Suffer Little Children

She and Cass had retired to their respective rooms and now, instead of falling immediately to sleep, she sat, leaning back on her cot, with the lamp still burning wastefully while she considered the information she had gathered so far.

One thing she now realized was that her cousin, the Abbot Brocc, was being a little selective with the information he had given her. Why had he asked Brother Conghus to keep a watchful eye on Dacan only a week before Dacan was killed? Well, that was something which she would have to sort out with Brocc.

There was a soft tap on the door of her chamber.

Frowning, she swung off her cot and opened it.

Cass was standing outside.

'I saw your light still on. I hope I am not disturbing you, sister?'

Fidelma shook her head, bade him enter and take the only chair that there was in the chamber while she returned to her seat on the bed. For propriety's sake, she left the door open. In some communities, the new moral codes were changing the older foundations. Many leaders of the Faith, like Ultan of Armagh, were arguing against the continued existence of mixed communities and even putting forward the unpopular concept of celibacy among leading religions.

She was aware that an encyclical attributed to Patrick was being circulated giving thirty-five rules for the followers of the Faith. The ninth rule ordered that an unmarried monk and anchoress, each from a different place, should not stay in the same hostel or house, nor travel together in one chariot from house to house nor converse freely together. And according to the seventeenth rule, a woman who took a vow of chastity and then married was to be excommunicated unless she deserted her husband and did a penance. Fidelma had been enraged by the circulation of the document in the name of Patrick and his fellow bishops, Auxilius and Iserninus, because it was so contrary to the laws of the five kingdoms. Indeed, what had made her actually suspicious of the authenticity of the document was that the first rule decreed that any member of the religious who appealed to the secular laws merited excommunication. After all, two hundred years ago Patrick himself was one of the nine-man commission which had been established by the High King, Laoghaire, to put all the civil and criminal laws of the five kingdoms in the new writing.

To Fidelma, the circulation of the 'rules of the first council of Patrick,' as they were being called, was another piece of propaganda from the camp of the pro-Roman faction which wished the Faith in the five kingdoms of Eireann to be governed entirely from Rome.

She caught herself as she became aware that Cass had been saying something.

'I am sorry,' she said awkwardly, 'my mind was drifting miles away. What were you saying?'

The young warrior stretched his legs in the cramped chair.

'I was saying that I had an idea about the lamp.'

'Oh?'

'It is obvious that someone refilled it when Dacan's body was discovered.'

Fidelma examined his guileless eyes solemnly.

'It is certainly obvious that the lamp could not have been burning all through the night, if Dacan was killed at midnight or soon after… that is,' she gave a mischievous grin, 'unless we are witnesses to a miracle; the miracle of the self-refilling lamp.'

Cass frowned, not sure how to take her levity.

'Then it is as I say,' he insisted.

'Perhaps. Yet we are told that Brother Conghus discovered the body and found the lamp burning. He did not refill it. It was still burning when Brother Tola went to examine the body and he swears that he did not refill it. He further told us, when I raised that very point, that he had extinguished the light when he and his assistant, Brother Martan, carried the body to his mortuary for examination. Who then refilled it?'

Cass thought for a moment.

'Then it must have been refilled just before the body was discovered or after the body was carried away,' he said triumphantly. 'After all, you judged for yourself that the lamp could only have been burning no more than an hour by the amount of oil still left in it. So someone must have refilled it.'

Fidelma regarded Cass with a sudden amusement.

'You know, Cass, you are beginning to display the mind of a dalaigh.'

Cass returned her look with a frown, unsure whether Fidelma was mocking him or not.

'Well…' he began, starting to rise with a petulant expression.

She held up a hand and motioned for him to remain.

'I am not being flippant, Cass. Seriously, you have made a point which I have neglected to see. The lamp was certainly refilled just before Conghus discovered the body.'

Cass sat back with a smile of satisfaction.

'There! I hope I have contributed to solving a minor mystery.'

'Minor?' There was a sharp note of admonishment in Fidelma's voice.

'What matter whether a lamp is filled or unfilled?' Cass asked, spreading his hands in emphasis. 'The main problem is to find who killed Dacan.'

Fidelma shook her head sadly.

'There is no item too unimportant to be discarded when searching for a truth. What did I say about gathering the pieces of a puzzle? Gather each fragment, even if they do not seem to be connected. Gather and store them. This applies especially to those pieces which seem odd, which seem inexplicable.'

'But what would a lamp matter in this affair?' demanded Cass.

'We will only know that when we find out. We cannot find out unless we start to ask questions.'

'Your art seems a complicated one, sister.'

Fidelma shook her head.

'Not really. I would think that your art is even more complicated than mine in terms of making judgments.'

'My art?' Cass drew himself up. 'I am a simple warrior in the service of my king. I adhere to the code of honor that each warrior has. What judgments do I have to make?'

'The judgment of when to kill, when to maim and when not. Above all, your task is to kill while our Faith forbids us to do so. Have you ever solved that conundrum?'

Cass flushed in annoyance.

'I am a warrior. I kill only the wicked—the enemies of my people.'

Fidelma smiled thinly.

'It sounds as if you believe them to be one and the same. Yet the Faith says, do not kill. Surely if we kill, if only to stop the wicked and evil, then the very act makes us as guilty as those we kill?'

Cass sniffed disdainfully.

'You would rather that they killed you instead?' he asked cynically.

'If we believe in the teachings of our Faith, then we must believe this was the example Christ left us. As Matthew records the Saviour's words, 'those who live by the sword shall die by the sword.' '

'Well, you cannot believe in that example,' scoffed Cass.

Fidelma was interested by his reaction, for she had long struggled with some of the theology of the Faith and had still not found a firm enough ground to argue many of its basic tenets. She often expressed her doubts in argument by taking the part of a devil's advocate and through that means she clarified her own attitudes.

'Why so?' she demanded.

'Because you are a dalaigh. You believe in the law. You specialize in seeking out killers and bringing them to justice. You believe in punishing those who kill, even to the point of raising the sword against them. You do not stand aside and say this is God's will. I have heard a man of the Faith denouncing the Brehons also in the words of Matthew. 'Judge not or you will be judged,' he said. You advocates of the law ignore Matthew's words on that so do I ignore Matthew's words against the profession of the sword.'

Fidelma sighed contritely.

'You are right. It is hard to 'turn the other cheek' in all things. We are only human.'

Somehow she had never felt comfortable with Luke's record of Jesus' teaching that if someone steals a