Verdict of the Court (3 page)

‘Brass,’ queried Domhnall. He was a very well-mannered boy, but his attention was focused on the roast goose.

‘Gold,’ said the harpist triumphantly, but his eyes were not on Domhnall, but had gone across the polished boards and were looking intently at the elderly Brehon.

And so was, noticed Mara, Maccon MacNamara. She began to think about the man. One of Turlough’s best friends and
taoiseach
of Clann Baiscinn from the western tip of the kingdom; his lands lay only a few miles away, further west and just where the huge River Shannon entered the sea after it had passed through the city of Limerick and passed the Castle of Bunratty, perched on its promontory. Maccon was a great man for boats and he and Turlough enjoyed fishing together. Mara had met him on previous occasions, but this was the first time that she had met his three children – the eldest, like her deceased mother, Mara guessed, a beautiful dark-haired girl of about sixteen and two red-headed twins not much older than her own son Cormac. He had been hilariously funny earlier, telling stories about narrow escapes that he and Turlough had when their net got tangled in the weir and teasing his daughter about being in love. A nice man, probably, even though he should have shown himself a bit more authoritative with those twins, she thought. However, she told herself forgivingly; perhaps he spoiled them because he saw little of them and because they had no mother. Otherwise she had always liked him; a man who was a good companion to her husband who was a fun-loving, easy-going ruler. But now Maccon was silent and his eyes were apprehensive as he glanced across at Brehon MacClancy. It would be worrying if the Brehon had something to disclose about Maccon. Turlough would be most upset if one of his best friends had betrayed him.

Mara allowed her glance to wander around the table. There was certainly a feeling of uneasiness among the guests seated around the long table spread with so many splendid dishes. There was a long silence, a silence when people looked at each other, looked at the elderly Brehon and then back at their platters again. And then, too quickly and too loudly, Fionn O’Brien, Turlough’s cousin, called up from the bottom of the table.

‘Turlough, let’s go hunting tomorrow. That marsh at the back of the castle is full of birds. I swear I heard a bustard outside my bedroom window. Rosta, you’d cook bustard for us, wouldn’t you, if we managed to get a few for you?’

‘One would be enough, my lord; these things weigh nearly as much as this young gosling here,’ said the cook readily. He poked Cormac in his skinny ribs and chuckled. He had once been a foot soldier in Turlough’s army, but an injury to his leg had made him lame and he had turned to cooking. He was a great favourite with Turlough and quite at home with all the company and Cormac was so taken by his mastery with pots and pans that he had informed his mother on his return from his last visit to Bunratty that he thought he’d rather be a cook than a lawyer.

Turlough laughed uproariously at the mild joke from his cook and the mood changed. Everyone seemed to have a story to tell about bustards, or a method of catching the huge birds, and Mara relaxed. She watched Enda, though. She was worried about him. It had seemed a wonderful position, nine years ago, for a seventeen-year-old boy to become an assistant to the Brehon at the King’s court, but now she wondered whether he had done the right thing. By now, with his brains and his qualifications, he could be holding a position such as she held, dealing with all the legal matters, solving crimes, keeping the peace between neighbours. Even in a kingdom as small as the Burren, the satisfactions of the job were immense and Enda could open his own school to train boys. She resolved to have a talk with him afterwards – this business of waiting around to fill dead men’s shoes was not good enough for one of her cleverest scholars. She was not the only one who looked at his downcast face, she noticed. Maccon MacMahon’s pretty sixteen-year-old daughter kept stealing glances at him and then blushing and looking away.

‘If you can kill two or three bustards, then I’ll have the feathers for a cloak,’ said Ellice, the wife of Turlough’s eldest son. She was ageing quickly, thought Mara. Nine years ago she had been a very pretty girl, but now she had a sour and discontented look. Her husband, Conor, suffered from poor health and she probably did not have much fun out of her life, being tied to a sickbed for long periods every year. Still she might be better now that her seventeen-year-old son, Raour, was back from fosterage. There was talk that the young man might replace his father as heir to Turlough if Conor continued to suffer from these continual fevers. He was certainly a fine, sturdy-looking fellow, thought Mara and she resolved to have a chat with Turlough about him. A king had to be warlike, had to be a leader of his people and the delicate Conor who coughed and shivered his way through every winter would not be acceptable to the clan. Turlough was now over sixty years of age, and the clan would be looking attentively at his appointed successor. It was important to groom a man for the position of king. If Conor agreed to step aside and allow his son to be elected as
tánaiste
in his place, then the youngster could live with Turlough and be educated into all the subtleties of friendliness, good manners, good humour and a thorough understanding of his fellow men which had made Turlough such a very successful ruler over three kingdoms.

It was just as she was considering the question that Brehon MacClancy spoke again.

‘I’m an old man now,’ he said heavily, ‘and some of ye like to make a game of me.’ He glared around the table and Mara felt her heart sink. She should have stayed and made sure that the offensive effigy had been removed. She had been tired, but if it had been her own territory she would not have allowed that to deter her. No, she acknowledged to herself, she did not like Brehon MacClancy and had just used the presence of the children’s father as an excuse to go away. Now the elderly man was going to allow a piece of childish spite to prod him into disturbing Turlough’s peace of mind in the midst of the celebrations of twenty years of successful kingship. Perhaps she could talk to him after the festivities were over, could suggest that he prepare the King for anything which would concern a near relative or close friend, make sure, perhaps, that he had firm evidence for the accusation. She watched him carefully now as he chewed his way through a mouthful of roast curlew and was devising an innocuous remark when suddenly and disgustingly he spat out what remained in his mouth and shouted out:

‘I can see your eyes on me; I know you’d like to kill me, you’d like to stick a knife in my back, but I’ll tell you something; whenever you are around I’ll have my eye on you and I have a fine strong lock on my bedroom door so don’t think that you’ll follow me up there. You can just sweat in your guilt until the moment is right to inform your king and the people of the kingdom about your treachery.’

And then he got to his feet unsteadily, thrust Enda, who had risen also, back into his chair and stumped out of the room. The company around the table fell silent, listening to his heavy footsteps going up the spiral staircase of the south-east tower to the bedroom which was reserved for him whenever he stayed at Bunratty Castle. The remaining guests looked at each other and looked away and Rosta called to his kitchen boys to bring in the third course of the meal.

Mara turned to Maccon. ‘Are both of your sons destined for the law?’ she enquired.

‘Both,’ he said, looking puzzled and then laughed. ‘I have only one son, Brehon; just this fellow, here,’ he said, tousling Cian’s hair. ‘Cael is a girl, but she likes to dress up as a boy; she and Cian have always been together and she enjoys what he enjoys. As good at throwing a knife as any boy, aren’t you? Shona doesn’t approve, do you?’ He looked across at his eldest daughter and she hoisted her shoulders and pouted but made no remark. She, also, had been fostered by the MacClancy family at Urlan Castle, Mara seemed to remember.

The strange thing was that her face, which had flushed a rosy pink earlier, when she had chatted with Enda, was now a stark white and her eyes were wide with apprehension. Only the children at the table seemed unconcerned by Brehon MacClancy’s threats.

(little primer)

A physician has an honour price of seven séts. He is expected to apply herbs, to supervise diet and to undertake surgery. There will be no penalty for causing bleeding, but if he cuts a joint or a sinew he has to pay a fine and he will be expected to nurse the patient himself.

A banliaig, woman physician, is a woman of great importance to the kingdom.

E
nda hovered at Mara’s side when they came out of church on Christmas Day. She had been looking for an opportunity to talk with him and instantly dropped Turlough’s arm and moved a little aside.

‘Come and look at my new horse, Enda,’ she said. ‘My dear old mare has gone into retirement now though I still use her on a few short journeys. This new fellow is splendidly strong. He hardly noticed the journey between here and Limerick.’

The stables were a good choice. No one had taken a horse out as the church was only a four-minute walk from the castle so the place was quiet and deserted – even the stable boys were enjoying a chat near the well where most of the inhabitants of the small village around the castle gathered to exchange news.

Despite the privacy Enda seemed reluctant to come to the point and spent such a long time discussing the horse and his breeding that Mara grew impatient.

‘Are you happy here, Enda, working with Brehon MacClancy?’ she said eventually breaking into a rambling discussion about Spanish blood.

He flushed vividly. ‘To be honest, I’m not,’ he said. ‘I haven’t been for the last few years.’

That surprised her. Enda, she thought, had always had a good opinion of himself. She was astonished that he hadn’t moved on to another post as soon as he had found the present one unsatisfactory and said so immediately.

‘Not so easy,’ he said cynically. He gave a quick look over his shoulder. There was no one near, but oddly he still hesitated.

‘Come on,’ she said. ‘You know that you can tell me.’ He had been such a brilliant boy, burning with intelligence and with assurance. He was still very good-looking, but somehow the burnish had gone from him and his blue eyes held a wary, defensive look which seemed to dim the perfection of their jewel-like intensity of colour.

‘I’ve applied to various clans all over the west and the midlands – every time that I heard of a death or of a move,’ he said after a minute, ‘but it has never seemed to work. No one was interested in me.’

That surprised her; hurt her also, that he had not turned to her when in trouble. Her quick wits immediately recognized the problem. She spoke quickly and impulsively without taking time to think.

‘Why didn’t you send a message to me; you silly boy?’ she said and then she stopped. There was an implication behind her words and it was not one that she should, under normal professional rules, have given voice to.

However, the words had been spoken and Enda nodded his head drearily.

‘I was going to; for the third position that I applied for; when Seán Barrett and his son, at Tirawley, were both killed in a raid – I told Brehon MacClancy that I would not trouble him to write a reference for me – that I would ask you – I’d begun to suspect that he was not saying anything very good about me …’

‘And what did he say?’ Enda had, of course, been correct in informing the Brehon that he was not going to ask for what her housekeeper, Brigid, called a ‘
spake
’ but nevertheless, Mara felt that he had been imprudent. A word with the King, a social visit to the Brehon at the Burren, an opening of his heart in confidence to a former
Ollamh
would have been the way she would have tackled the matter. But, of course, that was probably the woman’s way; Enda, as a young man, was more inclined to go headlong into the fray.

‘He was furious,’ said Enda. ‘He abused me, told me that I was a ne’er-do-good, that I would never be fit for anything other than to run errands, that he would certainly hesitate to recommend me for anything. He told me that he would tell the
taoiseach
at Tirawley that I was certainly not fitted for the post. He advised me to study more, to try to learn a little of the law, to study the Triads, and then he walked off.’

‘The Triads!’ Mara was bewildered. Enda had been such a clever scholar, with a wonderful memory. He had learned most of the Triads off by heart before his ninth birthday. These pithy, three-line summaries of the law were easily memorized by the young at a time when their memories were at a height, and were normally retained for the rest of their life.

Enda smiled slightly at her expression and then shrugged his shoulders. ‘I do nothing here – just listen to Brehon MacClancy. He never even tells me anything about the cases that are coming up on judgement day, never shows me his notes or discusses his verdicts. The only way that I am involved is when he sends me to summon people to court – and he could use one of the stable boys for that,’ he finished. There was a note of depression and finality in his voice which worried Mara more than if he had shown anger and resentment. She faced him resolutely.

‘Listen, Enda,’ she said firmly, ‘you mustn’t sit down under this. You have brains and you have ability. It’s now nine years since you left my law school; you are a qualified
Ollamh
– you took and passed that examination two years after you left me. You should and could pass your examination to be a Brehon as soon as possible. Come back to me and you can study for it. I haven’t too much to do at the moment – Fachtnan does so much of the teaching of the younger children – and you know, Enda, I would love to have an advanced scholar again. I still miss Shane – we sharpened our wits on each other, but, of course, he is back in the north of Ireland now and will take over from his father next year.’ She saw him wince at that – Shane had been a youngster of thirteen when Enda had left her law school with very high marks in his qualifying examination to be a lawyer. Now Shane would have a position among the venerated Brehons of Ireland, while Enda would still be an errand boy.