‘The body has waited long enough; it can wait another day,’ said Tomás breaking into her thoughts.

  ‘I shall consult with the king,’ said Mara haughtily, but she knew that Turlough, in his easy-going way, would be happy to leave it to the clan to make their own arrangements and he would turn up and do his part. This was her husband’s way of ruling over his territory and no one could say that it was a bad one since there had been peace within the three kingdoms since the year of 1499 when he had succeeded to that position after the death of his uncle. She stood up and nodded at him coolly. She walked across to where Fachtnan stood, supervising the scholars.

  ‘Anything interesting turn up yet?’ she asked.

  ‘Shane suggested asking who they were with, so I told them all to do that,’ he said in a low voice. ‘This means that we can double-check on their statements. So far no one has said that they were with Tomás; his wife, Cait, was with their son. I checked the cowherds myself. No one had anything to say. The raid occurred just when they were all having their supper.’ He looked over her shoulder and his face brightened. ‘Here’s Nuala,’ he said.

  Nuala was followed by Peadar, carrying the battered old medical bag as though it were some sort of holy relic. The case had belonged to Nuala’s grandfather, a highly esteemed physician whose notes had been used by the child Nuala as she struggled to attain her dream of being a physician. Nuala was a rich young woman who could buy the finest leather bag but she chose to retain her grandfather’s possession.

  ‘Just thought that you might like to have a word with Slaney,’ she said. ‘I’ve managed to purge her and get a lot of the poison out of her system. She’s in a pretty strange state still. That cowbane gives strange dreams and visions – terrible nightmares if too much is taken. Come and see her.’

  ‘I’ll leave you here in charge,’ Mara told Fachtnan. She lowered her voice and added, ‘And give a sharp answer to Tomás if he tries to impede you in any way.’

  He nodded with a half smile and when they were outside the door Nuala chuckled. ‘Can you imagine Fachtnan giving sharp answers?’

  ‘Nevertheless, in his own quiet way he gets what he wants,’ said Mara.

  ‘You don’t need to tell me about Fachtnan’s good points,’ said Nuala quietly. Then she raised her voice a little. ‘Peadar,’ she said, ‘go ahead to the patient’s room. Announce that I am coming and that I am bringing the Brehon with me. Try to see if you can get her as alert as possible. It’s not good for her to sleep so we must keep on preventing her doing that. Her maid is scared of her,’ she added when Peadar had gone bounding up the stairs, and then in a different tone of voice she continued, ‘I wanted to have you to myself for a minute to talk about Fachtnan,’ she said and Mara’s heart sank. Nuala was as beloved to her as was her own married daughter Sorcha. If she could have bought her what her heart desired she would not have grudged a box of silver. But life was not that simple. Fachtnan showed no signs of tiring of his love for Fiona who still treated him with friendly affability. He had never, Mara now realised, shown the same intensity for Nuala. He was fond of her; that was all.

  And yet the match would be ideal and it would restore Nuala to the Burren.

  ‘What do you want me to say?’ she asked looking at the girl affectionately. Nuala had not the perfection of looks that Fiona owned. She was tall; Fiona was tiny. Nuala had the dark eyes and the glossy black hair of the O’Davorens, whereas Fiona was primrose fair with eyes of cornflower blue. Nuala was respected; Fiona was adored by all who met her.

  Nuala did not speak for a moment. A thoughtful girl, considered Mara; a girl who had had an unhappy childhood with a father who was indifferent and then hostile to her ambition to become a physician and a mother who had been ill of a malady in the breast for years and then had died before Nuala was eleven.

  ‘I suppose I just want you to tell me whether I might have a chance,’ she said eventually. ‘Or is he heart and soul belonging to Fiona?’ she added in a tone which she endeavoured to make light.

  ‘Not that; certainly.’ Mara was prompt with her reply. ‘Fiona doesn’t want him. She’ll flirt and amuse herself, but she’s just as happy joking with Moylan and Aidan. Fiona will qualify – possibly next year, certainly the year after that, and then, I hope, she will go back to Scotland. Her father would be broken-hearted if she were to stay here in Ireland. I would not want an Irish match for her and I think she has no plans whatsoever for anything like that.’ Once again she thought of Ardal O’Lochlainn and his tender expression and resolved to discourage this as much as possible. It would bring little happiness to either, she told herself and rejected the notion that it was none of her business. Fiona is my business, she thought.

  She turned to the girl beside her. ‘I almost feel like a soothsayer, now,’ she said impulsively, ‘but I have an odd feeling that things will work out eventually between you and Fachtnan. Remember men grow up slowly – some of them never become adult, but I don’t think that Fachtnan is like that. He is mature, but not very confident. He may well feel that he is not good enough for you.’ She stopped and said no more. They had rounded the corner in the stairs and Slaney’s maid stood there, holding the door open for them.

  ‘How is she?’ Nuala frowned to see Slaney sleeping. ‘I thought I asked you to keep her awake,’ she said to the maid. She leaned over and pulled up an eyelid and then straightened with an angry frown. ‘She’s had some more of that stuff. How did she get it?’

  ‘She’s had n . . . n . . . nothing but spring water to drink . . .’ The woman stuttered in her alarm at Nuala’s expression.

  ‘Nothing else?’ Nuala looked puzzled and then pounced on a plate of sweetmeats by the bedside. ‘Where did these come from?’

  The maid looked at her guiltily. ‘My lord Jarlath sent these up. He said that they had come all the way from Spain. I thought a few would not hurt her. She was awake, but depressed and weeping. She does love sweet morsels like these.’

  Rapidly Nuala picked one of them up and sniffed it. ‘Smell that,’ she ordered the maid, fiercely thrusting the sweetmeat under the woman’s nose. The servant flinched and looked at her appealingly.

  ‘Let me smell,’ said Mara, feeling rather sorry for the servant. Slaney had always treated her abominably and the woman had become cowed over the years. ‘Hmm,’ she said, ‘there’s a dust on them.’ She cautiously licked a finger tip. ‘Sugar, isn’t it? I tasted that when I was in Galway some time ago. They grow it on an island in the middle of the ocean near Spain, I was told – the sugar is inside a cane, like a stout reed, I seem to remember.’ She talked on, giving the woman time to recover.

  ‘I just didn’t think,’ said the maid apologetically. ‘My mistress did enjoy them. She seemed so much better, but then those terrible dreams and visions came back again.’

  ‘Do you think something was put into the sweets?’ Mara queried and saw Nuala take out a tweezers and pull out some coarse fibres from the centre of the paste. Now that she sniffed again, there was something else, something slightly unpleasant.

  ‘Mice!’ she exclaimed. ‘Yes, you’re right, Nuala. There is a smell of cowbane from it. I remember Cumhal giving a crushed stem to the boys to smell and getting them to notice the smell of mice. He was warning them that they should keep away from cowbane unless they wanted to be like mice and to disappear underground.’

  ‘Now I’ll have to purge her again! It’s fortunate that she has plenty of flesh to spare,’ muttered Nuala. ‘No good you staying, Mara; it will be useless trying to talk to her tonight. Peadar, we have more work to do; let’s hope this time is the last time.’

  ‘I think,’ said Mara, ‘that I will have a word with Jarlath and find out about those sweets.’

  She went down the stairs meditatively and the first servant that she met she sent in quest of Jarlath. He came to her almost immediately.

  ‘Was out looking at that property of mine,’ he said when she met him in the entrance hall. There was an air of buoyancy about him and his white teeth flashed in his sea-browned face.

  ‘Are you going to sell?’ she enquired, leading the way outside onto the flat piece of garden in front of the castle where they could talk without being overheard. A splendid view, she thought looking straight down the almost perpendicular slope. The castle and its small area of pleasure grounds were perched like an eagle’s nest on the slope and far below it was the flooded valley floor. They were strange things those winter lakes, tuarlachs they were called. Once the summer weather came the water would drain back into the limestone caves below and grass would spring up, fresh, and luscious, more nourishing to cows than anything from the higher fields. But at the moment small waves rippled its surface where swans rocked happily. Her eyes went toward the west where the farm that was Jarlath’s portion was perched on a similar hill. Good limestone land, she thought. If he were to sell it and Peadar were to sell the farm that had been Garrett’s portion from the old lord, then the place of the MacNamaras in the Burren was going to be even more diminished. Already they were the smallest of the four clans. Perhaps, after another few years, their main seat of residence would no longer be in Burren, but would have shifted to Thomond. And, of course, she thought with a slight chill, the next taoiseach of the MacNamara clan may decide to give up the allegiance of his forebears and bend the knee to the English king. In that case she would prefer that there were no MacNamaras left in any of the three kingdoms ruled over by her husband. The O’Donnell clan, she had heard, were not happy that part of their ancient lands were now owned by Henry VIII of London.

  ‘I think so,’ Jarlath said with a slight hesitation, carefully considering her enquiry, ‘but I won’t rush into anything. I would prefer to sell it to a MacNamara, of course. Perhaps Tomás would buy it for his son. But I am certain that I want to go back to the sea. I’m going to Galway tomorrow to look for a new ship and to buy some new sails for Garrett’s big ship; Ardal O’Lochlainn has told me of a place which has sails of all sorts for sale. I know I could get some made here, but I have a feeling that I want to be out of this place as soon as possible. You don’t mind if I go to Galway for a day, do you, Brehon?’

  Mara thought about that. Until the murder case was solved she did not care to have anyone involved go outside the kingdom. On the other hand, Jarlath had, by all accounts, arrived at about the same time as the stampeding herd, which had been slowed by the very steep hill going up to Carron. Even if it were a little earlier than was known, he would hardly have had time to quarrel with his brother and to hurl the dead body down the hillside into the path of the cattle. Nuala had been fairly sure that Garrett had been dead for some time before being trampled on by the hoofs.

  ‘I wanted to talk to you about something, Jarlath,’ she said, not answering his question. ‘You sent some sweetmeats from Spain up to Slaney earlier this afternoon . . .’

  He frowned in puzzlement. ‘Not today,’ he said emphatically. ‘I brought some boxes of these sweets home with me and gave them to Garrett and Slaney the day that I arrived.’ A grin twitched at the corners of his mouth. ‘Slaney ate quite a few – they weren’t to Garrett’s taste, nor to mine, either, though I had a few to be polite; so then she decided to put them away in her stillroom, so that the crowd coming for the wake would not get their dirty paws on them. That was her expression, not mine,’ he added, the grin spreading.

  So that was it, thought Mara. Another puzzle. Presumably most of the household would have access to the still room; there would be no reason to have it locked. Anyone could have inserted these fibres from the root of the cowbane plant into the sweetmeats. Despite the efforts of farmers, the plant grew everywhere on swampy ground and after a wet spring like this it would be flourishing; its frilly leaves and tall, lacy, faintly pink flowers decorating every ditch.

  Mara looked thoughtfully at Jarlath. There was no real reason to suspect him, she thought. She appreciated Fiona’s point that a man who voluntarily gave up the position of taoiseach, and that yearly tribute of eighty ounces of silver or equivalent which Garrett had been exacting from his clan, was unlikely to be the sort of person who would murder from a desire to gain more possessions.

  ‘Well, I hope you have a pleasant day in Galway, and that you find what you are looking for, but of course you must wait until after the inauguration of the new taoiseach and the burial of your brother, and then a day away should be fine. Don’t make any arrangements for a permanent departure, though, will you? I think that I would prefer you to wait until I have solved the puzzle of your brother’s death.’ She said the last words firmly and saw his eyes move from hers and look over her shoulder at something behind her. She turned and saw the tall, broad-shouldered shape of Rhona standing above them outlined against the grey sky. She was standing with her side turned facing north as if she were looking towards Scotland. Mara looked at her thoughtfully.

  ‘Rhona is coming with me into Galway,’ said Jarlath casually. ‘She wants to get back to Scotland as soon as possible and there are a few goods that she wants to buy for Peadar to have him settled into the house on Garrett’s farm before she leaves. He is determined to stay and she wants to go home, so they will have to part. I’ll let her know that she must delay her departure, but that we may have our day in Galway once Garrett’s funeral and the inauguration have taken place.’

  ‘I’m sure that you will be of immense help to her,’ said Mara. Rhona would miss her son, she thought, but it was the way of the world. Her own daughter, Sorcha, had been married when she was not too much older than Peadar was now.

  Ten

  Berrad Airecht

  (Court Procedure)

  All facets of a case must be considered before finding a person guilty; grounds for suspicion may be:

  If the person is known to have been out on the night of a crime.

  If he sleeps in very heavily the next day.

  If he claims to be in a house of a friend or relative and it is proved that this is false.

  If it is known that he has uttered threats.

  If he trembles, blushes, turns pale or seems thirsty.

  If his footprint is found at the scene of the crime.

  If a shoe or an article of clothing belonging to him is found there.

  However, all judgements must bear in mind the character of the accused and the history of his life.

  ‘Shane has a brilliant idea, Brehon,’ said Hugh over his shoulder as soon as they had mounted their horses and cantered away from the castle.

  ‘Oh, yes, what is it, Shane?’ Mara had been riding beside Nuala, but the girl was silent and unresponsive so she abandoned her and moved up to join Hugh and Shane.

  ‘Well, it’s this, Brehon,’ Shane cast a glance around and waited until Mara was quite close before saying, ‘I kept thinking about how could the body of Garrett be thrown down in front of the cows. He must have weighed at least a couple of hundredweight. No man, and certainly no woman, could lift a weight like that and hurl it down the mountain. And I considered the possibility of the murderer putting the body on some sort of cart and tying it loosely with a chain and shooting it down. But then I thought that couldn’t have been the way, as the cart would have broken up into bits and the O’Lochlainn would have mentioned seeing something like that – and someone would have missed a cart – they’re valuable, these things.’

  ‘And you threw out a few questions, did you?’ Mara had noticed that most of the servants had been chosen by Fachtnan to stand in the line leading to Shane and that he had taken longer than his fellow scholars over the questioning.

  ‘Well, I thought I would use my initiative, Brehon,’ said Shane demurely. ‘I had a word with Fachtnan. Don’t worry; I cloaked the questions well. But after a while I began to despair of my idea. There certainly were no pieces of a cart, no wood at all when we searched the road and that is quite a high and well-built wall on the far side of it so it could not have gone on tumbling down the other side of the road, but then I had another idea. Could we stop here, Brehon, and I’ll explain to you?’

  By this time they had come to the length of road where Garrett’s body had been found. Mara called out to Fachtnan to stop and the others joined them, dismounting and holding the reins of the restive horses.

  ‘Are we going to have another search?’ Aidan was glancing around. ‘I’m sure we didn’t miss anything the last time, Brehon. We went over it really carefully.’

  ‘I’ve got an idea and I think it’s quite a good one,’ said Shane with his usual air of quiet confidence. ‘What if someone murdered Garrett earlier on in the day? After all no one had seen him since midday when Rhona heard the shouting match between him and Slaney – anyway, they murdered him and concealed the body and was wondering about burying him or throwing him in the lake after everyone had gone to bed. And then, the word comes about the cattle raid so – and here is the clever bit – our murderer – OM – slips out here with the body on a cart or something, and then gets an old millstone – there are quite a few cracked ones up there near to the old mill building – ties the body to it with the length of chain and sets it to roll down the hill, right into the path of the stampeding cattle. And what, my friends,’ demanded Shane rhetorically, ‘what happens to a millstone, when it tumbles down from a height and hits the road at high speed?’

  ‘It smashes,’ said Hugh beaming with pleasure at his friend’s cleverness. ‘And,’ he added, ‘that is why we found no sign of anything strange. There’s stone everywhere – and lots of it is broken – loose boulders are always tumbling down those steep hills.’

  ‘Not bad,’ said Moylan. ‘Well done, young fellow. I never thought of that. Let’s search. These ditches are full of stone.’

  ‘It might be the case,’ admitted Mara, but somehow she did not believe it. Still, it was clever of Shane to think of it and it did fit in with the idea at the back of her mind. She would have a word with Cumhal, she thought. He was the man who would be able to visualize the effect of hysterical cattle being driven at high speed.