Verdict of the Court (13 page)

‘Marvellous,’ said Mara with enthusiasm.

‘We’ll show you how it works, Brehon,’ said Domhnall. ‘Make sure that you have clean hands everyone.’ He waited, effortlessly in command, while the others dipped their fingers into the basin to the side of the fire, and then wiped them on the linen napkin resting on a stool.

‘In order of age; youngest first,’ he commanded.

It was interesting, thought Mara, that these young people hardly hesitated when they came to placing the figures. There were a few odd things.

Cormac did not remember the position of either of his parents.

Cael placed her father Maccon in the bottom third of the room, but opposite to the window recess where the Brehon MacClancy was drinking.

Only Cian had seen Enda go towards the Brehon.

But all had seen Raour approach him.

‘Well,’ said Mara, rising to her feet. ‘That was extremely interesting. Now I wonder could I give some advice about the interviewing of the rest of the people. I think,’ she went on without waiting for an answer, ‘it might be best if we bring people in one by one and without making a fuss about it. So Art, could you go and tell Fionn O’Brien that I want a word with him in the solar.’

Fionn O’Brien put himself, predictably, in the top half of the room, standing talking to Turlough during the ‘Hey Jig’. He remembered the position of fewer people than did the children – but that was to be expected. Mara herself found it hard to remember what she had been doing during that particular dance, but put that down to her lack of musical knowledge. She was happy to accept the verdict of the scholars who had her standing by the table – drinking, according to Cael.

One by one they came in, and to all outward appearance they were amused and interested by the exercise. Several, though, did corroborate Cael’s observance of Enda – Raour went so far as to claim to hear the words when he moved down to check that the hatch between the great hall and the small kitchen was locked.

‘Went to see whether Rosta had any decent wine,’ he claimed, ‘but there wasn’t a sound from inside, so I reckoned they had all gone downstairs to the main guard hall.’

‘And Enda’s words, what were they?’ queried Mara.

Raour frowned. ‘I think he said something like “
You can’t do this
,”
but I wouldn’t swear to it. There was no reason why I should take notice of it.’

‘And what did you think that he meant by that?’

‘I thought he might be reproaching the man for getting drunk,’ said Raour.

It was a reasonable explanation, but Mara, with the knowledge of that letter confirming Raour’s ennoblement at the hands of Henry VIII, was not convinced. There was a guarded look in the young man’s eye and she thought that the hand which moved the pieces with their identifying scarves had slightly trembled.

Poised between boyhood and adulthood, he had the sharp visual memory of the younger children and his choices of position almost exactly matched theirs.

Shona, on the other hand, though close in age, declared firmly that she just could not remember. When urged to try, her hands trembled so much that Domhnall politely offered her some elderberry cordial. She refused that abruptly, said that she had a headache and Mara allowed her to depart, gazing thoughtfully after her.

The door had not closed behind her when one of the castle’s servants appeared in its gap.

‘The physician asked me to see you, Brehon,’ he said. ‘I was to tell you that he is ill with a fever and has to keep to his bed for the next few days.’

Oh really, thought Mara with annoyance. What an old woman he is to be cosseting himself like this. And no suggestion of sending for another physician. An unpleasant thought came to her mind. If Donogh O’Hickey could not or would not investigate the dead body, she would have to do it herself.

With the help of her scholars she would cross-question all of the guests that were present during that time – less than an hour, she reckoned – when the Brehon, sitting in the window recess, sullenly swilling the mead, while others danced, was secretly and unlawfully done to death. One by one the guests would be interrogated and sooner or later the motive and means would be extracted and the guilty person arraigned and the verdict of the court delivered.

However, when Finbar was despatched for Maccon MacMahon, there was a surprise. Peering over his shoulder with an apologetic expression on his face was Turlough.

‘Maccon wanted me to come,’ he explained to his wife. ‘He wanted me to explain to you that he has urgent business at home. He must leave either tonight or first thing tomorrow morning.’

‘No way,’ said Cael. ‘We’re having too much fun – dead bodies, and all that sort of thing.’

‘You’ll do what you’re told,’ retorted Macon with unusual severity; he normally treated his two younger children with amused tolerance, while he hardly took any notice at all of Shona.

‘You’re not in charge here,’ retorted Cian. ‘She is.’ He pointed a grubby thumb at Mara and she suppressed a smile. His words however, made it harder for her to insist on Maccon’s presence, on him remaining within the walls of Bunratty Castle, when Turlough, the King, had obviously already acquiesced to his clansman’s departure.

‘As we agreed, my lord,’ she addressed Turlough with careful control, ‘it is essential that all guests remain with the castle grounds until the guilty person is found, or confesses.’

‘And that could be never,’ exclaimed Cael triumphantly.

‘May I send Cael and Cian for some more elderberry cordial, Brehon?’ asked Domhnall with careful tact. When she nodded, he said carelessly, ‘You go, too, Slevin, no hurry.’

Slevin got to his feet with a grin, took up the tray and said to the twins in seductive tones, ‘I’ll tell you what; let’s see if Rosta is making any wafers. I’d love a few; wouldn’t you? They’re just so good, hot from the griddle.’

A pair of clever boys, my two eldest scholars, thought Mara as the three left the room. Domhnall had understood that she wanted to get rid of the twins, and Slevin had instantly picked up on his intention. She sat back as Maccon, with a frown between his eyes, carelessly set out the figures on the replica of the great hall where Brehon MacClancy had met his death last night. He paused for a moment with the representative of the physician in one hand and then put him at the end of the hall, not too far from where the window recess where Brehon MacMahon had sat drinking. Then, after a moment’s hesitation, he moved the figure again and put it by the hatch to the kitchen.

‘I’m not sure,’ he said apologetically. ‘I remember looking at him wondering whether he was going to dance. He hadn’t done so during the evening, had just sat by the table, chatting to various people.’ He gazed at the few sparse figures that he had positioned and said with a grimace, ‘I’m afraid I’m not a very good witness. I’m not very observant, I think. Now about this business of mine, Brehon …’

‘I’ll let you know the instant it is possible for you to leave,’ promised Mara and was relieved when the door opened and the three, Slevin and the twins, came in with a tray bearing a flagon of elderberry cordial and a pile of fragrantly tempting wafers. Everyone took the refreshments happily – even Mara partook in order to praise the wafers.

It was only when the tray was cleared the scholars returned to the work. And then Turlough, more by chance than tact, she thought, caused a diversion by demanding to have his turn and he firmly clustered all of the pawns down in the window recess at the end of the hall and said cheerfully, ‘I’m suspicious about these youngsters; they were all having a bit of knife practice and one of them went astray.’

Cael and Cian eyed each other uncertainly, but the five law-school scholars, all of them well used to Turlough’s sense of humour, giggled almost uncontrollably. Death, thought Mara charitably, is always a shock. A few giggles would do no harm and she decided to pretend not to hear. She was surprised, though, to see how that the twins had reacted with uneasy glances passing between them. Neither of them laughed and they seemed taken aback by the reaction of the law-school scholars.

Maccon, she decided, was not much of a father. He hardly glanced at his own children and certainly did not appear to take any notice of their reaction to Turlough’s jest. He did not, however, pester her with any more requests and she hoped that he had become resigned to staying.

As the day went on she began to feel more and more puzzled. Domhnall and Slevin had dismissed the others to run around in the open air and had their heads together in their room over the sheaf of notes which had resulted from their elaborate scheme. From listening to the evidence, and from a cursory glance at these notes, Mara feared that they were not going to help the investigation too much. Oddly it didn’t seem as though anyone, except Enda, had gone near to Brehon MacClancy in that time, and somehow she found it hard to believe that Enda, though driven by love from Shona and sympathy at her plight, would turn to murder; after all, even if something had happened, Enda was still ready to marry her.

Unless, of course … now her thoughts went to the unpleasant, power-hungry old man which the once venerated Brehon MacClancy had turned into. He would have had power over Shona and power sometimes led to abuse. If that were the case … Well, then, she thought, Enda’s fury might have known no bounds.

Mara sighed. She thought wryly of Turlough’s touching belief that she might have had everything solved by breakfast time that morning past.

‘I’m not too sure of anything,’ she muttered as she left the room and descended the stairs, ‘but there is one thing that I must do. I must check whether the keys to the Brehon’s press are in the man’s pouch, or somewhere on the body, perhaps attached to a belt.’ A shudder of distaste went over her; nevertheless, she went steadily on down the stairs.

A thick mist had arisen, she saw, looking out through one of the small, narrow window loops on the staircase inside the north-eastern tower. Cormac, Art, Finbar together with the twins were chasing around the greensward in front of the castle, Cormac eluding capture by taking to a leafless beech tree with a tall narrow mossy trunk. She could barely see them at first but then the mist lightened for a moment and she stopped to watch with amusement. The twins were the pursuers, armed with lumps of clay from the river, rather than their throwing knives, she was glad to see. As Mara watched, one clay ball splattered against the back of Finbar’s best cloak and he sank dramatically to the ground. Cian seized his feet and he was hauled off towards the boathouse on the riverbank. Mara wondered whether she should intervene, but decided to leave them alone. The twins were an odd pair. It was hard to know how much they knew but Mara had an uneasy feeling that they were concealing something – something which might be of importance. She continued on her way, passing the great hall and going down the next flight of stairs, beyond the captain’s set of rooms and down into the main guard hall.

All was as usual there. The main guard hall was for the men-at-arms. They ate there, talked, sang, worked there and slept there at night on straw-filled pallets. When Mara came in she saw that the trestle tables for the meals were dismantled and piled up at the sides of the room. A group of guards were talking in front of the fire, another group were sharpening their swords and others were rubbing oil into wooden leather-covered shields. There was a pause in the lively conversation and snatches of song when she came in and the captain came forward instantly.

‘Anything that I can do for you, Brehon,’ he said, immediately attentive to the King’s wife.

‘I wonder could you lend me a couple of your men, Captain,’ said Mara making a great effort to sound cool and unconcerned. ‘I wish to examine the dead body and could do with some assistance. I understand that the physician is ill.’

He made haste to assure her that all the men and anything else that she wanted would be at her disposal. There was an uneasy sound to his voice and Mara understood. This man was responsible for security within the castle and a death during a festival was something which concerned him intimately. She wondered for a moment what relationship he had with the Brehon of Thomond and then dismissed the thought from her mind. Tomás had been killed less than an hour after the return of the King’s guests to the main hall. The people in the main hall, the King’s relations and his best friends, unlikely as it seemed, were the only ones who could be guilty of the crime.

‘If I could just borrow two of your men,’ she requested. ‘That’s really all that I need.’

She thought of asking for one of the trestle stands and its boards, also, but decided that was unfair. In all probability, the table would be taken back and used for dining on later on in the evening. There might be a stone slab down in the basement that could be used.

Without making further demands, she led the way down the stairs to the basement and inserted the key in the lock.

There was a ghastly damp chill that seemed to rush out from the basement once the door was opened. Easy to see how legends about ghosts could arise. However, to Mara’s relief, there was no smell of corruption. The two men stood back and she advanced in, trying to hide a shudder as a scampering noise told her that there had been a rat close by. One of the men raised his lantern and she saw the long bald tail disappear through a grating at the far side of the cellar.

‘Leads to the river, Brehon,’ said one of the men, picking up a stone and firing it in the direction of the grating. ‘They used to get rid of prisoners down there in the old days, I have heard tell,’ he added. He went across the damp flags that paved the nearest third of the room, his iron-tipped boots striking sharp echoes from the stones. ‘It’s got a latch on this side,’ he said holding up his lantern when they reached the iron grille, ‘but you can see, Brehon, that the grid is too small for anyone to put a hand through. They say that King Conor na Srona got rid of many an enemy down through this grating. Used to wait until high tide came and then the minute it began to ebb they would chuck the bodies through and the river would carry them down to the sea.’

‘Really,’ said Mara. She wondered whether her husband’s uncle was really as bloodthirsty as that, or whether the man was just delaying the evil hour when the corpse had to be taken from the lead-lined box.