The Haunted Abbot

 
 
 

 
The Haunted Abbot

 

 
PETER TREMAYNE

 
 
headline

 
Copyright © 2002 Peter Tremayne

 

 
The right of Peter Tremayne to be identified as the Author of the Work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

 

 
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be
reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted,
in any form or by any means, without the prior written
permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated
in any form of binding or cover other than that in which
it is published and without a similar condition being
imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

 

 
First published as an Ebook by Headline Publishing Group in 2010

 

 
All characters in this publication are fictitious
and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead,
is purely coincidental.

 

eISBN : 978 0 7553 7269 0

 

 
This Ebook produced by Jouve Digitalisation des Informations

 

 
HEADLINE PUBLISHING GROUP
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Table of Contents

 

 

Peter Tremayne is the fiction pseudonym of a well-known authority on the ancient Celts, who utilises his knowledge of the Brehon law system and seventh-century Irish society to create a new concept in detective fiction.

Peter Tremayne’s ten previous Sister Fidelma novels, most recently
Act of Mercy
,
Our Lady of Darkness
and
Smoke in the Wind
, are also available from Headline, as is a Sister Fidelma short story collection,
Hemlock at Vespers
.

An International Sister Fidelma Society has been established with a journal entitled
The Brehon
appearing three times yearly. Details can be obtained either by writing to the Society at PO Box 1899, Little Rock, Arkansas 72203-1899, USA, or by logging onto the Society website at
www.sisterfidelma.com
.

 

‘The Sister Fidelma books give the readers a rattling good yarn. But more than that, they bring vividly and viscerally to life the fascinating lost world of the Celtic Irish. I put down
The Spider’s Web
with a sense of satisfaction at a good story well told, but also speculating on what modern life might have been like had that civilisation survived’ Ronan Bennett

 

‘An Ellis Peters competitor … the background detail is marvellous’
Evening Standard

 

‘A brilliant and beguiling heroine. Immensely appealing’
Publishers Weekly

In memory of Moira Evans
(22 September 1951 - 4 August 2001)
a great friend, who offered support
and encouragement and
believed in Sister Fidelma

 

Do not stand at my grave and weep.
I am not there, I do not sleep.
I am a thousand winds that blow,
I am the diamond glints on snow.
I am the sunlight on ripened grain,
I am the gentle autumn’s rain.
When you awaken in the morning’s hush,
I am the swift uplifting rush
Of quiet birds in circled flight.
I am the stars that shine at night.
Do not stand at my grave and cry,
I am not there, I did not die …

 

Even when there is no law, there is conscience.

 

Publilius Syrus
First century BC

The Sister Fidelma mysteries are set mainly in Ireland during the mid-seventh century. This story, however, takes place while Fidelma and her companion in adventure, the Saxon Brother Eadulf, are en route to Eadulf’s birthplace of Seaxmund’s Ham, in the land of the South Folk (modern Saxmundham, Suffolk), in the kingdom of the East Angles (East Anglia) in what was to become England.

It should be remembered that East Anglia and the kingdom of the East Saxons (Essex) to the south had only been converted to Christianity by Irish missionaries a few decades before Fidelma’s visit, which takes place in December, AD 666.

In AD 653 King Sigebert of the East Saxons was baptised by the Irish Bishop of Lindisfarne, Finan. Finan sent one of his brethren, Cedd, to work among the East Saxons. Cedd was to attend the famous Synod of Whitby in AD 664 as an advocate of the Celtic Church. He built a church at Lastingham and died there soon after of the Yellow Plague. King Sigebert and his East Saxons returned to their pagan worship but Eata, the new Bishop of Lindisfarne, sent another Irish missionary to reconvert them.

Some years earlier, in the East Anglian kingdom, a prince of the royal house, also named Sigebert, had to flee to Gaul to escape being killed by an ambitious cousin who claimed the kingship. In Gaul, about 610-12, he met the famous Irish missionary Columbanus (c. 540-615), who had founded monastic centres at Annegray, Luxeuil and Fontaine and went on to establish the monastery of Bobbio, in Italy, which is said to have been the model for the abbey in Umberto Eco’s
Name of the Rose
.

Sigebert eventually returned to East Anglia having been converted by Columbanus to Christianity. Between 631 and 634 he brought missionaries into his kingdom. Among them was a Burgundian named Felix (d. AD 648), who set up his abbey at Dunwich, while a group of Irish missionaries, led by Fursa (known to the Angles as Fursey - 575-648), established their abbey at Burghcastle. Fursa was accompanied by his brothers, Foillan and Ultan, and by many other Irish religious. Among them were Gobban and Diciul, the latter leading the first Christian mission to the South Saxons (Sussex) and establishing his church at Bosham (AD 645).

Fidelma’s companion, Eadulf, had been an hereditary
gerefa
, a magistrate, in Seaxmund’s Ham before being converted by these Irish missionaries and receiving his religious training in an Irish foundation.

After the decision taken at the famous Council of Whitby in AD 664 (see
Absolution by Murder
), most Saxon kingdoms accepted Roman influence as being in the ascendant over the original Celtic Christian concepts. But in December 666, at the time this story is set, Christianity was still very new and the old pagan ways were dying hard. The East Angles and East Saxons were not even a generation away from their initial conversion from worship of their gods and goddesses - Tiw, Woden, Thunor, and Frig. The power of the old deities was such that even today, in the English language, the days of the week are still named after them - Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday - while the Easter festival takes its name from the fertility goddess Eostre. Christmas coincided with the pagan Saxon feast of Yuletide.

Sister Fidelma is not simply a religieuse, a former member of the community of St Brigid of Kildare. She is also a qualified
dálaigh
, or advocate of the ancient law courts of Ireland.

The Ireland of Fidelma’s day consisted of five main provincial kingdoms; indeed, the modern Irish word for a province is still
cúige
, literally ‘a fifth’. Four provincial kings - of Ulaidh (Ulster), of Connacht, of Muman (Munster) and of Laigin (Leinster) - gave their qualified allegiance to the Ard Rí or High King, who ruled from Tara, in the ‘royal’ fifth province of Midhe (Meath), which means the ‘middle province’. Even among the provincial kingdoms, there was a decentralisation of power to petty kingdoms and clan territories.

This cohesion was not yet reflected among the warring kingdoms of the Anglo-Saxons. At the time of Fidelma’s visit there were around ten or eleven such kingdoms, including petty kingdoms. Of these there were three main contenders for power - Northumbria, Mercia and Wessex. Each was fighting to establish its king as the Bretwalda - ‘ruler of Britain’. A cohesive unit which could be recognised as England was not to emerge for another three centuries after Fidelma’s time.

We should remind ourselves of the cultural perspective from which Fidelma views the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms, and discover how she could be an advocate in her country’s legal system - a thing impossible in Brother Eadulf’s native land.

The law of primogeniture, inheritance by the eldest son or daughter, was an alien concept in Ireland. Kingship, from the lowliest clan chieftain to the High King, was only partially hereditary and mainly electoral. Each ruler had to prove himself or herself worthy of office and was elected by the
derbhfine
of their family - a minimum of three generations from a common ancestor gathered in conclave. If a ruler did not pursue the commonwealth of the people, they were impeached and removed from office. The monarchical system of ancient Ireland had more in common with a modern-day republic than with the feudal monarchies which developed in medieval Europe.

Seventh-century Ireland was governed by a system of sophisticated laws called the Laws of the Fénechus, or land-tillers, which became more popularly known as the Brehon Laws, deriving from the word
breaitheamh
- a judge. Tradition has it that these laws were first gathered in 714 BC by order of the High King, Ollamh Fódhla. Over a thousand years later, in AD 438, the High King Laoghaire appointed a commission of nine learned people to study and revise the laws, and commit them to the new writing in Latin characters. One of those serving on the commission was Patrick, eventually to become patron saint of Ireland. After three years, the commission produced a written text of the laws, which is the first known codification.

The first complete surviving texts of the ancient laws of Ireland are preserved in an eleventh-century manuscript book in the Royal Irish Academy, Dublin. It was not until the seventeenth century that the English colonial administration in Ireland finally suppressed the use of the Brehon law system. To even possess a copy of the Irish laws books was punishable often by death or transportation.

The law system was not static and every three years, at the Féis Temhach (Festival of Tara), the lawyers and administrators gathered to consider and revise the laws in the light of changing society and its needs.

Under these laws, women occupied a unique place. The Irish laws gave more rights and protection to women than any other western law code until recent times. Women could, and did, aspire to all offices and professions as the co-equals of men. They could be political leaders, command their people in battle as warriors, be physicians, local magistrates, poets, artisans, lawyers and judges. We know the names of many female judges of Fidelma’s period - Bríg Briugaid and Aine Ingine Iugare, for example, and Dari, who was not only a judge but the author of a noted law text written in the sixth century.

Women were protected by law against sexual harassment, against discrimination, against rape. They had the right of divorce on equal terms from their husbands, with equitable separation laws, and could demand part of their husband’s property as a divorce settlement; they had the right to inherit personal property and the right of sickness benefits when ill or hospitalised. Ancient Ireland had Europe’s oldest recorded system of hospitals. Seen from today’s perspective, the Brehon Laws seemed to enshrine an almost ideal society.

This background, and its strong contrast to Ireland’s neighbours, should be understood in order to appreciate Fidelma’s role in these stories. Fidelma went to study laws at the bardic school of the Brehon Morann of Tara and, after eight years of study, she obtained the degree of
anruth
, only one degree below the highest offered in either bardic or ecclesiastical universities in ancient Ireland. The highest degree was
ollamh
, which is still the modern Irish word for a professor. Fidelma’s studies were in both the criminal code of the Senechus Mór and the civil code of Leabhar Acaill. Thereby she became a
dálaigh
or advocate of the law courts.

Her main role could be compared to that of a modern Scottish sheriff-substitute whose job is to gather and assess the evidence, independent of the police, to see if there is a case to be answered. The modern French
juge d’instruction
holds a similar role. However, sometimes Fidelma is faced with the task of prosecuting or defending in the courts or even rendering judgments in minor cases when a Brehon was not available.