Verdict of the Court (4 page)

‘Do come to me, Enda; give this up! It can be easily explained. You want to put your whole attention into this final qualification. King Turlough will soothe matters over so that no offence can be taken.’

However, he shook his head. His face flushed a dull red and for a moment there was a glow in his eyes. ‘I need to stay here for the moment, Brehon,’ he said hesitantly. He looked at her in an embarrassed way.

‘I know,’ she said, jokingly, but inwardly she was conscious of a slight feeling of annoyance. ‘You’re in love. It’s that pretty girl Shona MacMahon, isn’t it?’

He nodded. ‘I have been studying,’ he said in a burst of confidence. ‘Not the Triads, but the hard stuff. I sneak his books away when he is dozing after his dinner. I’m certain that I could sit the examination in front of any Brehon in Ireland, except Brehon MacClancy himself, and that I would pass. And if …’ He stopped, eyeing her rather uncertainly, and then said with an air of indifference, ‘The physician, Donogh O’Hickey, keeps warning him that the sound from his heart is very bad. Its beat is irregular. He told Brehon MacClancy yesterday that if he allowed himself to get into any more passions then he could throw a fit and drop down dead at any moment.’

‘I see,’ said Mara. She was conscious of a slight feeling of distaste. Enda, as she had suspected, was waiting for dead men’s shoes. She didn’t approve, but she could see the sense of it. If he did inherit the position of Brehon, then Maccon MacMahon, with the King’s approval, would probably be very happy to have his daughter betrothed to a young man with whom she was, fairly obviously, in love. Enda, from the time that he was fifteen years old, had always been prone to fall madly in love with various girls. It was probably time that he was married and this would be a suitable match. She would not meddle, she decided virtuously, and then smiled to herself. She would, of course; it was after all a question of one of her boys and she had known Enda since he was eight years old. She could never divest herself of maternal feelings towards those who had spent their childhood in her care. Perhaps a word in the King’s ear would be a good idea, she thought. He should be keeping an eye on his household.

‘Well, don’t forget that the offer stands,’ she said lightly. ‘We would love to see you again at Cahermacnaghten. Brigid would go mad with joy. She likes nothing better than to have one of her boys turn up. Well, we’d better go back and join the others.’ She led the way out of the stable without waiting for his reply and noted that the pretty girl, Shona, was lingering under the oak tree, from which, yesterday, the effigy of Brehon MacClancy had dangled with knives glinting from various parts of his straw-stuffed body. The girl was looking well this morning, she thought, and wondered whether she had just imagined the white face yesterday when Brehon MacClancy had made his pronouncement. Still it was unlikely that a girl of that age, just out of fosterage, had a secret of any particular importance.

She did not walk with Enda, but parted from him with a reassuring nod and a pat on his arm. Then she went across the bailey to join the physician, Donogh O’Hickey, who, standing below the steps up to the castle’s main entrance, was solemnly and patiently feeling the muscles in the arms of four young people. She had almost said four young boys – there was no doubt that the two MacMahon twins looked like boys. Not even for the sacred ceremony of Christmas Day Mass had Cael deigned to put on the longer
léine
of a girl, and with her cropped hair and her short cloak, as well as the manly hose, she looked just like a boy.

‘This one has the best muscles,’ said Donogh, pointing to Art.

‘I thought he would,’ said Cormac enthusiastically, while the twins scowled. Her son was, thought Mara, quite disappointed that his muscles had not been deemed to be the best, but his loyalty to his foster-brother, Art, reigned supreme in Cormac’s life. ‘Art is always working on the farm belonging to his mother – he’s always carrying loads of hay and dragging hurdles around for sheep enclosures.’

‘Belonging to his father you mean,’ snapped Cian. The boy was annoyed and still kept his arm in the position where his muscles showed.

‘No,’ said Cormac with surprise. ‘It’s Art’s mother that owns the farm; his father owns the fishing boat. Art does the rowing in that. No wonder his muscles are so good,’ he said seriously to the physician and then with a quick glance at Mara, he said mischievously, ‘I’m forced to spend my nights and days studying, so that is what makes my muscles weak.’

Mara ignored this. Art, she thought, did just as much study as Cormac, but he was an industrious child. Cormac was happy to wander around with his wolfhound puppy or chat to the farm workers in the evening, while his foster-brother went over to help his parents on the nearby farm.

‘Your pupil, Nuala, sends her greetings,’ she said to Donogh. Nuala, the physician at the Burren, was almost a daughter to her and she knew that the girl had been very grateful for the teaching that she had received from the elderly physician. There had been a time when she thought the thankfulness would overspill into a match between Nuala and the old man’s son, but in the end Nuala had turned to Fachtnan, the playmate of her early life and the object of her youthful adoration. It had been and was still a happy marriage, but Nuala, she knew, felt that she owed the O’Hickeys, both father and son, a great debt of gratitude for all that she had learned from the family. She watched the affection come to his eyes and hoped as hard as she could that Brehon MacClancy’s malice was not going to implicate this kind man. And yet, she remembered that he had worn a strained look at that unpleasant moment yesterday.

‘Tell me how Nuala is getting on,’ he said as he walked beside her up the castle steps.

‘Very well,’ she said promptly, ‘combining motherhood with work; still a great student; always trying to find out something more. The people of the Burren think highly of her. They have great trust in her and that is what everyone needs in a physician.’ And in a Brehon, she thought. Without trust, doubt and dissension step in and matters are settled with a knife or sword which could have been solved at the place of judgement.

‘I always hoped for a match between my wanderer of a son and Nuala,’ said the physician with a sigh as he pushed open the heavy front door, glancing upwards, momentarily, as everyone did, at the murder hole above. The castle at Bunratty had never been stormed, but the murder hole remained, ready for the defenders to pour boiling oil down onto the attackers.

‘One can never plan these things,’ said Mara. Privately she thought that the solid, reliable presence of Fachtnan and his lack of knowledge of medicine was probably a very good thing for Nuala. She was too serious, too inclined to be obsessive about her work. Married to another physician, the girl would never relax, she thought, as she said aloud, ‘Come up to the solar with me and I’ll give you all the news. I was going to ask you if you had any ideas about getting scholars for Nuala’s school. She has a great desire to set up a school for young physicians, just as I have a school for young lawyers.’

‘I thought that she already had a pupil,’ said Donogh O’Hickey, with a quick sidelong glance at Mara.

‘That’s right,’ said Mara readily. ‘But he is almost ready to qualify and she would like a group of young people to instruct. She is a very good teacher,’ she went on earnestly. ‘I remember her explaining to my young scholars how deaths such as Roman Claudius and King Henry I of England, who both died after eating a hearty meal supposedly poisoned by an enemy, might just have been caused by the food itself. Claudius who was supposed to have been poisoned by his wife had just eaten a dish of mushrooms,’ said Mara with a reminiscent smile. ‘Nuala told the boys how a poisonous fungus that looks just like a mushroom could have accidentally got into the dish, and the first of the many Henrys might well have been poisoned by the dangerous innards of the lampreys, so that rather than having a surfeit of them, or being poisoned by his nephew Stephen, as the story goes, he might just have been a victim to a careless cook. She is a wonderful teacher – the boys were testing poisonous fungi on trapped bluebottle flies for weeks after. She makes everything very interesting to them. I always get her to talk to them about the medical aspects of Brehon law.’

‘So she is still keen on the idea of a school.’ Donogh O’Hickey gave an indulgent smile.

‘That’s right,’ said Mara immediately. ‘And she has two little girls who will be trained up in the ways of medicine.’

‘Girls,’ said Donogh O’Hickey, making a slight face. ‘What a pity that she did not have a boy.’

Mara bit back a sharp report. It was amazing, she thought, that someone like Donogh O’Hickey, who knew that Nuala was probably the cleverest, the hardest-working and the highest-achieving of any of his scholars, would still think like that. She thought thankfully of her father, who had made the best of having no son and had trained his daughter to be a lawyer.

‘Tell me, how are things going here?’ she queried politely. ‘Brehon MacClancy does not seem in too good a mood. Is there something wrong?’

She had not expected him to tell her anything very much out here where people were passing continually and she was not surprised when he shrugged his shoulders and then began to talk hurriedly about the meal which was to be held to celebrate her arrival. She wondered what was going wrong in this castle that both he and the Brehon appeared to be tense and on edge. I must ask Turlough about it, she decided. But in the meantime she would try and get some more out of the physician so she invited him to join her in the solar for a drink. They could talk privately there, she thought.

‘I must just make sure that everything is in order for the boys,’ she said by way of excuse. He would have expected her to go straight to the great hall, but a private conversation there would be impossible.

By the time they went up the stairs, the majority of the castle guests were going for a midday meal in the great hall. As she passed the great hall, Mara could see Rosta in the small kitchen beside the hall rushing to and fro, firing orders at his helpers. This was a very busy time for the King’s cook, but the look on his face told her that he was enjoying himself immensely. He was a man who loved his art and loved to display what he was capable of. Although the Christmas night banquet would take place in six hours’ time, the meal being carried in looked every bit as elaborate as the feast last night.

‘There’s something in the solar for you, Brehon, if you would prefer it,’ he called out, seeing her pass his small kitchen. From the doorway of the great hall a malevolent face peeped around and then withdrew. Brehon MacClancy was used to being the only one bearing that title and he resented Mara’s use of it. She had, from the start, however, resolutely set her face against being known as ‘queen’ – her status, she reckoned, was that of Brehon, and only in private life was she the wife of a king. Brehon MacClancy would just have to get used to it – in just the same way as if Brehon MacEgan, or any other Brehon in Ireland, had visited the castle.

The solar was part of the King’s private suite of rooms at the top of the castle and a staircase in the north-east tower led up to them. There was an elaborate bedchamber with a magnificently curtained bed, a fireplace, a clothes rail as well as a beautifully carved hanging press, some chairs and a door that led to the garderobe where there was a board covered with a green cloth and the opening to the shaft leading to the moat was plugged with a cushion in order to prevent any smells arising. Above this room were another couple of bedrooms, used for the King’s children when they were young, but now occupied by the law-school scholars.

Beside the bedchamber was the King’s solar – a smaller version of the great hall, furnished with a table, already spread with some cold meats, some baked apples, baskets of bread rolls, and a flagon of wine. A fire was burning brightly in the six-foot-long fireplace. There was no one there and the candles were not yet lit, though some light came through the ‘squint’ looking down into the great hall where Turlough and his friends were talking loudly and enthusiastically about a hunt on the following day. St Stephen’s Day was traditionally hunting time and it looked as though, with the frost, it would be an ideal day for the marshy land around Bunratty Castle. Mara smiled to hear her husband’s voice boasting about a bird that he shot from an impossible angle – he sounded rather like nine-year-old Cormac, she thought as she peered down, unnoticed by the crowd. She withdrew and inserted a taper into the blazing fire on the hearth and went around the room, carefully lighting all the candles within arm’s reach before saying quietly:

‘What’s the matter with Brehon MacClancy, Donogh?’

The physician shrugged. ‘Nothing that he can’t cure by abstaining from over-eating and over-drinking.’ He also spoke very quietly, almost in her ear, although the heavy oaken door was firmly shut and the noise from the hall below would drown any voices.

‘I don’t mean his health – that is not my affair. He seems to be upsetting everyone, especially some of the young people. He seems to love upsetting them and giving malicious information …’ She hesitated there. Perhaps she had no right to enquire into Enda’s affairs – after all he was a man of twenty-six years and had left her law school nine years ago.

The physician was looking at her strangely. He moved away from the hearth and over to the table. He sat down, poured out some wine into two goblets, and nibbled at a bread roll before saying thoughtfully: ‘He told you about Shona, then; he swore not to mention it to anyone, but I suppose he thought that he could trust your discretion.’

‘I’m more concerned about Enda,’ she countered. Shona, daughter of Maccon MacMahon, one of Turlough’s friends, was none of her business and she decided that it was preferable to talk about Enda than to trick the physician into thinking that she knew something to Shona’s disadvantage. It did explain the girl’s white face yesterday, though.

‘Enda was one of the brightest scholars that I ever had,’ she continued, looking at the physician earnestly. ‘If you can imagine Nuala, or your son, Donogh Óg, hanging around, running errands for a physician, but having no opportunity to practise all that they have learned, well then, you can imagine what I feel about Enda. But don’t mention to anyone that I spoke of this; I don’t want to make a bad situation worse,’ she added quickly.