A MASS FOR THE DEAD (12 page)

I found a bit of copper to offer the saint and flung it into the pool. It sank to the bottom of the peat-stained water, disappearing into a crevice in the rocks. Then I took my own draught from the blessed spring; the water cooled my parched throat after the steep climb.

“And what did you ask Brigit for?” Mariota said to me, as we turned back towards Scalasaig. But I did not tell her.

Chapter 9

I
took my uncle’s small boat and returned to the Priory, but the afternoon was far gone before I arrived there. The sun that had shone so weakly earlier in the day had vanished, and fog had rolled in, making the Priory look almost like just another pile of wet rocks heaped up on the coast. The mist muffled most of the noises of the masons, finishing their day’s work on the north range. There had always been some few culdees on Oronsay, but it was only since the days of His Lordship that the Augustinian Priory had been built.

Perhaps the Lord of the Isles intended his gifts to the Priory to pave his way into heaven, I thought sourly to myself, but all the noise of the masons seemed to place Oronsay squarely in the mundane world. In the evening, however, the masons returned to their cottages nearby, and the Priory became more peaceful.

Word had evidently not reached them of Sheena’s death. The tide had been in, and the monastery cut off from the main island except by boat, and word was that no boats had docked there that day.

The canons were just leaving the refectory after their evening meal and I sought out Brother Donal, after first speaking briefly with Gillecristus. I did not tell him of Sheena’s death, but merely said I needed to ask some of the brothers a few more questions.

“Now?” questioned Gillecristus. “It will soon be time for Vespers.”

“Yes,” I said shortly.

Gillecristus shrugged, his face sour, and left me to find Brother Donal. We strolled down towards the cove, where there was little chance of being overheard, while the sun, finding its way through the clouds, broke through the dispersing fog and began to descend in the western sky.

“So have you discovered anything?” I asked Donal bluntly.

“Och, Muirteach,” he said, wrapping his habit a little more tightly around him as the wind blew against his thin body, “Well, they are saying this; that Gillecristus will be our new Prior.”

“So he could have had a reason to kill my father.”

Donal shrugged, his face glowing in the sunset.

I told him about what had happened to Sheena, and my suspicions. “So suppose Gillecristus murdered Sheena because she knew what he had done. Perhaps she walked down after my father to the Strand that night, and saw Gillecristus kill him, and then she had to die.”

“But then why would he have lain with her? Or she with him?” said Donal, and I had to admit that that did not fit. Gillecristus was a dried up stick, not a lusty man as my father had been. I simply could not picture him following Sheena to Dun Cholla and her submitting to him, for there had been no signs of violence except that last done there.

“Where was Gillecristus this morning?” I asked.

“I did not see him this morning, Muirteach,” Donal replied, looking troubled. “He had left word he was fasting and doing penance in his chamber this morning. He does so frequently, and I thought little of it at the time.”

“And Columbanus?”

“In his bake-house I suppose. Although young Blaise is ill in the infirmary, and he helps with the baking most times. So it may be that Columbanus was there alone, with none to vouch for him, either.”

“It is unlikely to be Columbanus, though,” I added. “He would not lie with his sister.”

“Pray to God he would not,” returned Donal. “Such as sin as that would be. But men have done worse, even than that, in this world.”

I agreed that they had.

The rays of the sinking sun glimmered crimson on the waves and we turned our steps back to the Priory. I now had the unpleasant task of telling Columbanus about his sister. I wondered that Angus and Alasdair had not done so, but realized they were probably too far-gone with drink to be going anywhere or telling anyone anything by now.

Donal came with me, and I was glad of that. We found Columbanus in his bake-house, stirring down some proofing yeast in a large pottery bowl. His face reddened with anger when he saw me.

“And what brings you back here,” he said. “Be away from here, you will sour my yeast.”

“No, now,” Donal put in. “Calm yourself, Columbanus. Muirteach is bringing some sad news indeed from the main island.”

“It is your sister, Columbanus. Sheena. She is dead.” I spoke abruptly for I did not know how else to tell him.

I had feared Columbanus would be as demonstrative in his grief as his brothers had been. But instead he stood dumbly, like a cow, and stared at me.

“Dead?”

“Aye. You were not knowing of it?”

“How did she die?”

“She was murdered, Columbanus. Like my father. At Dun Cholla.”

He lunged at me, and I was glad there were no weapons in the bake-house.

“But who would murder Sheena?” he asked, after Brother Donal and I had succeeded in quieting him. He had proved not so different from his brothers after all. “What had she ever done to anyone?”

“I do not know,” I answered carefully. “But could it not be the same person who killed my father? Perhaps she saw something of the first murder, perhaps she had gone down to the Strand after him for something, and then saw it, and so the murdered had to kill her.”

“Your father was a bastard, Muirteach, as you yourself are. And now, in his death, he has killed my sister.”

I bit my lip so hard that I tasted blood, as I tried to control myself from lunging at Columbanus in my turn.

“It is the shock talking, Muirteach,” said Donal soothingly to me. “Sure, you are not meaning this, Columbanus, not about our own dead Prior, may God grant him eternal rest.”

“And am I not meaning it?” roared Columbanus. “The black heart of him. He will rot in Hell for what he has done. All those years he took what he wanted from our family, leaving only wreckage in his wake. And now, you are telling me he has killed my sister—”

“Whist, no, now, Columbanus,” said Donal. “He was not killing your sister, the man is already dead, and Prior or no, the good Lord himself is deciding where he will rest, in Heaven or in Hell. But he did not kill your sister. Someone else must answer for that crime.”

“But if she died because of what she had seen—”

“You still cannot be holding the Prior responsible for that. You must have faith, faith in the mercy and justice of Our Lord.”

“And what justice was there for her?” Columbanus asked challengingly, but neither Donal nor myself could answer that question for him.

Columbanus went back with me, to see to his sister. As I rowed back to Colonsay through the darkness, for the sun had finally set, I said, in a manner of preparing him, as it were, “Sheena was strangled, Columbanus. With a cord. It could have been a bowstring. Are you knowing anyone who would have such a cord? Do your brothers?”

I asked this because I wondered if he knew anything more. The cord Sheena was strangled with could have been any string, I supposed, but it would have had to be strong to do that hellish work, for it had cut horribly into her flesh. I could not drive the image from my mind. It leapt and tumbled in my brain, mixed with images of my father’s corpse, with every stroke of the oars.

Columbanus snorted in disgust. “Who on the islands does not have a bow, Muirteach? What kind of
amadan
asks that question? When last I heard, both Angus and Alasdair had fine bows, but so did all the other men on Colonsay.”

He was right. Every man on the islands had a bow, for hunting the red deer, and even coneys for the stew pot. And so, as I beached the boat and we climbed the path leading to Sheena’s cottage by moonlight, I still had no clue as to who had killed her.

The house was crowded although the hour was now late. The women had finished the laying out and now the wake was on in earnest, the women keening and the men drinking, for the most part. The body lay on a trestle table surrounded by candles, while pitch torches burned, set in holders on the stone walls. The flames leapt and danced in the glowering darkness of the hut, casting glinting lights on the silver coins that covered Sheena’s eyes and flickering shadows of the mourners, like the hosts of the
sìthichean
, against the walls of the house.

I watched as Columbanus found and embraced his brothers, and the three, looking oddly alike despite the tonsure and robes of Columbanus, stood together looking at the corpse of their sister. Little Maire was there too, along with my older half-brother, and I wondered who it was that had finally told them what I had been too cowardly to tell them—that their mother was dead. The women sang their keening song over the corpse:

You are going home this night to your home of winter,

To your home of autumn, of spring, of summer,

You are going home this night to your lasting home,

To your unending rest, to your lasting bed.

Maire’s eyes were red as she listened, she would have been crying, of course, but her face was white as the linen shroud that wrapped her mother. Her brother stood by her side, wide eyed, uncharacteristically solemn and quiet, with snot and tears mixed together running down his cheek. I did not see the baby, or Aorig, and I guessed that she had kept him at her house.

But Mariota was there, along with her father, and she smiled at me a little when she saw me through the crush of people. I was surprised when she made her way to my side. She plucked at my sleeve and drew me towards the door of the cottage, away from the crush by the bier.

“I need to speak with you,” she said urgently. We went outside, and sat on a large rock overlooking the sound. The sounds of mourning and talk from inside Sheena’s cottage wafted out to us, mingled with the sound of the waves on the shoreline below, while the full moon had risen and its light glinted silver on the rocks and the water.

“And so?” she asked, expectantly.

“What?”

She frowned a little, but it looked more like a half-smile. “What were you finding out when you went to see Donal?”

“It was for that you needed to speak with me?”

“Aye.”

I did not then understand women. Nor, I can say, do I even understand them the now. But I answered her question.

“Gillecristus looks in a fair way to be becoming the next Prior. And Columbanus knew nothing of his sister’s death before I arrived.”

“Well, what of Gillecristus?”

“He was not seen this morning. He told the other canons he was alone in his chamber, fasting, and doing penance. So it could have been him, I suppose. He, or Columbanus, could have slipped away, taken the coracle across the Strand, met her, killed her, and returned with none the wiser. But did Sheena know Gillecristus? Sheena knew her killer, she was friendly with him.”

“And she could not have been friendly, as you call it, with Gillecristus?”

I scowled. “I cannot think so, Mariota,” I answered with some exasperation, as if I was speaking to a child. “He is a dried up old stick of a man, and neither Donal nor myself think that he would have abused Sheena before he killed her. Gillecristus continually spoke against her. He did not think it seemly for the Prior to have a hand-fasted wife. He felt it took him too much away from his duties. He felt it his mission, I believe, to point this out often to my father. Which he did do, repeatedly.”

Mariota just smiled, and I felt compelled to add something more to my speech. “Gillecristus is forever speaking about the snares and wiles that women use to entrap men and lure them into sin. For you do know, do you not, that Eve was the cause of Man’s fall from Paradise.”

Mariota continued to smile, more broadly now, and I got the distinct feeling she was trying to keep from laughing. For myself, I could not believe how much I myself had sounded like Gillecristus himself as I had spoken.

“And you, do you believe that, Muirteach?” she asked.

“Well, it is the teaching of the Church.” I felt myself flushing and felt my tongue all tied in knots. Why was she asking such questions? And why had I even brought up the topic, at all, at all? “But I left the order,” I continued somewhat lamely. “I found I would not make a monk.”

Chapter 10

“A
nd why was that?”

I did not answer and then I thought I noticed that Mariota herself was blushing, although it was difficult to tell in the moonlight. But whether she was or no, it did not stop her from continuing to speak.

“Well, whatever, perhaps even such a pious man as Gillecristus might find himself ensnared by a woman’s wiles. It might not be impossible, no matter how unlikely.” Her eyebrows arched as she looked at me. “You do not think so?”

I stuttered a moment, red-faced like a lad, and then grudgingly admitted it was possible.

“Well, that is settled, then,” she said a moment later, her tone strangely brisk. “But that still is not to say that it was Gillecristus was the killer.”

“But you were just arguing that it was,” I said, bemused.

“No, Muirteach, I was speaking of something else entirely. But perhaps I had no business to have been speaking of it.” She paused.

We sat in silence for a moment listening to the waves, and the clamor from the house. People were drinking more now, and I could hear the voices of Angus and Alasdair and Columbanus as they mourned their sister.

“Muirteach,” Mariota asked abruptly, “When you were finding Sheena, was she wearing a fine brooch on her plaid?”

“No,” I answered. I thought I remembered the pin Mariota was thinking of. “That same fine silver pin she was wearing to the funeral? I do not think she would be wearing it to pick rush flowers.”

“No,” replied Mariota, “but she might indeed wear it if she was going to meet her lover. We did not find it, Muirteach, when we laid out her body. It is not here at her house. I looked for it.”