Verdict of the Court (10 page)

Not just the usual courting, she thought, but a pair of very troubled young people, giving and seeking comfort. She grimaced slightly and continued down the narrow, winding steps. What was going to be the outcome of this Christmas Day murder, she wondered as she pulled up the latch and pushed open the door of the solar. Then she stopped in surprise. Turlough was there at the table munching his way through a second breakfast – he was sprawled on the cushioned bench, but standing rigidly, one on each side of the fire, were two figures.

‘Visitors for you,’ said Turlough with a jerk of his thumb.

‘On private and confidential business,’ said Cael, looking hard at Turlough.

He took the hint immediately, rose with a grin on his face and said, ‘I’d better go downstairs, hadn’t I, and see what the rest of my guests are up to? What do you think?’

Neither of them smiled or moved. They were quite a serious and intense pair of children, thought Mara, looking at them with interest. Neglected, too – perhaps their elder sister should be looking after them instead of walking through the trees with Enda. Cael had chopped her hair even shorter – now it hung just barely below her ears and neither appeared to have changed their
léinte
for days. They had been grubby when she arrived – and she had put that down to ordinary childish play, but they had remained grubby through the celebrations. She wondered whether they had proper night clothes, whether anyone ever made sure that they washed and changed, or whether they even combed their hair. Brigid, old as she was by now, would sort them out quickly, she thought. Then feeling a certain respect for their self-sufficient intensity, she turned a serious face towards the twins and asked them deferentially whether they wanted to sit down.

‘We’ve got the list of tunes for you,’ said Cian, holding out a grubby piece of vellum. The script on it was fluent, well formed, although both of them, she had noticed when watching them drink, were left-handed. It was well spelled, also, so their early education had not been neglected. There had been, according to it, six dances after the King’s guests had come back into the great hall and each one of them had the name of the music placed beside the numeral and, in a bracket after it, the type of dance. Domhnall, thought Mara, had been thinking along these lines and this would form a good basis for a more thorough investigation.

‘That’s not all, though,’ said Cael. She looked grimly at Mara and then unbuckled the leather belt that she wore. It was studded with knives, each sheathed in its leather holster, eleven of them, counted Mara, but there was one of the dozen slots without a knife.

‘That’s right,’ said Cael with a nod as she saw Mara’s eyes go to the empty space.

‘She threw two of hers into Brehon MacClancy’s body – the one we made, the one swinging from the rope,’ said Cian. ‘I threw one, also, but she only got back one of hers.’

‘We tortured the stable boy,’ said Cael with relish.

‘But he swore by all that he held holy that he had sent the three knives over to the castle.’

‘It was my one that went into his chest, into the chest of the straw effigy – that was the one that is missing – my best knife. So …’ finished Cael, watching Mara’s face.

Odd, thought Mara. She had only noticed two knives in the dangling figure. However, she said nothing. It was possible she had been mistaken. Mara went across the room, picked up the box from its place on the carved court press and opened it. She said nothing, but held it out and the twins reacted immediately.

‘That’s it,’ said Cael triumphantly.

‘Definitely,’ said Cian.

‘You see that scratch on the hilt – I did that when Cian and I were throwing it at a bird. We wanted to see which of us brought him down.’

‘Don’t touch,’ said Mara moving the box away from them. ‘That’s evidence now.’ An idea occurred to her and she said casually:

‘I suppose that one of your knives is kept for cleaning fish, or do you use all of them?’

There was a moment’s silence. Cian, observed Mara, just looked puzzled, but Cael eyed her narrowly. She could have sworn that the girl caught in her breath.

‘My throwing knife to gut fish!’ she exclaimed then and looked at Mara with contempt.

‘What’s the difference between gutting fish and killing something, or someone?’ asked Mara with an innocent air. ‘Have you been fishing?’

‘No.’ The answer was uncompromising but probably the truth as her brother did not contradict the statement. He looked as though he was thinking hard and an annoyed look came over his freckled face.

‘You know what it means, of course, Cael,’ remarked Cian. His voice sounded slightly sulky. ‘It means that you are the prime suspect for the crime of committing a murder.’

His sister’s face lit up.

‘I hated him,’ said Cael with satisfaction.

‘You wanted to help Shona, didn’t you,’ put in Cian.

‘And Enda,’ added Cael with a smirk. ‘Don’t forget dear Enda.’

‘You just wanted to get rid of Brehon MacClancy to help the world,’ said Cian with a flourish.

They both stared at Mara in a challenging way and she nodded her head with the air of one who is not too impressed.

‘Yes,’ she said, ‘but there are other suspects.’

‘You,’ said Cian. ‘Because of the satire.’

‘That doesn’t make her a suspect – it was the
file
wrote the satire about her. That’s not her fault. He just did it for a joke,’ Cael assured Mara. ‘He never thought that Brehon MacClancy would seize it and refuse to give it back.’

Mara’s eyes narrowed. A satire on her; this was the first that she had heard of it. She wouldn’t have minded – no, probably she would have been immensely irritated, she told herself with a flash of honesty, but in public she would have had the self-possession to take it as a joke. Turlough, however, had a straightforward simplicity and he would have been furious. It would be no wonder if the poet, Aengus MacCraith, had been sick with anxiety when the Brehon maliciously confiscated it. She would have to go through the Brehon’s papers. Once she had finished with the twins she would send them to summon Enda and ask where MacClancy had put his notes. There would have been a judgement day arranged for the sixth of January, she remembered, so the cases should have been listed. In the meantime, she would see how much more information she could get from the twins.

‘Why should your sister, Shona, want to kill Brehon MacClancy?’ she asked in a respectful tone.

‘Because he was stopping her marrying Enda,’ said Cian quickly.

‘I see,’ said Mara. There would be more than that to it, she guessed. The marriage would not have been favoured by the girl’s father, unless Enda had better prospects. In any case, if the fosterage had ended, then it was not for MacClancy to say who she was to wed. She turned her mind to a different matter.

‘Where did the stable boy leave the knives?’ she asked.

‘Don’t ask me, I’m a suspect,’ smirked Cael.

‘And I’m her twin brother,’ remarked Cian. ‘I have family loyalty.’

‘Unless you can put aside personal affairs you are of no use to me,’ said Mara firmly and they both capitulated immediately.

‘He says he gave them to someone to put them in our room,’ said Cian. ‘He’s a hopeless witness because he can’t remember who he gave them to – one of the guard, he thinks.’

‘And where’s your room?’

‘Right on the top of the south-eastern tower.’

‘I see,’ said Mara. So the twins shared a room. She had imagined that Shona would have had her young sister with her in the much more luxurious quarters known as the priest’s room. Maccon MacMahon was in the old chapel – when Turlough had become King he had shown his devotion to religion by rapidly causing a small church and a priest’s house to be built in the grounds and moving the priest out into these quarters and leaving himself with two beautiful rooms for favoured guests.

But the room that was occupied by the twins was a small room at the very top of the spiral staircase, just under the flag post. Would a member of the guard have gone to the trouble of taking the knives all the way up there, she wondered, or would he have passed them on to someone else. Or even taken them and put them down somewhere. It might be quite hard to find out what happened to them.

‘We found them on a window loop at the bottom of the tower,’ admitted Cian, ‘but one was missing. There’s someone outside your door,’ he added in a hushed whisper. ‘Take cover!’ He snatched a knife from his belt, crept over to the door and opened it with a flourish.

‘Oh, it’s only you,’ he said with disgust as the widely opened door revealed the figure of Domhnall with hand outstretched to knock.

‘I’ve had an idea, Brehon,’ said Domhnall ignoring, in his dignified way, the badly behaved twins. ‘I was thinking that I could get a piece of board from the carpenter and use it to make a chart. We could write all the names of the adults across the top of the board and perhaps the parts of the room along the side …’

‘Do it for everyone during the “Hey Jig” – that’s the fourth tune of the evening and that’s probably the time that the murder took place,’ said Cael in an offhand manner.

‘Great idea,’ said Mara enthusiastically. ‘When all the scholars have had their breakfast, Domhnall, then Cael or Cian will take you to the master carpenter’s house and you can see if he has a suitable piece of board for you. If you write with charcoal then the board can be given back as good as new.’

‘And it can be wiped clean if the killer forces his way in,’ said Cael.

‘I thought you were a suspect,’ said Cian challengingly.

‘I didn’t do it – guess why? Because I wouldn’t have stuck a knife in his back like that; that’s not a good place to kill anyone – just under the shoulder blade. I’d have gone behind and slit his throat. No, it definitely wasn’t me.’

‘Do you know,’ said Mara slowly and thoughtfully, ‘I think you two are going to be a great help to me in this investigation.’ It was an interesting idea. There were easier ways of killing someone at a feast than sticking a knife into their back under the shoulder blade. She wondered whether it was true that was not a good place and decided that it was. There was a competence and sincerity about the twins’ observations which made her believe that they knew what they were talking about, and that they were not lying.

‘Let’s go and get Cormac out of bed, and the rest of them,’ proposed Cian and he and Cael disappeared instantly from the room. Cael had flushed slightly at Mara’s praise but had immediately scrubbed her finger tips through her uneven locks of bright-red hair and then tweaked her nose in a business-like way.

‘Have your breakfast in peace, Domhnall,’ advised Mara, but she knew that he would manage the twins. She went over to the hatch, opened it and glanced down.

Aengus MacCraith was drinking some ale and chatting with Turlough while the cook slid some fried pork and eggs onto his plate. She would join them, she thought. It would be interesting to see the poet’s reaction to her presence.

Did those satirical verses still exist? she wondered.

(the last laws)

The law regards satire as a very severe attack on a person because it strikes and cuts at log n-enech (literally the ‘price of his face’ – but meaning the ‘honour price’.) Anything that causes a person to lose face, injures that person and recompense has to be paid.

Composing a satire

Repeating a satire

Mocking a manner of speech

Casting scorn on professional ability

Mocking a person’s appearance

Making public a physical blemish

Giving a nickname that endures.

‘H
ere’s the person that we all want to see,’ said Turlough boisterously when Mara came into the great hall. All faces turned smilingly towards her. It seemed, she thought, still like a merry festive gathering, not a hall where last night a man, well known to all of these guests, had been murdered in the presence of his friends and neighbours.

‘What can I do for you, my lord?’ she queried pleasantly.

‘It’s just that Maccon has to go home tomorrow morning,’ he said. ‘We really do need to have the bustard hunt today.’

‘I’m afraid that you will all have to be patient for a while longer,’ she said smoothly. It was no good, she thought, wishing that her husband had a bit more sense than to tackle her in public like this. He was who he was. ‘I can make no promises – no confession of guilt has been made and my investigations have produced several possibilities.’ She allowed that sentence to hang and was pleased to find that the hearty, bloodthirsty expressions of the eager faces turned towards her changed to surreptitious and slightly guilty sidelong glances at each other. Fionn O’Brien, Aengus MacCraith, Raour and Maccon suddenly became very interested in fresh helpings of eggs and bacon produced by the obliging Rosta and she moved slightly back into the window recess and waited with her eyes on Turlough until he had the sense to join her.

‘The captain of the guard says that I may borrow two of his men to aid the physician to investigate the body thoroughly,’ she said in a whisper. She was an expert at pitching her voice, so she knew that the words had reached the men standing around the table. A whisper, she had found from experience, mostly travelled further than words spoken in a low voice.

She scanned the faces carefully, but they all looked ill at ease and almost furtive. The thought of that dead body stored down in the basement was giving everyone an uncomfortable feeling and she was glad to see that nobody dared to protest about the cancelling of their hunt through the marshy ground after that. She smiled reassuringly at Turlough and left the hall quickly.

‘Could you send one of your lads to find Enda for me, Rosta,’ she said as he followed her out of the great hall. ‘Tell him that I’ll be in the Brehon’s room,’ she added.

Tomás MacClancy’s room was always kept for him – indeed, he probably spent far more time in Bunratty Castle than he did in his own place at Urlan. Situated in the south-east tower it was always known as the robing room, as in the past both of Turlough’s uncles had used it for that purpose.