Hemlock At Vespers (28 page)

“That would not be so, would it, Conn, Tanist of the Uí Dróna?”

The young man’s expression was sullenly defiant.

“You see,” Fidelma went on, speaking to Liadin, “Conn was using you, Liadin. He persuaded you to work out the plan to implicate Irnan because if I followed your false trail and could demonstrate that Irnan was implicated, or at least was a suspect in Scoriath’s death, then she would have had to relinquish the chieftaincy of the Uí Dróna. A chieftain must be without blemish or suspicion. Who would benefit from that but the Tanist—the elected heir?”

Liadin had turned to Conn in disbelief.

“Deny it!” she cried. “Say it is not so!”

Conn shrugged arrogantly.

“Why gamble just for love when one can take power as well? We laid out the plot as you have deduced it, Fidelma of Kildare. Except for one thing: I also slew Scoriath. And when the child stumbled into the room and saw me, I had to kill him as I must now kill you….”

Conn raised his sword.

Fidelma flinched, closing her eyes. She heard Liadin scream. The blow was not delivered. She opened her eyes to find that Liadin was clinging to Conn’s sword arm while Rathend and two warriors crowded the cell to disarm and drag the struggling young man away.

Liadin collapsed into a sobbing heap on the cot.

Rathend was standing gazing at Fidelma with a look of admiration in his eyes.

“So you were right, Fidelma of Kildare. How could you have been so sure?”

“I was not sure. Only my instinct was sure. I was certain that Liadin could not have killed her son but that weighed against my certainty that it was Liadin who set the elaborate series of false clues for me to follow, knowing how they would appeal to my vanity for solving mysteries. I was faced with two conflicting certainties. That meant Liadin had an accomplice, and in that accomplice one could look for motive. I began to suspect Conn when he willingly provided me with the next link about Irnan and the Jewess connection.

“Poor Liadin, even when she knew that Conn had slain her child, she continued to go through with this plot for love of him. A strong thing, this blindness of love.”

She glanced compassionately at her friend. “Only when I realized the width of the palm print on the book satchel was that of a male hand did things make sense. Conn, in setting the murder scene, had to make sure that Liadin had left the clue in its proper place and, in doing so, he left his own clue there. The plan needed my participation to follow the false clues. I was late in arriving here and found that Conn was looking for my coming. At the time I wondered why he was relieved when I arrived.”

Rathend sighed softly.

“So Conn persuaded his lover to participate in the crime, making her believe it was all for love while all the time he merely sought power?”

“Liadin is guilty, but not so guilty as Conn, for he played on her emotions as a fiddler plays upon his instrument. Ah, Liadin, Liadin!” Fidelma shook her head. “No matter how well one thinks one knows someone, there is always some dark recess of the mind that even the closest of friends may never reach.”

“She saved your life, though. That will stand in mitigation when she is judged.”

“If only Scoriath had been honest with her,” Fidelma sighed. “If Scoriath had confessed his affair with Irnan and told Liadin that he wanted a divorce, she would not have been led into this fearful plot.”

“It seems that Scoriath brought his own fate upon himself,” ventured Rathend.

“He was probably a coward to emotion,” agreed Fidelma as they turned from the cell, leaving the sobbing Liadin alone. “Men often are.
Dew vult!”

“God wills all things,” echoed Rathend hollowly.

A CANTICLE FOR WULFSTAN

Abbot Laisran smiled broadly. He was a short, rotund, red-faced man. His face proclaimed a permanent state of jollity, for he had been born with that rare gift of humor and a sense that the world was there to provide enjoyment to those who inhabited it. When he smiled, it was no fainthearted parting of the lips but an expression that welled from the depths of his being, bright and all-encompassing. And when he laughed it was as though the whole earth trembled in accompaniment.

“It is so good to see you again, Sister Fidelma,” Laisran boomed, and his voice implied it was no mere formula but a genuine expression of his joy in the meeting.

Sister Fidelma answered his smile with an almost urchin grin, quite at odds with her habit and calling. Indeed, those who examined the young woman closely, observing the rebellious strands of red hair thrusting from beneath her head-dress, seeing the bubbling laughter in her green eyes, and the natural expression of merriment on her fresh, attractive face, would wonder why such an alluring young woman had taken up the life of a religieuse. Her tall, yet well-proportioned figure seemed to express a desire for a more active and joyous role in life than that in the cloistered confines of a religious community.

“And it is good to see you again, Laisran. It is always a pleasure to come to Durrow.”

Abbot Laisran reached out both his hands to take Fidelma’s extended one, for they were old friends. Laisran had known Fidelma since she had reached “the age of choice,” and he it was who had persuaded her to take up the study of law under the Brehon Morann of Tara. Further, he had persuaded her to continue her studies until she had reached the qualification of
Anruth,
one degree below that of
Ollamh,
the highest rank of learning. It had been Laisran who had advised her to join the community of Brigid at Kildare when she had become accepted as a
dálaigh,
an advocate of the Brehon Court. In the old days, before the Light of Christ reached the shores of Éireann, all those who held professional office were of the caste of Druids. When the Druids gave up their power to the priests and communities of Christ, the professional classes, in turn, enlisted in the new holy orders as they had done in the old.

“Shall you be long among us?” inquired Laisran.

Fidelma shook her head.

“I am on a journey to the shrine of the Blessed Patrick at Ard Macha.”

“Well, you must stay and dine with us this night. It is a long time since I have had a stimulating talk.”

Fidelma grimaced with humor.

“You are abbot of one of the great teaching monasteries of Ireland. Professors of all manner of subjects reside here with students from the four corners of Ireland. How can you be lacking stimulating discourse?”

Laisran chuckled.

“These professors tend to lecture; there is little dialogue. How boring monologues can be. Sometimes I find more intelligence among our students.”

The great monastery on the plain of the oaks, which gave it the name Durrow, was scarcely a century old but already its fame as a university had spread to many peoples of Europe. Students flocked to the scholastic island, in the middle of the bog of Aillín, from numerous lands. The Blessed Colmcille had founded the community at Durrow before he had been exiled by the High King and left the shores of Éireann to form his more famous community on Iona in the land of the Dàl Riada.

Sister Fidelma fell in step beside the Abbot as he led the way along the great vaulted corridors of the monastery toward his chamber. Brothers and laymen scurried quietly hither and thither through the corridors, heads bowed, intent on their respective classes or devotions. There were four faculties of learning at Durrow: theology, medicine, law and the liberal arts.

It was midmorning, halfway between the first Angelus bell and the summons of the noonday Angelus. Fidelma had been up before dawn and had traveled fifteen miles to reach Durrow on horseback, the ownership of a horse being a privilege accorded only to her rank as a representative of the Brehon Court.

A solemn-faced monk strode across their path, hesitated and inclined his head. He was a thin, dark-eyed man of swarthy skin who wore a scowl with the same ease that Abbot Laisran wore a smile. Laisran made a curious gesture of acknowledgment with his hand, more as one of dismissal than recognition, and the man moved off into a side room.

“Brother Finan, our professor of law,” explained Laisran, almost apologetically. “A good man, but with no sense of humor at all. I often think he missed his vocation and that he was designed in life to be a professional mourner.”

He cast a mischievous grin at her.

“Finan of Durrow is well respected among the Brehons,” replied Fidelma, trying to keep her face solemn. It was hard to keep a straight face in the company of Laisran.

“Ah,” sighed Laisran, “it would lighten our world if you came to teach here, Fidelma. Finan teaches the letter of the law, whereas you would explain to our pupils that often the law can be for the guidance of the wise and the obedience of fools, that justice can sometimes transcend law.”

Sister Fidelma bit her lip.

“There is sometimes a moral question which has to be resolved above the law,” she agreed. “Indeed, I have had to face decisions between law and justice.”

“Exactly so. Finan’s students leave here with a good knowledge of the law but often little knowledge of justice. Perhaps you will think on this?”

Sister Fidelma hesitated.

“Perhaps,” she said guardedly.

Laisran smiled and nodded.

“Look around you, Fidelma. Our fame as a center of learning is even known in Rome. Do you know, no fewer than eighteen languages are spoken among our students? We resort to Latin and sometimes Greek as our lingua franca. Among the students that we have here are not just the children of the Gael. We have a young Frankish prince, Dagobert, and his entourage. There are Saxon princes, Wulfstan, Eadred and Raedwald. Indeed, we have a score of Saxons. There is Talorgen, a prince of Rheged in the land of Britain …”

“I hear that the Saxons are making war on Rheged and attempting to destroy it so they can expand their borders,” observed Fidelma. “That cannot make for easy relationships among the students.”

“Ah, that is so. Our Irish monks in Northumbria attempt to teach these Saxons the ways of Christ, and of learning and piety, but they remain a fierce warrior race intent on conquest, plunder and land. Rheged may well fall like the other kingdoms of the Britons before them. Elmet fell when I was a child. Where the Britons of Elmet once dwelt, now there are Saxon farmers and Saxon thanes!”

They halted before Laisran’s chamber door. The Bishop opened it to usher Fidelma inside.

Fidelma frowned. “There has been perpetual warfare between the Britons and the Saxons for the last two and a half centuries. Surely it is hard to contain both Briton and Saxon within the same hall of learning?”

They moved into Laisran’s official chamber, which he used for administrating the affairs of the great monastery. He motioned Fidelma to be seated before a smoldering turf fire and went to pour wine from an earthenware jug on the table, handing a goblet to her and raising the other in salute.

“Agimus tibi gratias, Omnipotens Deus,”
he intoned solemnly but with a sparkle of humor in his eyes.

“Amen,” echoed Sister Fidelma, raising the goblet to her lips and tasting the rich red wine of Gaul.

Abbot Laisran settled himself in a chair and stretched out his feet towards the fire.

“Difficult to contain Briton and Saxon?” he mused, after a while. In fact, Sister Fidelma had almost forgotten that she had asked the question. “Yes. We have had several fights among the Britons and the Saxons here. Only the prohibition of weapons on our sacred ground has so far prevented injury.”

“Why don’t you send one group or the other to another center of learning?”

Laisran sniffed.

“That has already been suggested by Finan, no less. A neat, practical and logical suggestion. The question is … which group? Both Britons and Saxons refuse to go, each group demanding that if anyone leave Durrow then it should be the other.”

“Then you have difficulties,” observed Fidelma.

“Yes. Each is quick to anger and slow to forget an insult, real or imaginary. One Saxon princeling, Wulfstan, is very arrogant. He has ten in his retinue. He comes from the land of the South Saxons, one of the smaller Saxon kingdoms, but to hear him speak you would think that his kingdom encompassed the world. The sin of pride greatly afflicts him. After his first clash with the Britons he demanded that he be given a chamber whose window was barred from ingress and whose door could be bolted from the inside.”

“A curious request in a house of God,” agreed Sister Fidelma.

“That is what I told him. But he told me that he feared for his life. In fact, so apprehensive was his manner, so genuine did his fear appear, that I decided to appease his anxiety and provide him with such a chamber. I gave him a room with a barred window in which we used to keep transgressors but had our carpenter fix the lock so that the door could be barred from the inside. Wulfstan is a strange young man. He never moves without a guard of five of his retinue. And after Vespers he retires to his room but has his retinue search it before he enters and only then will he enter alone and bar the door. There he remains until the morning Angelus.”