Laws in Conflict (2 page)

Mara turned the matter over in her mind. There was no reason why she should not go. She had often thought of a visit to Galway with her scholars, but had not liked the idea of housing them in an inn. This offer was a very good one. She made up her mind swiftly.

‘Well if you’re sure that it won’t be a burden to your sister, then we’ll come for a few days with pleasure. Just Monday to Wednesday in two weeks’ time – you will have had enough of us after that.’

There are three grades of judges, or arbitrators. The first is fit only to determine matters relating to craftsmen and has an honour price of seven
séts
. Above him is the judge who is competent in both traditional law and poetry with an honour price of ten
séts
. Then above these two is the judge who is known as the judge of three languages. This judge is experienced in traditional law, poetry and canon law and is deemed to have an honour price of fifteen
séts
.

‘A
hard, cold man,’ said Ardal O’Lochlainn.

Mara looked at him with surprise. They were riding side by side through the rocky mountain pass that had been hewed out of the limestone peak of the Carron Mountain on the north-eastern fringe of the kingdom of the Burren. Ardal had business in Galway and had offered his services as escort to Mara and her scholars on their journey to the city.

Mara was glad of Ardal’s company. The scholars were wildly excited at the unexpected break in their routine and wildly excited adolescents capping each other’s jokes began to get tiresome after a while. Ardal knew Galway well as many of the horses that he reared on his rich grasslands were exported to England, France and Spain through the port of Galway, and Mara was anxious to get some information about the ruling powers in that stone-built city. She listened with interest to him explaining the government of Galway, the place of the
Gall
or stranger.

‘Think of it as a kingdom,’ he advised, ‘but a kingdom where the king is voted for every year – by the merchants of the town, of course, rather than by the royal family. The mayor is king – he has power over life and death, the power to tax everything that comes into the city – even the prisage, the tax on wine – one tun out of every tun brought in. The revenues from wine alone are enough to make any man rich.’

‘But at the end of the year he loses his power and one of the two bailiffs is elected instead,’ remarked Mara. She found herself glad that she had accepted this invitation. It would be interesting to go outside the kingdom of the Burren – every yard of its one hundred square miles as well known to her as the palm of her own hand. In the city of Galway she would meet new laws, new customs, would see a world that was run on totally different principles. Her lively mind began to teem with questions.

‘Unless the mayor is re-elected, of course,’ remarked Ardal quietly. ‘The present man, James Lynch, member of one of the powerful merchant families, has been mayor for the last five years.’

‘Yes, I remember that Lawyer Bodkin said something about that. A popular man, then.’

Ardal said something in reply to this but his voice was lost as Aidan, in a boisterous mood, was keen to impress sixteen-year-old Fiona by a spectacular display of how the surrounding rocks threw back his voice when he yodelled. Fiona had been teasing him about how small the mountains were compared with her native Scotland, and Aidan and she had been arguing vociferously for the last quarter of an hour.

It was only when the scholars all paused to allow the echo to reply that she heard Ardal’s quiet remark –
a hard, cold man
.

So this James Lynch, a man with the power of a sovereign over the city state of Galway, was perhaps a man who might misuse that power. Not an easy man to deal with, she thought, but deal with him she would. There was no way that she would abandon a man from the kingdom of the Burren to his fate without making an attempt to help him. Galway was not under English rule, but it ruled itself by the laws of the king and the emperor – by a mixture of English law and Roman law, and both were equally cruel to those who infringed even minor examples of these laws, she thought, as she turned back to address her scholars.

‘You can ride ahead until we reach the coast road,’ she said, ‘but after that we will be out of our kingdom and you must ride sedately and do credit to Cahermacnaghten law school.’

‘Race you to the bottom of the hill, Fiona; Ireland against Scotland,’ Aidan said, and in a minute the five youngsters, with Fachtnan in the rear, went galloping past them, the horses’ hoofs sending up a cloud of limestone dust from the dry road. Mara was glad to see them go. There were few men that she could rely on as much as Ardal to hold his tongue about subjects she discussed with him.

‘I’m not sure that I am doing a wise thing or not, Ardal,’ she said, turning impulsively towards him, ‘but I’m thinking of interfering in the affairs of another kingdom, or state,’ she finished.

He took his time about replying. Very characteristic of Ardal, she thought with amusement. If she had said something like that to her husband he would immediately have exclaimed. A thousand questions, pieces of advice, appeals would have instantly come to his lips. But Ardal just looked at her intently for a moment, his blue eyes thoughtful. He was a good-looking man, she thought, admiring the way he rode his strawberry roan mare with such ease and sat tall and slim, with his long-fingered hands holding the reins loosely. His red-gold hair was burnished by the pale winter sun.

‘I think you, yourself, may have doubts about the wisdom of becoming involved, Brehon,’ he said eventually. He and Mara were almost the same age and had grown up together, lived near to each other, played with each other – Ardal’s sister had been Mara’s greatest friend – but his respect for her high office meant that he always addressed her by her formal title. She smiled now at his diplomatic answer.

‘You refuse to pass judgement yourself,’ she said lightly. ‘I suppose you’re right,’ she said more seriously. ‘I wouldn’t have asked you if I had been sure that I was doing the right thing. And, of course, I still need to do nothing, but I strongly feel that I should try to appeal on behalf of the man who is held in the gaol – have you seen this gaol, Ardal?’

‘From the outside, only, Brehon – an unpleasant, stinking place even from there.’ His high-bridged nose wrinkled fastidiously.

That decides matters, thought Mara. A man used to the clean, windy atmosphere of the limestone land of the Burren was languishing in a stinking gaol set among alien people who did not speak his language or live by his laws. If possible she would rescue him; she would appeal to this mayor, or sovereign, of Galway.

‘James Lynch,’ she said aloud. ‘Tell me more of him, Ardal? And why has he been re-elected four times?’

‘I suppose you could say, Brehon, that he is in his fifth year of office because he is an honest man. When the English King – King Richard, the third of that name – granted a charter to Galway, he waived all his own rights to taxes on the goods; the mayor was to have the taxes, supposedly for building walls and paving the town, but . . .’

‘But not all mayors used the money for that purpose.’

‘Not even a fraction of it,’ confirmed Ardal with a slight smile. ‘These merchant families of Galway have been swapping the office of mayor around between them for the last thirty years or so and they have become more and more wealthy during that time.’

‘But not James Lynch,’ put in Mara quickly.

‘James Lynch has grown rich, though not outrageously so,’ corrected Ardal, ‘but he has also seen to it that the increased prosperity of Galway has been shared out amongst the people of the town, that they are protected by high walls, manned by men with guns – even cannon – and that the streets of the city are paved and kept in good repair, and, of course, as I said to you, he governs with a strong hand, so no lawlessness, neither theft nor drunkenness, can affect the trade in the city.’

‘Can anyone be a mayor?’ Mara turned over in her mind the power that was exercised by this man – a power over life and death.

‘The bailiffs are elected every year, but the choice of mayor is then limited to the mayor and his two bailiffs. I suppose in theory anyone can be a mayor, Brehon, but in practice it is restricted to the great trading families of Galway: the Lynches, the Blakes, the Joyces, the Skerretts and the Brownes – there are more but these are the ones that I remember. They tend to be related to each other as they intermarry a lot. For instance, the wife of James Lynch is the sister to Valentine Blake and Valentine Blake is married to the sister of Philip Browne.’

‘And Philip Browne is married to the sister of James Lynch,’ suggested Mara, interested by the links. In Gaelic Ireland most marriages seemed to take place within the clans.

‘Well, no, not so,’ said Ardal, tugging at his moustache with his right hand while the left hand slowed the mare to a standstill. The scholars were all waiting obediently at the bottom of the steep hill leading from the Carron Mountains down to sea level and marking the division between kingdoms. ‘Philip Browne is married to a Spanish lady, in fact. They have one daughter, a girl called Catarina.’

‘Oh, that’s exotic! A half-Spanish girl!’ Mara was amused to see that her scholars were listening to this piece of gossip with interest. ‘Where did Philip Browne meet this Spanish lady?’

‘Like your friend, Lawyer Bodkin, he imports horses from Spain,’ said Ardal, and then waited while Mara marshalled her scholars so that the very-adult Fachtnan was at the front beside Moylan, the two youngest scholars, Shane and Hugh, were in the centre and Fiona and Aidan were bringing up the rear, where she could keep a strict eye on any silly or noisy behaviour. It was only after they had moved on at a decorous pace that Ardal spoke again, keeping his voice so low that she could barely hear him.

‘They are very powerful men, these merchant princes in Galway, Brehon. You know your own business best, of course, but I would say that you should hesitate to interfere too deeply into what they regard as their royal right to govern the city in the way that they choose.’

A new charter was accordingly granted, dated at Westminster, the 15th December, 1484, whereby the king confirmed all former grants, and renewed the powers to levy the tolls and customs, which he directed should be applied towards the murage and pavage of the town; he also granted licence that they might, yearly, forever, choose one mayor and two bailiffs and that the mayor should continue to hold sovereign rights . . . The first mayor and bailiffs were accordingly elected under this charter, on the 1st August, 1485, and were sworn into office on the 29th September following.

M
ara had often visited Galway – her daughter, Sorcha, had married a merchant, named Oisín, and they lived there with their three children – but for most of her scholars it was a first visit and they were overawed by the sight of the great stone city surrounded by a high wall and packed with tall houses squeezed together like herrings in a box of salt. A large amount of those houses were tower houses or even small castles and they reared up, their castellated roofs outlined against the sky. The streets were well paved with limestone cobbles – a drain running down the centre of each street and a narrow pavement for pedestrians on either side. It was a city built around a western seaport on the Atlantic Ocean, and despite the crowds of people and numerous houses it was a fresh airy city on this fine, breezy day in early February.

Ardal O’Lochlainn courteously conducted them through the Great Gate, capped with a stone tower, straight down the High Street, past the church of St Nicholas, whose size made the scholars open their eyes widely, and then on towards the sea until they reached Lombard Street, where he instantly found their host’s house down a short lane leading from this and took his farewell once the door had been opened to his knock. Mara did not attempt to detain him. Ardal was a mysterious person who went his own way and kept details of his private life very much to himself. For years he had a relationship with a fisherman’s daughter somewhere north of Galway – a wife of the fourth degree, as Brehon Law phrased it – but that now seemed to have come to an end. Was his visit to Galway for business or for pleasure? she wondered as she greeted the stately manservant who had opened the door to this large crowd of guests.

Lawyer Bodkin’s residence was a tower house – not unlike the one in which Ardal O’Lochlainn lived back in the spaciousness of the Burren kingdom. The legal business must be very prosperous, Mara thought as servants thronged around the doorway, some coming from behind the house and leading the horses and ponies to the stable yard, some taking satchels upstairs and others escorting the guests to their bedrooms high up in the tower.

There was no sign of either Lawyer Bodkin or his sister Jane – it would have been strange behaviour in hospitable, Gaelic Ireland, not to have the hosts at the door, exclaiming ‘Come in, come in, you’re very welcome . . .’ – but there was something to be said for this custom of first allowing guests to refresh themselves and change their clothing first, thought Mara as she tested the softness of the four-poster bed, well screened with curtains, and then strolled to the window to look out. Her beautifully furnished room faced west and she had a clear view of the harbour with the large sailing ships rocking gently at their anchorage points. Fiona had been lodged just across the corridor to her and the five boys were all in a large attic where Lawyer Bodkin had formerly housed his law pupils.

Mara washed her face and hands in the soft, warm water – rainwater, she thought with interest and wondered how they managed to store it in sufficient quantities in order to provide enough for such a large household.

Then she changed her clothes. Her daughter Sorcha had told her to be sure to wear a fine silk gown and a silken hood – had even sent a messenger with a bundle of suitable clothing – but Mara was not minded to try to look like a lady from Galway. She knew that the wives of Gaelic chieftains dressed up whenever they went to town, wearing swathes of linen around their heads and elaborate, fussy gowns, but she did not like that fashion either.