Scales of Retribution (7 page)

‘No, you don’t,’ interrupted Mara. ‘No one, but I, knows what I am thinking. Now come on, Nuala. Just start at the beginning and go through it again. You left here quite early, walked across to Caherconnell. And then?’

‘And then,’ said Nuala with an impatient sigh, ‘I went into the little stone shed where the gardening things are kept – I didn’t want to see any of them at the house, so I just took out a basket for the weeds and a small fork, and I set to work. Nobody had bothered doing anything so there were weeds everywhere.’

‘Which part of the garden were you in?’ asked Mara.

‘I started off at the far end with the bed of woundwort and then I had just moved down to work on the camomile when Caireen screamed. I don’t want to talk about it . . . shouldn’t you go indoors and rest?’

‘I can’t bear to go on into the house again,’ said Mara. Nuala was stubborn; there would be no point in pursuing the questioning for now. ‘Let’s go and join Sorcha and the children,’ she suggested. ‘They’re having their dinner over there on the field. It’s such a treat for them to have meals out-of-doors. Collect Cormac, will you, Nuala? Brigid is looking after him. The sunshine won’t do him any harm, will it?’

‘I’ll bring a piece of linen to shade him and then he will be fine,’ said Nuala running down the road, her long legs covering the hundred yards’ distance in the same time that it took Mara to open the gate and start to cross the field.

‘
Mamó
,
Mamó
,’ shouted Domhnall and Aislinn as they came running towards her.

‘May I come into your dining hall?’ Mara asked politely. A large clint had been spread with a piece of linen, and wooden plates and wooden goblets had been laid out on it. In the centre were flat baskets of food and a big flask of milk for the children. Mara smiled when she saw the milk. It had been coloured pink. This was Brigid, she knew. When she herself had been young, Brigid had coloured the milk with a few raspberries and had persuaded her that it came from a magic pink cow, owned by the fairies. The same story had been told to Sorcha, and now Domhnall and Aislinn were the latest believers. Would little Cormac grow up to enjoy this same treat, she wondered, her eyes going to the Brehon’s house where Nuala was walking carefully down the path holding a heavily swathed bundle in her arms.

‘Thank goodness this fellow’s not crawling yet,’ said Sorcha with a glance at plump little Manus in her arms, ‘these two have me worried enough, leaping from stone to stone.’

‘I should get Cumhal to drive you to Fanore beach one day. It would be lovely for the children to run around the sands. I meant to arrange it, but the baby coming so early put everything askew.’ Mara watched her grandchildren with a smile. Sorcha had no reason to worry about them. They were as sure-footed as the wild goats that roamed the High Burren and the mountain sides. Both looked very well, she thought; the pure Atlantic air of the Burren had tanned their skins to a gorgeous shade of deep brown which went so well with their short white
léinte.

‘Yes, that was a shock. A whole month early! Never mind, it’s all for the best; now you can enjoy him for the two months of the summer holidays,’ said Sorcha, who had a happy nature that always saw the bright side of everything.

‘Here’s a plate for you,
Mamó
, but you’ll have to share with Nuala.’ Aislinn arrived back with some harebells and carefully arranged the flowers around a plate for her grandmother, and placed a wooden cup beside it. ‘That was
Dat
’s plate but he didn’t stay for the meal.’

‘Where is Oisín?’ asked Mara, admiring the nodding heads of the harebells.

‘Oh, you know Oisín,’ said his wife tolerantly. ‘He can never sit still for long. After five minutes he was off, striding across the fields to Kilcorney. He wants to look at those oak trees in Malachy’s woodland.’

‘Why?’ asked Mara casually. Her attention was on the bundle in Nuala’s arms. She held out her own arms, a slight ache of love trembling through her whole body. She curved around the light weight and held the tiny baby against her cheek for a moment.

‘He’s making plans to fell the trees and use them for making wine barrels,’ said Sorcha. ‘He’s been thinking about that for years. I used to laugh at him and tell him that Malachy would probably outlive him, but there you are! Oisín always get what he wants, sooner rather than later.’

‘Of course,’ breathed Mara. ‘He’s Malachy’s heir, isn’t he?’

Almost absent mindedly she held out a finger for the baby to clutch.

How could I have been so stupid, she thought, exasperated with herself. Of course, under Brehon law, Malachy’s heir was neither his daughter Nuala, nor his wife Caireen. No doubt Caireen, who had lived under English law in Galway, expected to inherit, but Brehon law, though making provision for a daughter (and not a widow, who was expected to return to her own family), firmly gave the inheritance of the clan land to the nearest male relative if there were no sons nor no brothers to inherit. The Davorens had been a clan where males were in short supply. Her own father had just a daughter to inherit, but she had been lucky enough to keep his farm because the land at Cahermacnaghten had been presented directly to her father by the king as part of the payment for his services as Brehon of the Burren, and so was not clan land.

Malachy, on the other hand, had no official status as a physician and possessed only a small amount of clan land. And of course, clan land in Malachy’s case was not farmland, but a woodland comprising twenty acres of mature oaks.

‘Nuala, did you know that Oisín was Malachy’s heir?’ She asked the question casually, arranging the linen folds above the baby’s face to protect his delicate skin against the intensity of the sun’s rays.

‘No, I didn’t.’ Nuala sounded hostile. It was impossible to speak to her of anything to do with Malachy. She immediately seemed to assume the air of suspected person, and turned sullen and uncommunicative.

If Nuala did not know, then Caireen did not know either, thought Mara, tenderly exposing her son’s stick-like legs to the air, and then carefully draping a piece of linen so that the sun did not burn his delicate skin. It had never been mentioned, she suspected. Malachy had no interest in that oak woodland. He sold the odd tree to Blár O’Connor, the wheelwright, or had one of his men cut up a few fallen trees after a storm, but that was all.

So it was likely that Caireen, new from Galway and used to English laws, thought she would inherit all. Mara disliked Caireen immensely, but, still, was it even sensible to suspect her of murdering her husband?

Probably not. Malachy alive was at least making money and could sponsor her three sons through to physician status. Suddenly a thought came to her.

‘Do you know when Ronan, Caireen’s son, will qualify as a physician?’ she asked Nuala.

‘Ronan is already a qualified physician,’ said Nuala in a surly manner. She looked away from Mara, but not quickly enough to hide the expression of rage on her face. She picked up a honey cake that Aislinn had put on the shared plate and snapped it in half with her strong white teeth, staring across the stony fields with an expression that she strove to make indifferent.

‘That was quick!’ exclaimed Mara. ‘I thought he had another year to go.’

Nuala shrugged her shoulders and then turned away from Sorcha’s curious eyes. Mara knew why her daughter looked puzzled. Nuala acting as physician was mature, poised and communicative. Nuala speaking of her father turned into a rude, angry adolescent.

‘It just happened a couple of weeks ago,’ she said.

‘So that’s why I didn’t know about it. I should have been informed. Did Malachy feel that he was ready?’

‘He examined him, got a physician from Galway, a friend of Ronan’s late father, to moderate the results; Ronan was declared a full physician two weeks ago.’ Nuala’s voice was toneless and lacking in any emotion, but Mara could imagine how she felt. Malachy was doing his best to deny his own gifted daughter the opportunity to achieve the ambition that had possessed her since she was a child, and yet he had gone to great extremes to rush forward the appointment of his stepson. Mara gave a quick glance at the tight-lipped face as she patted the girl’s hand with unspoken sympathy.

‘He probably faked the result. Ronan isn’t that good. Malachy would do anything to please Caireen,’ remarked Nuala, still in a dry, toneless voice.

Mara saw Sorcha look slightly shocked. The way Nuala referred to her father as ‘Malachy’, the detached way that she spoke of him, the depth of bitterness in her voice would create a bad impression on anyone, even someone as good-natured and unsuspicious as Sorcha. Mara hoped that Nuala would not talk about her father in front of too many people. Had she spoken of him like that in front of Boetius? There was an uncomfortable silence for a moment, and then Sorcha exclaimed, ‘There’s a horse coming down the road. Look, it’s stopping at your house, Mother.’

‘Visitor!’ shouted Domhnall.

‘Cumhal will say that we are over here, Domhnall. Look, he’s coming out of the school. Don’t shout any more. You’ll wake the babies,’ said Sorcha, watching Brigid’s husband, Cumhal, the farm manager, leave his task of making room for the sweet-scented hay in the huge barn and come out to meet the woman on horseback.

‘It’s Teige O’Brien’s wife, Cairo, from Lemeanah Castle, you know.’ Mara gave the explanation to Sorcha while endeavouring to look hospitable. Teige was chief of the O’Brien clan in the Burren, a cousin and friend of her husband, King Turlough.

‘Let me hold little Cormac while you talk to her. Manus is fast asleep.’ Sorcha laid her sleeping son on a folded sheepskin on the ground beside her, and took the baby from her mother’s arms. Mara gave him up reluctantly. He was so tiny and so fragile that she hated letting him go.

‘Don’t worry, he’ll soon be as strong and healthy as these three,’ said Sorcha, sensitive to her mother’s moods.

‘Brigid says that Cormac is our uncle.’ Aislinn cast a dubious look at Cormac. ‘He’s too tiny to be an uncle.’

‘Let’s play a joke on the visitor.’ Domhnall was going through the painful stage where he insisted on telling jokes to everyone. He ran off instantly and waited by the field gate.

‘Would you like to meet my uncle,
bhean usail
(noble lady)?’ his voice floated back as he greeted Ciara and escorted her over the clints towards where his mother and grandmother sat. ‘He’s got a big black beard and he is as tall as the gable of a house . . . and there he is sleeping on my mother’s lap!’

‘God please him; isn’t he beautiful,’ said Ciara fervently, but Mara was not deceived. Ciara had been shocked by the baby.

‘He arrived a month early, gave us all a surprise,’ she said trying to sound like her usual competent, cheerful self.

‘He’s looking wonderful, all the same, God bless him,’ murmured Ciara. She appeared to be struggling to think of something else to say, but then gave up and started to admire Sorcha’s three children and to exclaim over their size and beauty, and resemblance to their father Oisín.

‘Any news from Teige?’ asked Mara.

‘Only that they were camped near to each other at O’Briensbridge, just outside Limerick – so near that they could hear each other drinking,’ said Ciara promptly. ‘Each side are waiting for the other to move first. I came to see if you knew anything else.’

‘No, we haven’t heard,’ said Mara catching a worried look from Sorcha. So this was the news that they had been keeping from her. Turlough and his forces were drawn up in battle formation. Perhaps the battle had already taken place. That wretched bridge! Turlough and his brothers had built it some years ago and it had been his pride and joy ever since. The Earl of Kildare would have known that any threat to O’Briensbridge would bring the warlike king of Thomond, Corcomroe and Burren marching into battle.

‘Very likely nothing will come of it,’ said Ciara hastily, and fell to admiring Cormac again. Aislinn and Domhnall wandered off on one of their daily optimistic excursions to find the chuckling cuckoo that woke them every morning with its echoing call, and was still shouting after their bedtime. Looking bored and unhappy, Nuala moved a little aside, squatting down and examining some plants in the small raggedly rounded holes where rainwater had dissolved the limestone. The three women left behind turned their attention to the the tiny premature baby.

As if Cormac felt their eyes on him, he woke and cried.

‘He’s hungry again,’ laughed Sorcha, bending over her little half-brother. Instinctively his mouth turned towards the source of milk, and Mara winced as Ciara glanced at her and then at the baby in her daughter’s arms.

‘Sorcha is feeding him for me. I have no milk,’ she said in tones that she strove to make matter-of-fact and commonsensical.

Ciara nodded in a perfunctory way.

‘Are you looking for a wet nurse?’ she asked, and Mara responded gratefully to the lack of fuss or false optimism.

‘Yes, do you know of anyone?’

‘I do indeed. The wife of Teige’s chief shepherd, a very good fellow, Teige says he never had a man as good with the sheep and all their ailments, a very nice family; well, his wife lost a baby last week. He died from a fever, poor little fellow. It would be an act of kindness to give work to poor Eileen. She’s all alone at the moment as the husband will be very busy up the mountain with the sheep shearing.’

‘How old is she?’ Mara was cautious. A girl who had lost her own son might not be careful enough of this very, very precious little fellow. She would have preferred someone who, like Sorcha, was nursing her own child and had enough milk for two.

‘Oh, she’s not a young girl. She has been married for over twenty years. It’s very sad because it looked as though she were barren. This was the first child. You needn’t think that she is a heedless young thing. That child was always beautifully cared for and looked as strong as a young horse. It was just one of those things! Children die easily. Poor little fellow, he died of a fever. You’ll like Eileen. She’s a very nice woman, very good with her hands, and we always have her at the tower house whenever we need extra staff for a party or a festival. She’ll do some lovely stitching for you; I think that you would like her. I’ve never seen such a good seamstress, though she’s left-handed and they are not usually so good, are they? She gets quite a bit of silver for her work at Noughaval market. Would you like me to ask her to come to see you?’