Laws in Conflict (26 page)

‘He’s got Walter!’ The shrill scream of Hugh’s voice came from the top of the roof, and by the light of the torch Mara could see the head of copper curls, so admired by Jane Bodkin, leaning over the drip ledge of the parapet on top of the gaol. Beside him was Shane’s dark head. Mara’s heart stopped at the peril that her boys were in. She came forward from her place of concealment and stepped out into the street, only to shrink back as the soldiers, fighting hand-to-hand with the Blakes, passed her so closely that she could only save herself by returning quickly into the alleyway.

And then Mara saw what they had seen.

James Lynch was dragging his son up Gaol Street, up towards Middle Street and from there through the Great Gate and out on to Gallows’ Green.

And Walter Lynch, manacled and shackled with heavy iron chains, had a noose around his neck and was been led by his own father like a beast to the slaughterhouse.

Mara acted quickly. There was, she reasoned, nothing that she could do for Hugh and Shane just now. They were with the O’Malley in the gaol and the gaol was now no longer the focus of the battle. Somehow, she felt confident that the clansmen would look after her two boys.

But Walter Lynch, no more than a boy himself, would be hanged by the neck, hanged until he was dead, within the hour unless someone rescued him.

Was it possible that, even now, she could make James Lynch hesitate? That what she had to tell him would ring true and that he would spare his son until a just trial could be held?

Gallows’ Green, she thought. The fanatical father was going to drag his son there. How could she get there before them?

Mara knew Galway quite well by now and quickly she pictured her route. A moment later she had gone back down the alleyway, had crossed Market Street, gone through the gate into the graveyard of St Nicholas’s Church and out of the back gate and into Lombard Street.

Lombard Street was no longer empty. Lights were on in all the shops, tower houses and dwellings. People were coming out through opened doors, or thronging up from Quay Street. She saw David Browne, with his sister Catarina, hurrying forward, but she did not wait to greet them. There was a murmur of conversation and then a swell of voices. The words ‘Gallows’ Green’ were on all lips. Mara pushed her way through them and went rapidly up North Street, noticing Richard Athy, standing with a perturbed face, at the gate of his splendid mansion.

And then she became aware that she had a companion. By her side was Anthony Skerrett with a drawn sword in his hand. He saw her look at it and smiled.

‘Got used to carrying this around the streets of London at night,’ he said casually, and kept his place at her elbow as she turned down Little Gate Street, praying that she would get to its junction with Middle Street before James Lynch. She went faster now – Anthony and his sword ensured that a path opened out in front of her.

And she was just in time. The soldiers had to fight every inch of the way with their pursuers, and the boy Walter, dragged by the noose, was in chains and could not make good progress. Despite her circuitous route she had arrived at the junction before the father and son and was ready to say what had to be said. This life had to be saved. That other life would have to take a chance. At least the warning would be public and would give a chance of escape. But she had no choice. She would have to tell this madman, James Lynch, what she believed had happened on that fatal Shrove and she would have to tell him before he reached Gallows’ Green.

A king or his representative, a Brehon, can issue an ordinance in times when law and order begins to break down and where the orders are necessary for the preservation of life. It follows then that a Brehon must be skilled in talking to incensed multitudes and negotiating their consent to a new order or law.

Triad 49

There are three things that are the sign of a well-run kingdom:

1. Suppressing robbers.

2. Crushing criminals.

3. Preventing lawlessness.

J
ust as Mara and Anthony Skerrett emerged into the crossroads, she realized that James Lynch could go no further. The street between him and the way to Gallows’ Green was completely blocked with people. Men came running down towards him from the Great Gate, but these men were not sailors; these were men with bare legs and huge moustaches, wearing woollen cloaks or short jackets over their Gaelic
léinte
. They were armed with short swords and small, light, slender throwing knives, and they yelled their battle cry of ‘O’Flaherty
Abú
’ as they came.

The ferocious O’Flahertys, hated and feared by the people of Galway, had arrived.

Mara could picture how they had arrived at this spot and admired the quick wits of whosoever had directed them. The message would have been passed to them, probably by Hugh and Shane as soon as they had come in by the open gate to the west. They would have circled the town on the side of the sea and then cut across its eastern side, keeping always inside the walls of the city and finding nothing but empty streets and scared citizens hiding within their houses.

But were they in time?

James Lynch, dragging his son by the noose, and accompanied by the ranks of soldiers, had reached the junction of the four crossroads where Little Gate Street and Great Gate Street joined on to Skinner’s Street and High Middle Street – by coincidence just beside his own house. Ahead of them was the short length of Great Gate Street and then, on the other side of the gate, was Gallows’ Green. The entire regiment of soldiers was with him, forming a human shield to his back, and on both sides.

But the O’Flahertys had been too quick for them. They had wedged themselves into a solid fighting mass, blocking the way forward. The soldiers hesitated and then stopped, their swords in their hands and their eyes on the ferocious clansmen ahead of them. And behind the soldiers came the cohorts of the Blake family reinforced with the clansmen of O’Malley of the Ships.

‘Walter, Walter,’ screamed Margaret, and she burst through the crowd of soldiers, desperately clawing her way towards her son. Her hair streamed down her back and her face was blotched with tears. At the last moment a soldier seized her by an arm and she clawed at him as if she had been the cat depicted on the Burke shield over her brother’s castle.

‘Let me go, let me have my son,’ she wept, and her nails raked the man’s face until he managed to seize both of her hands. Another soldier put a hand over her mouth and she was dragged back.

The boy was almost unconscious, Mara could see. The noose was pulled so tightly that his face was purple and his eyes were staring. His head slumped down over his chest and when a sudden silence fell after Margaret’s shrieks were suppressed, Mara could hear him retching desperately, his chained hands trying to rise high enough to be able to grab the rope from his neck.

A second later, James acted. The noose, shortened to a dangerous extent, was in one of his hands, but with the other he seized the boy by a fistful of curls and hauled him over towards the studded oak front door of his own tower house. Somehow he must have got the key into his hand, because a few seconds later he had jerked his son over the threshold and had slammed the heavy door behind them.

‘My son, my son,’ screamed Margaret again as her captors released her.

And then a great roar broke out – a roar of anger, but of triumph, too. No door in the world was strong enough to stand against the combined might of the Blakes, the O’Malleys and the O’Flahertys!

‘Let go my arm,’ said Mara irritably to Anthony Skerrett. ‘Let me go. I must talk to him. He might listen to me. He is making a terrible mistake. I must get in there. I must get into his house and go after him.’

‘Let her go,’ said Henry Bodkin, who had fought his way to her other side.

But it seemed as though it was too late. No one took any notice of her. The stone buildings of the city resonated to the cry of ‘Kill, kill, kill’, and the timbers of the door began to splinter. The well-trained soldiers’ iron discipline had collapsed in the face of the mob’s fury and now they fought for their own lives, desperately trying to escape the trap in which they were placed with enemies on both sides of them. There was nothing Mara could do. The noise was too great. Even Margaret’s shrieks could no longer be heard as she stood with her hair streaming loosely down her back and her mouth widely opened in anguish.

Blake, the blacksmith, was to the fore now and he had an enormous hammer in his hands. He shed his tunic and swung the hammer a few times, as if testing his muscles as well as its weight. The O’Malley called to his men and they began to scale the wall of the tower house, using slightly protruding stones as if they were steps on a staircase and swinging themselves upwards by the protruding drip ledges above the windows.

Then the blacksmith hit the door. The hammer bounced off the iron studs and he frowned calling for another. A smaller hammer was put into his hand and with that he split a board. A gaping hole, the size of a man’s head, appeared in the door. Other men with hammers and cudgels fell upon door, blows rained on it and it began to crumble. A cheer went up, but then it was followed by a sudden silence and a terrible scream, a scream like that from a banshee, and it came from Margaret.

‘Oh, my God, look! He’s going to hang my son himself.’

There was a dead silence. The noise of blows ceased; no one spoke; every eye went upwards. A gasp ran through the immense throng and then silence again.

A candle had been lit in a window at the top of the tower house. One of the two casements had been pushed open and the rope knotted to the stone mullion between the windows. With almost supernatural strength James Lynch lifted the body of his son on to the windowsill.

‘You’re wrong, Mayor Lynch,’ called Mara into the silence. Her voice had been trained by her father from a very early age, trained to be heard in an outdoor court where hundreds of people stood in a five-acre field. Project your voice towards the stone cliff at the back, he used to advise. She spoke now without strain and without emotion, and the cool, calm tone took the man’s attention. He stopped and leaned out of the window. Walter’s legs were still inside the room. It was impossible to know whether he was dead or just unconscious, but the body slumped helpless on the stone sill of the mullioned window.

Mara continued. A life hung by a hair; she knew that.

‘The murder of Carlos Gomez of Spain was not committed by your son, Walter Lynch,’ she went on. Her voice was pitched at the roof of the tower house and she knew by long experience that the stone there would act as a sounding board and would bounce the sound back to the crowds that thronged the crossroads. Let the guilty take warning; the innocent had to be saved.

‘On that night, the night of Shrove Tuesday,’ she continued, just as if she were giving judgement at Poulnabrone in the Burren, ‘many young men went outside the city gates. The mayor kept strict order within the town and no drunkenness or fighting was tolerated there. Outside the city gates was a different matter,’ said Mara, her tone crisp and assured, her eyes on the roof of the tower house.

‘Carlos Gomez,’ she went on, ‘was one of those who went outside the gates.’

‘Enough of this,’ screamed James Lynch. ‘You’ve claimed to know the truth in this matter. Give me the name of the murderer, or hold your peace while I make sure that justice is carried out.’

There was a faint sound of splintering wood and Mara made a slight gesture of her hand to silence it and spoke quickly and firmly.

‘Carlos Gomez,’ she said, ‘was murdered, but not murdered in the place where the body was found, on the hill overlooking Lough Atalia, on the grass beside the windmill. He was murdered just beside The Green, not far from the Great Gate itself.’

There was a slight stir, a murmur from the crowd and she waited courteously until it had subsided. James Lynch had turned away and she had to get his attention back on to her. When she spoke again, her slightly raised voice was severe.

‘James Lynch, you are a judge without judgement. You claim to represent the law, to act as a lawyer, but you have not studied the law. You carried out a trial without ascertaining the merest facts. If you had examined the body of Carlos Gomez you would have found abrasions on the back of the head, a quantity of fine limestone gravel in the hair around the abrasions and a bruise under the chin. Carlos Gomez was probably knocked to the ground by a blow to the chin, knifed as he lay there and then either dragged or carried to the windmill and his body deposited in that place just beside the windmill where an innocent boy slept.’

She had got his attention now, Mara noticed, feeling a slight thrill. Mad as the man was – and by now she had little doubt that he was insane – he was as he was said to be; a man of integrity, a man who upheld the law as he understood it. That image was central to his belief in himself and perhaps she had momentarily shaken it. She pursued her advantage.

‘And when Carlos Gomez was killed, Walter Lynch was already insensible from the effects of the strong drink that he had consumed.’

Mara held her breath, her eyes raised. Was it going to work? Could anyone accomplish this impossible deed?

James Lynch gave a groan that echoed around the street.

‘Mad woman; you are mad and bad!’ he exclaimed. ‘It was Walter Lynch’s dagger that killed the Spaniard. A life for a life! Never let it be said that a murderer’s unhappy father allowed him to escape from the gallows.’

Reaching down he hoisted his son into an upright position. Now everyone could see from the violent trembling of the boy’s limbs that he was still alive. He stood there for a second looking downwards, the noose around his neck, and it seemed to Mara that his eyes found the face of his mother.

‘Now may the Lord have mercy on your soul,’ called James Lynch, and looked up towards the heavens above as he pushed the boy over.

But he was too late. If he had looked a minute earlier, he might have still carried out the execution, but now he did not have time.