Peter Tremayne - Act of Mercy

‘Can you get the cat out from under the bunk? I think he must be hurt,’ she interrupted as she realised that the blood could not have come from the puncture marks the cat had made when he had been frightened during the night.

Wenbrit went down on his knees. It took him some time before the cat allowed himself to be taken hold of. Wenbrit was finally able to get near the animal, having made sure that he held the front paws togetherto stop Mouse Lord scratching. Making soft reassuring sounds, the boy gently extracted Mouse Lord from underneath the bunk and laid him on the bedding. Something was obviously hurting the animal.

‘He’s been cut.’ The boy frowned as he examined the animal. ‘Deeply cut, too. There’s still blood on his hind flank. What happened?’

Mouse Lord had calmed down as the animal realised that they meant him no harm.

‘I don’t know … oh!’

Even as she spoke, Fidelma understood the meaning of her painful awakening during the night. She leant over the straw mattress of the bunk and saw what she was looking for immediately. It was the same knife which Sister Crella had given her; the one Crella claimed that Brother Guss had planted under her bunk. It was smeared with blood: Mouse Lord’s blood. Fidelma cursed herself for a fool. She had brought the knife from Crella’s cabin and put it in her baggage and it had disappeared before Toca Nia’s death.

Wenbrit had finished his examination of the cat.

‘I need to take Mouse Lord down below where I can bathe and stitch this cut. I think the creature has been stabbed in the hind flank. Poor cat. He’s tried to lick it better.’

Fidelma glanced at Mouse Lord in sympathy. Wenbrit was fussing over the cat, who was allowing the boy to stroke him under the chin. He began to purr softly.

‘How did this happen, lady?’ asked Wenbrit again.

‘I think Mouse Lord saved my life,’ she told him. ‘I was asleep with him curled up on my chest. Someone came to the cabin door. Perhaps Mouse Lord sprang up when the killer entered. They obviously didn’t see the cat. I must have been lucky for they threw the knife instead of moving to stab me as I lay. Whether the cat’s move deflected it, I am not sure, but poor Puss caught the blade in his flank. The cat’s reaction woke me and scared the attacker.’

‘Did you recognise the person?’ demanded the boy.

‘I am afraid not. It was too dark.’ Fidelma gave a shudder as she realised how close she had come to death for a second time. Then she pulled herself together.

‘Look after Mouse Lord, Wenbrit. Do your best. He saved my life. We’ll have some answers before long. Deo favente, this storm must moderate soon. I can’t concentrate with it.’

But they were without God’s favour, for the storm did not moderate for another full day. The constant noise and heaving had dulled Fidelma’s senses; she became almost indifferent to her fate. She justwanted to sleep, to find some relief from the merciless battering of the weather. Now and then the ship would heel over to such an angle that Fidelma would ask herself whether it would right itself again. Then, after what seemed an age, The Barnade Goose would slowly swing back until another great wave came roaring out of the darkness.

At times Fidelma believed the ship to be sinking, so completely immersed in seawater did it seem to be; she even had to fight for breath against the lung-bursting bitter saltwater that drenched her. Her body was bruised and assaulted by the constant tossing of the ship.

It was dawn the next day when she drearily noticed that the wind was less keen than before and the rocking of the ship less violent. She made her way out of her cabin and looked around. The grey morning sky held a few tattered storm clouds, low and isolated, sweeping by amidst a layer of thin white cloud. She even saw the pale, white orb of the sun on the eastern horizon. Not a full-blooded dawn but with just a hint that the day might improve.

To her surprise, she saw Murchad coming along the main deck towards her. He looked utterly exhausted after the two days of severe storm in which he had been mainly at the steering oar.

‘Are you all right, lady?’ he asked. ‘Wenbrit told me what happened and I asked Gurvan to keep a watch on you just in case you were attacked again.’

‘I have felt better,’ confessed Fidelma. She saw Wenbrit occupied further along the deck. ‘How is Mouse Lord?’

Murchad smiled.

‘He might limp a little but he will continue to hunt mice for a while yet. Young Wenbrit managed to stitch the wound together and he seems none the worse for the cut. I don’t suppose you saw who threw the knife at you?’

‘It was too dark.’ Then she changed the subject. ‘Are we through the storm?’

‘Through the worst of it, I think,’ he replied. ‘The wind has moved southerly and it will be easier for us to hoist the mainsail once again and keep to our original course. I think this is one voyage that I shall not be sorry to end. I’ll be glad to find myself in the arms of Aoife again.’

‘Aoife?’

‘My wife is called Aoife,’ Murchad smiled. ‘Even sailors have wives.’

A thought nagged at Fidelma’s memory. Suddenly the words of an old song came into her mind.

‘You who loved us in the days now fled

Down the whirlpool of hate, spite fed,

You cast aside the love you bore,

To make vengeance your only law!’

Murchad frowned.

‘I was thinking of the jealous lust of Aoife, the wife of Lir, the god of the oceans, and how she destroyed those who loved him.’

The captain sniffed disparagingly.

‘My wife Aoife is a wonderful woman,’ he said in a tone of protest.

Fidelma smiled quickly.

‘I am sorry. It was merely the name which prompted the thought. I did not mean anything against your wife — but it has brought a useful memory back to me.’

What was the Biblical verse that Muirgel had mentioned to Guss when she told him that she knew why she might be the next victim?

… jealousy cruel as the grave;

It blazes up like blazing fire

Fiercer than any flame.

She looked across to the sea. It was still white-capped but not quite so turbulent now, and the great waves were becoming smaller and fewer. At last it all made sense! She smiled in satisfaction and turned back to the weary Murchad.

‘I’m sorry, Captain,’ she said. ‘I was not concentrating.’

It was then that Fidelma focused on the mess that the storm had created on the ship. The deck was strewn with splintered spars, the water-butt appeared to have shattered into pieces, ropes and rigging hung in profusion. Sailors seemed to have collapsed where they stood, in sheer exhaustion.

‘Was anyone hurt?’ Fidelma asked in wonder at the debris.

‘Some of my crew have a scratch or two,’ Murchad admitted.

‘And the rest of the passengers?’

Murchad shook his head.

‘Not a hair of them was harmed, lady — this time.’

To Fidelma it was a sheer miracle that in the two days the little ship had been tossed hither and thither on the rough seas, no one had been injured.

‘Tomorrow, or the day after, I expect to sight the Iberian coast, lady,’ he said quietly. ‘And if my navigation has been good, we shallbe in harbour soon after. From that harbour it is but a short journey inland to the Holy Shrine.’

‘I shan’t be sorry to escape from the confines of your ship, Murchad,’ Fidelma confessed.

The captain gave her a bleak look.

‘What I was trying to say, lady, is that once we reach the harbour, there will no longer be an opportunity to bring the murderer of Muirgel nor Toca Nia to justice. That will be bad. The story will follow this vessel like a ghost, haunting it wherever it goes. My sailors have already called this a voyage of the damned.’