Peter Tremayne - Hemlock at Vespers

“That was stupid. If Muirenn had been found guilty, that would have weighed heavily on your conscience.”

“I would not have let that happen. I would have returned,” protested Nath.

“Returned? And what excuse would you have offered for your absence? You would have willingly returned to exchange places with Muirenn? That I find hard to believe.”

“Believe it or not, it is the truth.” The young cenobite looked defiant.

Fidelma turned reprovingly to Ainder. “That was foolish advice which you gave to Nath.” The young girl raised her chin pugnaciously. “I thought it best at the time,” she answered. Fidelma gazed thoughtfully at the girl, “I believe you did.” She rose and turned toward the door.

“I am returning to see Father Allán now. You should return to the community, Nath. You have told me the truth.”

Father Allan rose awkwardly as Sister Fidelma entered his cubi-culum.

“Will you tell me why you killed Moenach, or shall I tell you?” she demanded with an abruptness that left him staring open-mouthed at her. Her voice was cold, impersonal.

Father Allán blinked and his jaw slackened at the unexpectedness of the question. Before he could protest innocence, Fidelma added with emphasis: “I know you did it. It would save time if we dispensed with any false protestations. I first suspected when I heard that after Brother Aedo had arrived here with the news, he was so distraught that he could not lead you to the spot. Yet you unerringly led the way to where Moenach’s body was, in spite of the fact that there are many similar glades and dells in the forest so, if Aedo had given you the best directions in the world, you might have hesitated before you found the body.”

A bewildering variety of expressions chased one another across the face of the Father Superior. Then, as he realized that Fidelma was coldly determined, he sat down abruptly and spread his hands helplessly.

“I loved Moenach!”

“Hate is often simply the other side of love,” observed Fidelma.

The Father Superior hung his head.

“I raised Moenach from a boy. I was his foster father before the law. He had everything a young man could want, good looks, talent and a way of bending everyone to his will, of deceiving everyone into believing his goodness and piety…”

“Not quite everyone,” Fidelma pointed out.

“I know. I know,” sighed Father Allan, his shoulders hunched.

“I should have listened to his fellow cenobites a long time ago. I should have listened. But I was prejudiced and stopped up my ears when they told me the truth.”

“What changed you?”

“I tried to deceive myself for a long time about Moenach. Then Nath came to me with the terrible news of what Moenach had done to Ainder. I could not allow the evil that I had nurtured to continue. If he were capable of this as a boy, what evil lay in store in the future?”

“What happened?”

“I dismissed Nath, pretending that I did not believe him. I knew that Moenach had gone down to the village and so I hurried immediately down the path and waited for him. The rest was simple. He had no suspicions. I drew his attention to something on the ground and while he was bending to examine it, I picked up a rock and hit him, again and again until…”

“Then Muirenn happened to come on the scene …?”

“I heard someone coming along the forest path. I hurried away as quickly as I could.”

“And poor Muirenn saw the form of a religieux hastening away from the scene. You left the old woman there to be blamed for Moenach’s death.”

“I did not wish that. My soul has been in purgatory ever since.”

“Yet you did not speak up when Brother Aedo claimed that she was the murderess? You went along with it and added to the evil of your deed by arresting her and calling for a Brehon to try her.”

“I am a human being,” cried Father Allan. “I am not beyond sin if self-preservation is a sin.”

Fidelma pursed her lips as she gazed at him.

“Your attempt to shift the blame to the innocent and stand by while the innocent suffered is a sin.”

“But my deed was not evil. I have cleansed the world of an evil that once I nurtured in the mistaken belief of its goodness.”

Father Allan had recovered his full composure. His features were scornful, almost boastful now.

“I believed that Muirenn might prove her innocence. But if Mui-renn was innocent then suspicion should not fall on me. Nath had foolishly been persuaded to disappear. He might have been blamed. Everyone knew how he hated Moenach.”

Fidelma felt troubled. There was something about this puzzle that did not fit exactly together. A piece of the puzzle was still missing. She accepted that Father Allan had struck the blows that had killed Moenach. However, why would Father Allán, who had not previously accepted Brother Nath’s word about Moenach, nor, indeed, the word of any of those who had tried to warn the Father Superior about Moenach, suddenly accept Nath’s story of Ainder’s rape to the extent that he went straightaway and killed Moenach? Something did not fit.

Suddenly Fidelma’s mouth split into an urchin grin of satisfaction.

An hour later she presented herself at the cabin of Illand.

Ainder greeted her at the doorway.

“I will not keep you long, Ainder,” Fidelma said. “I want to clarify one point. You told me that Nath loved you?”

Ainder nodded with a frown of curiosity.

“But you did not return his love,” Fidelma continued calmly. “You never returned it. You only used him.”

Ainder flashed an angry glance at Fidelma. She saw the grim signs of knowledge in the eyes of the religieuse.

“Father Allán is under arrest for the murder of Moenach. Mui-renn is released and no suspicion falls on Nath whose only crime was that he was easily led.”

For a while Ainder said nothing. Then she seemed to explode in emotion.

“Nath was weak, untalented. Allán was a chieftain’s son with position and a reputation. I, we…”

She suddenly realized the implication of what she had confessed to. Her shoulders hunched and then she said in a small-girl voice. “What will happen to me now?”

Fidelma did not feel pity for this child-woman. Ainder did not love Father Allan any more than she had loved Nath. She had been using Father Allan simply as a means of changing her station in life. It had been Father Allan who had become infatuated with the girl. So besotted with her that when he heard that Moenach had raped the girl, and had it confirmed from her lips, he had waylaid the young man and killed him. The rage that Nath had witnessed had not been for his accusation against Moenach but for Moenach’s crime against Ainder. It was a rage born of jealousy.

That much might have been understandable as a justification for killing Moenach. But Father Allán and Ainder together had conspired to lay the blame on two innocent people. Muirenn might well have proved her innocence and so they had plotted to use the guileless fascination of Nath for Ainder and manipulate him into guilty behavior. Ainder had cynically deceived and exploited the enamored youth.

“You will be tried for complicity in the murder of Moenach,” replied Sister Fidelma.

“But I am only a…”

“A young girl?” finished Fidelma drily. “No. As you have previously remarked, you are at the age of choice and considered responsible in law. You will be tried.”

Fidelma gazed a moment at the hatred on the girl’s face. She was thinking of the infatuated Brother Nath and the love-sick Father Allán. Grá is gráin -love or hate, even the words came from the same root. What was it that the great poet Dallán Forgaill once wrote? Love and hatred were hatched from the same egg.