Verdict of the Court (27 page)

Scolding and chattering, Brigid tucked her arm into Mara’s and led her along the short distance between the Brehon’s house and the law-school enclosure. Mara drew in a deep sigh and began to feel better. Brigid had asked for no explanations, had offered no sympathy. Her housekeeper had a simple code. While Mara’s father was alive, she and Cumhal had served him with the utmost devotion and unquestioning loyalty. After he died and Mara had become first the head of the law school and then the Brehon of the Burren; that loyalty had been transferred to the daughter. Whatsoever she did, whatever she thought, every decision that she made was right in their eyes. Though they had known her from babyhood, both Cumhal and Brigid always respectfully addressed Mara as ‘Brehon’ and only on rare occasions did an endearment like ‘
alanah
’ steal out.

And, of course, Brigid, as always, was right. She was bone-tired and every fibre of her body seemed to ache. Once the housekeeper had left her, Mara went quickly into the small room at the back of the house. There was a big pump there and someone had already filled the wooden bath tub with icy water from the hundred-foot-deep well. It was her father that had the well dug and she blessed his memory every time she used it. It had never gone dry – in some way that Domhnall had endeavoured to explain to her, the streams that flowed down from the mountains filled a vast lake beneath the limestone of the Burren and the water was available to the inhabitants for the labour of digging a well.

Cumhal had lit the charcoal in the iron brazier; the place was gloriously warm. Mara took the large pot of boiling water from the iron grid across the top and poured it into the cold water in the bath, testing the water with her hand until the temperature was right. Then she noticed an iron cup, filled with a dark red liquid, standing at the back of the grid. Brigid’s special elderberry cordial! She picked it up, drained it and felt the hot spiciness warm her right down to her toes. She shed her clothes and climbed into the hot water, lay back and closed her eyes. I can’t help matters, she said to herself resolutely. Now is the moment to stop thinking and worrying. After her bath she would do as Brigid suggested. Go straight up the stairs, get in under the blankets made from the fleece woven from her sheep flock and just sleep for as long as she could.

Mara slept heavily, an exhausted, nightmare-filled sleep, and then woke when it was dark. There was a platter of oaten biscuits by her bed and a glass of milk. She ate and drank mechanically and wished that she had stayed asleep. Her mind had started to become very busy. Could she have done things differently? And yet she had acted in good faith and she could not wish her actions undone – just that she had never gone to Bunratty Castle. In the past the continuous battles, attacks and defence had been a different part of Turlough’s life and not one that she had taken much interest or part in and now she desperately wished the past couple of weeks had never taken place. Her mind went around and around in circles and when dawn came she suddenly fell into a heavy sleep.

The noise of horse hoofs roused her. For a while she lay there feeling dazed and uninterested. Then she realized that this was a large party and sat up in bed. That could mean only one thing. Her heart skipped a beat. For a moment, she had thought that it might be her nearest neighbour, a local
taoiseach
, Ardal O’Lochlainn, but there were too many horses in the train for that. Ardal was a simple man, a man who normally rode alone or in the company of his steward, though perhaps it was possible that he had mustered a crowd of his shepherds and they were riding out to round up the sheep from his lands near the sea.

She got up, went to the window, pushed open the casement and leaned out. No, it was not Ardal. She had thought that there had been too many horses for that. The stately banners told their own tale – this was the King and his men. For a moment she felt almost like creeping out from the back entrance to her house and avoiding this meeting, but a moment’s reflection stiffened her backbone and she went rapidly to the wooden press in her room and selected a gown dyed a cherry red and slipped it over a fresh starched linen
léine
. She combed her hair, braided it, fastened it with pins behind the back of her neck, checked her appearance in the mirror of burnished steel, slipped on a pair of soft leather shoes and went out of the bedroom and down the stairs. It took all of her courage to lift down her fur-lined mantle from the back of the door, to slip it on and to walk resolutely down the flagstoned path to the garden gate. There she waited calmly and courageously until the horses rounded the last bend in the road.

Despite the recent events, Turlough rode with only his usual small band of guards in front of him and his two personal guards behind him. Riding beside him, though, one on either side of him, were a pair of young people and lagging behind the guards came two small figures on ponies.

‘Enda!’ exclaimed Brigid, rushing forward to greet one of the former pupils of the law school. Mara was glad to see how eagerly the golden-haired young man jumped from his horse and hugged her elderly housekeeper. Enda had always been a favourite with Brigid, even when she had deplored some aspects of his adolescent behaviour.

And then the scholars burst from the kitchen house, each with a half-eaten oat cake in hand.

‘
Iontach!
Are you coming to stay with us,’ shouted Cormac rushing forward and beaming exuberantly at the MacMahon twins. ‘Brigid, this is Cael and Cian – they will have a marvellous time here. Are you staying for long? Come and see my wolfhound. You didn’t believe that I have a real, live wolfhound puppy, all for myself, did you?’

Chattering wildly, Cormac escorted the twins to the stable and followed by the other boys they rushed over to the stables and released the puppy who immediately jumped up on the twins, his paws, still muddy from his early morning run. Once Cormac had greeted his father exuberantly, he, the twins and the other scholars took off across the road and began running across the limestone clints, Smoke barking and leaping and making circles around them.

When the noise died down a little, Mara looked up at the dark-haired girl beside Enda and said impulsively, ‘You are very welcome, Shona. I hope you will stay here for a long time. I will love to have your company. Brigid, we can have a room for Shona in the guesthouse, can’t we? Enda, you take her there?’

And then they were all gone, the twins and the scholars still running with the wildly excited, loudly barking puppy, Enda, with a protective hand on Shona’s elbow, escorting her over to the guesthouse, Brigid, in her element, calculating her stores for a worthy meal for all of those unexpected guests.

And Mara was left gazing up at her husband Turlough Donn O’Brien.

‘I thought this might be best thing to do with these poor children,’ said Turlough apologetically. ‘You don’t mind, do you? You could try the two little ones in your school, they get on well with Cormac, you know. Clever as a pair of eels, they are; the two of them. You’ll like them. I’ll pay their fees, of course. And Enda wants to marry Shona – that will be all right, won’t it? I’ll give the dowry – you get him qualified as a Brehon and then they can settle down.’

He gazed around him with a smile of satisfaction. ‘God, I’m hungry,’ he said. Don’t know why. We stayed overnight with Brad at Kilnaboy and he gave us a great meal, but I’d love a cup of wine now. Let’s go inside and leave these youngsters to look after themselves.’

And that, probably, thought Mara, was all that was going to be said about that time in Bunratty. Turlough was a simple man who lived for the day and seldom looked back either in repentance or in anger. She tucked her arm into his and led the way back towards the house.

‘You go in,’ she said when they came to the door. ‘I’ll just find Cumhal to open a new barrel of wine.’

‘Let’s have the glass goblets that your father brought from Rome,’ said Turlough and Mara smiled back at him before going across to the law-school enclosure. So this was going to be a celebration.

‘Cumhal,’ she called when she went in through the gate of the enclosure. ‘Would you come and help me to open a new barrel of wine?’ While she waited for him, her mind dwelt fondly on an unopened cask of the finest burgundy, imported from France by Domhnall’s father, her daughter’s husband. It had sat quietly in the cool, damp darkness of her cellar for over a year. Now was going to be the perfect moment to broach it.

‘I’ll just fetch a flagon and be with you in a minute, Brehon,’ promised Cumhal, hurrying over to the kitchen. Brigid had left Enda to show Shona around and was calling orders to her assistant. Turlough would have a superlative meal in front of him with the greatest rapidity. Mara waited for Cumhal and then accompanied him down the steep steps to the cellar and pointed out the choice wine, lingering while Cumhal decanted it in his expert way and poured some into the flagon. She stood back and told him to precede her up the narrow staircase to the parlour in the Brehon’s house.

There were going to be no recriminations, no demands for an explanation, she thought as she followed him up the steps. Her guilt had dissipated. ‘
Everything done in good faith
,’ she quoted to herself from her law documents. Neither she nor Turlough would mention the matter for a while, she decided, and then the sting would have gone out of it.

There were voices from the front of the house, and she could hear Turlough’s booming laugh. A sociable man, he must have got tired of sitting alone in her parlour and gone out to look for company. When she came out of the front door, she saw that Ardal O’Lochlainn had hastened over to pay his respects to his King. They were both laughing heartily over some joke.

And then she stopped abruptly, her eyes widening with incredulity.

‘So there you are, Ardal,’ came Turlough’s voice, choked with laughter. ‘That’s the story. That’s just the way that it all happened. I got my wrist well and truly slapped by my lady judge!’