A MASS FOR THE DEAD (11 page)

Who had her lover been? For certain it had not been my father, dead and moldering in his winding sheet at the Priory. I had never heard of Sheena having another lover, but perhaps there was some talk of it among the women I did not know of. Seamus’s mother might know something of the matter.

And why had he killed her, then? From their footsteps it seemed they were familiar enough with one another.

Perhaps that is why my father struck her. He learned somehow of the other lover, and then, in anger, hit her. And perhaps then the other man had lain in wait for my father in his turn, and killed him as he tried to cross the strand.

Sheena must have known he had murdered my father, and thus he had killed her here, to keep her from speaking of it, after pleasuring himself one last time. Irreligious though I was, I crossed myself, and prayed that the Beaton would come quickly, but he did not.

At length I could stand it no longer, and despite the rays of the sun I began to shiver and shake some. I stuffed the stone back in my pouch and continued my vigil.

It seemed an eternity of days, although the sun had scarcely moved westward, before I finally heard voices and footsteps. Seamus led the way, followed by the Beaton and my uncle. But before them, crying out like the hounds of Hell themselves, were Angus and Alasdair. They were already far gone with drink, I realized, a second before they reached me. Angus grabbed me first, his hands around my throat, as he questioned me, his voice thick with drink and tears.

“And were you killing her, yourself, you coward that you are, but no, no for she cannot be dead. She is just sleeping there, in the Dun, is she not?”

I knew not how to answer, nor could I, with his hands choking me so, and it was a relief when my uncle reached me and wrested Angus’s hands from my throat. I wheezed and gasped for breath, and shook my head, still unable to answer, while he continued his rant.

“Hold them back now, Gillespic,” ordered the Beaton, “while I go inside and see what’s amiss here.” He gestured me to come with him, and I was glad to, away from the raging bulls that were Sheena’s grieving brothers.

“Where did you find them?” I asked the Beaton when we were safe inside the Dun and away from their ears. “Could they have done it?”

“They were far gone with the drink at Donald Dubh’s,” replied the Beaton, “and had been, all morning. There are many who will vouch for them.”

“So they did not do this,” I said.

The Beaton scowled at me. “Muirteach,” he said patiently, in the way of someone explaining things to a child, “are you truly thinking they would do this to their own sister?” And I had to confess that I had not really thought they had done so. But then who had?

“Time enough to be dealing with that, later on,” he answered, “but first let us look at her, poor thing.”

The Beaton’s examination of the body was a hurried one; the sounds of Angus and Alasdair’s wailing outside made it so. I was glad to see him gently straighten her clothing a bit, pulling her shift down over her legs and covering her body with her
brat
, thus giving her a more modest appearance, before Gillespic and Seamus could prevent her brothers from bursting in on us.

“Och, my white love,
mo cridhe
, my heart, you have gone from us, and whatever will your bairns be doing the now, without their mother and whatever shall we be doing without you as well?” Alasdair moaned. I was surprised to see him grieve so, which proved how little I knew the man at that time.

Angus, more stolid in his grief, just sat on the ground near his sister’s body, ramming his dirk into the ground nearby again, and again, and again. His face white, his upper teeth bit down hard upon his lower lip, so hard, indeed, that the blood trickled from it, while the little pile of disturbed black earth grew around the blade of his knife, dark like blood against the green bracken.

The Beaton looked grim, and reached in the satchel he carried for a small glass vial, which he handed towards my uncle. “Here, mix some of this with
uisgebeatha
. It is poppy juice, from the Levant. It will calm them, a bit, for the while.”

Gillespic nodded, and took the vial, pouring a good portion of it into his own flask of whiskey, then he handed Alasdair the flask, and Alasdair stopped his rant long enough to drink a long swig. My uncle then looked at Angus, holding the flask towards him, but the man stared right through him, still driving his knife into the ground.

My uncle shrugged his shoulders somewhat and seemed a bit at a loss, which was unusual for him. I could not remember ever seeing him in such a way before. But he collected himself, and said, as Alasdair finished his drink and before he could begin keening again, “Now, Alasdair you must be gathering yourself together the now, man. We cannot be leaving her here, but must be laying her out proper, like.”

“Aye,” said Alasdair, stopping his mourning a moment to consider. “We shall lay her out with candles, and masses, beeswax candles if we can get them. In the church it shall be. Angus, you, stop playing with your knife. We must be carrying our sister home. We cannot be leaving her here, in this place. Put your dirk away, the now, and be a man about it.”

I think my uncle was relieved when Angus slowly sheathed his dirk, and lumbered to his feet. I know I was.

We made a makeshift stretcher from a
brat
and two branches of rowan growing nearby, and carried my stepmother—for such in a sense she was, although she was but a few years older than myself
—
back to her cottage. Seamus told me that Mariota had taken the bairns away with Aorig, to her house. I was glad I did not have to look in the face of my half-sister and brothers as I carried the dead body of their mother over the threshold of the cottage.

But perhaps the children knew something of this—at least who their mother had been going to meet that morning when she had gone out to pick her rush flowers. Or perhaps the man had visited the cottage before that. So it was that, after we had placed the corpse on the mound of bracken that had served as Sheena’s mattress, I went, all unwillingly, in search of my brothers and sister, while the Beaton remained with Angus and Alasdair, to wait for the women from Scalasaig who would come to lay out the body.

* * * * *

I found them at Aorig’s, as Seamus had told me I would. Maire, her little face pinched, was looking after the baby while her brother ran wildly around the cottage, scaring Aorig’s chickens and terrorizing the hen. Aorig seemed but a little flustered.

“Och, I had forgotten what banshees the little ones can be,” she said easily. “Mind you, do not be scaring my hen so that she will not be laying,” she called to my half-brother. “Maire, you can put the bairn down, now. He will be safe enough, sleeping here.”

Maire did not answer, but sat rocking her baby brother back and forth in front of the hearth.

“Do they know?” I asked Aorig in an undertone.

“Eh, we have told them nothing, the poor lambs, but Maire is knowing that something is amiss.”

“Well, who is going to be telling them?” I asked peevishly. I knew I did not want to be the one to do it. “And where is Mariota?”

Aorig gave me a shrewd glance. “Mariota left the bairns here with me. She said she had something to see to. She did not tell me what it was.”

“And as to who will be telling the poor bairns,” she continued, “that I do not know.” Her face looked worried underneath her white kerch. “Mayhap Angus and Alasdair? Or Gillespic? He is their uncle also.” She looked at me a little accusingly. “You are their half-brother, after all, Muirteach. Mayhap you should tell them. You are here, after all.”

“I do not think so,” I said quickly. “But I would like to be speaking with Maire.”

Aorig shrugged, and motioned me towards the hearth. I sat down on the three-legged stool next to my half-sister. “Maire,” I said. “Maire, it is just Muirteach. Will you speak with me?”

“Where is Mother?”

I could not lie to her, but I could not tell her what had happened. “Your mother has had an accident, white love,” I finally managed to say.

I was somewhat relieved when Maire did not ask any more, but the dejected slump of her head as she bent over her baby brother, crooning some nonsense song to him, led me to think I would not be needing to tell her the rest.

“Maire,” I finally asked, “did your mother speak of meeting with anyone today, this morning, when she left to get her rush flowers? Or did anyone visit in the last few days, anyone unusual at all?”

Maire bit her lip. “No, she was going to get the plants, that was all.” I watched her little teeth gnaw on her thin lower lip a little. “For dyeing the wool,” she added, as if she thought a man like myself would not know what it was for. “I wish she would come home,” she suddenly said. “My brother is aye fretful, now. Herself,” she pointed her chin in Aorig’s direction, “was giving him some cow’s milk to drink but it will be giving him the colic.”

“And no one visited?” I persisted, not wanting to be the one to tell her that her mother would not be coming home.

“No one,” she said, her little jaw snapping shut tight.

I sighed and rose up from the stool, starting to leave.

“What happened to your leg?” my half-sister suddenly asked.

I flushed like a maid. I hate to be asked about my leg, and I hated it even more in those days. “I had a fever,” I said shortly, “when I was about the age of your brother outside. It stopped growing, and when it did grow, it grew twisted. That was the way of it.”

She gave me a searching look, then went back to crooning her lullaby without saying anything more. I left the cottage, feeling oddly nonplussed.

Outside I found that Mariota had returned. “And where were you?” I asked, sounding perhaps surlier than I truly felt. But somehow I had wanted her here, taking care of my brothers and sisters, so that I would not be worried by it.

“Away to your aunt’s to get a poppet for the child and some remedy for the colic for your baby brother,” she replied, the silver of her voice as even as the still waters of Loch Fada on a calm day. “Maire is not a grown woman. She should have a poppet, or something. Now that one,” she said, indicating my other brother, who had not stopped his efforts at upsetting Aorig’s homestead, “knows how to play far too well.”

I shrugged in agreement, for by now my younger brother had gotten Aorig’s spindle and was charging at the dun cow with it, pretending it was a spear and the cow a stag. It took some time for Aorig to reclaim her spindle, swat my half-brother on his bum, and sit down again at her work. After all was calm again, I gestured to Mariota.

“Walk with me.”

“Oh?”

“I need to speak with you, where those ones cannot be hearing.”

She smiled, unruffled by my bad humor, and we set out to walk up the path towards Brigit’s well.

“So Angus and Alasdair could not have done this,” I said.

“And it is clear that Sheena did not kill your father,” Mariota added, when I had told her about the cord mark on Sheena’s neck, “for whoever killed him, killed her. Yet not so violently. Or,” she continued, her white brow furrowed a little in thought, “it could well have been someone who knew how your father was killed, and tried to imitate that.”

“Perhaps.”

“What of the canons?”

I supposed one of the canons could have killed Sheena. But would he have lain with her first? I thought of my father and shrugged. Why not? Sheena had not scrupled to sleep with those in Holy Orders, as my three half-brothers and sisters proved.

I wondered if Brother Donal had found anything else at the Priory. Sure it did not seem that Columbanus would murder his sister, but what of Gillecristus? If he had murdered my father, in hopes of becoming the next Prior, and somehow Sheena had known of it, might he have killed her to keep his secret?

And Columbanus did not know yet of his sister’s death. Perhaps I should go tell him of it.

Mariota agreed that sounded a fine idea.

We neared the well, with its fine view towards the North. You could see almost to the golden sands of Kiloran, and Dun Nan Nighean, where the chief’s wives were sent to give birth. I pointed out these sites to Mariota, by way of hoping to impress her a bit.

“A fine thing, that,” she said, “to have your wife climb up there to give birth, up in that Dun.”

“It is not so bad,” I pointed out, “at least my aunt has done well by it. All her bairns have been healthy, at least.” I thought of my leg, suddenly, and flushed.

We stopped at the spring. There were some rags tied to the branches of the nearby gorse bush, gifts to the saint, and in the pool formed by the spring was the glint of silver and copper coins thrown there by the devout.

Mariota knelt, and I listened to her sweet voice repeat the old blessing of Brigit, while I tried to pray myself.

Brigit of the mantles,

Brigit of the peat-heap,

Brigit of the shining hair,

Brigit of the augury,

Nor fire shall burn me.

Nor sun shall burn me

Nor moon shall blanch me

Nor water shall drown me

Nor flood shall drown me

Nor brine shall drown me

Nor seed of fairy host shall lift me

Nor seed of airy host shall lift me

Nor earthly being destroy me.

Mariota took a ribbon from her bag and tied it on one of the branches of the shrub growing near the well. Then she plunged her hands into the water welling from the crevice in the rocks, and drank deeply.

She looked so lovely kneeling there, the sweet, sweet form of her, with her long hair in plaits down her back, hanging heavily like chains of white gold. I made my own wish, hopeless as it seemed at the time, and reached into my pouch for something to offer the saint. I touched the round stone within and fancied my fingers tingled as they felt it.