Our Lady of Darkness

‘So where are these beasts now? Who brought them here and who took them away? Indeed, where are Gabrán’s crew, come to that?’

She returned to her seat on the hatch cover and closed her eyes for a moment in thought. She felt that she was overlooking something important. She wondered why the crew had left Gabrán on his own and taken the animals needed to bring the boat upriver to this spot? Abbess Fainder’s story about merely happening on the boat and then finding Gabrán just at the moment of his slaughter seemed so far-fetched; asfar-fetched as the idea of the killer escaping by jumping over the side of the boat into the swiftly flowing river. It was nonsense. But then, perhaps, Eadulf’s story appeared equally nonsensical in face of the evidence of the girl Fial who claimed to have been an eye-witness to her friend’s death. Fidelma expelled her breath in a deep sigh.

‘Well, there is little we can do here for the time being,’ she said, standing up. ‘Dego, I want you to ride back to Cam Eolaing and find Coba, if he is there. He said that he was returning to his fortress and he is the bó-aire of this area. This matter needs to be reported to him. If you fail to find him at Cam Eolaing, ride back to Fearna and bring Bishop Forbassach here.’

Abbess Fainder was anxious.

‘What do you mean to do?’ She tried to sound commanding, but her voice trembled.

‘I mean to follow the law,’ Fidelma replied with grim humour. ‘It will be up to the Brehon of this kingdom, I presume, as to whether that law will follow the punitive Penitentials, of which you are so fond, or whether you will be found guilty and punished by our own native system.’

Abbess Fainder’s eyes widened with horror. ‘But I did not do it.’

‘So you have said, Mother Abbess,’ Fidelma rejoined with a touch of well-deserved malice. ‘Just as Brother Eadulf said that he did not do what he was accused of!’

Eadulf untied the gag on the young girl whom he had carried to the entrance of the cave. She continued to stare at him with eyes wide, round and dark, mirroring her fear. In spite of the tightness of her bonds she was trembling visibly.

‘Who are you?’ demanded Eadulf.

‘Don’t hurt me!’ came the whimpering response. ‘Please, don’t hurt me.’

Eadulf tried a reassuring smile. ‘I do not propose to hurt you. Who left you in this condition?’

The girl took some time to overcome her fear.

‘Are you one of them?’ she whispered.

‘I do not know who “they” are,’ Eadulf replied, and then, remembering the second bound form in the cave, he turn back and brought her out. She, too, was barely thirteen, a half-starved dishevelled little girl. He removed her gag and she sobbed in great breaths of air.

‘You are a Saxon, so you must be one of them,’ the first girl cried fearfully. ‘Please do not hurt us.’

Eadulf sat down before them, shaking his head. He, too, was cautious, for he made it a rule never to loose the bonds of any person until he found out why they had been bound in the first place. He had once seen a young Brother killed by an insane woman when he had removed her bonds, thinking he was releasing her from a tormentor.

‘I have no intention of hurting you, whoever you are. Tell me first, who are you, why are you bound and who bound you?’

The two girls exchanged a nervous glance between them.

‘You must know, if you are one of them,’ replied the first of the girls with some defiance.

Eadulf was patient. ‘I am a stranger here. I do not know who you are nor who “they” are.’

‘But you knew enough to come into the cave to find us,’ pointed out the second girl, who seemed to have a quicker wit than her companion. ‘No one would stumble on that cave by chance. You must be one of them.’

‘If I am someone who means you harm, then you have nothing to lose in answering my questions,’ Eadulf pointed out. The younger girl started to sob. ‘However,’ he added sharply, ‘if I am simply a stranger passing by, then I might be able to help you in your plight if you tell me the reason why you have been bound and left in this cave.’

It was some time before the elder of the two came to a decision.

‘We do not know,’ she said after some thought.

Eadulf raised his eyebrows in disbelief.

‘It is the truth that I tell you,’ the girl insisted. ‘Yesterday, we were taken from our homes by a man. He brought us to this place, bound us and left us. He said that someone would come to take us on a long journey and that we would never see our homes again.’

Eadulf stared hard at the girl trying to assess the truth of what she was saying. Her voice was dull, flat now, as if divorced from the reality of what she was saying.

‘Who was this man?’ he pressed.

‘A stranger like yourself.’

‘But not a foreigner,’ added the second girl.

‘I think that you had better explain further. Who are you and where do you come from?’

The girls seemed less nervous now as he drew them out of their first fear of immediate harm.

‘My name is Muirecht,’ said the elder. ‘I come from the mountains to the north of here. Well over a day’s riding.’

Eadulf turned to the younger of the two. ‘And you?’

‘I am called Conna.’

‘And do you come from the same place as Muirecht?’

The girl shook her head.

‘Not the same place,’ Muirecht intervened, responding for her. ‘I never saw her before we found ourselves together as prisoners. We did not know each other’s names until this moment.’

‘So what happened? Why were you made prisoners?’

The girls exchanged another glance and it seemed to have been silently agreed that Muirecht would speak for the two of them.

‘It was yesterday morning, well before dawn, that I was awakened by my father …’

‘And who is your father?’ intervened Eadulf.

‘A poor man. He is a fudir, although he is a saer-fudir,’ she added this fact quickly and proudly.

Eadulf knew that the fudir was the lowest class of Irish society; a class scarcely little removed from the slaves of Saxon society. They were comprised not of members of the clan but were commonly fugitives, prisoners of war, hostages or criminals who had their civil rights removed as a form of punishment. The fudirs were divided into two sub-classes, the daer- fudir or unfree and the saer-fudir, who were not exactly free men but did not suffer the bondage placed on the lower rank. The saer-fudir were usually those who were not criminals and therefore could regain certain rights and privileges in society. They could work land that was allotted to them by their lord or king and on very rare occasions rise from the ‘unfree’ class to become a céile, a free clansman, and they might even reach to the rank of a bó-aire, a landless chieftain and magistrate.

Eadulf indicated that he understood.

‘My father’s plot of land is small,’ went on Muirecht, ‘but, in spite of that, the chief of the territory demands the biatad, the food rent. Twice a year my father had to repay the loans from the common stock.’

Eadulf knew the custom. Both free and unfree fudir could borrow cows, pigs, corn, bacon, butter and honey, from the common stock of the clan, provided that one third of the value of that which they tookwas paid back annually for seven years. At the end of that time the stock became their property without further payment. The free fudir was also obliged to give the Chief either service in time of war or service in an agreed number of days working the land of the Chief. Eadulf, coming from a society in which outright slavery was normal, always considered the idea of the non-free class of society being able to obtain such loans and work their way to freedom as a curious concept. He could see that, for a man with poor land and little ability to manage, the loan might, in certain circumstances, induce further poverty instead of raising him out