“You remember nothing of the event?”
“Nothing at all. So far as I am aware, I went to bed, fell asleep, and was only awoken when the steward and the abbot came into my cell to confront me.”
“Do you remember prophesying his death in the refectory?”
The girl nodded quickly. “That I do remember. But I simply repeated what the voice told me to say.”
“The voice?”
“The voice of the shadow from the Otherworld. It attends me at night and wakes me if I slumber. It tells me what I should say and when. Then the next morning I repeat the message as the shadows instruct me.”
“You hear this voice… or voices… at night?”
The girl nodded.
“It comes to you here in your cell?” pressed Fidelma. “Nowhere else?”
“The whispering is at night when I am in my cell,” confirmed the girl.
“And it was this voice that instructed you to prophesy Brother Sioda’s death? It told you to speak directly to him? Did it also tell you to mention Gormflaith and her baby?”
The girl nodded in answer to all her questions.
“How long have you heard such voices?”
“I am told that it has been so since I was a little girl.”
“What sort of voices?”
“Well, at first the sounds were more like the whispering of the sea. We lived by the sea, and so I was not troubled at first for the sounds of the sea have always been a constant companion. The sounds were not disturbing but gentle, kind sounds. They came to me more in my head, soft and sighing. Then they increased. Sometimes I could not stand it. My parents said they were voices from the Otherworld. A sign from God. They brought me here. The abbey treated me well, but the sounds increased. I was placed here to be looked after by Sister Slaine.”
“I hear that these voices have become very strident of late.”
“They became more articulate. I am not responsible for what they tell me to say or how they tell me to say it,” the girl added as if in defense.
“Of course not,” Fidelma agreed. “But it seems there was a change. The voice became stronger. When did this change occur?”
“When I came here to this cell. The voice became distinct. It spoke in words that I could understand.”
“You mention voices in the plural and singular. How many voices spoke to you?”
The girl thought carefully. “Well, I can only identify one.”
“Male or female?”
“Impossible to tell. It was all one whispering sound.”
“How did it become so manifest?”
“It was as if I woke up and they were whispering in a corner of the room.” The girl smiled. “The first and second time it happened, I lit a candle and peered round the cell, but there was no one there. Eventually I realized that as strong as the voices were, they must be in my head. I resigned myself to being the messenger on their behalf.”
“And the voice instructed you to do what?”
“It told me to stand in the refectory and pronounce their messages of doom.”
Abbot Laisran leaned forward in a confiding fashion. “Sometimes these messages were of violence against the whole community, and at other times violence against individuals. But it was the one against Brother Sioda that was the most specific and named events.”
Fidelma nodded. She had not taken her eyes from the girl’s face. “Why do you believe this voice came from the Otherworld?”
The girl regarded her with a puzzled frown. “Where else would it be from? I am a good Christian and say my prayers at night. But still the voice haunts me.”
“Have you heard it since the warning you were to deliver to Brother Sioda?”
The girl shook her head. “Not in the same specific way.”
“Then in what way?”
“It has gone back to the same whispering inconsistency, the sound of the sea.”
Fidelma glanced around the cell. “Is this place where you usually have your bed?”
The girl looked surprised for a moment. “This is where I normally sleep.”
Fidelma was examining the walls of the cell with keen eyes. “Who occupied the cells on either side?”
“On that side is Sister Slaine who looks after this poor girl. To the other side is the chamber occupied by Brother Cruinn, my steward.”
“But there is a floor above this one?”
“The chamber immediately above this is occupied by Brother Torchan, our gardener.”
Fidelma turned to the lock on the door of the cell.
Abbot Laisran saw her peering at the keyhole. “Her cell was locked, and the key on the inside when Brother Cruinn and I came to this cell after Brother Sioda had been found.”
Fidelma nodded absently. “That is the one puzzling aspect,” she admitted.
Abbot Laisran looked puzzled. “I would have thought it tied everything together. It is the proof that only Scathach could have brought the weapon and robe into her cell and therefore she is the culprit.”
Fidelma did not answer. “How far is Brother Sioda’s cell from here?”
“At the far end of this corridor.”
“From the condition of the robe that you showed me, there must have been a trail of blood from Brother Sioda’s cell to this one?”
“Perhaps the corridor had been cleaned,” he suggested. “One of the duties of our community is to clean the corridors each morning.”
“And they cleaned it without reporting traces of the blood to you?” She was clearly unimpressed by the attempted explanation. Fidelma rose and glanced at the girl with a smile. “Don’t worry, Sister Scathach. I think that you are innocent of Brother Sioda’s death.” She turned from the cell, followed by a deeply bewildered Abbot Laisran. “Let us see Sister Slaine now.”
At the next cell, Sister Slaine greeted them with a nervous bob of her head.
Fidelma entered and glanced along the stone wall that separated the cell from that of Sister Scathachs. Then she turned to Sister Slaine, who was about twenty-one or — two, an attractive-looking girl.
“Brother Sioda was a handsome man, wasn’t he?” she asked without preamble.
The girl started in surprise. A blush tinged her cheeks. “I suppose he was.”
“He had an eye for the ladies. I presume that you were in love with him, weren’t you?”
The girl’s chin came up defiantly. “Who told you?”
“It was a guess,” Fidelma admitted with a soft smile. “But since you have admitted it, let us proceed. Do you believe in these voices that Sister Scathach hears?”
“Of course not. She’s mad and has now proved her madness.”
“Do you not find it strange that this madness has only manifested itself since she was moved into this cell next to you?”
The girl’s cheeks suddenly suffused with crimson. “Are you implying that-?”
“Answer my question,” snapped Fidelma, cutting her short.
The girl blinked at her cold voice. Then, seeing that Abbot Laisran was not interfering, she said: “Madness can alter, it can grow worse… It is a coincidence that she became worse after Abbot Laisran asked me to look after her. Just a coincidence.”
“I am told that you work for the apothecary and look after sick people? In your experience, have you ever heard of a condition among people where they have a permanent hissing, or whistling in the ears?”
Sister Slaine nodded slowly. “Of course. Many people have such a condition. Sometimes they hardly notice it while others are plagued by it and almost driven to madness. That is what we thought was wrong with Sister Scathach when she first came to our notice.”
“Only at first?” queried Fidelma.
“Until she starting to claim that she heard words being articulated, words that formed distinct messages
