Peter Tremayne - Badger's Moon

She felt a sudden sense of guilt.

During the last few days she had not thought once of little Alchú. Did that mean that she was a bad mother? She halted her horse and sat frowning as she considered the matter. She remembered something that her mentor, the Brehon Morann, had once said when judging the case of a neglectful father. ‘For a woman, giving birth to a child is the path to omniscience.’ Ever since the birth of Alchú she had been having disturbing thoughts, thoughts which troubled her because she found she did not agree with her teacher. Fidelma had not felt her wisdom increase nor felt any of the joys that she had been told by her female relatives and friends should have been forthcoming. She felt vexed. It was as if she saw Alchú almost as a bond that ensnared her — a curtailment of her freedom rather than something which enriched her. Did she really desire the sort of freedom that she was now experiencing?

What was it Euripides had said? Lucky the parents whose child makes their happiness in life and not their grief, as the anguished disappointment of their hopes. Why didn’t she feel those emotions for little Alchú that she had been told to expect? It was not that she did not care about the child, nor feel anything at all, but she had been told that the birth of her child would be an earth-shattering event, one which would change her. It had not. Maybe it was this lack of the fulfilment of the expectation that was the problem and not the relationship with her baby.

A sudden anger at her own complex feelings came over her and she kicked viciously at her mount’s belly and sent it speeding once more along the track. This time she let the horse have its head completely. The wind sent her red-gold hair streaming out behind her and she raised her face into the welcoming coolness with a sensual smile of pleasure. Was it not Brehon Morann who had declared that a gallop on a bright, fresh day was the cure for all the evils that assailed the mind?

It was some time before she eventually decided to halt the animal and turn it, blowing and snorting, to walk gently back along the track, for she had ridden well past her proclaimed destination in her sudden delight at the freedom of the gallop. She was, at least, feeling some sense of equilibrium as she rode towards the gates of the abbey. The subject of her motherhood and her emotions had been dispelled and her mind was now able to concentrate on the matter in hand.

As she approached the track to the abbey, under the shadow of the hill, she was suddenly aware of a lumbering great wagon being pulled by two horses making its slow progress down the track towards her. The nun hunched on the driver’s seat seemed very familiar. She frowned for a moment and then recognised him.

‘We meet again, Gobnuid,’ she called.

The smith scowled as he drew abreast of her. Fidelma glanced at the wagon. It seemed packed with hides.

‘Transporting hides does not seem a task for a smith,’ she said. ‘You appear to be doing several jobs that are unsuited to your profession — messenger and now wagon driver.’

Gobnuid shrugged his broad shoulders. He did not rise to her sarcastic bait.

‘I take on whatever tasks there may be when there is no work for the forge,’ he said sourly.

‘Where do you sell the hides?’ she asked.

‘They eventually go down to the coast, to the house of Molaga or to the abbey of Ard Mhór where they make leather goods.’

‘You are taking them all the way there?’

‘I am only taking them to the Bridge of Bandan. From there they will go by river boat to the house of Molaga on the coast.’

It struck her as odd that his usual reticence had given way to a desire to answer her questions.

‘Do they fetch a good price?’

Gobnuid pursed his lips sourly. ‘Whether they do or not, my fee for transporting them is the same.’

‘So they are not your hides?’

‘I am a smith, not a tanner.’

Fidelma was curious. ‘So you are transporting the hides for Lesren?’

Gobnuid gave a gruff laugh. ‘Not for Lesren. I would do little for that son of a…’ He paused. ‘No, these hides belong to my lord Accobrán. Now, I need to be on my way.’

He flicked the reins and the cart began to move off, leaving deep tracks in the mud of the road. Fidelma stared at the tracks for a moment or two and then turned her horse again towards the abbey. She wondered why Gobnuid had been forthcoming with information. It was unlike his previous attitude and she was certain that he had been responsible for the so-called accident on the ladder that morning. She had not told Eadulf but she had clearly seen the way a sharp knife had cut into the rung of the ladder. There was no rotten wood there. The rung had been almost severed so that it would break under any heavy weight.

Brother Solam came to the gate to meet her as she swung down from her horse. She noticed that he had been standing with another religieux who had the dust of travel on him and had the reins of his horse still looped over his arm. The youthful steward of the abbey greeted her respectfully.

‘If you seek Abbot Brogán, Sister, you will have to wait awhile. He has gone to his cell to meditate. At such times, we are not allowed to disturb him.’

‘Then do not do so, for it was not the abbot that I particularly wanted to see,’ she replied.

Brother Solam was frowning over this when the other religieux left his horse and came quickly forward. There was a smile of greeting on his owlish features. Fidelma could not place him. He was a dark, lean-featured man.

‘Sister Fidelma? Fidelma of Cashel?’ the man asked. Even before Fidelma affirmed the fact, the man continued: ‘I am Túan, the steward of the house of Molaga. I was at the abbey of Ardmore when you were staying there last year. I don’t suppose you remember me…?’

Fidelma rejected the polite impulse to say that she did. It interested her to hear that the man was from the house of Molaga.

‘Have you just arrived?’ It was asking the obvious but she wanted to deflect from talking about an unremembered previous meeting.

Brother Túan indicated that he had. ‘Brother Solam was just telling me of the problems here and that you had arrived to resolve them.’

Fidelma decided that her original purpose in coming to the abbey could be delayed a moment or two longer and she glanced about. In the courtyard was a bench under an apple tree, conveniently by the warmth of the abbey blacksmith’s forge. She indicated it.

‘Let us sit there awhile, for I would seek your opinion, Brother Túan.’ She turned to Brother Solam with a bright smile. ‘Will you forgive us, for a moment?’

Still frowning, Brother Solam was clearly unhappy. But he simply said: ‘I will attend to the needs of Brother Túan’s horse. Do you want me to stable your own mount?’

‘There is no need. I do not plan to stay long.’

Brother Túan and Fidelma seated themselves on the bench beneath the shade of the shrub-like tree with its spiny branches. There was still fruit on it.

‘I suppose you have heard some details about what has been happening here?’ Fidelma asked without further preamble.

The steward of the house of Molaga grimaced. ‘They say that there is a lunatic abroad, Sister. One who strikes at the full of the moon.’

‘And do you know that a young woodcutter named Gabrán has been accused by the father of one of the victims?’

‘That was found to be false,’ replied Brother Túan immediately. ‘You must have been told that on the night of that murder, at the full moon of that month, the Month of Greenflies, this youth Gabrán was staying at the house of Molaga?’

Fidelma smiled at the confirmation. ‘And you can personally confirm that?’

‘I can indeed.’