Suffer Little Children

'Another blank wall,' she said almost under her breath. 'Yet somewhere there is a door. Somewhere,' she added vehemently.

'What path will you follow now, cousin?' asked the abbot anxiously.

Fidelma was turning away from the window when she caught sight of a barc under full sail, sliding swiftly into the inlet, negotiating a course around the heavy merchantman like a dolphin around a ship. An idea formed quickly in her mind and she wondered why she had not thought of it before. She reached her decision almost immediately.

'I shall be leaving the abbey for a while, Brocc,' she said. 'The path that I must follow is not here.'

'Where will you go now?' Brocc looked astounded.

'I need the services of a good swift barc,' Fidelma responded, ignoring the abbot's question. 'Where can I charter one?'

'A sailor named Ross owns the swiftest barc on the coast,' Brocc said, without need for deliberation. 'But he knows it and his knowledge is reflected in his price. I see his ship is anchored below. Any fisherman will tell you where he may be found.'

'Excellent. While I am away there are some items which I want you to safeguard for me. They constitute evidence in my investigation and I cannot afford to take them on my journey.'

Brocc pointed to a large oak cabinet on the far side of his chamber.

'It has two locks,' he assured her, 'and is quite secure. I usually place the valuables of this abbey in it.'

Fidelma took her marsupium, which she had become in the habit of carrying, from her shoulder and placed it on the table. Wordlessly, the abbot took from under his table a set of keys on a ring, which she presumed had been hanging on some secret hook, and went to the cabinet and opened the door. He gestured for Fidelma to bring the marsupium to him and placed it inside. She watched as he secured the door and returned the keys to their resting place.

'Should Sister Grella reappear, I want her to be placed under guard, on my authority, until I return. Is that understood?' she asked Brocc.

The abbot indicated that it was.

Satisfied, Fidelma turned to Cass.

'Come, then, let us seek out this Ross and negotiate a price with him for our journey.'

Brocc was standing uncertainly.

'But where are you going? How long shall you be away? If I must imprison Sister Grella, I must have some idea.'

Fidelma paused at the door and once again felt sorry for her cousin's woebegone expression. Again she had the feeling of a little boy lost.

'Better that no one knows of where we have gone until we return. In the meantime, if you are able to detain Sister Grella, simply tell her that she is being held as a material witness to the death of her former husband, the Venerable Dacan. With God's help we shall return before a week is passed.'

Brocc's jaw dropped in anxiety.

'A full week?' His voice was full of distress but Fidelma had already left his chamber with Cass trailing behind her.

Chapter Thirteen

'That is Na Sceilig. See! There before us on the horizon.'

The speaker was Ross, standing on the stern deck of his ship. He was pointing out across the blue stretch of ocean. His deep green eyes, which reflected the changing moods of the sea, were narrowed. He was a short, stocky man, with graying, close-cropped hair; a grizzled veteran of forty years of seafaring. His skin was tanned by the sea winds almost to the color of nut. He was a man with a dour humor and always ready with a loud bellow when he was displeased.

His swift sailing barc was two days out from Ros Ailithir where Fidelma had negotiated a rather exorbitant price with the sailor to take them to the monastery of Ffnan at Sceilig Mhichil and back again. The vessel had followed the coastal lanes, catching a faint wind blowing from the north-east which brought them around the southern extremes of Muman and then Ross had maneuvered his vessel into the fast- flowing tide which sent them racing to the north.

Fidelma shaded her eyes with her hands and gasped at the spectacular rocks that thrust out of the sea before her. There were two islands—stark, fissured pyramids with castellated outcrops rising sheer and terrifying out of the dark, brooding seas—which were situated some eight miles from the mainland. Their sheer terrible magnificence caused Fidelma to catch her breath.

The name Sceilig implied rocks but she had not been prepared for such looming slatey masses.

'On which island is the monastery?' asked Fidelma.

'That bigger island,' indicated Ross, pointing to the pyramid-shaped spectacle rising over seven hundred feet out of the water.

'But I cannot see any place to land, let alone a place to construct habitations,' Fidelma protested, peering in amazement at the vertical sides of the island.

Ross knowingly tapped the side of his nose with a gnarled forefinger.

'Oh, there is a place to land, right enough and, if you have a head for heights, you may climb up to the monastery, for it rests high up there.' He pointed to the high peaks of the island. 'The monks call the place Christ's Saddle for it is so high. It is situated between those two points there.'

Fidelma became aware of a cacophony of noise from the wheeling seabirds. Great gannets, with six-foot wing-spans, wheeled, soared and circled. Now and then they would plummet vertically, a full sixty feet into the sea in search of fish.

The second island, particularly, seemed to be crowned by a ring of wheeling and crying birds. Fidelma thought at first that, by some miracle, it was snow capped until Ross pointed out that it was the excretions of birds built up over the long centuries.

'They nest on the Little Sceilig,' explained Ross. 'Not just gannets, but gulls, cormorants, guillemots, kittiwakes, razor-bills, shearwaters and fulmars and even other birds whose names I have forgotten.'

Cass, who had been standing silently by, suddenly remarked: 'Here is an awesome place to chasten the soul.'

Fidelma smiled at him, amazed that his usually stolid mind could be so moved.

'Here is a place to elevate the soul,' she corrected, 'for it shows just how insignificant we are in the great scheme of creation.'

'I still cannot see why you would wish to come to this isolated place,' Cass muttered, gazing at the breathtaking cliffs of the island.

Fidelma decided that it was time to relent a little and reveal what was in her mind.

'Remember the vellum we found in Grella's chamber? The letter Dacan wrote to his brother, Abbot Noe? He wrote it on the evening before he was killed and said that he had traced his quarry—remembered he used that word 'quarry'?—to the monastery of Sceilig Mhichil. He was searching for the heir of the native line of kings of Osraige. I am following the belief that he was killed because of that knowledge and that the next step along the path to resolving the mysteries rests on that impregnable island which you see before you.'

Cass turned his gaze from the island to Fidelma and then back at the towering gray mass. He pursed his lips thoughtfully.

'You expect to find whoever it was that Dacan was looking for on the island?'

'Dacan certainly did.'

That Ross and his crew, like most seamen of the coastal waters, were highly skilled was demonstrated in the next few minutes as they negotiated to a landing place which had been invisible until they came within a few yards of it. The waves threatened to hurl the vessel against the crashing rocks as the water foamed around them, causing sea spray to drench everyone. It took a while to anchor close enough for anyone to land.

'It is not good that we hold ourselves against the rocks of this landing place,' cried Ross, having to shout to make himself heard above the crashing of the waves and cry of the seabirds. 'When you have landed we will pull back from the island and stand off until such time as you signal us to pick you up.'

Fidelma raised her hand in acknowledgment and prepared herself to leap from the side of the boat onto the narrow granite ledge which constituted a natural quay.