Hemlock At Vespers (19 page)

Fidelma hurried quickly to her side. Belach was patting her hands in a feeble attempt to revive her senses.

“She’s fainted,” muttered the man unnecessarily.

“Get some water,” instructed Fidelma and when the water had been splashed against the woman’s forehead and some of it nursed between her lips, Monchae blinked and opened her eyes.

“What was it?” snapped Fidelma. “What made you faint?”

Monchae stared at her a moment or two, her face pale, her teeth chattering.

“The pipes!” she stammered. “The pipes!”

“I heard no pipes,” Fidelma replied.

“No. Mugrán’s pipes… on the table!”

Leaving Belach to help Monchae to her feet, Fidelma turned, holding her candle high, and beheld a set of pipes laying on the table. There was nothing remarkable about them. Fidelma had seen many of better quality and workmanship.

“What are you telling me?” she asked, as Monchae was led forward by Belach, still trembling.

“These are Murgán’s pipes. The pipes he took away with him to war. It must be true. His ghost has returned. Oh, saints protect us!”

She clung desperately to her husband.

Fidelma reached forward to examine them pipes.

They seemed entirely of this world. They were of the variety called
cetharchóire,
meaning four-tuned, with a chanter, two shorter reed-drones and a long drone. A simple pipe to be found in almost any household in Ireland. She pressed her lips tightly, realizing that when they had all retired for the night there had been no sign of any pipes on the table.

“How are you sure that these are the pipes of Murgán?” she asked.

“I know them!” The woman was vehement. “How do you know what garment belongs to you, or what knife? You know its weave, its stains, its markings….”

She began to sob hysterically.

Fidelma ordered Belach to take the woman back to her bed.

“Have a care, Sister,” the man muttered, as he led his wife away. “We are surely dealing with evil powers here.”

Fidelma smiled thinly.

“I am a representative of a greater power, Belach. Everything that happens can only occur under His will.”

After they had gone, she stood staring at the pipes for a while and finally gave up the conundrum with a sigh. She left them on the table and climbed the stairs back to her own bed, thankful it was still warm for she realized, for the first time, that her feet and legs were freezing. The night was truly chill.

She lay for a while thinking about the mystery which she had found here in this desolate mountain spot and wondering if there was some supernatural solution to it. Fidelma acknowledged that there were powers of darkness. Indeed, one would be a fool to believe in God and to refuse to believe in the Devil. If there was good, then there was, undoubtedly, evil. But, in her experience, evil tended to be a human condition.

She had fallen asleep. It could not have been for long. It was still dark when she started awake.

It took a moment or two for her to realize what it was that had aroused her for the second time that night.

Far off she could hear pipes playing. It was a sweet, gentle sound. The sound of the sleep producing
súan-traige,
the beautiful, sorrowing lullaby.

“Codail re suanán saine…
”—Sleep with pleasant slumber …

Fidelma knew the tune well for many a time had she been lulled into drowsiness as a child by its sweet melody.

She sat up abruptly and swung out of bed. The music was real. It was outside the inn. She went to the shuttered window and cautiously eased it open a crack.

Outside the snow lay like a crisp white carpet across the surrounding hills and mountains. The sky was still shrouded with heavy grey-white snow clouds. Even so, the nightscape was light, in spite of the fact that the moon was only a soft glow hung with ice crystals that produced a halo around its orb. One could see for miles. The atmosphere was icy chill and still. Vapor from her breath made bursts of short-lived clouds in the air before her.

It was then that her heart began to hammer as if a mad drummer were beating a warning to wake the dead.

She stood stock still.

About a hundred yards from the inn was a small round knoll. On the knoll stood the figure of a lonely piper and he was playing the sweet lullaby that woke her. But the thing that caused her to feel dizzy with awe and apprehension was that the figure shimmered as if a curious light emanated from him, sparkling like little stars against the brightness of the reflecting snow.

She stood still watching. Then the melody trailed off and the figure turned its head in the direction of the inn. It gave vent to an awesome, pitiful cry.

“I am alone! I am alone! Monchae! Why did you desert me? I am alone! I will come for you soon!”

Perhaps it was the cry that stirred Fidelma into action.

She turned, grabbed her leather shoes and seized her cloak, and hurried down the stairs into the gloomy interior of the main room of the inn. She heard Belach’s cry on the stair behind her.

“Don’t go out, Sister! It is evil! It is the shade of Murgán!”

She paid no heed. She threw open the bolts of the door and went plunging into the icy stillness of the night. She ran through the deep snows, feeling its coldness against her bare legs, up toward the knoll. But long before she reached it, she realized that the figure had disappeared.

She reached the knoll and paused. There was no one in sight. The nocturnal piper had vanished. She drew her cloak closer around her shoulders and shivered. But it was the night chill rather than the idea of the specter that caused her to tremble.

Catching her breath against the icy air, she looked down. There were no footprints. But the snow, on careful inspection, did not lie in pristine condition across the knoll. Its surface was rough, ruffled as if a wind had blown across it. It was then she noticed the curious reflective quality of it, here and there. She bent forward and scooped a handful of snow in her palm and examined it. It seemed to twinkle and reflect as she held it.

Fidelma gave a long, deep sigh. She turned and retraced her steps back to the inn.

Belach was waiting anxiously by the door. She noticed that he now held the sword in his hand.

She grinned mischievously.

“If it were a spirit, that would be of little assistance,” she observed dryly.

Belach said nothing, but he looked and bolted the door behind Fidelma as she came into the room. He replaced the sword without comment as she went to the fire the warm herself after her exertion into the night.

Monchae was standing on the bottom step, her arms folded across her breast, moaning a little.

Fidelma went in search of the jug of
corma
and poured out some of the spirit. She swallowed some and then took a wooden cup to Monchae and told her to drink it.

“You heard it? You saw it?” the wife of the innkeeper wailed.

Fidelma nodded.

Belach bit his lip. “It is the ghost of Murgán. We are doomed.”

“Nonsense!” snapped Fidelma.

“Then explain that!” replied Belach, pointing to the table.

There was nothing on the table. It was then Fidelma realized what was missing. She had left the pipes on the table when she had returned to bed.

“It is two hours or so until sunrise,” Fidelma said slowly. “I want you two to return to bed. There is something here which I must deal with. Whatever occurs, I do not wish either of you to stir from your room unless I specifically call you.”

Belach stared at her with white, taut features.

“You mean that you will do battle with this evil force?”

Fidelma smiled thinly.

“That is what I mean,” she said emphatically.

Reluctantly, Belach helped Monchae back up the stairs, leaving Fidelma standing in the darkness. She stood still, thinking, for a while. She had an instinct that whatever was happening in this troubled isolated inn, it was building toward its climax. Perhaps that climax would come before sunrise. There was no logic to the idea but Fidelma had long come to the belief that one should not ignore one’s instincts.

She turned and made her way toward a darkened alcove at the far end of the room in which only a deep wooden bench was situated. She tightened her cloak against the chill, seated herself and prepared to wait. Wait for what, she did not know. But she believed that she would not have to wait for long before some other manifestation occurred.

It was a short time before she heard the sounds of the pipe once more.

The sweet, melodious lullaby was gone. The pipes were now wild keening. It was the hair-raising lament of the
gol-traige,
full of pain, sorrow and longing.

Fidelma held her head to one side.

The music was no longer outside the old inn but seeming to echo from within, seeping up under the floorboards, through the walls and down from the rafters.

She shivered but made no move to go in search of the sound, praying all the while that neither Monchae nor Belach would disobey her instructions and leave their room.

She waited until the tune came to an end.

There was a silence in the old building.

Then she heard the sound, the sound she had heard on her first waking. It was a soft, dragging sound. Her body tensed as she bent forward in the alcove; her eyes narrowed as she tried to focus into the darkness.

A figure seemed to be rising from the floor, upward, slowly upward on the far side of the room.

Fidelma held her breath.

The figure, reaching its full height, appeared to be clutching a set of pipes beneath its arms. It moved toward the table in a curious limping gait.

Fidelma noticed that now and again, as the light of the glowing embers in the hearth caught it, the figure’s cloak sparkled and danced with a myriad pinpricks of fire.

Fidelma rose to her feet.

“The charade is over!” she cried harshly.

The figure dropped the pipes and wheeled around, seeking to identify the speaker. Then it seemed to catch its breath.

“Is that you, Monchae?” came a sibilant, mocking whisper.

Then, before Fidelma could prepare herself, the figure seemed the fly across the room at her. She caught sight of light flashing on an upraised blade and instinct made her react by grasping at the descending arm with both hands, twisting her body to take the weight of the impact.

The figure grunted angrily as the surprise of the attack failed.

The collision of their bodies threw Fidelma back into the alcove, slamming her against the wooden seat. She grunted in pain. The figure had shaken her grip loose and once more the knife hand was descending.

“You should have fled while you had the chance, Monchae,” came the masculine growl. “I had no wish to harm you or the old man. I just wanted to get you out of this inn. Now, you must die!”

Fidelma sprang aside once more, feverishly searching for some weapon, some means of defense.

Her flailing hand knocked against something. She dimly recognized it as the alabaster figure of the Madonna and Child. Automatically, her fingers closed on it and she swung it up like a club. She struck the figure where she thought the side of the head would be.

She was surprised at the shock of the impact. The alabaster seemed to shatter into pieces, as she would have expected from a plaster statuette, but its impact seemed firm and weighty, causing a vibration in her hand and arm. The sound was that of a sickening smack of flesh meeting a hard substance.

The figure grunted, a curious sound as the air was sharply expelled from his lungs. Then he dropped to the floor. She heard the sound of metal ringing on the floor planks as the knife dropped and bounced.

Fidelma stood for a moment or two, shoulders heaving as she sought to recover her breath and control her pounding emotions.

Slowly she walked to the foot of the stairs and called up in a firm voice.

“You can come down now. I have laid your ghost!”

She turned, stumbling a little in the darkness, until she found a candle and lit it. Then she went back to the figure of her erstwhile assailant. He lay on his side, hands outstretched. He was a young man. She gave a soft intake of breath when she saw the ugly wound on his temple. She reached forward and felt for a pulse. There was none.

She looked round curiously. The impact of a plaster statuette could not have caused such a death blow.

Fragments and powdered plaster were scattered in a large area. But there, lying in the debris, was a long cylindrical tube of sacking. It was no more than a foot high and perhaps one inch in diameter. Fidelma bent and picked it up. It was heavy. She sighed and replaced it where she had found it.

Monchae and Belach were creeping down the stairs now.

“Belach, have you a lantern?” asked Fidelma as she stood up.

“Yes. What is it?” demanded the innkeeper.

“Light it, if you please. I think we have solved your haunting.”

As she spoke she turned and walked across the floor to the spot where she had seen the figure rise, as if from the floor. There was a trapdoor and beneath it some steps which led into a tunnel.

Belach had lit the lamp.

“What has happened?” he demanded.

“Your ghost was simply a man,” Fidelma explained.

Monchae let out a moan.

“You mean it is Murgán? He was not killed at Loch Derg?”

Fidelma perched herself on the edge of the table and shook her head. She stooped to pick up the pipes where the figure had dropped them onto the table.

“No; it was someone who looked and sounded a little like Murgan as you knew him. Take a look at his face, Monchae. I think you will recognize Cano, Murgán’s younger brother.”

A gasp of astonishment from the woman confirmed Fidelma’s identification.

“But why, what … ?”

“A sad but simple tale. Cano was not killed as reported at Loch Derg. He was probably badly wounded and returned to this land with a limp. I presume that he did not have a limp when he went away?”

“He did not,” Monchae confirmed.

“Murgán was dead. He took Murgán’s pipes. Why he took so long to get back here, we shall never know. Perhaps he did not need money until now, or perhaps the idea never occurred to him….”