Hemlock at Vespers

“This is where you found Brother Fergal and the dead girl, Barr-dub?” asked Fidelma, as they paused outside the door.

“It is,” acknowledged the Brehon. “Though the girl’s body has been removed. I cannot see what use it will be to your advocacy to view this place.”

Fidelma simply smiled and went in under the lintel.

The room was small and dark, almost like the cell in which she had left Fergal, except that the bothán was dry whereas the cell was damp. There was a wooden cot, a table and chair, a crucifix and some other items of furnishing. Fidelma sniffed, catching a bittersweet aromatic smell which permeated from the small hearth. The smell was of burnt leaves of stramóiniam.

The Brehon had entered behind her.

“Has anything been removed apart from the girl’s body and the person of Brother Fergal?” Fidelma asked as her eye traveled to a wooden vessel on the table.

“As you see, nothing has been touched. Brother Fergal was in the bed, there, and the girl lay by the hearth. Only the girl’s body and the person of Brother Fergal have been removed. Nothing else has been removed as nothing else was of consequence.”

“No other objects?”

“None.”

Fidelma went to the table, took up the wooden vessel and sniffed at it. There was a trace of liquid left and she dipped her finger in it and placed it, sniffing as she did so, against her lips. She grimaced at the taste and frowned.

“As Brehon, how do you account for the fact that, if Brother Fergal is guilty, it would follow he killed Barrdub and then went to bed, leaving her body here, and slept peacefully until morning? Surely a person who killed killer would have first done their best to hide the body and remove all trace of the crime lest anyone arrive and discover it?”

The round-faced Brehon nodded and smiled.

“That had already occurred to me, Sister Fidelma. But I am a simple judge. I have to deal with the facts. My concern is the evidence. It is not in my training to consider why a man should behave in the way he does. My interest is only to know that he does behave in such a manner.”

Fidelma sighed, set down the vessel and looked round again before leaving the cell.

Outside she paused, noticing a dark smear on one of the upright stone pillars framing the doorway. It was a little over shoulder height.

“Barrdub’s blood, I presume?”

“Perhaps made as my men were carrying the body out,” agreed the Brehon uninterestedly.

Fidelma gazed at the smear a moment more before turning to examine the surroundings of the bothán which was protected by a bank of trees to one side, bending before the winds which whipped across the hill, while bracken grew thickly all around. The main path to the bothán, which led down to the village, was narrow and well trodden. An even narrower path ascended farther up the hill behind the building while a third track meandered away to the right across the hillside. The paths were certainly used more than occasionally.

“Where do they lead?”

The Brehon frowned, slightly surprised at her question.

“The way up the hill will eventually bring you to the dwelling of the hermit, Erca. The path across the hillside is one of many that goes wherever you will. It is even an alternative route to the village.”

“I would see this Erca,” Fidelma decided.

The Brehon frowned, went to say something and then shrugged.

Erca was everything Fidelma had expected.

A thin, dirty man, clad in a single threadbare woollen cloak; he had wild, matted hair and staring eyes, and he showered abuse on them as they approached his smoking fire.

“Christians!” he spat. “Out of my sight with your foreign god. Would you profane the sacred territory of The Dagda, father of all gods?”

The Brehon frowned angrily but Fidelma smiled gently and continued to approach.

“Peace to you, brother.”

“I am not your brother!” snarled the man.

“We are all brothers and sisters, Erca, under the one God who is above us all, whichever name we call Him by. I mean you no harm.”

“Harm, is it? I would see the gods of the Dé Danaan rise up from the sidhe and drive all followers of the foreign god out of this land as they did with the evil Fomorii in the times of the great mists.”

“So you hate Christians?”

“I hate Christians.”

“You hate Brother Fergal?”

“This land could not set boundaries to my hatred of all Christians.”

“You would harm Brother Fergal, if you could?”

The man cracked his thumb at her.

“That to Fergal and all his kind!”

Fidelma seemed unperturbed. She nodded toward the cooking pot which sat atop the man’s smoking fire.

“You are boiling herbs. You must be knowledgeable of the local herbs.”

Erca sneered.

“I am trained in the ancient ways. When your mad Patrick drove our priests from the Hill of Slane and forced our people to turn to his Christ, he could not destroy our knowledge.”

“I see you have a pile of pale brown roots, there. What herb is that?”

Erca frowned curiously at her a moment.

“That is lus mór na coille.”

“Ah, deadly nightshade,” Fidelma acknowledged. “And those leaves with the white points next to them?”

“Those of the leaves of the muing, or poison hemlock.”

“And they grow on this hill?”

Erca made an impatient gesture of affirmation.

“Peace to you, then, brother Erca,” Fidelma ended the conversation abruptly, and she turned away down the hill leaving the bewildered Erca behind. The perplexed Brehon trotted after her.

“No peace to you, Christian,” came Erca’s wild call behind them as the hermit collected his thoughts. “No peace until all worshippers of foreign gods are driven from the land of Éireann!”

Fidelma said nothing as she made her way down the hillside back to Fergal’s bothán. As she reached it, she darted inside and then reemerged a moment or two later carrying the wooden vessel.

“I shall need this in my presentation. Will you take it into your custody?”

“What line are you following, Sister?” frowned the Brehon as he accepted the vessel and they continued on to the village. “For a moment I thought you might be suggesting that Erca is somehow involved in this matter.”

Fidelma smiled but did not answer the question.

“I would now like to see the brother of Barrdub. What was his name? Congal?”

They found the brother of Barrdub in a poor dwelling by the river bank, a bothán of rotting wood. The Brehon had made some preparation as they walked to Congal’s cabin.

“Congal’s father was once the hostel keeper for the Eóghanacht of Cashel, a man held in high honor,