Writ in Stone (28 page)

His voice was deeper and lower now, a savage note in it as he said: ‘Why not? You were trying to wreck my life forever . . . not for the first time, either. You took everything that I had and now you wanted to take my life away, as well.’

‘Not your life,’ said Mara. ‘You know the law better than that. Open admission of the crime and compensation to the victim, that is what is required.’

‘Do you believe that?’ he sneered. ‘You haven’t heard the abbot, have you? This crime was committed on church soil; Roman law will prevail. He will want the murderer hanged.’

‘I am Brehon of the Burren,’ said Mara simply. ‘My word goes on the Burren. You will not hang.’

‘I will certainly not hang,’ he said with determination, ‘and I will pay no fine. You won’t shame me in public, again, either.’

And when she said nothing, he added, ‘I’m not going to stand there at Poulnabrone, as I did twenty years ago.’

‘Why did you kill him?’ asked Mara, ignoring this.

There was a silence and then he gave a short laugh.

‘That was a mistake,’ he said.

‘You thought it was the king; I know that. This was one of the reasons why I knew it had to be you; another who might have had a motive to kill the king knew of the switch,’ her mind went to her suspicions of Teige O’Brien, before she added, ‘you did not. You thought that the arrangement had been unaltered, that the king was going to do the first hour of the vigil. You went down, killed him, returned to the lay dormitory and then Murrough woke up and saw you, fully clothed, even with your boots on, standing at the window.’

‘What if he were lying?’

‘It was possible,’ admitted Mara. ‘But why should Murrough lie?’

‘I’m surprised that you did not recognize that he had as much opportunity to kill the king as I had, and of course, far more of a motive. And what about the stone in the bell tower?’

‘So far as the bell tower was concerned, the evidence against Murrough was given by the mason, that very mason who had primed Murrough with details of my divorce. That was a mistake that you made. You had probably drunk too much when you told him that the name of my first husband was Dualta. Even the king, his father, did not know that and Murrough was only a baby nineteen years ago.’

‘So, when you saw my mason’s mark, that I signed my work in the church with the letter ‘D’ writ in stone, you guessed.’

‘No, not then, although that stayed at the back of my mind and it served to verify my conclusion. No, you betrayed yourself when you said: “a king’s son may go, where a humble man may not tread”
.
That brought me back to the law school immediately. I could hear my father’s voice quoting Fithail: it was one of his favourite quotations. I wondered why a mason should use those words. They showed an education either at a law school, or perhaps at a bardic school. I never knew what had happened to you, once our marriage was dissolved, never cared, I suppose, but I knew that your father had been a mason.’

‘That can’t be all. You recognized me, didn’t you? I kept thinking that, sooner or later, you must recognize me.’

‘No,’ said Mara with weary honesty. ‘I did not recognize you. You are very changed.’

He picked up the candle, holding it closely against his face, moving it around.

‘Look at me now, there must be something of the old Dualta, the man you married twenty-two years ago.’ There was a pleading note in the rough, hoarse voice.

Mara looked at him compassionately. He was only three years older than herself, but life had not been good to him. She looked at the white hair, the heavy drooping white moustache, the deeply scored wrinkles, the stooping figure. She shook her head wordlessly. Even his voice was completely changed, she thought. Years of breathing in stone dust, years of tramping through bad weather, sleeping in wet clothes, years of steady drinking had altered him completely.

‘Don’t look at me like that.’ Now the husky voice was charged with passion. He had always had that streak of a bully in him. ‘I’m as good as you any day, better. Just because I did not spend my time chanting all those silly laws and Fithail . . . I was sick of Fithail being rammed down our throats every day. I had far more brains than you ever had but you thought yourself to be something special. Your father worshipped you. He neglected the other scholars just so that he could boast about his brilliant daughter. He never wanted you to marry me, of course. I wasn’t good enough for the wonderful Mara. You ruined my life between you: you and your father. I think about it every day and every night. I know what I could have been if I had never met you.’

He sounded sincere, but he had always been someone who could be convinced by the sound of his own words. For a moment she felt sorry for him, but then her eyes went to the still-gaping hole above their heads and returned to his face.

‘Don’t live in the past, Dualta; you have made yourself another life,’ she said quietly, but he ignored this and hurried on.

‘When I fixed that bell there and when I imagined it falling on you I suddenly felt free. I knew that if you were killed I would no longer have you looking over my shoulder, always telling me not to drink so much, to do this and to do that. While you lived I could never get the sound of your accursed voice out of my mind. And then you didn’t come to church and now it is to do again. Unless . . .’ He paused and looked closely at her. He took a long drink from his flask of
brócoit
and then upended the flask and watched the last few drops drip on the flagged floor before replacing it in his pouch. When he spoke again, Mara recognized that he was now quite drunk.

‘Perhaps we could get together again?’ he said flippantly. ‘You owe me that, surely. Why should you go off with another man? The abbot here would tell you that it is a sin. You cannot have another husband; I’m your husband so I should save you from that sin.’

There was no mistaking his meaning and suddenly Mara was filled with conviction that she had made a bad mistake. She should have interviewed him in the presence of others, should have kept everything on a professional basis. This was an unhappy, disappointed man trying to hurt in every way possible, and more worrying, perhaps, trying to resurrect the past.

‘Dualta,’ she said quickly. ‘There is nothing left of any feeling that prompted that marriage twenty-two years ago. However, for the sake of the bond that was once between us I will give you the silver to pay the fine. You can go back to Galway once judgement day is over. The affairs of the kingdom of the Burren will be of little interest to any there. Your life will not have changed, but the law must be upheld.’

‘The law,’ he sneered. ‘That’s all that matters to you, isn’t it? That’s all that ever mattered to you. You wrecked our marriage, left our daughter without a father, and all so that you could be Brehon and
ollamh
of the law school; all so that you could take your father’s place.’

She made no reply. Was it true? She swept the accusation aside. She had done what had seemed to be right at the time. The past was over and could not be undone. Dualta had made his own future and so had she. She had cared for Sorcha as best she could and her daughter had grown up happy and secure. The presence of a father such as this man before her was unlikely to have added much to that security. She brushed aside these speculations. She now had a duty to perform; she was the king’s representative; she would have to summon him to appear before the king and the people of the Burren and if he refused, to serve the writ of the law upon him.

‘Dualta,’ Mara said quietly and calmly, ‘I have now solved this crime, so I shall have to lay my findings before the king, hear the case at Poulnabrone and allocate the compensation.’

She got to her feet. How long had elapsed during this conversation? she wondered. Nothing more needed to be said about the past. The future was what concerned her now. Willing or unwilling, Dualta had to admit his crime at Poulnabrone and the fine had to be paid. She glanced towards the west door. Soon the king, members of his family, the abbot, monks, lay brothers, guests and servants would all come streaming through it. She still hoped to bring Dualta to a reasonable frame of mind before they arrived.

‘Our lives have parted and they can never come together again.’ She said the words resolutely and without warmth. First she had to convince him to abandon all dreams of a future by her side. Then she could talk about his future. She had silver in plenty. Her years as Brehon of the Burren had brought her wealth. Her law school was popular, the fees had accumulated and Cumhal managed the farm so well that there was always a profit. She would give Dualta what he needed to set himself up in Galway, she decided. Once the trial at Poulnabrone was over and he had admitted his guilt and the fine had been paid then she would make him the offer. He would no longer need to be a jobbing mason, travelling the countryside, but could have his own shop and perhaps some pupils to train in the prosperous city of Galway.

‘We are two very different people now from the boy and girl of twenty years ago,’ she added firmly.

She watched him keenly and saw the realization of the position come into his eyes. After a minute, he nodded indifferently.

‘I’ll go, now,’ he said, and she recognized that his voice was devoid of hope. ‘Don’t worry; I’ll get out easily, no matter how many instructions you have issued. I tested it myself a few hours ago. I just told the porter that I needed a stone from outside the gate and he handed the key into my own hand. I locked the gate behind me when I came back in and pretended to put the key back on the peg, but here it is now.’ From his pouch he produced a large key.

‘And why didn’t you go then?’ Perhaps that would have been best, she thought, though recognizing the feeling as a weakness.

He gave a short laugh. ‘Why not, indeed? There speaks a lady who has plenty of money. I wanted to finish the work and get my payment for it. I can’t live through the winter in Galway without that. Anyway, by then I was sure that you did not recognize me and without recognizing me what would be the motive for the crime? However, you were cleverer than I thought, so now I will go.’

‘No,’ she said firmly. ‘Not without admitting the crime in public.’

‘Perhaps I’ll take you with me,’ he said. He pulled out another flask of
brócoit
from his pouch, emptied it in one long swallow and then replaced it. ‘You would have come willingly at one time.’

She ignored that. She would say no more about giving him money, she decided. He was obviously a very heavy drinker; there might well be no saving of him. ‘If you are not prepared to acknowledge your crime,’ she continued, ‘then I shall order that you be bound and guarded until the case can be tried. I will find a lawyer to speak for you if you wish, but I can assure you that my evidence will convict you.’

‘You were always hard,’ he said, looking at her gloomily.

‘Three years with you meant that I had to harden, or else break.’ She flashed the words out like the thrust of a dagger, breaking her own resolution not to talk about the past.

It should not have been said; she knew that as soon as she had uttered the words. His face darkened and changed.

And yet all might still have been well if the west door had not opened suddenly, young, confident feet strode up the church and then Shane’s voice, high and light:

‘Brehon, the abbot has sent me to tell you that we are on our way.’

Close on his heels were a couple of young monks, one of whom, with a taper in his hand, proceeded to go from candlestick to candlestick filling the church with light. They passed the three figures at the top of the nave and the brilliance of the lights that they carried blinded Mara for a moment.

As soon as they lit the candles in the chancel, Dualta blew out his own candle. The strong, burning-flesh smell of the tallow floated beneath Mara’s nostrils. Now she could no longer see him properly, but he stood very close to her and very close to Shane. And then came the sound of voices and the noise of footsteps coming across in through the west door, walking to their places in the nave. And then more footsteps, tramping in disciplined silence, of the monks entering the church behind the abbot.

At that moment Dualta acted.

Swiftly he took a step forward and seized Shane, dragging him away from Mara and up the steps towards the altar. All candles had now been lit there and their light illuminated the scene. At the same moment as Shane screamed, Mara saw the dagger at his throat.

‘Keep away, everyone, keep away from me.’ Dualta’s hoarse, rough voice rasped through the church and a stunned silence fell instantly.

‘What is the meaning of this?’ The abbot spoke carefully and quietly; the menace to the boy’s life was obvious. Mara glanced at Conall and Fergal; each had a dagger in his hand. Teige O’Brien was fumbling for his, while Ardal O’Lochlainn moved slowly, but softly, towards the north transept.

‘The meaning of this is that I have accused this man, Dualta, the mason, of the murder of Mahon O’Brien.’ Mara made her voice as loud as she could. She heard it ring from the arches and hoped that it could cover the small, soft movements that Ardal was making. Deliberately she moved to the opposite side of the church, near to the door leading out on to the cloisters. Let all attention be focused on her, she prayed, and let Ardal approach the altar without being seen.

‘This man,’ she repeated, ‘this man, Dualta, the mason, was my husband once. I divorced him nineteen years ago. Yesterday, in a fit of insanity, he planned to murder the king, rather than to allow me to marry again.’

A murmur arose in the church and Mara heard the soft noise with pleasure, even the brothers were turning one to the other. Let Dualta be occupied in looking across at her, in listening to her words, let him not look towards Ardal.

‘As we all know now, Mahon O’Brien took the king’s place in the church. One hooded man, of the same size and build, looks like another,’ she went on, spacing her words to allow the echo to return its response. Ardal had now reached the scalloped archway leading to the small north transept chapel.