Badger's Moon

reminded Fidelma of a pine martin. Suspicious and fearful. His rapid glance took them all in before he returned his gaze to the young tanist.

‘What do you want of me, Accobrán?’ he snapped. ‘Am I not busy enough?’

Eadulf exchanged a glance with Fidelma. The man was obviously not going to be helpful. No one of the Cinél na Áeda seemed kindly disposed towards strangers, so far as they were able to tell.

‘I have brought a dálaigh to ask questions of you, Lesren.’

The tanner’s dark eyes swivelled to Eadulf. ‘Dálaigh? That man is a foreigner.’

‘Do you have objections to foreigners, Lesren?’ demanded Fidelma sharply.

‘None, woman, if they do not interfere in my business.’

Accobrán swallowed and was about to explain who Fidelma was when she cut him short.

‘It is I who am the dálaigh, Lesren. I am come to ask some questions about your daughter.’

‘You?’ The tanner seemed amused. ‘A young woman?’

‘This is Fidelma of Cashel,’ put in Accobrán. ‘Sister to King Colgú,’ he added sotto voce.

The tanner blinked but his unfriendly expression did not change. ‘If you are here to ask me about Beccnat’s murder, I will tell you who killed her. It was Gabrán.’

Accobrán expressed his impatience. ‘We made inquiries, Lesren. You know that. Gabrán was nowhere near Rath Raithlen on the night your daughter died.’

‘So you say.’

‘I only say what the witnesses say. The fact is that he was staying twelve miles away.’ The tanist’s voice indicated that he had told the story a hundred times before. ‘Aolú, our late Brehon, agreed that he was innocent of your claim.’

‘If you claim that Gabrán slew your daughter,’ Fidelma added. ‘Are you also saying that he killed the other two girls as well?’

Lesren raised his chin stubbornly. ‘I say that he killed Beccnat. That is what I say. I told her to beware of him and his thieving family.’

‘Those words are harsh and have harshness in the saying of them,’ Fidelma reproved him. ‘I would caution you against calling people thieves. You know the law and the penalty that falls upon those who tell false tales about others. It could even lead to the loss of your honour price, súdaire.’ She laid a soft stress on his title as a means of reminding him of the standing in society he could lose.

Eadulf knew that everyone in the five kingdoms of Éireann, from the lowborn to the highest, was possessed of an honour price. The High King himself was rated at the value of sixty-three cows while a provincial king, such as Fidelma’s brother Colgú, held an honour price valued at forty-eight cows. In the time that he had been in this land Eadulf prided himself on having learned to judge the honour price of most people and concluded that a tanner would be valued at four cows. The cow was the basis of the currency, with a séd being the value of one cow while a cumal was that of three cows. Smaller coins like a silver screpall or a sicil were divisions of the value of a cow.

At first Eadulf had not been able to understand the honour price system and vainly tried to equate it with the caste system of his own people. He soon realised that there was a fairness in its structure that had much to do with the system of punishments for crimes. The whole basis of the law system was compensation and rehabilitation. To maintain a standard throughout the kingdoms, each person was ascribed an honour price that was based on the job they did, and not on who their parents were. Fines were assessed on the honour price of the one transgressed against. If a man killed a master builder then he would have to pay the master builder’s family compensation to the value of twenty cows, together with a fine to the court. If he could not afford it, and his own honour price was less than the value of twenty cows, then he would lose his honour price and all civil rights, and would have to work to compensate the family and the court. He became an ‘unfree’ man, a man without any rights — a fuidhir.

There were two types of ‘unfree’ person, depending on the seriousness of the crime. While a daer-fuidhir had no rights and could not bear arms, a saer- fuidhir was entitled to continue to work his own land or follow his own professional calling — within reason. He was expected to pay taxes. If, by the end of his life, he had not provided the required compensation and rehabilitated himself into society, then the punishment did not fall upon his wife or children. Every dead man kills his own liabilities, said the Brehons.

As a foreigner in Éireann, Eadulf was classed in law as a ‘grey dog’, cú glas, which actually meant one who was an exile from overseas. Thus Eadulf, no longer an emissary of the Archbishop of Canterbury, was without legal standing and had no honour price. Even married to Fidelma he would have remained without an honour price had not Colgú and Fidelma’s nearest relatives recognised the union and approved it. Being accepted by Fidelma’s family, Eadulf was also accepted as having an honour price that was half that of Fidelma’s. But there were restrictions that someone of his culture found onerous and almost offensive. He was not entitled to make legal contracts without Fidelma’s permission and she was responsible for any debts or fines that he might incur. Neither was he allowed to have any legal responsibility in the rearing of their son Alchú. That was Fidelma’s responsibility alone. For Eadulf, his position as a ‘grey dog’ was a bitter legal concept in spite of the fact that, in reality, Colgú treated Eadulf as both friend and equal.

What Eadulf found astonishing was that Fidelma’s people saw many matters that his culture would not even call transgressions worthy of severe punishment — if one could call fines and loss of rights a punishment. In Saxon society, death and mutilation and slavery were considered just punishment for the entire range of social and political transgressions, whereas in the Bretha Nemed the Brehons decreed that if a man kissed a woman against her will, he would have to pay her full honour price. If a man tried to indecently assault a woman, then the Cáin Adomnáin set the fine at the value of twenty-one cows.

Truth was taken seriously in law. The Bretha Nemed stated that if a person wrongfully accused another of theft, or publicised an untrue story that caused shame, it required the payment of the victim’s honour price. Hence he could understand why Fidelma was now giving the tanner a fair warning.

Lesren, however, would not be warned.

‘What I saw is the truth. Ask Goll, the woodcutter, if you do not believe me. Ask him why he had to pay me a fine of one screpall. I will say no more on the matter until you have done so.’

‘One screpall is no great sum to pay,’ muttered Eadulf.

‘A transgression of the law is great enough, no matter the outcome,’ snapped the tanner.

‘And what Brehon imposed this fine?’ asked Fidelma.

‘Aolú.’

‘And Aolú is dead,’ muttered Accobrán.

Fidelma sighed impatiently. ‘Am I to believe that you disapproved of your daughter’s relationship with Gabrán because of his father, Goll, and this matter of the fine that you have mentioned?’

Again the chin came up aggressively. ‘It is reason enough.’

‘What did Beccnat have to say about your disapproval? She was seventeen and beyond the age of choice. She had the right to decide her own future.’

Lesren’s features wrinkled in a scowl. ‘She was my daughter. She refused to abide by my decision and look what happened to her. If only Escrach had not broken with Gabrán, he would not have pursued my daughter.’

‘Escrach?’ Fidelma glanced at him with quickened interest. ‘What do you mean?’

‘Gabrán was paying her attention until she made it clear that she was not interested in him. I warned my daughter not to encourage him.’

‘Daughters have rights once they reach the age of choice,’ Fidelma admonished him.

‘Daughters also have duties,’ replied the tanner angrily. ‘I had to chastise Beccnat when she spent nights away from home. Even to the end she refused to obey and those last three nights she spent away from home — well, I feared she would pay for it and she did. Gabrán was to blame.’