Our Lady of Darkness

There were many questions she must ask Fial. Why had she and her friend arranged to meet on the quay in the middle of the night? And, in the darkness of that night, how could she have seen the features of the killer of her friend so clearly that she could identify him? Who told her that he was a Saxon stranger? If one accepted Eadulf’s word, he had neither seen nor spoken to Fial before. Had he been pointed out to her? If so, by whom?

Fidelma sighed deeply, knowing that while she might pick at points and challenge the legal procedures, the main facts remained. Eadulf had been identified by an eye-witness. He had been found with his robe bloody and with a torn piece of the girl’s clothing on him. How could she refute that evidence?

The apothecary was a large, stone room with wooden doors and shuttered windows which opened onto a herb garden. Dried herbs and flowers hung in bunches from wooden rafters and a fire burnt in a hearth at one end of the room, above which a large black iron cauldron hung. In it steamed a noxious-smelling brew. Jars and boxes were stacked along the surrounding shelves.

An elderly man turned as Sister Étromma entered. He was slightly stooped, his grey-white hair merging with a flowing beard. His eyes were light grey and had a cold, dead quality.

‘Well?’ His tone was high-pitched and querulous.

‘This is Sister Fidelma from Cashel, Brother Miach,’ Sister Étromma announced. ‘She needs to ask you some questions.’ She spoke to Fidelma. ‘I will leave you here while I find Sister Fial.’

Fidelma found the elderly physician glaring suspiciously at her.

‘What do you want?’ he snapped. ‘I am very busy.’

‘I will not keep you long from you work, Brother Miach,’ she assured him.

He sniffed disdainfully. ‘Then state your business.’

‘My business is as a dálaigh, an advocate of the courts.’

The man’s eyes narrowed a fraction. ‘And what is that to do with me?’

‘I want to ask you some questions about the trial of Brother Eadulf.’

‘The Saxon? What of it? I hear that they are hanging him, if they have not done so already.’

‘They have not hanged him yet,’ Fidelma assured him.

‘Ask your questions then.’ The old man was impatient and temperamental.

‘I understand that you gave evidence at the trial?’

‘Of course. I am the physician of this abbey. If there is a suspicious death then I am asked for my opinion.’

‘Tell me, then, of your evidence.’

‘The matter is over and done with.’

Fidelma replied harshly: ‘I will say when it is over and done with, Brother Miach. You will answer my questions.’

The old man blinked rapidly, apparently unused to being spoken to in such tones.

‘They brought me the body of a young girl to examine. I told the Brehon what I had found.’

‘And that was?’

‘The girl was dead. There were bruises around her neck. Clearly she had been strangled. Moreover, there were obvious indications that she had been raped beforehand.’

‘And how did those obvious indications manifest themselves?’

‘The girl had been a virgin. Not surprising. She was only twelve, so I am told. The sexual intercourse had caused her to bleed extensively. It needed no great medical knowledge to see the blood.’

‘So there was blood on her robe?’

‘There was and around the area where you would expect to find it in the circumstances. There is no doubt as to what happened.’

‘No doubt? You say it was rape. Could it have been otherwise?’

‘My dear … dálaigh,’ the old physician was pitying in his tone. ‘Use some imagination. A young girl is strangled after having intercourse; does it seem likely that it could be anything else but rape?’

‘It is still more of an opinion than true medical evidence,’ Fidelma said. The old physician did not reply and so she passed to her next question. ‘Did you know the child?’

‘Gormgilla was her name.’

‘How did you know that?’

‘Because I was told.’

‘But you had never seen her in the abbey before she was brought to you in death?’

‘I would not have seen her unless she had been ill. I think it was Sister Étromma who told me her name. Come to think of it, I would have been seeing her sooner rather than later, had she not been killed.’

‘What makes you say that?’

‘I think she was one of those religieuses who like to punish themselves for what they think are their sins. I noticed that she had sores around both wrists and around one ankle.’

‘Sores?’

‘Signs that she had used bonds on herself.’

‘Bonds? Not connected with her rape and murder?’

‘The sores had come from the use of constraints which she had obviously worn some time prior to her death. The sores had nothing to do with her other injuries.’

‘Were there signs also of flagellation?’

The physician shook his head. ‘Some of these ascetic masochists simply use bonds to expiate the pain of what they deem as sins.’

‘Did you not find that this masochism, as you define it, was strange in one so young?’

Brother Miach was indifferent. ‘I have seen worse cases. Religious fanaticism often leads to shocking self- abuse.’

‘Did you also examine Brother Eadulf?’

‘Brother Eadulf? Oh, the Saxon, you mean. Why would I do that?’

‘I am told that he was found with blood on him and in possession of a piece of the girl’s torn robe. Perhaps it would have been appropriate to have examined him to show whether there was any consistency in his appearance with the idea that he had carried out an attack on the girl.’

The physician sniffed again. ‘From what I hear, it needed no words of mine to convict him. As you say, he had blood on him and a piece of the girl’s bloodstained robe. He was also identified by someone who saw him do the killing. What need for me to examine him?’

Fidelma restrained a sigh. ‘It would have been … appropriate.’

‘Appropriate? Pah! If I spent my life doing what was appropriate, I would have let a hundred suffering patients die.’

‘With respect, that is hardly a comparison.’

‘I am not here to argue ethics with you, dálaigh. If you have done with your questions then I have work to do.’

Fidelma ended the interview with a brief word of thanks and left the room. There was nothing else to pursue with the physician. There was no sign of Sister Étromma returning. She waited outside the apothecary for several minutes before a thought came to her. One of the gifts Fidelma possessed was an almost uncanny ability to find her way in any place once she had been there before. She knew by means of retained memory and instinct just how to find her way back to the places in the abbey through which she had been led. So instead of continuing to wait for Sister Étromma, she turned along the passageways and began to retrace her steps towards the chamber of Abbess Fainder.

She opened the door onto the silent courtyard of the abbey and crossed it slowly. The body of the monk was still hanging from the wooden gibbet. What was his name — Brother Ibar? Strange that he should have murdered a boatman and robbed him on the same quay just a day after the rape and death of Gormgilla.

She suddenly halted in the middle of the courtyard’s quadrangle.

This was one of the two people in the abbey to whom Eadulf had spoken at any great length on the evening that he had arrived.