The Leper's Bell (31 page)

The leper began to lead him confidently round the walkway, following the great walls.

‘Do not bother to count the windows, Brother Saxon. There are twenty-seven, that I might look out on the star clusters from which knowledge and power are gained.’

Eadulf frowned. He recalled that this was some pagan doctrine and wasn’t sure what it implied.

‘Are you not of the Faith?’ he queried.

The leper chuckled. ‘Is there only one Faith then, my friend? Faith in the singular means that we must disbelieve all other faiths.’

‘Faith is Truth,’ countered Eadulf.

‘Ah, when reality and hope are dead, then Faith is born. Believe in all things, Brother Saxon, and you will not be disappointed.’

Uaman halted before a door and opened it, beckoning Eadulf to follow him through a corridor into an inner chamber. It was a well-appointed apartment, the walls lined with polished red yew and hung with tapestries of sumptuous colours. The leper pointed to a couch.

‘Be seated, Brother Saxon, and tell me the purpose of your coming hither. What is this quest of which you speak?’

Uaman seated himself across the room by the open hearth in which logs glowed hotly. He kept his cowl on and Eadulf could not discern his features. All he was aware of was the dead white flesh of the single claw-like hand that remained uncovered.

‘I have come in search of my child, Uaman. I am here in search of Alchú.’

‘Why do you think I can help in that matter?’

Eadulf leant forward. ‘The baby was left at Cashel in the charge of a nurse named Sárait. She was murdered. She, or some other, had left the baby by itself and a wandering herbalist and his wife found the child
and thought it was abandoned. They took it and brought it with them to this country where you fell in with them. And you paid them money for it. I accept that you could not know the identity of the child and your desire was simply to help it. Where is Alchú? I will recompense you for what you paid the herbalist but I must take the infant back to Cashel.’

The leper’s shoulders moved. At first Eadulf thought the man was having a fit, but then a high-pitched sound came from beneath the cowl. He realised that Uaman was laughing again.

‘So far as you are concerned, Eadulf of Seaxmund’s Ham, the baby is dead,’ Uaman finally said in a flat tone. ‘Dead to you and your Eóghanacht whore.’

Eadulf made to rise from his seat but became aware of sharp, cold steel at his neck. One of Uaman’s guards must have entered unseen behind him and now stood with knife or sword at his throat.

‘What does this mean?’ he asked through clenched teeth. He realised that the question was a silly one for now his suspicions were tumbling into certainties. Deep within him he knew that he had been taking a naive approach to Uaman the Leper.

‘It means that the fates have been kind to me, Eadulf of Seaxmund’s Ham. In the last two years you and your Eóghanacht whore have gained quite a reputation in the five kingdoms. It was a bad day when you were taken from that Gaulish ship and made to work in the mines of Beara as our prisoner, before our intended rising against Colgú.’

Eadulf cursed himself for a fool. So Uaman had known about even that.

‘Have we met before?’ he asked.

‘You knew Torean of the Uí Fidgente.’

‘He tried to kill me but he was slain by Adnár, the local chieftain, who was loyal to Cashel.’

‘Torean was my brother,’ Uaman replied icily.

Eadulf blinked rapidly. He should have worked that out before. Torean was also a son of Eoganán.

‘Exactly,’ Uaman said as he watched the realisation dawn in the other’s eyes. ‘A son of Eoganán who was slaughtered at Cnoc Áine by Colgú.’

Eadulf grimaced. ‘If truth is to be served, it was Eoganán, your father, who raised his clan in rebellion against Colgú and met the fate of one who unlawfully rebels. He who draws his sword against a prince might as well throw away the scabbard.’

‘A Saxon axiom?’ sneered Uaman.

‘How could you have known the baby with the herbalist and his wife was the child of Fidelma and me? Even I was not entirely sure they had taken him until I followed them to the abbey of Coimán.’

‘News travels swiftly in this land. The Uí Fidgente still have loyal followers. Minds that are obviously quicker than that of the great
dálaigh
, your wife. Someone close to Cashel told one of my messengers that the child was missing and likely to be in the possession of the itinerant herbalist and his wife.’

Eadulf look amazed. ‘A traitor? In Cashel?’

‘No, my Saxon friend, not a traitor but an Uí Fidgente patriot,’ Uaman said in satisfaction.

‘Where is my son?’ Eadulf demanded harshly.

‘You mean the son of the Eóghanacht whore who thwarted our plan to take power? Well, he will never grow up to become an Eóghanacht prince.’

Eadulf started forward but the sharp steel at his throat kept him in the chair.

‘You swine! You have killed him!’ he cried helplessly.

Again Uaman chuckled in his high-pitched tone.

‘Oh no, my poor friend. He is not killed. Far worse.’

Eadulf looked at him in bewilderment and the leper chuckled again.

‘He will live, be sure. But he will grow up never knowing his father and mother, or the bloodline to which he is heir. He will, if he lives so long, become a simple shepherd, herding his sheep on the mountains haunted by the daughter of Dáire Donn. And your son will bear a name that will symbolise my revenge against his people. That is his fate. Already he is being nursed by peasant folk who do not know his origin but think of him as my gift to fill the void in their pointless, childless lives.’

‘You decaying son of a…’ Eadulf snarled and this time the blade drew blood from his neck.

Uaman seemed even more amused.

‘Indeed, I am
iobaid
, one who decays and rots because of this evil sickness that has been laid on me. It was not always so. I was my father’s right hand, his adviser, while my brother Torean was his tanist, his heir apparent. Many blows were struck at Cnoc Aine. I fled the field after my father’s death and soon the sores began to show on my body. I realised then that the ancients had cursed me for my failure and that only cold vengeance would remove the curse.’

Eadulf gasped. ‘That’s nonsense!’

‘First, Cashel will suffer. I will make it suffer. The suffering has already begun.’

‘So you arranged the murder of Sárait?’

To Eadulf’s surprise Uaman shook his head.

‘That was purely fortuitous. I heard the news of her death and the disappearance of Fidelma’s child. But it was purely by chance that one who was sympathetic worked out that the herbalist and his wife had found the child. He sent me a message to that effect and I could not believe my luck. Nor could I believe their greed. They did not even question me when I offered money for the baby. Ah, human frailty. That is my faith, my Saxon friend. I believe in the frailty of human beings.’

Eadulf sat glowering at him.

‘You are telling me that you had no hand in Sárait’s murder? That you did not intend this…’ he made an encompassing gesture with his hand, ‘from the start?’

The leper’s shoulders were moving again in the indication of his mirth.

‘You may dwell on all these things in the time that is left to you, Brother Eadulf of Seaxmund’s Ham,’ he said. ‘And that, alas, is not very long. You have until high tide and then your earthly span is ended.’

The white claw-like hand gestured in dismissal and Eadulf found powerful fingers gripping his arms. He was dragged from his seat and realised that there were two men behind him. It was useless to struggle. He was dragged through a side door and along the dark grey corridors, his mind whirling as he tried to understand what he had been told. Once more he found himself being half pushed, half dragged round the circular walkway in the outer wall of the rounded fortress. Then he was propelled through another straight corridor that seemed to jut out at an angle from the rest into a square structure that stood apart from the tower. He was being pushed down a circular flight of stone steps to where a flagstone was raised. A wooden ladder led into the dark aperture. One of the warriors pushed him towards it.

‘Get down there, Saxon,’ he said, indicating the aperture with his sword.

A smell of sea and dankness rose up. It reminded Eadulf of the odour of sea caves.

‘You might as well kill me here,’ he told them defiantly. ‘I can see
nothing below that ladder, so if you want me to go into some subterranean cave full of water I should tell you that I prefer the sword to drowning.’

The guard laughed uproariously.

‘Didn’t Uaman tell you that you had until the high tide? He wants you to dwell on your fate for a while. So we must not kill you yet, my friend.’

His companion grinned eagerly.

‘I’ll tell you what… we’ll give you this oil lamp. The light should last you until the high tide. Don’t worry. See how solicitous we are about your needs?’ He shoved a lighted oil lamp at Eadulf.

‘Now get down the ladder or we might reconsider,’ snapped the guard with the drawn sword.

Eadulf hesitated only a moment. At least he had light and he had freedom of movement. While he had those, he had hope. The alternative was dying from a sword wound at once.

He turned and began to climb down the ladder.

As he descended he found that he was moving into a chamber whose sandy floor was four metres from the stone aperture in the ceiling above. It was square in shape, some two metres by two. It was chill and had an overpowering smell of sea about it. Yet he saw that the walls were not those of a cave but made of great blocks of stone even though the floor consisted of wet sand.

He stepped off the bottom rung, holding his lamp high, and peered round.

Almost at once, the ladder was pulled swiftly up.

Laughter came from above him.

‘Until high tide, Saxon,’ called one of the men. ‘Pleasant dreams!’

The stone thudded into place above him and he was alone.

Fidelma later regarded it as the longest and worst day of her life. She lay on the bed in the upper room of the hunting lodge, securely bound. Now and again one of the Uí Fidgente would look in and check on her, ensuring that the bonds still held. During the day, Crond came in twice to give her food and drink, this time freeing her hands but standing over her in case she made any attempt to escape. The most embarrassing moment came when she was forced to answer nature’s demands. Crond rigged a blanket round a pail in a corner and actually stood in the room during the proceedings. For the most part, she was alone with her thoughts.

She had tried once again to seek refuge in the
dercad
, the act of meditation, but a strange thing happened. She began to question even that as a means of escape from the present. She realised that she must start facing reality - perhaps for the first time. She was confronting a question that she had always tried to avoid. She could admit that now, as she lay alone and unable to act. She began to think about her relationship with Eadulf and her child - their child. Suddenly, tears were streaming from her eyes, although she did not yet understand why she had begun to feel this uncontrollable emotion. She had always been in control before. She had, perhaps, been too controlled.

Once she had tried to take refugee in the idea that, after her youthful experience with the warrior Cian, it was a rational decision not to get too close to any man. It was a good excuse, an easy excuse. But it was merely an excuse. Had she been deceiving herself? What did she want? She had wanted independence, to rely on no one except herself. She wanted to be a good
dálaigh.
She had an exceptional ability for solving puzzles, and that was her motivation in life. If it was taken away from her she could not fulfil her ambition and live contentedly. She realised that she regretted that her cousin, Abbot Laisran of Durrow, had persuaded her to enter the religious. It was true that most people in the professions in the five kingdoms had done so, because it was the custom. But her time at Kildare had not been happy, for institutions implied restriction of freedom and what Fidelma desired most of all was personal freedom.

That was it! Freedom. That was the heart of the problem between her and Eadulf. She was unwilling to be restricted. She did not want to be bound. Suddenly, she could hear the sage tones of her mentor, the Brehon Morann, asking: ‘What is it that binds you, Fidelma?’ Indeed, what bonds was she afraid of? She had left Kildare, and her ability and qualification as a lawyer had caused her to be sought after. If she admitted it, she was also lucky. She had been born a daughter of Failbe Flann, king of Muman, and her brother was now king. She did not want for security. So, once again, she found herself asking what bound her.

Her mind returned to Eadulf and little Alchú.

Was she living just for herself? Her favourite philosopher was Publilius Syrus. He had been brought to Rome as a slave from Antioch and finally given his freedom. He had written many moral maxims that Fidelma had learned by heart, for in Brehon Morann’s law school he had often been referred to. His maxim
iudex damnatur ubi nocens absolvitur
- when
the guilty man is let off, the judge stands condemned - was almost a slogan. Fidelma had objected to the interpretation and as a youthful student argued that it was better a guilty man be let off than an innocent man be condemned. She claimed that the pressure placed on judges by this maxim would encourage them to condemn a man simply out of fear lest they themselves should be condemned.

She was vehemently supportive of the Irish system in which the law wisely accepted
each brithemoin a báegul
- to every judge his error. But a judge had to give a pledge of five ounces of silver in support of his judgement, and pay a fine if they left a case undecided. All judgements could be appealed and judges had to pay compensation if they were found to be false.

She had let her mind wander. She caught herself with a frown. What had she been thinking about? Publilius Syrus? Was she living just for herself? That was it. That was what she had been asking herself. Publilius Syrus had said that they who live only for themselves are truly dead to others. She shivered slightly.