Chain of Evidence (28 page)

At that moment both Stephen and Boetius had re-started the chant of ‘
burn, burn, burn
’ and it was taken up by the men packed into the narrow passageway. The only hope that Mara had was that another cloudburst might quench the flames of the fire. It was beginning to emit less heat, she noticed. More branches were needed to keep it going, but there seemed to be no effort made to fetch some from outside the enclosure. She looked up to the heavens, but the clouds were parting. Another of those sudden changes in weather that were so common to the west of Ireland appeared to be about to happen and she could do nothing about it. She opened her mouth to threaten Tomás again, but this time only a rusty croak was emitted. She boiled with frustration that her most potent weapon was now lost to her. She thought briefly about Brennan the cowman and wondered whether the frustration of all that rage and sense of injustice trapped behind a mouth that would not obey had played any part in the murder of Garrett. And then, of course, this was a man that understood cows, she thought, and shot one more glance at the sky.

But the rain had completely stopped now and a faint shaft of sunlight appeared in the western sky. Mara, dry-mouthed and still choking, looked instinctively towards it.

The land to the west of the enclosure, the stony slabs of the limestone plateau that formed the high Burren, had been empty a minute ago, but now up against the sky, etched in black, were the forms of some riders. Six men on horses, riding flat out, the horses stretched to a fast gallop. Could either Moylan or Aidan have managed to make contact? Were these riders coming to her assistance, or were they, as she tried to tell herself, nothing whatsoever to do with her?

Afraid to hope, Mara looked away. The clan members still chanted in dull tones and had not noticed the direction of her gaze, but Stephen Gardiner had begun to turn his head to follow the direction of her eyes. Rapidly she snatched a burning brand from the fire and moved it across his face. He drew back instantly, waving a hand to dissipate the smoke and then wiping his eyes with his handkerchief. Boetius was tenderly feeling the bright red bald patch on the side of his chin and she hoped maliciously that he would never again be able to sport that trimly pointed English beard. Once again she swiped the air with the brand, praying more sincerely than she had ever prayed in her life, that she could keep their attention from these racing horsemen.

Slaney moaned in pain and then cried out shrilly. She was beginning to come to her senses, thought Mara compassionately, and there would be no comfort for her in that. Better a blow across the skull, such as had killed her husband, rather than a slow death in the torment of a fire. She prayed again for rain; at least that eased the pain of burns, but no rain came and the late evening sunshine brightened.

And then there was a shout – more like a roar from a bull than the utterance of a man. Mara thrilled to the sound. She knew that man; it was Fintan the blacksmith, his mighty voice had been honed from a childhood and boyhood spent in a smithy full of the beating of iron. It penetrated the brains of the chanting men and an uncertain note came into the sounds.

The floor of the sunken passageway was so low that men found it hard to see properly over the walls and those at the back pressed forward so that those in front were pushed up and into the small round space encircling the second dolmen and its surrounding fire. A shout of pain and a stream of curses came when a few legs came into contact with the smouldering fire.

Two minutes later with blood-curdling yells, Fintan and the largest of his forge workers, came in through the enclosure, behind the compressed throng of MacNamaras. They cleaved their way through and stood brandishing enormous hammers. His brother, his son, his neighbours and some of his forge workers, all armed with fearsome throwing knives, stood above, peering down at the corralled men.

‘Give the word, Brehon, and we’ll slaughter the lot of them,’ shouted Fintan.

Miraculously Mara felt her gullet expand with relief. She coughed once and waited for a moment, shaking her head to Fintan’s suggestion. The smoke was dying down now and she opened her mouth, drawing in a gulp of damp air and allowing its coolness to soothe the inflammation in her throat. There was a sound of more horsemen now and to her immense relief, Aidan’s head appeared at the top of the wall. He did not have the O’Lochlainn with him but the dependable face of Fachtnan leaned down from beside him and Nuala was by his side and behind her, Cumhal, Mara’s farm manager, and his workers.

In an instant Fachtnan had leaped down, dislodging a few clansmen and he held up his arms for Nuala. She handed her medical bag to Aidan and slipped down into them instantly. Even in the midst of her pain and her anxiety, Mara noticed how Fachtnan held Nuala for a minute longer than was necessary and that it was Nuala who freed herself.

‘Are you all right?’ she asked Mara, taking her medical bag and bending over Slaney.

‘Something for my throat, Nuala; I must talk!’ whispered Mara hoarsely.

The wonderful thing about Nuala was her quick wits. In an instant she had produced a flask from her bag, handed it to Mara, saying ‘marsh mallow root; just keep sipping it,’ and then had applied herself to soaking pieces of linen and layering them onto Slaney’s leg.

Mara swallowed a gulp of the mallow root solution and then another. She took in a deep breath and when she spoke her voice was strong enough to be heard.

‘All MacNamara men from Thomond, except Tomás MacNamara, are to be escorted from here to the boundary between the kingdom and Thomond. They will not be re-admitted to this kingdom except by the direct order of the king. These two men, Stephen Gardiner and Boetius MacClancy are to be chained – Fintan, will you see to that?’ She waited until the two men had been seized and then continued, ‘And, Fintan, I want them driven along the road to Abbey Hill and then released once they reach the road to Kinvarra at the boundary of this kingdom.’ Mara took another sip of the cooling mallow root drink and addressed them severely. ‘If either of you, Stephen Gardiner, or Boetius MacClancy, appear once more in the Burren, I will cry you to the heavens as an outsider and an alien and you will have no protection under the law.’

They did her will, quickly and efficiently. The men from Thomond were relieved of their throwing knives by Balor, Fintan’s giant-sized worker. The sight of him, holding a hammer above their heads, made the knives come tumbling out and Balor placed each neatly on the top of the rapidly cooling dolmen. Fintan, in the meantime, softened the ends of the iron chain in the remaining embers and then shackled the two men, Stephen Gardiner and Boetius MacClancy. They were driven off by two of Mara’s workmen who nodded at the directions given to them by Cumhal.

There was one more task to be done before this ugly business was finished. Tomás MacNamara was leaning against the wall and she went over to him. He looked up at her with very black eyes and then, suddenly and unexpectedly, vomited on the ground in front of her feet. Mara frowned. But there was no way that a man could do this for no reason so she went across to Nuala.

‘Look at this man’s eyes,’ she asked and walked back beside her. By now Tomás had sunken down and was crouched on the ground, his head supported on his hands. He looked up at them with a dazed expression.

Nuala bent over him and pulled down the lid of the large, black-pupilled eyes and nodded.

‘Cowbane,’ she said. ‘He’s been dosed with cowbane. He’ll recover. Let him walk around in the air for a while.’ Rapidly she went back to Slaney, holding the woman’s wrist in her hand and counting anxiously.

‘Cowbane,’ repeated Mara to herself. It was as she had thought. She remembered the rows of the very black eyes watching her. Tomás, she recollected from her first meeting with him, was, like his son, Adair, a brown-eyed man; brown-eyed, but not black-eyed. Who had fed him and the men from Thomond with cowbane? It would have been easy to put it into the mead – only very small quantities were enough to ensure that the drinker had strange dreams and strange fears.
Allucinari
,
that was the word she had come across in her readings of the classics, she remembered. That’s what the man was suffering from.

And not just Tomás. Again she cast her mind back to her mental picture of the men who crowded into the sunken passageway; the men with the black staring eyes. Almost the entire party had been doctored with cowbane.

But, by who?

She thought she knew the answer.

And why?

She knew the answer to that, also.

There was only one person who could have done this and that person was Cait, the wife of Tomás. And why? Well, the reason was obvious when Mara thought of the adoration in the woman’s eyes when she had looked at her beautiful young son. Tomás’s downfall would have been Adair’s opportunity. Mother love, she thought as she nodded to Cumhal’s plans to fetch a cart from a nearby neighbour in order to convey Slaney back to Rathborney.

She sighed. There was one more task to be done before she could rest and nurse her sore throat and burning hand. She watched the men from Thomond being driven off towards the eastern boundary between the Burren and their own kingdom and she waited until Stephen Gardiner and Boetius MacClancy had been dragged up to the road leading to the north. Only then did she mount her horse and sign to her two scholars to accompany her.

She would not seek her bed until every flask, pot, ewer, pitcher and bowl from that pernicious stillroom at Carron Castle had been emptied in front of her eyes onto the cobbles of the castle’s courtyard. The rest, she thought, could wait until the morrow. She left Tomás to his wife’s care; he seemed to have sunken into a wordless, sightless, immobile state and it would, she thought, as she appointed two of her workers to stand guard over the castle for the night, be useless to question him at that moment.

Tomorrow the truth would emerge.

A
bóaire
(a substantial farmer) is a man of three snouts:

So that he is capable of receiving a king or a bishop or a scholar or a brehon from the road, prepared for the arrival of guest-company.

Here is the record of the possessions of a
bóaire

He has twenty cows, two bulls, six oxen, twenty pigs, twenty sheep, four domestic boars, two sows, a saddle-horse, an enamelled bridle, and sixteen bushels of seed in the ground. He and his wife have four suits of clothes.

M
ara slept badly and only dropped into an uneasy doze just as a blackbird piped a tentative whistle outside her bedroom window. When she woke her scorched hand was stiff and sore and she ached in every limb. There was a noise downstairs from the kitchen and she lay there for a while
half-ho
ping that Brigid would bring her some breakfast in bed just as she would have done when Mara was a child and suffering one of her rare illnesses.

But when the door opened it was Nuala and her medical bag who appeared and Mara welcomed her with relief. From time to time, during the night, she had swallowed sips of the marsh mallow root drink and now the flask had been emptied. Her hand was painful, but that didn’t matter; her voice was of more importance. There was something she had to do today. Garrett MacNamara’s killer had to be confronted; a confession had to be made and a day appointed for the sentence of retribution. Wordlessly, she looked at Nuala and silently opened her mouth to allow the girl to inspect her throat.

‘Getting on really well; much less inflamed; bound to be a bit sore first thing in the morning. I’ve brought you some more of the syrup. I’ve had Peadar out in that marshy piece of earth near the river first thing this morning and he brought me back a root of the mallow. I had him grind it and make a new supply. Drink this.’ Nuala’s voice was so full of energy and well-being that Mara began to feel better.

She tilted the goblet, drank and felt a soothing coat of mucous liquid, flavoured with honey, slide over the sore tissues in her throat and closed her eyes with relief. She eyed the well-stoppered flask with approval. It could be carried in her satchel, she thought as she enquired about Slaney.

‘I’ve dosed her fairly heavily with poppy juice so she slept the night through, but it is a bad burn – she’s a fat woman and it has burned almost to the bone. I’ve left Peadar in charge of her; that man in Scotland, the herbalist at the friary, taught him a lot. He is going to be a good apprentice,’ said Nuala buoyantly.

‘Perhaps he should have been the one to come here to renew the bandages on my hand,’ said Mara, watching Nuala at work with a slight smile puckering the corners of her lips. There was an air of suppressed excitement and pleasure under the girl’s professional manner. Was it relief at having finally made a decision to come back to the Burren? Or was there something else? She had known Nuala for her entire life and had seen her in all moods; but she had never seen the brown eyes sparkle quite as they were doing at this moment. Mara held her breath.

‘I wanted to see you,’ said Nuala. She gave a half-laugh. ‘It was quite a night,’ she said lightly. ‘Fachtnan and I brought your two boys back up to the law school once everything was in place. We were a bit worried about you. And then Aidan came crashing in, saying that the O’Lochlainn and his steward were missing – they had gone to Coad races with quite a few of his men and it was thought that they would stay overnight with Teige O’Brien. Aidan came to ask Cumhal what to do. When I heard about Slaney, and about the fire, I thought I should go too. Aidan kept saying that the Brehon would rescue the woman and Fachtnan, of course, agreed with him, but Cumhal; I’ve never seen him so worried. I thought he’d kill his horse the way he rode that cob across the limestone pavements with the rain making everything slippery.’