Laws in Conflict (4 page)

A spoilt child, very sure of her own charm, thought Mara, but she could not help responding to the compliment, praising the horse and telling the girl what a lovely pair they made.

‘Have you heard that a Spanish cousin of mine is visiting us, sir?’ Catarina enquired of Henry Bodkin.

‘For a visit?’ asked the lawyer, while Mara suppressed a slight smile. This was the second time within the last couple of minutes that Catarina had mentioned this Spanish cousin.

‘No, well, yes, originally I believe it was for a visit, but he has determined to stay here permanently. He is going to set up a business importing Spanish mares and breeding from them. He has lots of ideas,’ she finished, trying to sound dispassionate but her cheeks flushed to a bright rose colour and a small smile twitched the corners of her mouth. Mara guessed that this Spanish cousin had seen more than a business opportunity to make him decide to remain in Galway.

‘What’s your cousin’s name?’ she asked obligingly.

‘Carlos.’ The girl’s voice became more foreign as it lingered lovingly over the two syllables. ‘He’s just two years older than I am. But you will see him tonight. We are all coming to supper with the Blakes – it’s in your honour.’ She bestowed another smile on Mara and then trotted off on her Arab steed.

‘So that is Philip Browne’s daughter,’ said Mara remembering Ardal’s story. She watched with amusement how the heads of the parading soldiers on the wall turned and gazed in the girl’s direction until a sharp command from the sergeant made them swivel back again. She was a tall, strong, well-made girl with a great seat on a horse. ‘Ardal O’Lochlainn told me that he had married a Spanish lady,’ she added.

‘Huge expense,’ muttered Lawyer Bodkin, and then when she looked at him with surprise, he added, ‘Importing Arab horses, I mean. Anyway, come and see my horses, and afterwards I’ll show you the windmill.’

Mara was very fond of horses and admired his. A lot of horses for one man, even if his sister Jane rode, she thought. She counted ten and one mare was obviously near to giving birth. The mares were mostly sturdy Connemara horses, but the stallion looked to have some Spanish blood in him. After a while she ran out of compliments and waited for him to make the next move. I’m bored, she thought. I’m so used to being busy, to packing so much into every minute of the day, to doing three or four tasks even before breakfast. If only Sorcha and the children were here I could go to visit them – she saw little enough of her daughter as during the school holidays she felt a duty to be with her kingly husband as much as possible, and Sorcha herself had three small children and Oisín’s business interests kept them tied to Galway. This month, however, by an awkward coincidence, Sorcha had accompanied him on a visit to his family in the kingdom of Thomond.

Henry Bodkin was determined to prove the perfect host and insisted on showing her the windmill. A broad, stone path ran up to it and the grass grew thick and undamaged around it. There was little to see – a dusty ground floor filled with heaped up empty sacks, the huge vertical shaft, the horizontal wheels, the hot grinding stones, nothing was new to her. The lawyer was slightly surprised to hear that they had a windmill also in the Burren – thinking, no doubt, that they were primitives who each ground their own oats with the aid of a couple of stones.

‘Could I visit your law chambers, now?’ she asked, and then, suddenly inspired, said, ‘I would love to have an opportunity for studying any books that you have on law.’

‘Dull work for you; I had planned to take you to visit some of the foremost families – the Browne mansion is quite near to here – but if you would prefer . . .’ he looked concerned, but she thought she discerned a note of hopefulness in his voice.

‘I’ll meet them tonight.’ Mara made her voice sound quite decisive. The law books would be interesting to her. Perhaps if he had an abundance he might present one to her, but if not perhaps she could commission a copy. Printing, she had heard, had almost replaced handwritten books in England, but possibly in Galway there was still some old-fashioned scribe who would take on the task.

The lawyer’s chambers were at quite a distance from the Great Gate – almost down to the inlet from the sea and near to a fish market, she guessed, judging by the pungent smell and the cries of the stallholders.

‘This is the courthouse,’ said Henry Bodkin with pride, pointing to a stately stone building with matching piers outside the well-cared-for door. ‘A couple of hundred years ago this belonged to the De Burgo clan – now known as the Clanrickard and Clanwilliam – but they . . .’ he hesitated, and then said, ‘well, they did not keep to the customs and laws of their ancestors . . .’

‘Ulick Burke is a friend of my husband’s,’ said Mara quietly.

‘Indeed, I think I did meet him in your company.’ He was a little embarrassed and concentrated on explaining the layout of the courthouse to her. Everything seemed shut up.

‘Nothing going on there today,’ she remarked.

‘Nothing official,’ he replied. ‘The clerks of the court are working, of course, but they go in and out of the back door. They get the papers ready for the cases to be heard by the judges,’ he added.

‘I see.’ Mara was amused. She herself was the only judge in a kingdom two hundred times larger than the city of Galway but she did her own paperwork, pronounced judgements, arranged and supervised the paying of retribution fines, and in addition taught at a school.

‘You will find it all rather overwhelming tomorrow,’ said Lawyer Bodkin, kindly. ‘I remember how you told me that you try cases and pass judgement in a field beside an old dolmen.’

‘It will certainly be very different,’ said Mara cautiously. ‘And your own chambers – you don’t occupy the whole building, do you?’

‘I have the ground floor and my two colleagues, John D’Arcy and William Joyce, occupy the other two floors – you can see that even the lawyers belong to the great twelve trading families of Galway,’ he added with a smile. ‘Some people even, jokingly, call them the twelve tribes of Galway: Athy, Blake, Bodkin, Browne, D’Arcy, Deane, Font, Ffrench, Joyce, Kirwan, Lynch, Martyn, Morris and Skerrett.’

‘And the prosecuting lawyer, at the trial tomorrow, which one of the lawyers is he?’ asked Mara.

‘The prosecuting lawyer,’ said Henry Bodkin, not meeting her eyes, ‘is Thomas Lynch. He has his rooms at the courthouse itself.’

‘Lynch?’ Mara was startled.

He nodded. ‘Yes. Thomas Lynch, the chief lawyer in the city, is a first cousin to James Lynch, the mayor. He sums up, and then the mayor, or sovereign as we call him in court, directs the jury about the verdict, passes judgement, states the penalty – he has that power.’ His voice was soft, but it was only after he had escorted her into his chambers, introduced her to his clerk and then taken her into the inner room, that he said with emphasis: ‘The power over life or death will lie in the hands of Mayor James Lynch. The two bailiffs, Valentine Blake and a very elderly man called John Skerrett, will be present, but they have no voice. They are there to observe only.’

Henry’s chambers were extremely comfortable, well heated – too well heated, thought Mara, by a coal fire. It was the first time that she had experienced coal and though she missed the sweet peaty smell of the turf, the heat was very much greater. She almost drifted off to sleep in the comfort of the well-padded armchair where he insisted that she sit while leafing through his rather meagre collection of books. His practice seemed to be mainly a commercial one, she thought as she eavesdropped shamelessly on the conversations that he held with his clerk – most of the letters that he dictated were to do with claiming his fee for drawing up bills of sale. Buying and selling, that was what made Galway so prosperous. One man imports one hundred and ten tuns of wine, pays eleven tuns of that as tax to the mayor and then sells the remaining ninety-nine casks to someone like her son-in-law Oisín. The sums involved, even for wine alone, since each cask held over two hundred gallons, were immense. No wonder the city seemed filled with small castles! No wonder, also, that the office of mayor was so lucrative and that there was enough employment for three lawyers within a space of less than half a square mile.

By the time the four o’clock bell chimed from St Nicholas’s, Mara was glad to accept Henry’s escort back through the crowded streets. Her scholars were just arriving from an opposite direction when they turned into Lombard Street. They seemed pleased to see her and even from a distance she could make out Aidan saying to Fiona, in what he thought was a low voice, ‘You tell her.’

But it was only while Mara was getting dressed for the evening’s entertainment that she remembered the overheard phrase and she was not surprised when a tap came at her door. Quickly she pulled her purple gown over her head, slipped on a light pair of shoes and then went to the door.

‘Thank goodness,’ said Fiona, coming in, clad only in her
léine
. ‘I thought that woman, Jane Bodkin, would be hovering around for ever.’

‘Let’s hope she wasn’t still hovering – she would be rather shocked if she saw you going around the house dressed like that with all the young men upstairs,’ pointed out Mara, and then her face grew serious as Fiona said impulsively, ‘Brehon, Fachtnan is very worried. The man in the gaol is called Sheedy. Do you know who he is? Sheedy O’Connor?’

‘Sheedy O’Connor!’ repeated Mara in a shocked whisper. ‘So that’s what’s become of him! Poor Sheedy! Whatever brought him to Galway?’

‘That’s what Fachtnan said.’ Fiona looked troubled. ‘He told me that you had announced at judgement day a few years ago that he was to be classified as a
dásachtach
.’

‘That’s right,’ said Mara unhappily. And then she stopped. Heavy footsteps were coming up the stairs. ‘Go back into my room,’ she hissed, feeling relieved that she herself had already changed. This was the master of the house himself, not a bad fellow, she thought, basically honest, keen to make money, that had been obvious from what she heard today, but not in favour of a death penalty for a poor old man half out of his wits.

‘I’m sorry to delay you on your way up to get ready,’ she began rapidly, ‘but one of my scholars caught a glimpse of the man that you have in custody and he is a man that I have formally declared to be insane.’

‘He escaped from a Bedlam hospital or something equivalent; is that the case?’ Lawyer Bodkin looked at her enquiringly.

‘We don’t have hospitals for the insane in our kingdoms,’ explained Mara. ‘Brehon law stated that an insane man should be held by his nearest relative until he could be questioned at the law court on judgement day. If he were found to be permanently insane then the kin group, that was all of the descendants of the same great-grandfather, would have to care for him, either by drawing lots or by some other arrangement. The usual thing is to pass the insane person around from household to household on a monthly rotation, unless some charitable person could be found to take permanent care of him.’

Lawyer Bodkin raised his eyebrows and looked rather sceptical. It did sound a little haphazard, thought Mara. But mainly speaking it worked. It was just very bad luck that Sheedy had escaped from poor Diarmuid who had been devastated at his failure to keep him safe.

‘It usually works very well,’ she said defensively. ‘Unfortunately the man who was caring for Sheedy when he disappeared, a most compassionate man, has a rather fierce dog – half wolf in origin – and Sheedy took a great dislike to that dog and managed to escape from Diarmuid’s custody. The people of the Burren hunted for him, but eventually were forced to believe that he had died in some mountain cave.’

‘But he made his way to Galway,’ mused Henry. ‘I suppose we will never know how, or even when he arrived. There was no mention of the man being insane as far as I can tell; Lawyer Joyce is acting for the shopkeeper, of course, but . . .’

‘But no one is acting for the accused man, I suppose,’ interrupted Mara. ‘And the shopkeeper who brought the charge, who is he?’

‘His name,’ said Lawyer Bodkin, eyeing her in a troubled fashion, ‘is Stephen Lynch. He is a first cousin to the prosecuting lawyer and to the mayor.’

‘And the mayor is the judge,’ stated Mara.

‘And Mayor Lynch is the judge,’ he confirmed.

A person who is deemed to be an idiot, insane or a lunatic is not liable for any penalties even if he or she breaks the law. The penalty will be incurred by the guardian or nearest kinsman unless it can be shown that every effort was made to restrain the person. The care of a person who has been deemed by the court to suffer from any of these conditions is the responsibility of the clan and its
taoiseach
(chieftain) must make provision for the safety and well-being of such persons.

T
he streets were still very crowded when the party from the Bodkins’ tower house set out to walk the short distance to Blake’s Castle. Jane Bodkin, to Mara’s relief, walked between Hugh and Shane. Hugh, though not outstandingly intelligent, was a gentle, sweet-natured boy and Shane, whose father was Brehon to the O’Neill, lord of most of Ulster, had very courtly manners. Both of these could be relied to be polite to their hostess. Fiona had been instructed to keep Henry Bodkin occupied and she slipped her arm into his with such a sweet maidenly expression that he beamed down on her paternally. This left Mara free to walk with Fachtnan.

‘Tell me about poor Sheedy,’ she said in a low tone.

He looked at her with a troubled expression.

‘I’ve never seen anything so awful – even pigs are much better housed than he is. Filthy straw on the ground – hadn’t been changed for a week, by the look of it – no means of relieving himself; the poor fellow is shackled and manacled.’

‘How did you discover him?’ Mara fought back the anger and distress. Now she had to think clearly and cleverly.

‘Well, I was getting Hugh to ask the names of all the streets that we passed through – you know you said that he needed to practise his English – so when we found that we were in Gaol Street we went looking for the prison, and then we saw it. The warder was outside so we went up to him.’ Fachtnan glanced down at Mara and said unexpectedly, ‘You know, Brehon, Aidan is very clever really. He is just so humorous, so funny, and he was talking and laughing with the warder who was bored, of course, just standing there, scratching himself.’