Hemlock at Vespers

Fidelma pointed to the figure of the dark-haired man on the floor which Lorcán had not observed.

“Do you recognize that Brother?” she asked.

“The saints defend us!” exclaimed the boatman as he bent down. “This is Brother Spelán.”

Fidelma pursed her lips.

“Brother Spelán?” she repeated unnecessarily.

Lorcán nodded unhappily.

“He served as Abbot Selbach’s dominus, the administrator of this community. Who did this deed? Where is everyone?”

“Questions can be answered later. We need to take him to a more comfortable place and restore him to consciousness. The boy-Sacán, you called him? — well, he is certainly beyond our help.”

“Sister,” replied Lorcán, “my friend Maenach knows a little of the physician’s art. Let me summon him so that he might assist us with Spelán.”

“It will take too long.”

“It will take but a moment,” Lorcán assured her, taking a conch shell from a rough leather pouch at his side. He went to the door and blew on it long and loudly. It was echoed by a tremendous chorus of frightened birds. Lorcán paused a moment before turning with a smile to Fidelma. “I see Maenach on the cliff top with the young Sister. They are coming this way.”

“Then help me carry this Brother to one of the nearby cells so that we may put him on a better bed than this rough floor,” instructed Fidelma.

As she knelt down to help lift the man she suddenly noticed a small wooden cup lying nearby. She reached forward and placed it in her marsupium, her large purselike bag, slung from her waist. There would be time to examine it later.

Between them, they carried Brother Spelán, who was quite heavy, to the nearest cell and laid him on one of two wooden cots which were within.

Maenach came hurrying in with Sister Sárnat almost clutching at his sleeve. Lorcán pointed to the unconscious religieux.

“Can you revive him?” he asked.

Maenach bent over the man, raising the unconscious man’s eyelids and then testing his pulse.

“He is in a deep coma. Almost as if he is asleep.” He examined the wound. “It is curious that he has been rendered so deeply unconscious from the blow that made this wound. The wound seems superficial enough. The brother’s breathing is regular and untroubled. I am sure he will regain consciousness after a while.”

“Then do what you can, Maenach,” Fidelma said. “Sister Sárnat, you will help him,” she instructed the pale, shivering young girl who still hovered uncertainly at the door of the cell.

She then took the boatman, Lorcán, by the arm and led him from the cell, turning him toward the quadrangle, and pointing silently to the figure bound to the tree.

Lorcán took a step forward and then let out a startled exhalation of breath. It was the first time he had observed the body.

“God look down upon us!” he said slowly as he genuflected. “Now there are two deaths among the religious of Selbach!”

“Do you know this person?” Fidelma asked.

“Know him?” Lorcán sounded startled at the question. “Of course. It is the Abbot Selbach!”

“Abbot Selbach?”

Fidelma pursed her lips with astonishment as she reexamined the body of the dead abbot. Then she gazed around her toward the empty landscape.

“And did you not say that Selbach had a community of twelve Brothers here with him?”

Lorcán followed her gaze uncertainly.

“Yes. Yet the island seems deserted,” he muttered. “What terrible mystery is here?”

“That is something we must discover,” Fidelma replied confidently.

“We must leave for the mainland at once,” Lorcán advised. “We must get back to Dún na Séad and inform the Ó hEidersceoil.”

The Ó hEidersceoil was the chieftain of the territory.

Fidelma raised a hand to stay the man even as he was turning back to the cell where they had left Brother Spelán.

“Wait, Lorcán. I am a dálaigh, an advocate of the Law of the Fenechus, holding the degree of Anruth. It is my task to stay and discover how Abbot Selbach and little Sacán met their deaths and why Brother Spelán was wounded. Also we must discover where the rest of the community has disappeared to.”

Lorcán gazed at the young religieuse in surprise.

“That same danger may yet attend us,” he protested. “What manner of magic is it that makes a community disappear and leaves their abbot dead like a common criminal bound to a tree, the boy dead and their dominus assaulted and unconscious?”

“Human magic, if magic you want to call it,” Fidelma replied irritably. “As an advocate of the law courts of the five kingdoms of Ireland, I call upon you for assistance. I have this right by the laws of the Fenechus, under the authority of the Chief Brehon. Do you deny my right?”

Lorcán gazed at the religieuse a moment in surprise and then slowly shook his head.

“You have that right, Sister. But, look, Abbot Selbach is not long dead. What if his killers are hiding nearby?”

Fidelma ignored his question and turned back to regard the hanging body, her head to one side in reflection.

“What makes you say that he is not long dead, Lorcán?”

The sailor shrugged impatiently.

“The body is cold but not very stiff. Also it is untouched by the scavengers…”

He gestured toward the wheeling birds. She followed his gaze and could see among the seabirds, the large forms of black-backed gulls, one of the most vicious of coastal scavengers. And here and there she saw the jet black of carrion crows. It was the season when the eggs of these harsh-voiced predators would be hatching along the cliff-top nests and the young birds would be demanding to be fed by the omnivorous parents, feeding off eggs of other birds, even small mammals and often rotting carcasses. She realized that the wheeling gulls and crows would sooner or later descend on a corpse but there was no sign that they had done so already.

“Excellently observed, Lorcán,” she commented. “And presumably Brother Spelán could not have been unconscious long. But do you observe any other peculiar thing about the Abbot’s body?”

The boatman frowned at her and glanced at the slumped corpse. He stared a moment and shook his head.

“Selbach was flogged and then stabbed three times in the back. I would imagine that the thrust of the knife was upward, between the ribs, so that he died instantly. What strange ritual would so punish a man before killing him?”

Lorcán stared more closely and sighed deeply.

“I don’t understand.”

“Just observe for the moment,” Fidelma replied. “I may need you later to be a witness to these facts. I think we may cut down the body and place it out of reach of the birds within the oratory.”

Lorcán took his sharp sailor’s knife and quickly severed the ropes. Then he dragged the body into the oratory at Fidelma’s direction.

Fidelma now had time to make a more careful examination of the young boy’s body.

“He has clearly been immersed for a while in the sea. Not very long but several hours at least,” she observed. “There are no immediate causes of death. He has not been stabbed nor has he been hit by any blunt instrument.”

She turned the body and gave a quick sudden intake of breath.

“But he has been scourged. See, Lorcán?”

The boatman saw that the upper part of the boy’s robe had been torn revealing that his back was covered in