a muddy puddle.

For such a plump woman she could walk at quite a pace. Mara ignored Aidan and Moylan, but was soon forced by the speed of Caireen’s rapid strides to drop back a little. The ground was uneven and her pregnancy made her wary of forcing her pace. She could still hear fairly well though. Caireen was cross-questioning Fachtnan about his father, the size of his father’s farm, the number of brothers in the family, and his future hopes as a lawyer. She even knew about Fachtnan’s uncle, the Brehon at Oriel. No doubt, she was vetting Fachtnan’s suitability as a spouse for Nuala, but Mara felt infuriated. What business was it of Caireen? she asked herself with gritted teeth. She’s not even married to Malachy yet.

She looked around. Enda was kicking a stone in an idle way. He had grown beyond the simple horseplay games of the sort that Moylan and Aidan indulged in. He and Fachtnan had paired off very firmly in the last year. At her glance he now came up and joined her.

‘Just go and catch up with Fachtnan,’ she said to him urgently. ‘That woman is giving him a hard time and you know Fachtnan – he’ll be too polite to tell her to mind her own business.’

Enda gave her a quick, amused smile and lengthened his stride.

‘You don’t mind if I join you, mistress?’ His tone was of a polished man-about-town. ‘The Brehon told us that you lived at Galway with your late husband, the physician. You must have met some very interesting people there.’

Malachy’s house, at Caherconnell, was a handsome two-storey house set within the rounded enclosure wall of an old
cathair
. A comfortable house, but not large: certainly not large enough for two families. It was surrounded by a flourishing herb garden, full of all the plants that Malachy used for making his medicines.

Mara looked carefully around to see if Nuala was there. Although the garden was probably centuries old, when she had known it first it had been a ramshackle place where sturdy herbs battled it out with invading weeds. But Nuala had made the place her own, working long hours, weeding, pruning, ordering the beds of trim plants. Mara had expected to find her working here, but the garden was empty.

When they went in, Nuala was lolling listlessly on a window seat, drawing some old scroll through her fingers, but looking fixedly into the distance. When she saw Mara her eyes brightened and she came forward in her usual impulsive way, and then when Caireen stretched out a motherly arm, she took an abrupt step backwards. She was a pretty girl, not yet fifteen, but well grown and tall. Her colouring came from her father, dark-brown eyes, black hair and an olive skin that still bore traces of last summer’s tan, but her brains came from her mother’s side of the family. Nuala was immensely intelligent, and immensely knowledgeable about all medical matters. Already people of the Burren were beginning to avoid the father and seek out his daughter. There were no signs of Caireen’s sons, but that was just as well; Enda, Fachtnan and the others were friendly boys and would have been sociable to them, and Nuala, in her present mood, might have found that hard to bear.

‘Are your sons not here today?’ asked Mara in a friendly way.

Caireen shook her head. ‘You know what boys are like,’ she said coyly, peeping at Malachy in a roguish way. ‘They like a bit of fun. This place is quiet for them.’

‘So they won’t live here then when you are married.’ Mara kept her voice light and innocent and saw Nuala turn her head and look at Caireen for the first time.

Caireen’s voice hardened. ‘Certainly they will live here. Where else would they live except with their mother? The youngest is the same age as Nuala here. Now, cheer up, child,’ she addressed Nuala in a patronising way. ‘I know you miss the lively company, but there are some other friends coming to amuse you, so you won’t be alone for the rest of the day. My lads will be back this evening for supper. They promised they would do that.’

‘Fachtnan and the others are just coming. Go out and meet them, Nuala, will you?’ suggested Mara hurriedly. She was afraid that Nuala might explode; the quicker she was out of the room, the better.

‘Well, I’ll go and see how the dinner is getting on.’ Caireen took off her elaborate, stiff head covering and examined herself complacently in the silver mirror by the window.

‘Come into the stillroom with me, Mara, and we’ll leave this room for the youngsters.’ Malachy sounded guilty and his bride-to-be, on her way out, sent a suspicious glance from him to Mara, but then smiled sweetly and forgivingly.

‘Yes, you entertain your
cousin
, Malachy.’ The strong emphasis on the word cousin made Mara tighten her lips to avert an amused grin. The fact that she was actually married to Turlough Donn O’Brien, king of three kingdoms, did not seem enough to stop Caireen being jealous that Malachy would spend time with another woman.

The stillroom was a small, dimly lit room at the back of the house. It was hung with fragrant drying herbs and the shelves, that lined the wall, were filled with flasks and jars all labelled in Malachy’s untidy scrawl. Some shavings of a white root were drying in one shallow dish and there were some fat white seeds in another. An iron brazier, burning lumps of charcoal, stood in the middle of the floor and a pot bubbled with some garlic-smelling mixture.

‘Sit down,’ said Malachy, pulling out a chair. As she sat heavily, her stomach slightly protruding, he added hastily, ‘How are you? The child doesn’t cause you too much distress, does it? You should probably be resting.’

‘I’m fine,’ said Mara briefly. And then, being a woman who disliked beating about the bush, she said abruptly, ‘What’s the problem with Nuala then, Malachy?’