The Devil's Seal (44 page)

‘Well, the thieves could identify them as well,’ Eadulf replied pointedly.

Brehon Fíthel leaned forward and declared: ‘I must now insist that we are told exactly what these valuable items were.’

‘Items of extreme value to certain people within these kingdoms wishing to show authority from Rome,’ Venerable Verax prevaricated.

‘Certain people?’ Fidelma smiled indulgently. ‘To be succinct, those who wanted to be recognised as Chief Abbot or Bishop of the religious over all these kingdoms. That, of course, is why you were so interested in finding out which of our abbots and bishops would want to claim this primacy. The intention of Victricius and his companion was clearly to sell these items to the highest bidder, as they would seemingly confer the authority of the Bishop of Rome on whoever owned them.’

Abbot Ségdae now intervened with a frown. ‘Surely, it must have occurred to the thieves that such a transaction would be as illegal as it would be invalid?’

‘Invalid because the items would not have the authority of the Bishop of Rome and because they were presumably intended for another,’ agreed Fidelma.

The Venerable Verax smiled tightly. ‘Unfortunately, the declaration of the name and office on the parchment, given under the Holy Father’s own seal, was left to be filled in later by a scribe.’

‘I thought that you said these items were sent to and intended for, Theodore, Archbishop of Canterbury?’ Eadulf said sharply.

‘Theodore was already Archbishop,’ agreed the Venerable Verax. ‘He needed no such authority. But he was finding it hard to control all the kingdoms of the Angles and Saxons. He had sent an emissary to Rome with the request that he be allowed to elevate a bishop called Wilfrid as Archbishop of Northumbria, with his cathedral in a town called York. This Wilfrid would therefore become the second Chief Bishop among the kingdoms of the Angles and Saxons. However, Theodore wanted the power to do this without Wilfrid being specifically named, until such time as Theodore was certain of his ability, since there were still some matters of contention between them. My task was to take the
pallium
and the declaration, given under the Holy Father’s seal, to Canterbury. As I said before, the name and bishop’s see, the official centre and jurisdiction of the bishop, was left for one of Theodore’s scribes to fill in.’

‘In other words,’ Eadulf summed up, ‘someone could purchase these items from the thieves and then append their own name? Rome might deny it, but the claim could be announced and could convince enough people to cause a schism that might last for generations.’

‘Exactly so,’ confirmed the Venerable Verax.

‘Well, I would have had nothing to do with such false baubles,’ Abbot Ségdae declared immediately.

‘But there may be others who have no such scruples,’ Fidelma pointed out. ‘I have attended councils at Streonshalh and at Autun; I have seen how bishops and abbots are no better than temporal princes in their quest for power. No doubt there would be many who would pay a king’s honour price for such items. Fortunately, some of these items were destroyed.’

The Venerable Verax leaned forward with a gasp. ‘I hear they were stolen from the thieves – but do you know for certain that they were destroyed?’

‘Having come thus far, let us finish.’ Fidelma ignored his question. ‘You landed in the Kingdom of Laighin. You told people there you were on a deputation to learn the views of the abbots and bishops. But you also asked questions of merchants and travellers to see whether your thieves had reached there. In fact, they had landed in a port further south but not in Laighin. It was a port in this Kingdom of Muman called Láirge. They had hired a river boat to take them here.’

Brehon Fíthel interrupted. ‘One of these thieves you say was someone who called himself Victricius?’

‘He called himself the Venerable Victricius of Palestrina, passing himself off as an elder of the religious,’ Fidelma confirmed. ‘He had already been caught stealing and was flogged in Canterbury.’

‘I am afraid that his companion was my own brother, Egric,’ Eadulf added stiffly. ‘My young brother, who by the strangest coincidence of fate survived the attack and was brought to Cashel. He tried to keep up the disguise that he was a religious, travelling with this Venerable Victricius on some religious mission. I felt he was lying but could not accept it.’

‘So Victricius and Egric were the thieves who stole the items from Canterbury and brought them to Port Láirge?’ Colgú concluded.

‘Indeed,’ Fidelma nodded. ‘Victricius and the boatmen were attacked and killed on the river. Egric survived. The items were initially thought to have been stolen or destroyed.’

Everyone was tense now, looking towards her. She turned and motioned to Eadulf, who produced something wrapped in a cloth, which they had brought into the council chamber.

‘Unfortunately, when the thieves arrived at the harbour of Láirge, they met the person who was to set in motion the events that led to all the deaths here. Until he makes a full confession, we can only surmise the details. He met Victricius and Egric at Láirge. He discovered what they had to trade. He saw the tremendous value of the items and knew that, with them, he could acquire rank and power. There was just one problem: he personally could not afford to purchase them.

‘So he told Victricius and Egric to take a boat up the River Siúr, to head for Cluain Meala, the Field of Honey, where they would be contacted. Of course, he had no intention of them ever reaching that township. He arranged with a small band of outlaws, led by Rudgal, to ambush them. They were to steal what they could, but ensure that certain items were taken and brought to him. As we know, Rudgal and his companions killed Victricius and the two boatmen, and also believed they had killed Egric.’

‘But you said some items were saved?’ the Venerable Verax pressed anxiously.

Fidelma gestured to Eadulf, who unwrapped the cloth he had before him. From it, he produced the embroidered lambswool band that Brother Conchobhar had found wrapped around the waist of Rudgal. The Venerable Verax rose and took the item from Eadulf, his eyes wide and hands trembling.

‘It is the
pallium
!’ he gasped. ‘The same
pallium
blessed by the Holy Father.’

‘Unfortunately,’ continued Fidelma, ‘Rudgal and his gang of cut-throats were not too mindful either of life or the value of the written word. Rudgal found and kept the
pallium
, but his companions simply ransacked and destroyed the papers, including the document given under the Bishop of Rome’s seal. Rudgal and his attackers took what items they deemed of immediate value and set fire to the rest.’

‘How can we be sure that the document with the Holy Father’s seal was destroyed?’ demanded Venerable Verax.

Eadulf reached into his robe and drew out the small lead fragment that looked like a coin.

‘It is lucky that when I was in Rome, I had seen similar items,’ he said. ‘Here is the lead seal with the letters V.I.T.A. inscribed on it and an emblem. When our warriors came across the scene of the attack by the river, one of them, Dego, spotted this lead token on the ground. It was among the burned papers. He picked it up, thinking it was merely a worthless coin, and decided he would use it as a weight for his fishing line. So this was the only other item that survived.’

He dropped it into the Venerable Verax’s outstretched hand. The man glanced at it and uttered a deep sigh. ‘It is indeed the Holy Father’s
bullae
– his seal – which is attached on all official documents from his hand.’

Brehon Fíthel asked to see the item, turning it over between his fingers. ‘Curious, indeed,’ he remarked. ‘I would have thought such an important seal would have been made of a metal of finer quality than mere lead. What do you call it? A bull?’

‘The word
bullae
means a seal,’ explained the Venerable Verax, taking it back from the Chief Brehon before glancing at Fidelma. ‘So this is all that has survived? No other documents?’

‘It is all,’ confirmed Fidelma.

‘Then it seems that our journey has been wasted.’ Bishop Arwald was clearly disappointed.

‘Wasted?’ rebuked Fidelma. ‘Is any journey wasted? I hope not. You have the
pallium
and you have the
bullae
. And perhaps you and your party may have learned something about our kingdoms.’ She looked the Venerable Verax straight in the eye and added, without a change of expression, ‘You may even inform people that Strabo was in error when he told the world that we were cannibals. Learning that fact, surely, was no waste of a journey!’

‘I mean that our fear of these items falling into the wrong hands was no fear at all,’ Bishop Arwald replied stiffly.

‘On the contrary,’ Fidelma returned, ‘there
was
a fear – and that fear has engendered the deaths of eight people! In addition, a young warrior is now disabled for life and, had Eadulf and I not been lucky, it might have meant our deaths or injury as well.’

‘Eight deaths?’ The Venerable Verax frowned.

‘Your thief and his companion, Egric, two innocent boatmen, Brother Cerdic, Rudgal, Sister Dianaimh, Beccan the steward . . . I am not even counting the gang of outlaws led by Rudgal.’

‘Are you saying that all these deaths were caused by the same event – all came about through the robbery of these items in Canterbury?’ It was the Chief Brehon Fíthel who asked the question.

‘I do.’

‘
Post hoc, ergo propter hoc
,’ Bishop Arwald commented sarcastically. ‘As these events happened after the first event, so you claim that they must have been caused by that event. Well, it does not follow.’

‘On the contrary, I have already said that when the theft took place in Canterbury, the thieves came to this kingdom, and landed in Láirge’s harbour, where they met the person who was determined to get what they carried by any means. So their fate was sealed – and that action had a series of reactions.’

‘And who was this someone?’ asked Chief Brehon Fíthel. ‘Are you going to identify him?’

‘Of course. Some here already know his identity. However, let me lead you through the morass of deceptions, so you will understand the logic. After the attack by the Déisi outlaws, and the report of the incident to the Brehon at Cluan Meala, Cummasach, the Prince of the Déisi, set out to find the band of outlaws to track them down. They put up a fight and most of the band perished. There were three exceptions. Two men escaped – Maon and his companion, who are now dead. But their leader, Rudgal, was taken captive. He had been told the value of the cloth. He wrapped it around his waist and intended to bargain it for his freedom.

‘The conceiver of the murderous plot could not allow that. There was a crude attempt to make Rudgal’s death look like suicide, but what his killer did not realise was that Rudgal actually had the
pallium
wrapped around his waist. It was found when the body was prepared for burial and has been hidden in Brother Conchobhar’s apothecary ever since.’

‘But what of the other deaths?’ Brehon Fíthel asked. ‘Are you saying the same person – one person – was responsible for
all
of them? If so, I have been told that some of them took place while Deogaire was being held as a prisoner. If he was not responsible for the attempt on your lives, who was?’

‘Deogaire is most assuredly innocent – but I had to hold him to allay the suspicions of the killer and later to protect his life in case he too was attacked. For I have to say, this killer has no compunction about sacrificing the innocent.’

Brother Conchobhar leaned towards his nephew and clapped him on the shoulder in congratulation. Deogaire was looking relieved.

‘But then it means that Beccan was the guilty person,’ Colgú concluded. ‘But how . . .? He was also murdered, and so was Sister Dianaimh.’

‘We have a saying that whether it is black, dun or white, it is its own kid that the goat loves,’ Fidelma suddenly said.

‘And so?’ Brehon Fíthel was clearly puzzled and he was not alone.

‘I think everyone will recall that Beccan was of the Déisi. They are the people who live south of the River Siúr,’ she added for the benefit of the Venerable Verax and his companions. ‘When Beccan spun the false story about seeing a woman named Maon – who actually turned out to be a man called Maon who was one of Rudgal’s outlaws – he let slip that his home was at Míodán. Prince Cummasach, when he brought Rudgal as prisoner here, told us that Rudgal and his band had been caught near their home at Míodán.’

‘Are you saying that Beccan was one of them?’ demanded Brehon Fíthel.

‘Beccan did not have that capability,’ Fidelma responded. ‘It was his inability even to remember names that almost caused his downfall but has led to another confirmation of the plot. Beccan was afraid of forgetting a fictitious name. It had been observed here that whenever my brother had guests, Beccan had to write them down. So he decided to stick to the real name of the person he was to meet because he knew him well from his own village. Beccan was forced into this conspiracy by his very own family and was used to draw a false trail when the person concerned mistakenly thought I was getting too close to them. Sadly I was not, otherwise . . .’ She shrugged.

‘How was he persuaded?’ questioned Colgú. ‘I still don’t see.’

‘Because I think we will discover that he was related to the main deviser of this murderous conspiracy and also to Rudgal and his outlaws at Míodán.’

‘You said Beccan was told to lead a false trail,’ Brehon Fíthel frowned. ‘By whom and how?’

‘Beccan was told to implicate Deogaire in this matter. Unfortunately, honesty of thought often leads to a bad reputation. Deogaire made no secret that he did not share the Faith and so we, in our prejudice, could believe anything about him. So if Deogaire was made to appear guilty – guilty of something – it could direct us away from the truly guilty. It was a complicated plot.

‘Someone knew about Deogaire’s argument with his uncle. There had been a witness. That person instructed Beccan to do the following: he suggested to Deogaire that he could stay in the guest quarters that night. The idea of it being done in exchange of some medicines was firstly to allay any suspicion that Deogaire might have as to why Beccan had suddenly become friendly enough to make the offer, and secondly to give Beccan an excuse to leave the palace that night. You see, Maon and his companion had to be alerted to the news that Eadulf’s brother Egric had survived the attack on the Siúr and that he had gone to Eatharlach with Dego. The murderer had come to the wrong conclusion – that Egric must have saved the
pallium
and the
bullae
and hidden them. He had to instruct Maon to chase Egric. Why didn’t the murderer go himself? Because there was no way he could leave the palace without being missed and giving rise to questions.