Dúnliath was young enough, true. She had corn-coloured hair and dark blue eyes, and a heart-shaped face — which would have been attractive had it not been for the curious combination of a slightly pudgy nose and thin, almost mean lips. She had a sturdy figure, and Fidelma would have said, overall, that her features were plain. She found the girl’s almost permanent apologetic smile extremely irritating. However, looks did not matter. It was the intellect that went with them. Dúnliath’s interests, however, were few. She seemed to indulge herself only in entertainment, in the songs of the bards, in dancing and the tales of storytellers. She seemed to have no leanings towards more intellectual pursuits or statecraft. And she was hopeless at board games like brandubh or fidchell. Fidelma felt guilty for even thinking these thoughts. After all, it was what her brother, Colgú, saw in the girl that mattered and not what she felt. Colgú had helped her when she had decided that she wanted to marry Eadulf, a stranger not only to her clan and her kingdom, but to her entire culture. There were many among her people, the Eóghanacht, who had disapproved of the ‘Saxon’ as they called Eadulf. Her brother had stood up for her. Now it was her turn to stand up for her brother.
She tried to hide her thoughts from Colgú as she bade farewell to him and Abbot Ségdae; however, she realised he was sensitive enough to know that she had reservations.
A short while later, she stood impatiently watching Eadulf choose items to pack in his saddle-bag. Even though he had now fully accepted that Fidelma was no longer of the religious, Eadulf himself continued to maintain the robes of a religieux. He still felt a commitment to the organisations of the Faith.
‘Have you given instruction to Muirgen about little Alchú?’ he asked, not for the first time.
Alchú was their three-year-old son who, during the times they had to be away from Cashel, was looked after by their faithful nurse, Muirgen, whose husband, Nessán of Gabhlach, herded sheep for Colgú.
‘Of course,’ Fidelma replied, suppressing the urge to tell Eadulf to stop fussing.
When Fidelma had entered their chambers and asked him if he would come with her to Cluain Mór, explaining the purpose of the trip, Eadulf had actually felt a sense of relief. He had seen the sparkle of exhilaration in her eyes; a change from the dark and unyielding expression that she had worn during these last few weeks since the meeting of the Council of Brehons. He had come to realise, more than anyone, how important her ambition was to become Chief Brehon of Muman. Right from the start, during the six years of their often tempestuous relationship, Fidelma had always insisted that her first duty was to the law, and that she had only joined a religious community for the sake of security, on the advice of her cousin, Abbot Laisran. Her father and mother had died when she was a baby and, at the time, her brother had not even been heir-apparent to the Kingdom of Muman.
When Eadulf and Fidelma had first met at the great Council of Streoneshalh, he discovered that Fidelma had already left the community of Cill Dara and was employed by individual prelates to give them legal advice or counsel. For many years she had lived separate from religious communities and their Rule. Indeed, Eadulf could hardly consider himself as involved in any one community. He, too, had acted for some years as an emissary between kings and prelates.
While the Faith did not forbid marriage among the religious, in spite of a growing number of ascetics who advocated celibacy, their relationship had often been a cause of some friction. Fidelma had always placed the law first. He had often thought that life in a religious community was the answer to the problems that beset them. He had even tried to live for a short time in such a community, before King Colgú had ordered Fidelma and himself to go south to the Abbey of Lios Mór to investigate the death of its famous scholar, Brother Donnachad. That had been when Fidelma had announced her firm intention to leave the religious in name as well as practice. The rest was left to him to make his choice.
Eadulf had considered carefully and made his choice. What did he want in life? He wanted to nurture and support the woman he had fallen in love with. He wanted to protect and raise the son they had given birth to. He wanted to use what talents he had for the good of the people around him, those people who had taken him in, a stranger in a strange land, and been kind to him. When reason combined with emotion, there had been no choice for him to make. He supported Fidelma, but not by always giving in to her. He knew that she had a strong will, but he was sensitive enough to realise that it was borne of her insecurity, having lost both her parents when she was a baby.
The case in point was the recent meeting of the Council of Brehons, the judges of the kingdom. Their decision to elect Brehon Áedo as the Chief Brehon instead of her had hit Fidelma hard, although she did not show it in public. Not that she ever said anything, even to Eadulf. When he ventured on to the subject, she would merely say that the council had made the logical choice. Áedo was older and wiser than she was, she would say. But he saw the bleak expression; indeed, the disappointment and hurt in her eyes. It had cast a deepening gloom over their lives for the last week or so. Eadulf realised that his wife needed his steadfastness, his quiet support and his optimism. She needed the emotional stability that only he could give her.
Seeing her entering the chamber with an animated expression, for the first time in weeks, was a relief to Eadulf. Here was the distraction that she most needed; a distraction which would call on the use of her talent and capabilities so that she did not have time to be bored, nor to brood.
‘You say that this ford, where the farmer found the body, is at Cluain Mór?’ he asked as he made a final check through the contents of his saddle-bag.
‘It is only a short distance from here,’ confirmed Fidelma, giving the specific measurement in her own language. He spent a moment trying to work out a translation of 1,000 forrach and realised it was just a few kilometres. Fidelma had already packed her bag and was now waiting for him.
‘Then at least it is not a long ride,’ he said thankfully. Eadulf was not a brilliant horseman and disliked long journeys, although, during his lifetime, he had probably travelled further than most of his contemporaries would ever imagine might be accomplished. He had twice travelled to Rome itself and once to the Council of Autun in Burgundia.
The second bag that he was taking was called a lés, a bag filled with some physician’s instruments and apothecary’s potions. Eadulf had first come to the land of the Five Kingdoms of Éireann many years ago to study at Tuaim Brecain, the premier school of medicine in the land of Ulaidh, the Northern Kingdom. There he had learned enough of the medical skills to assist in many of Fidelma’s investigations. That was after he had been converted to the New Faith. He had grown to manhood in his native Seaxmund’s Ham, in the Land of the South Folk, part of the Kingdom of the East Angles, where he had been an hereditary gerefa or magistrate. An Irish missionary named Fursa had turned him away from the worship of Woden and the other gods and goddesses of his people.
‘I am just going to give some final instruction to Muirgen,’ Fidelma said, jumping to her feet. She always found it difficult to sit still, doing nothing, while waiting for him. If necessary, she could induce the meditation exercise called the dercad, but now was not the time. So she left Eadulf to finish packing his bag and went in search of the nurse.
She was hurrying across an interior courtyard when she became aware of two figures blocking her path.