A Scream From The Sepulchre

the doors from the inside. They could see that his fingernails were torn and bleeding where he had scrapped at the door in his terror. And his face! The eyes were wide with fear, as if he had been confronted by some evil power of darkness.

Tressach shivered violently. 'God look down on us!'

Garbh was rubbing his chin in bewilderment.

'The tomb was securely sealed,' he whispered. 'You all saw the seals on the door. It has been sealed for fifteen hundred years.'

'Yet this man was inside trying to break out.' Fidelma pointed out the obvious. 'He was apparently dying even as Irel was ordering the tomb to be opened. It was his dying cries that Tressach and Irel heard.'

Irel glanced towards Sister Fidelma.

'This is hardly a sight for a sister of the Faith,' he protested as he saw her moving forward.

'I am a dalaigh,' she reminded him. 'I shall take charge of this investigation.'

Irel glanced questioningly to Abbot Colman, who nodded slightly, and the captain stood aside to allow Fidelma to enter the tomb. She ordered the lanterns to be held up to illuminate the area.

Fidelma moved forward curiously. She had heard all the stories of Tigernmas, the infamous High King, who had ordered his Druids to be put to death and turned to the worship of a gigantic idol. Generations of children had been frightened into obedience with tales of how the evil king's soul would ascend from the Otherworld and take them off unless they obeyed their parents. And now she stood at the door of his tomb, unopened since his body had been placed in it countless generations ago. It was not an inviting place. The air was stale, dank, and smelling of rotting earth and vegetation. A noxious, unclean atmosphere permeated the place.

The first thing she noticed was that the body was of a man of middle years, somewhat plump, with well- kempt white hair. She examined the torn and bleeding hands and looked at the softness of the fingers and palms. He was clearly someone not used to manual work. She examined his clothing. Apart from the dust and dirt of the tomb and the stains of blood from his wound, they were the clothes of someone of rank. Yet he wore no jewellery, no symbols of office, and when she examined the leather purse attached to the belt around his waist, she found only a few coins in it.

Only when she had conducted this scrutiny did she turn to examine his face. She tried to ignore the terrible mask of dread on it. Then she frowned and called for a lantern to be held more closely, studying the features with some dim memory tugging at her mind. The features seemed familiar to her.

'Abbot Colman, please look at this man,' she called. 'I have a feeling that I should know him.'

Colman moved forward somewhat unwillingly and bent down beside her.

'Christ's wounds!' exclaimed the abbot, forgetting his calling. 'It is Fiacc, the Chief Brehon of Ardgal.'

Fidelma nodded grimly. She knew that she had seen the man's features before. The chief judge of the clan of Ardgal was one of the learned judges of the country.

'He must have been here to attend the convention,' breathed Colman.

Fidelma rose and dusted her clothing. 'The more important thing to discover is what he was doing here at all,' she pointed out. 'How did a respected judge come to be in a tomb which has never been opened in generations and get himself stabbed to death.'

'Witchcraft!' supplied Tressach in a breathless tone.

Irel glanced at his subordinate with a look of derision.

'Don't the teachings of Patrick's first council tell us there is no such thing as witchcraft?' he rebuked, before turning to Fidelma. 'There must be an explanation for this, Sister.'

Fidelma smiled appreciatively at the man's pedestrian approach.

'There is an explanation for everything,' she agreed, as she let her eyes wander into the interior of the tomb. 'Sometimes it is not easily seen, however.' Then she turned back to Colman. 'Would you consult with the steward of the convention and see if Fiacc was in attendance and whether he was due to speak?'

Colman hesitated only a moment before hurrying away on his task.

Fidelma bent again to the corpse. There was no disputing the cause of death. The shaft of wood, like an arrow, was stuck in the back of the corpse under the shoulder blade.

'The worst place to try to stab a man,' sniffed Irel. 'To stab him in the back,' he added when Fidelma glanced up questioningly at him. 'You can never be sure of inflicting a mortal wound. There are too many bones in the way of a vital organ, any of which might deflect the blow. It is better to stab from the front, in and up under the rib cage.'

He spoke with the relish of a warrior.

'So you would say that whoever delivered the blow was an amateur when it came to killing?' asked Fidelma drily.

Irel considered the point.

'Not necessarily. The implement has been inserted slightly to the side and with an upward thrust towards the heart. The killer knew what he was about. He was aiming to pierce the heart immediately. Nevertheless, the victim lived on for a while. If he had not, we would never have heard his cries and discovered the body.'

'You are very observant, Irel. But why do you ascribe the killing to a man?'

Irel shrugged indifferently.

'It is logical. Look at the depth at which the wood is buried in the flesh. It would take strength to thrust it in so far.'

Fidelma could not fault the logic. But she was examining the shaft of wood with more interest. It was a piece of aspen, some eighteen inches or more in length, and it was inscribed with Ogham characters. She ran her finger over the cut letters, feeling the faint stickiness of the sap. The words meant 'The gods protect us.' It was now obvious what it was. The aspen wand was called a fe—an instrument by which corpses and graves were measured. It was generally regarded as an unlucky object and no one would willingly touch a fe unless they had need to.

Even Fidelma felt that she had to summon a special courage before she reached over and yanked the piece of wood from the corpse of Fiacc. She immediately saw that it was no ordinary fe. Where the shaft had been driven in, it had been whittled into a sharp point and, when she'd wiped the blood on the clothes of the corpse, her eyes narrowed as she observed that this point had been hardened by fire.

Tressach, standing nearby, was gazing aghast at Fidelma's handling of the wooden fe.

'Sister,' he reproached, 'it is highly unlucky to handle that. And to handle the very fe that measured this tomb for Tigernmas ...'

Fidelma did not reply. She rose to examine the rest of the tomb.

It was an oval-shaped chamber cut into a mound of earth with its floors flagged with stones while granite blocks lined the walls and were placed so that they formed a natural archlike structure across the entire roof. The length of the tomb was about fifteen feet, and its width a little more than twelve. Fidelma was thankful that the open doors of the tomb had allowed fresher, chill evening air to dispel the fetid atmosphere.

There was no need to ask where the remains of Tigernmas were. At the far end of the tomb, in a central position, stood an upright, rusting iron frame. In it, almost crumbled to pieces, were the remains of a skeleton. There were some fragments of clothing on it; a metal belt buckle and a rusty sword had fallen nearby. It had been the custom for the ancients to bury their chieftains and great rulers standing upright and facing their enemies, sword clasped in their dead hand. This iron cage had obviously been designed to keep the corpse upright in the burial chamber. By this method, it was said, the aura of the dead was supposed to protect the living. The skull of the skeleton had fallen to one side in the cage so that its eyeless sockets appeared to be staring with malignant force in the direction of the dead Fiacc. The skeletal grin seemed to be one of satisfaction. Fidelma felt irritated at the way her imagination interpreted these images.

To one side of the tomb were the rotting remains of a chariot. This would be the king's most cherished vehicle, left there to help transport him to the Otherworld. Jars and containers of what had once been his favourite foods and drink stood nearby, large bronze and copper containers made by skilled craftsmen.

Fidelma moved forward and her foot caught at something. She bent down and picked up a small but weighty bar of metal. Having examined it closely by Irel's lantern, she realised that it was silver. She set it down carefully, and as she did so she saw a few brooches scattered about. They were of semiprecious jewels set in gold mountings. Again, it was the custom to bury a portion of wealth with a great chieftain, for he would also need some means to help him in his journey to the Otherworld. Frowning thoughtfully, Fidelma continued to examine the rest of