A MASS FOR THE DEAD

A MASS FOR THE DEAD

A Muirteach MacPhee Mystery

by

Susan McDuffie

Copyright © 2006 by Susan McDuffie

All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the express written permission of the publisher, except where permitted by law.

This novel is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination, or, if real, used fictitiously.

Originally Published in 2006 by Five Star, an imprint of Thompson Gale, in conjunction with Tekno Books and Ed Gorman.

Cover Art by Delle Jacobs
http://dellejacobs.blogspot.com

eBook editions by eBooks By Barb for booknook.biz

ISBN for e-book editions:

Mobi (Kindle) edition: 978-0-9847900-0-5
Epub edition: 978-0-9847900-1-2

Acknowledgements

First, I must thank my parents, Bruce and Winifred McDuffie. Their loving parenting over the years has immeasurably enriched my life and nurtured my creativity. Bob and June Stevens encouraged me, read the manuscript and kept me at it. Donna Thomson also read the manuscript and made many helpful suggestions, as did members of the Santa Fe Writer’s group. Sharron Gunn’s help with Gaelic and Gaelic pronunciation was most appreciated. Sheila F. Duffy’s booklet,
Colonsay and Oronsay
, provided initial seeds, which eventually grew to fruition in this story. Any errors are entirely my own.

Cast of Characters

On Colonsay

Muirteach (Moor-tech) MacPhee

Somerled, his dog

Seamus, Muirteach’s 14 year old friend

Aorig, Seamus’s mother

Seamus’s father

Gillespic, Muirteach’s uncle, Chief of the Clan MacPhee

Euluasaid, his wife

Sheena, the Prior’s mistress

Angus & Alasdair, her brothers

Sean, Maire and baby Columbanus, Sheena’s children

Donald Dubh (doo), tavern keeper

His wife

Tormod, a mason

His mother

On Oronsay and at the Priory

Crispinus, the Prior of Oronsay and Muirteach’s father

Gillecristus, the sub-prior

Columbanus, the baker, Sheena’s brother

Donal, the librarian

Padraig, the beekeeper

Moloug, the brewer

Augustus

Aidan

Gillecolm

Alasdair Beag, an islander

Calum Glas, master mason

Eogain, Tormod’s brother

On Islay

John MacDonald, the Lord of the Isles

Fearchar (farcher) Beaton, a physician

Mariota, his daughter

Robbie, Mariota’s cousin

Seòras, a harper

Muirteach’s great-aunt Morag

Cousin Elidh (aylee)

Alsoon

Padraic, a priest on Nave Island

Ian Mor & Niall Sgadan, two brothers, fishermen, on Nave Island

On Mull

Lachlan Lubanach MacLean

Lady Mary, his wife

Map of Colonsay and Oronsay

A MASS FOR THE DEAD

Prologue

Scotland 1373

T
he body floated, limbs tangled in strands of reddish dulse and yellow bladderwrack. Salt water washed over it, then receded. The tide left the flotsam lying on wet sand, sightless eyes staring into obscurity and fingers just grazing the large stone Celtic cross that stood halfway across the Strand.

A hungry gull alighted, and pecked at one eye with interest. Others joined it, eager for breakfast, and their cries rang through the salt smelling air as they fought over the carrion. The first gull, satiated, took flight as the sky lightened and the sun began to rise. Beating its wings against the damp air, the bird circled over the expanse of wet sand, pooled water and black rocks that now separated the tidal island of Oronsay and its gray stone Priory from the larger green hills and more mundane concerns of Colonsay.

The sun tried to burn through the mist, but failed, leaving the body wrapped wetly in fog like a winding sheet, with the keening of the gulls for a requiem. It wasn’t until Alasdair Beag came down to dig oysters for the monks and nearly bumped into the corpse, that his brethren learned what had happened to the Prior and why it was that he had not shown his face at Matins the night before.

Chapter 1

A
sprig of heather poked me in the side. Unable to ignore it, I tossed and burrowed into the piled heather and bracken covered with a blanket that served as my bed, trying in vain to find a more comfortable spot. So Seamus found me awake that morning, when he came to tell me my father was dead.

I sat up and stared at him. Seamus’s fourteen-year-old form looked dark against the morning light from the open door of the blackhouse behind him.

“Muirteach, did you no hear me?” He shook me again. “I said your father’s dead.”

My dog woke from the noise, rose, and licked my face, by way of a morning greeting.

“No, now, Seamus,” I said. I patted Somerled’s large shaggy head a bit absently before I waved the dog away, thinking Seamus must somehow have gotten the news wrong. “That’s never true.”

”No, it is true, Muirteach. You must be believing me.”

“No,” I said again, stupidly, but something in Seamus’s high-pitched tone, his voice just cracking as he spoke, stopped me in mid-phrase, and made me begin to believe the lad.

“What was it?” I asked, after another moment, my mind racing. “A fit?”

“No.” Seamus paused. “He was murdered.”

My hands went cold, and I almost choked on my own spit. “Murdered?”

“Aye.”

I wondered which of his women had finally killed him. The Prior of Oronsay, dead.

I stood up, and began to dress, pulling my linen shirt over my head and throwing my
brat
over my shoulders. The rough wool of it fell about me warmly in the morning chill.

I watched Seamus squat on my stool next to the remains of the fire on the open hearth. The morning sun filtered through the doorway of the blackhouse and picked out a few details, my leather satchel thrown carelessly on the floor, Seamus’s brown hair untidy, the sharp angles and freckles of his boy’s face.

I thought of my own father’s face, his voice, scornful when he spoke of his bastard son. I would never hear that voice again.

“What else do you know of it, Seamus?” I finally asked him when I could speak.

“A messenger came from the Priory, for your uncle, and himself told me to fetch you. He has already gone to the Canons, on his galley.” Seamus’s words tumbled out, one upon the other, in his eagerness to tell me the tale. Stunned, I stood and listened, trying to make sense of what he said.

“Old Alasdair found him. He’d gone down to get oysters, but there he was—the Prior, I mean,” added Seamus unnecessarily. “Face down in the Strand he was, with his hands nearly touching the sanctuary cross.”

I filled the basin with water from the jug that sat by the hearth, splashed some on my face, and took a drink.

“His mouth was full of sand. He’d been choked with it,” Seamus added.

I gagged and spat the water out upon the hearth. It sizzled on some still warm embers and I watched a faint trail of white steam rise, watched it wend its way up and out through the darkness of the thatch overhead, while I fought down my desire to be sick.

Seamus picked up a stick, tracing idle designs in the ashes. “You’ll be wanting a fire,” he finally said, awkwardly, to break the silence. He poked at the peat in the fire pit. “It’s cold this morning.”

“I’ll be wanting to see him, I’m thinking, not a fire.” I spoke more harshly than I’d realized and Seamus put the stick down hastily. “Where is he?”

“They took the body to the Priory.”

Aye, I thought, with some bitterness. Where else would they take him? Certainly not here, to his own son.

“We’d best be going, then Seamus. That is, if you’re coming with me.”

The lad nodded eagerly. I found his hero-worship oddly comforting this morning, misplaced though it seemed most of the time.

I grabbed another drink of water from the wooden cup that sat by the jug, and managed to swallow it this time.

“Let’s be off then,” I said and lifted aside the flap of cowhide that served as a door on my fine house.

“I will just be telling my mother,” Seamus said, darting next door. I nodded. Somerled tried to follow, but I told him to stay and for once he obeyed me, whining a bit as he skulked back inside the hut.

The brightness of the June day was blinding after the dimness inside my hut and I stood for a moment outside, waiting for Seamus and letting my eyes adjust.

The village of Scalasaig looked much as usual this morning, the stone huts, with their heather thatch, snug against the damp and the breezes from the bay. I smelled the scent of peat fires and baking, mingled with the more aromatic smells of my neighbors’ middens.

Seamus emerged from the house he shared with his mother and father with two bannocks in his hands. He crammed one into his mouth while we set out walking.

“Mother gave me this for you,” he said between mouthfuls, handing me the other bannock. “She said you should be eating something.”

Cattle going to pasture earlier that morning, and folk going about their business, had already churned up the mud in the street leading through the center of the village to a fine morass. We left and headed south, down the track leading through the low hills the two miles or so to the Strand.

The dew hung heavy on the bracken and pink thistle that lined the track. Among green rushes and bog cotton, a single yellow iris stood alone and I marveled at the beauty of it. Perhaps it was the shock of that morning that made me notice it so, petals curling away from the center of the flower, dew drops dripping from the softness of them like crystal tears.

Mist rolled in as we passed Loch Colla, muffling sound and sight so that we could not even see the walls of the Church of the Glen. The lowing of some cattle grazing in the uplands echoed mournfully. I shivered, my bad leg began to ache, and I wished I had thought to borrow a horse. We saw few people about. Even the death of the Prior of Oronsay, and himself an island man, wasn’t enough to drag most folk from their tasks on this June day.

“It was your uncle, Muirteach, that told me of it. He said to come and find you.”

I realized Seamus was speaking. I had not been listening.

“And himself?” I asked, finally, trying to collect my thoughts. “Where is the MacPhee?”

“He’ll aye be there now, settling it all with the brothers.”

That was right, I remembered. Seamus had already told me my uncle had gone on his galley to see to things at the Priory.

And good luck to him there. My uncle Gillespic was always one to try and get things settled, one way or another, as quickly as ever might be. But the death of his own brother, a prior, for all that he had had two handfasted wives, a full-grown bastard son, and some other bastards as well, might not be so easily settled.