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“Oh, aye?” Jamie said, not knowing quite what to say to that.
His eye had caught the glint of metal on the shelf, and he squinted, trying to make it out. It was a glass box, with something dark inside, and the gleam of gold within that. But what—
“Oh, you’ve spotted our hand!” said the abbot, delighted at the chance to show another of his curiosities. “Now, there’s a thing!”
He stood on his tiptoes to reach down the box and beckoned Jamie over to the broad table, washed in sunlight from the open window. There was a flowering vine of some kind twining round the window, and the monastery’s herb garden was visible outside. The fine spring day washed in on a tide of sweet scent—all of these overpowered when the abbot opened the box.
“Peat?” Jamie said, though there could be no doubt about it. The curled black object—which was indeed a human hand, broken off at the wrist and dried in some way—gave off the same acrid tang as the peat bricks that graced every hearth in Ireland.
The abbot nodded, moving the hand delicately so the ring wedded to the skin of one bony finger showed more clearly.
“One of the brothers found it in a bog. We didn’t know whose it was, but clearly ’twas no peasant. Well, we poked about a bit more and found butter, of course—”
“Butter? In the bog?”
“ Bea
Jamie had a sudden odd feeling that someone was standing just behind his shoulder, but fought back the urge to turn round.
“He was lying on his back, as though he’d been laid out dead, and he had on rough breeks and a cloak with a small gold brooch to fasten it at the throat. Speaking of throats, someone had cut his for him, and had bashed in his head for good measure.” The abbot smiled, though without his usual humor. “And to make quite sure of the thing, there was a thin rope wrapped tight round his neck.”
The feeling of someone behind him was so strong that Jamie shifted his position, as though to relieve some stiffness, and took the opportunity for a quick glance. No one there, of course.
“You’ve not the Irish, you say—so I suppose you’ll not know the Aided Diarnmata meic Cerbaill? Or Aided Muirchertaig meic Erca?”
“Ah … no. Though … does aidedmean, perhaps, ‘death’?” It was nothing like the Gаidhligword for it, but he thought he’d maybe heard it from Qui
The abbot nodded, as though this ignorance was forgivable, if regrettable.
“Aye, it does. Both those poems tell of men who suffered the threefold death—that being a procedure usually reserved for gods or heroes, but, in the case of Diarnmataand Muirchertaig meic Erca, was imposed for crimes committed against the Church.”
Jamie backed a little away from the table and leaned against the wall, folding his arms in what he hoped was a casual ma
“And ye’re thinking that this”—he nodded at the hand—“gentleman had done something o’ the sort?”
“I shouldn’t think so,” the abbot said, “but the sorry fact is, we don’t know.” He put down the lid of the glass box with gentle fingers and left them resting there.
“We dug quite a bit and harvested three months’ worth of peats for our trouble, which was quite enough reward in itself, as I told the brothers who did the work, but we found near the body the gold hilt of a sword—I’m afraid peat does not preserve baser metals at all well—and a cup, inlaid with jewels. And some little distance away—those.” He gestured toward the far wall of the study, where two large curving bits of metal gleamed in the shadow.
“What are they?” Jamie was loath to leave the shelter of his wall, but curiosity drove him toward the objects, which upon inspection proved to be a sort of primitive trumpet, though with a curved long stalk and a flattened end rather than a bell.
“A very old woman who lives near the bog told me that they’re called lir, but I’ve no notion how she knows, and neither did she. Obviously there was more ceremony than murder about this man’s death, though.”
The abbot rubbed a knuckle absently across his upper lip.
“Word got about, of course,” he said. “And the talk! The folk of the country thought he might be everything from the High King of the Druids—assuming there ever to have been such a creature—to Fio
“St. Hugelphus? Is there a St. Hugelphus?”
The abbot’s hand dragged down over his chin and he shook his head, defeated by the perversity of his flock.
“No, but not a whit of good does it do for me to tell them so. They were after building a special chapel and putting the poor fellow’s body in it in a glass case, with beeswax candles burning at the head and foot.” He glanced at Jamie, one brow lifted. “You say you’re newly come to Ireland, so you’ll maybe not know how it is with the Catholics here, since the penal laws.”
“I could maybe guess,” Jamie said, and the abbot smiled in wry response.
“Maybe you could, at that. Leave it that the monastery once owned as much land as a man could walk over in half a day. Now we’ve the buildings left, barely the ground to grow a few heads of cabbage, and lucky to have it. As to dealings with the government and the Protestant landowners, especially the Anglo–Irish settlers …” His lips tightened. “The very last thing I need is to have flocks of pilgrims making their way here to venerate a false saint covered in gold.”
“How did ye stop it?”
“We put the poor fellow back in the bog,” the abbot said frankly. “I doubt he was a Christian, but I said a proper Mass for him, and we buried him with the words. I let it be known that I’d taken his jewels off and sent them to Dublin—I did send the brooch and the sword hilt—to discourage anyone looking to dig him up again. We mustn’t put folk in the way of temptation, now, must we? D’you want to see the cup?”
Jamie’s heart gave an unexpected thump, but he nodded, keeping an expression of mild interest on his face.
The abbot stretched up on his tiptoes to reach down a bunch of keys that hung from a hook by the door and beckoned Jamie to come along.
Outside in the cloister walk, the day was fine, and fat bees buzzed over the herb garden that lay within the square of the cloister, dusted thick with the yellow pollen. The air was mild, but Jamie could not get rid of the sense of chill that had struck him at sight of that clawed black hand with its gold ring.
“Father,” he blurted, “why did you keep his hand?”
The abbot had reached a carved wooden door and was groping through his ring of keys, but looked up at that.
“The ring,” he said. “There are runes upon it, and I think them maybe done in the old Ogham way of writing. I didn’t like to take the thing off, for it’s plain to see that you couldn’t do it without pulling the finger to pieces. So I kept the hand, in order to make a drawing of the ring and its markings, meaning to send it to a fellow I know who claims to have some notion of Ogham. I was meaning to bury the hand with the rest of the body—and still am,” he added, finding the key he wanted. “I just haven’t found the time to do it. Here, now—” The door swung open, silent on leather hinges, revealing a set of steps, and a smell of onions and potatoes floated up from the depths of a dark cellar.