An Ensuing Evil and Others

THE SPITEFUL SHADOW

“It is so obvious who killed poor Brother Sioda that it worries me.” Sister Fidelma stared in bewilderment at the woebegone expression of the usually smiling, cherubic Abbot Laisran. “I do not understand you, Laisran,” she told her old mentor, pausing in the act of sipping her mulled “wine. She was sitting in front of a blazing fire in the hearth of the abbot’s chamber in the great Abbey of’Durrow.

On the adjacent side of the fireplace, Abbot Laisran slumped in his chair, his wine left abandoned on the carved oak table by his side. He was staring moodily into the leaping flames. “Something worries me about the simplicity of this matter. There are things in life that appear so simple that you get a strange feeling about them. You question whether things can be so simple, and sure enough, you often find that they are so simple because they have been made to appear simple. In this case, everything fits together so flawlessly that I question it.”

Fidelma drew a heavy sigh. She had only just arrived at Durrow to bring a psalter, a book of Latin psalms written by her brother, Colgu, King of Cashel, as a gift for the abbot. But she had found her old friend Abbot Laisran in a preoccupied frame of mine. A member of his community had been murdered, and the culprit had been easily identified as another member. Yet it was unusual to see Laisran so worried. Fidelma had known him since she was a little girl, and it was he who had persuaded her to take up the study of law. Further, when she had reached the qualification of Anruth, one degree below that of Ollamh, the highest rank of learning, it had been Laisran who had advised her to join a religious community on being accepted as a ddlaigh, an advocate of the Brehon Court. He had felt that this would give her more opportunities in life.

Usually, Abbot Laisran was full of jollity and good humor. Anxiety did not sit well on his features, for he was a short, rotund, red-faced man. He had been born with that rare gift of humor and a sense that the world was there to provide enjoyment to those who inhabited it. Now he appeared like a man on whose shoulders the entire troubles of the world rested.

“Perhaps you had better tell me all about it,” Fidelma invited. “I might be able to give some advice.”

Laisran raised his head, and there was a new expression of hope in his eyes. “Any help you can give, Fidelma… Truly, the facts are, as I say, lucid enough. But there is just something about them-” He paused and then shrugged. “I’d be more than grateful to have your opinion.”

Fidelma smiled reassuringly. “Then let us begin to hear some of these lucid facts.”

“Two days ago, Brother Sioda was founded stabbed to death in his cell. He had been stabbed several times in the heart.”

“Who found him and when?”

“He had not appeared at morning prayers. So my steward, Brother Cruinn, went along to his cell to find out whether he was ill. Brother Sioda lay murdered on his bloodstained bed.”

Fidelma waited while the abbot paused, as if to gather his thoughts.

“We have, in the abbey, a young woman called Sister Scathach. She is very young. She joined us as a child because, so her parents told us, she heard things. Sounds in her head. Whispers. About a month ago, our physician became anxious about her state of health. She had become-” He paused as if trying to think of the right word. “-she believed she was hearing voices instructing her.”

Fidelma raised her eyes slightly in surprise.

Abbot Laisran saw the movement and grimaced. “She has always been what one might call eccentric, but the eccentricity has grown so that her behavior became bizarre. A month ago I placed her in a cell and asked one of the apothecary’s assistants, Sister Slaine, to watch over her. Soon after Brother Sioda was found, the steward and I went to Sister Scathachs cell. The door was always locked. It was a precaution that we had recently adopted. Usually the key is hanging on a hook outside the door. But the key was on the inside, and the door was locked. A bloodstained robe was found in her cell and a knife. The knife, too, was bloodstained. It was obvious that Sister Scathach was guilty of this crime.”

Abbot Laisran stood up and went to a chest. He removed a knife whose blade was discolored with dried blood. Then he drew forth a robe. It was clear that it had been stained in blood.

“Poor Brother Sioda,” murmured Laisran. “His penetrated heart must have poured blood over the girl’s clothing.”

Fidelma barely glanced at the robes. “The first question I have to ask is why would you and the steward go straight from the murdered man’s cell to that of Sister Scathach?” she demanded.

Abbot Laisran compressed his lips for a moment. “Because only the day before the murder, Sister Scathach had prophesied his death and the manner of it. She made the pronouncement only twelve hours before his body was discovered, saying that he would die by having his heart ripped out.”

Fidelma folded her hands before her, gazing thoughtfully into the fire. “She was violent then? You say that you had her placed in a locked cell with a Sister to look after her?”

“But she was never violent before the murder,” affirmed the abbot.

“Yet she was confined to her cell?”

“A precaution, as I say. During these last four weeks she began to make violent prophecies. Saying voices instructed her to do so.”

“Violent prophecies but you say that she was not violent?” Fidelma’s tone was skeptical.

“It is difficult to explain,” confessed Abbot Laisran. “The words were violent, but she was not. She was a gentle girl, but she claimed that the shadows from the Otherworld gave her instructions; they told her to foretell the doom of the world, its destruction by fire and flood when mountains would be hurled into the sea and the seas rise up and engulf the land.”

Fidelma pursed her lips cynically. “Such prophecies have been common since the dawn of time,” she observed.

“Such prophesies have alarmed the community here, Fidelma,” admonished Abbot Laisran. “It was as much for her sake that I suggested Sister Slaine make sure that Sister Scathach was secured in her cell each night and kept an eye upon each day.”

“Do you mean that you feared members of the community would harm Sister Scathach rather than she harm members of the community?” queried Fidelma.

The abbot inclined his head. “Some of these predictions were violent in the extreme, aimed at one or two particular members of the community, foretelling their doom, casting them into the everlasting hellfire.”

“You say that during the month she has been so confined, the pronouncements grew more violent.”

“The more she was constrained, the more extreme the pronouncements became,” confessed the abbot.

“And she made just such a pronouncement against Brother Sioda? That is why you and your steward made the immediate link to Sister Scathach?”

“It was.”

“Why did she attack Brother Sioda?” she asked. “How well did she know him?”

“As far as I am aware, she did not know him at all. Yet when she made her prophecy, Brother Sioda told me that she seemed to know secrets about him that he thought no other person knew. He was greatly alarmed and said he would lock himself in that night so that no one could enter.”

“So his cell door was locked when your steward went there after he had failed to attend morning prayers?”

Abbot Laisran shook his head. “When Brother Cruinn went to Sioda’s cell, he found that the door was shut but not locked. The key was on the floor inside his cell…. This is the frightening thing…. There were bloodstains on the key.”

“And you tell me that you found a bloodstained robe and the murder weapon in Sister Scathach’s cell?”

“We did,” agreed the abbot. “Brother Cruinn and I.” “What did Sister Scathach have to say to the charge?” “This is just it, Fidelma. She was bewildered. I know when people are lying or pretending. She was just bewildered. But then she accepted the charge meekly.”

Fidelma frowned. “I don’t understand.”

“Sister Scathach simply replied that she was a conduit for the voices from the Otherworld. The shadows themselves must have punished Brother Sioda as they had told her they would. She said that they must have entered her corporeal form and used it as an instrument to kill him, but she had no knowledge of the fact, no memory of being disturbed that night.”

Fidelma shook her head. “She sounds a very sick person.” “Then you don’t believe in shadows from the Otherworld?” “I believe in the Otherworld and our transition from this one to that but… I think that those who repose in the Otherworld have more to do than to try to return to this one to murder people. I have investigated several similar matters where shadows of the Other-world have been blamed for crimes. Never have I found such claims to be true. There is always a human agency at work.”

Abbot Laisran shrugged. “So we must accept that the girl is guilty?”

“Let me hear more. Who was this Brother Sioda?” “A young man. He worked in the abbey fields. A strong man. A farmer, not really one fitted in mind for the religious life.” Abbot Laisran paused and smiled. “I’m told that he was a bit of a rascal before he joined us. A seducer of women.” “How long had he been with you?”

“A year, perhaps a little more.”

“And he was well behaved during this time? Or did his tendency as a rascal, as you describe it, continue?”

Abbot Laisran shrugged again. “No complaints were brought to me, and yet I had reason to think that he had not fully departed from his old ways. There was nothing specific, but I noticed the way some of the younger religieuse behaved when they were near him. Smiling, nudging each other… You know the sort of thing?”

“How was this prophecy of Brother Siodas death delivered?” she replied, ignoring his rhetorical question.

“It was at the midday mealtime. Sister Scathach had been quiet for some days and so, instead of eating alone in her cell, Sister Slaine brought her to the refectory. Brother Sioda was sitting nearby and hardly had Sister Scathach been brought into the hall than she pointed a finger at Brother Sioda and proclaimed her threat so that everyone in the refectory could hear it.”

“Do you know what words she used?”

“I had my steward note them down. She cried out: ‘Beware, vile fornicator, for the day of reckoning is at hand. You, who have seduced and betrayed, will now face the settlement. Your heart will be torn out. Gormflaith and her baby will be avenged. Prepare yourself. For the shadows of the Otherworld have spoken. They await you.’ That was what she said before she was taken back to her cell.”

Fidelma nodded thoughtfully. “You said something about her knowing facts about Brother Siodas life that he thought no one else knew?”

“Indeed. Brother Sioda came to me in a fearful state and said that Scathach could not have known about Gormflaith and her child.”

“Gormflaith and her child? Who were they?”

“Apparently, so Brother Sioda told me, Gormflaith was the first girl he had ever seduced when he was a youth. She was fourteen and became pregnant with his child but died giving birth. The baby, too, died.”

“Ah!” Fidelma leaned forward with sudden interest. “And you say that Brother Sioda and Sister Scathach did not know one another? How then did she recognize him in the refectory?”

Abbot Laisran paused a moment. “Brother Sioda told me that he had never spoken to her, but of course he had seen her in the refectory and she must have seen him.”

“But if no words ever passed between them, who told her about his past life?”

Abbot Laisran’s expression was grim. “Brother Sioda told me that there was no way that she could have known. Maybe the voices that she heard were genuine?”

Fidelma looked amused. “I think I would rather check out whether Brother Sioda had told someone else or whether there was someone from his village here who knew about his past life.”

“Brother Sioda was from Mag Luirg, one of the Ui Ailello. No one here would know from whence he came or have any connection with the kingdom of Connacht. I can vouch for that.”

“My theory is that when you subtract the impossible, you will find your answers in the possible. Clearly, Brother Sioda passed on this information somehow. I do not believe that wraiths whispered this information.”

Abbot Laisran was silent.

“Let us hear about Sister Slaine,” she continued. “What made you choose her to look after the girl?”

“Because she worked in the apothecary and had some understanding of those who were of bizarre humors.”

“How long had she been looking after Sister Scathach?”

“About a full month.”

“And how had the girl’s behavior been during that time?”

“For the first week it seemed better. Then it became worse. More violent, more assertive. Then it became quiet again. That was when we allowed Sister Scathach to go to the refectory.”

“The day before the murder?”

“The day before the murder,” he confirmed.

“And Sister Slaine slept in the next cell to the girl?”

“She did.”

“And did she always lock the door of Sister Scathachs cell at night?”

“She did.”

“And on that night?”

“Especially on that night of her threat to Sioda.”

“And the key was always hung on a hook outside the cell so that there was no way Sister Scathach could have reached it?”

When Abbot Laisran confirmed this, Fidelma sighed deeply. “I think that I’d better have a word with Sister Scathach and also with Sister Slaine.”

Fidelma chose to see Sister Scathach first. She was surprised by her appearance as she entered the gloomy cell the girl inhabited. The girl was no more than sixteen or seventeen years old, thin with pale skin. She looked as though she had not slept for days; large dark areas of skin showed under her eyes, which were black, wide, and staring. The features were almost cadaverous, as if the skin was tightly drawn over the bones.

She did not look up as Fidelma and Laisran entered. She sat on the edge of her bed, hands clasped between her knees, gazing intentiy on the floor. She appeared more like a lost waif than like a killer.

“Well, Scathach,” Fidelma began gently, sitting next to the girl, much to the surprise of Laisran, who remained standing at the door, “I hear that you are possessed of exceptional powers.”

The girl started at the sound of her voice and then shook her head. “Powers? It is not a power but a curse that attends me.”

“You have a gift of prophecy.”

“A gift that I would willing return to whoever cursed me with it.”

“Tell me about it.”

“They say that I killed Brother Sioda. I did not know the man. But if they tell me that it was so, then it must be so.”

“You remember nothing of the event?”

“Nothing at all. So far as I am aware, I went to bed, fell asleep, and was only awoken when the steward and the abbot came into my cell to confront me.”

“Do you remember prophesying his death in the refectory?”

The girl nodded quickly. “That I do remember. But I simply repeated what the voice told me to say.”

“The voice?”

“The voice of the shadow from the Otherworld. It attends me at night and wakes me if I slumber. It tells me what I should say and when. Then the next morning I repeat the message as the shadows instruct me.”

“You hear this voice… or voices… at night?”

The girl nodded.

“It comes to you here in your cell?” pressed Fidelma. “Nowhere else?”

“The whispering is at night when I am in my cell,” confirmed the girl.

“And it was this voice that instructed you to prophesy Brother Sioda’s death? It told you to speak directly to him? Did it also tell you to mention Gormflaith and her baby?”

The girl nodded in answer to all her questions.

“How long have you heard such voices?”

“I am told that it has been so since I was a little girl.”

“What sort of voices?”

“Well, at first the sounds were more like the whispering of the sea. We lived by the sea, and so I was not troubled at first for the sounds of the sea have always been a constant companion. The sounds were not disturbing but gentle, kind sounds. They came to me more in my head, soft and sighing. Then they increased. Sometimes I could not stand it. My parents said they were voices from the Otherworld. A sign from God. They brought me here. The abbey treated me well, but the sounds increased. I was placed here to be looked after by Sister Slaine.”

“I hear that these voices have become very strident of late.”

“They became more articulate. I am not responsible for what they tell me to say or how they tell me to say it,” the girl added as if in defense.

“Of course not,” Fidelma agreed. “But it seems there was a change. The voice became stronger. When did this change occur?”

“When I came here to this cell. The voice became distinct. It spoke in words that I could understand.”

“You mention voices in the plural and singular. How many voices spoke to you?”

The girl thought carefully. “Well, I can only identify one.”

“Male or female?”

“Impossible to tell. It was all one whispering sound.”

“How did it become so manifest?”

“It was as if I woke up and they were whispering in a corner of the room.” The girl smiled. “The first and second time it happened, I lit a candle and peered round the cell, but there was no one there. Eventually I realized that as strong as the voices were, they must be in my head. I resigned myself to being the messenger on their behalf.”

“And the voice instructed you to do what?”

“It told me to stand in the refectory and pronounce their messages of doom.”

Abbot Laisran leaned forward in a confiding fashion. “Sometimes these messages were of violence against the whole community, and at other times violence against individuals. But it was the one against Brother Sioda that was the most specific and named events.”

Fidelma nodded. She had not taken her eyes from the girl’s face. “Why do you believe this voice came from the Otherworld?”

The girl regarded her with a puzzled frown. “Where else would it be from? I am a good Christian and say my prayers at night. But still the voice haunts me.”

“Have you heard it since the warning you were to deliver to Brother Sioda?”

The girl shook her head. “Not in the same specific way.”

“Then in what way?”

“It has gone back to the same whispering inconsistency, the sound of the sea.”

Fidelma glanced around the cell. “Is this place where you usually have your bed?”

The girl looked surprised for a moment. “This is where I normally sleep.”

Fidelma was examining the walls of the cell with keen eyes. “Who occupied the cells on either side?”

“On that side is Sister Slaine who looks after this poor girl. To the other side is the chamber occupied by Brother Cruinn, my steward.”

“But there is a floor above this one?”

“The chamber immediately above this is occupied by Brother Torchan, our gardener.”

Fidelma turned to the lock on the door of the cell.

Abbot Laisran saw her peering at the keyhole. “Her cell was locked, and the key on the inside when Brother Cruinn and I came to this cell after Brother Sioda had been found.”

Fidelma nodded absently. “That is the one puzzling aspect,” she admitted.

Abbot Laisran looked puzzled. “I would have thought it tied everything together. It is the proof that only Scathach could have brought the weapon and robe into her cell and therefore she is the culprit.”

Fidelma did not answer. “How far is Brother Sioda’s cell from here?”

“At the far end of this corridor.”

“From the condition of the robe that you showed me, there must have been a trail of blood from Brother Sioda’s cell to this one?”

“Perhaps the corridor had been cleaned,” he suggested. “One of the duties of our community is to clean the corridors each morning.”

“And they cleaned it without reporting traces of the blood to you?” She was clearly unimpressed by the attempted explanation. Fidelma rose and glanced at the girl with a smile. “Don’t worry, Sister Scathach. I think that you are innocent of Brother Sioda’s death.” She turned from the cell, followed by a deeply bewildered Abbot Laisran. “Let us see Sister Slaine now.”

At the next cell, Sister Slaine greeted them with a nervous bob of her head.

Fidelma entered and glanced along the stone wall that separated the cell from that of Sister Scathachs. Then she turned to Sister Slaine, who was about twenty-one or — two, an attractive-looking girl.

“Brother Sioda was a handsome man, wasn’t he?” she asked without preamble.

The girl started in surprise. A blush tinged her cheeks. “I suppose he was.”

“He had an eye for the ladies. I presume that you were in love with him, weren’t you?”

The girl’s chin came up defiantly. “Who told you?”

“It was a guess,” Fidelma admitted with a soft smile. “But since you have admitted it, let us proceed. Do you believe in these voices that Sister Scathach hears?”

“Of course not. She’s mad and has now proved her madness.”

“Do you not find it strange that this madness has only manifested itself since she was moved into this cell next to you?”

The girl’s cheeks suddenly suffused with crimson. “Are you implying that-?”

“Answer my question,” snapped Fidelma, cutting her short.

The girl blinked at her cold voice. Then, seeing that Abbot Laisran was not interfering, she said: “Madness can alter, it can grow worse… It is a coincidence that she became worse after Abbot Laisran asked me to look after her. Just a coincidence.”

“I am told that you work for the apothecary and look after sick people? In your experience, have you ever heard of a condition among people where they have a permanent hissing, or whistling in the ears?”

Sister Slaine nodded slowly. “Of course. Many people have such a condition. Sometimes they hardly notice it while others are plagued by it and almost driven to madness. That is what we thought was wrong with Sister Scathach when she first came to our notice.”

“Only at first?” queried Fidelma.

“Until she starting to claim that she heard words being articulated, words that formed distinct messages which, she also claimed, were from the shadows of the Otherworld.”

“Did Brother Sioda ever tell you about his affair with Gorm-flaith, and his child?”

Fidelma changed the subject so abruptly that the girl blinked. It was clear from her reaction that Fidelma had hit on the truth.

“Better speak the truth now, for it will become harder later,” Fidelma advised.

Sister Slaine was silent for a moment, her eyes narrowed as she tried to penetrate behind Fidelma’s inquisitive scrutiny.

“If you must know, I was in love with Sioda. We planned to leave here soon to find a farmstead where we could begin a new life together. We had no secrets from one another.”

Fidelma smiled softly and nodded. “So he did tell you?”

“Of course. He wanted to tell me all about his past life. He told me of this unfortunate girl and her baby. He was very young and foolish at the time. He was a penitent and sought forgiveness. That’s why he came here.”

“So when you heard Sister Scathach denounce him in the refectory, naming Gormflaith and relating her death and that of her child, what exactly did you think?”

“Do you mean, about how she came upon that knowledge?”

“Exactly. Where did you think Sister Scathach obtained such knowledge if not from her messages from the Otherworld?”

Sister Slaine pursed her lips. “As soon as I had taken Sister Scathach back to her cell and locked her in, I went to find Brother Sioda. He was scared. I thought at first that he had told her or someone else apart from me. He swore that he had not. He was so scared that he went to see Abbot Laisran-”

“Did you question Sister Scathach?”

The girl laughed. “Little good that did. She simply said it was the voices. She had most people believing her.”

“But you did not?”

“Not even in the madness she is suffering can one make up such specific information. I can only believe that Sioda lied to me….” Her eyes suddenly glazed and she fell silent as if in some deep thought.

“Cloistered in this abbey, and a conhospitae, a mixed house, there must be many opportunities for relationships to develop between the sexes?” Fidelma observed.

“There is no rule against it,” returned the girl. “Those advocating celibacy and abstinence have not yet taken over this abbey. We still live a natural life here. But Sioda never mixed with the mad one, never with Scathach.”

“But you have had more than one affair here?” Fidelma asked innocently.

“Brother Sioda was my first and only love,” snapped the girl in anger.

Fidelma raised her eyebrows. “No others?”

The girls expression was pugnacious. “None.”

“You had no close friends among the other members of the community?”

“I do not get on with the women, if that is what you mean.”

“It isn’t. But it is useful to know. How about male friends?…”

“I’ve told you, I don’t-”

Abbot Laisran coughed in embarrassment. “I had always thought that you and Brother Torchan were friends.”

Sister Slaine blushed. “I get on well with Brother Torchan,” she admitted defensively.

Fidelma suddenly rose and glanced along the wall once more, before turning with a smile to the girl. “You’ve been most helpful,” she said abruptly, turning for the door.

Outside in the corridor, Abbot Laisran was regarding her with a puzzled expression. “What now?” he demanded. “I would have thought that you wanted to develop the question of her relationships?”

“We shall go to see Brother Torchan,” she said firmly.

Brother Torchan was out in the garden and had to be sent for so Fidelma could interview him in his cell. He was a thickset, muscular young man whose being spoke of a life spent in the open air.

“Well, Brother, what do you think of Sister Scathach?”

The burly gardener shook his head sadly. “I grieve for her as I grieve for Brother Sioda. I knew Brother Sioda slightly but the girl not at all. I doubt if I have seen her more than half a dozen times and never spoken to her but once. By all accounts, she was clearly demented.”

“What do you think about her being driven to murder by voices from the Otherworld?”

“It is clear that she must be placed in the care of a combination of priests and physicians to drive away the evilness that has compelled her.”

“So you think that she is guilty of the murder?”

“Can there be any other explanation?” asked the gardener in surprise.

“You know Sister Slaine, of course. I am told she is a special friend of yours.”

“Special? I would like to think so. We often talk together. We came from the same village.”

“Has she ever discussed Sister Scathach with you?”

Brother Torchan shifted uneasily. He looked suspiciously at Fidelma. “Once or twice. When the abbot first asked her to look after Sister Scathach, it was thought that it was simply a case of what the apothecaries call tinnitus. She heard sounds in her ears. But then Slaine said that the girl had become clearly demented, saying that she was being woken up by the sound of voices giving her messages and urging her to do things.”

“Did you know that Slaine was having an affair with Sioda?” Fidelma suddenly said sharply.

Torchan colored and, after a brief hesitation, nodded. “It was deeper than an affair. She told me that they planned to leave the abbey and set up home together. It is not forbidden by rule, you know.”

“How did you feel about that?”

Brother Torchan shrugged. “So long as Sioda treated her right, it had little to do with me.”

“But you were her friend.”

“I was a friend and advised her when she wanted advice. She is the kind of girl who attracts men. Sometimes the wrong men. She attracted Brother Sioda.”

“Was Brother Sioda the wrong man?”

“I thought so.”

“Did she ever repeat to you anything Brother Sioda told her?”

Torchan lowered his eyes. “You mean about Gormflaith and the child? Sister Slaine is not gifted with the wisdom of silence. She told me various pieces of gossip. Oh…” He hesitated. “I have never spoken to Scathach, if that is what you mean.”

“But, if Slaine told you, then she might well have told others?”

“I do not mean to imply that she gossiped to anyone. There was only Brother Cruinn and myself whom she normally confided in.”

“Brother Cruinn, the steward, was also her friend?”

“I think that he would have liked to have been something more until Brother Sioda took her fancy.”

Fidelma smiled tightly. “That will be all, Torchan.”

There was a silence as Abbot Laisran followed Fidelma down the stone steps to the floor below.

Fidelma led the way back to Sister Scathachs cell, paused, and then pointed to the next door. “And this is Brother Cruinn’s cell?”

Abbot Laisran nodded.

Brother Cruinn, the steward of the abbey, was a thin, sallow man in his mid-twenties. He greeted Fidelma with a polite smile of welcome. “A sad business, a sad business,” he said. “The matter of Sister Scathach. I presume that is the reason for your wishing to see me?”

“It is,” agreed Fidelma easily.

“Of course, of course. A poor, demented girl. I have suggested to the abbot here that he should send to Ferna to summon the bishop. I believe that there is some exorcism ritual with which he is acquainted. That may help. We have lost a good man in Brother Sioda.”

Fidelma sat down unbidden in the single chair that occupied the cell. “You were going to lose Brother Sioda anyway,” she said dryly.

Brother Cruinn’s face was an example of perfect self-control. “I do not believe I follow you, Sister,” he said softly.

“You were also losing Sister Slaine. How did you feel about that?”

Brother Cruinn’s eyes narrowed, but he said nothing.

“You loved her. You hated it when she and Brother Sioda became lovers.”

Brother Cruinn was looking appalled at Abbot Laisran, as if appealing for help.

Abbot Laisran wisely made no comment. He had witnessed too many of Fidelma’s interrogations to know when not to interfere.

“It must have been tearing you apart,” went on Fidelma calmly. “But instead, you hid your feelings. You pretended to remain a friend, simply a friend to Sister Slaine. You listened carefully while she gossiped about her lover and especially when she confided what he had told her about his first affair and the baby.”

“This is ridiculous!” snapped Brother Cruinn.

“Is it?” replied Fidelma as if pondering the question. “What a godsend it was when poor Sister Scathach was put into the next cell to you. Sister Scathach was an unfortunate girl who was suffering, not from imagined whispering voices from the Otherworld, but from an advanced case of the sensation of noises in the ears. It is not an uncommon affliction, but some cases are worse than others. As a little child, when it developed, silly folk-her parents-told her that the whistling and hissing sounds were the voices of lost souls in the Otherworld trying to communicate with her and thus she was blessed.

“Her parents brought her here. She probably noticed the affliction more in these conditions than she had when living by the sea, where the whispering was not so intrusive. Worried by the worsening affects, on the advice of the apothecary, Abbot Laisran placed her in the cell with Sister Slaine, who knew something of the condition, to look after her.”

Fidelma paused, eyes suddenly hardening on him.

“That was your opportunity, eh, Brother Cruinn? A chance to be rid of Brother Sioda and with no questions asked. A strangely demented young woman who was compelled by voices from another world to do so would murder him.”

“You are mad,” muttered Brother Cruinn.

Fidelma smiled. “Madness can only be used as an excuse once. This is all logical. It was your voice that kept awakening poor Sister Scathach and giving her these messages that made her behave so. At first you told her to proclaim some general messages. That would cause people to accept her madness, as they saw it. Then, having had her generally accepted as mad, you gave her the message to prepare for Sioda’s death.”

She walked to the head of his bed, her eye having observed what she had been seeking. She reached forward and withdrew from the wall a piece of loose stone. It revealed a small aperture, no more than a few fingers wide and high.

“Abbot Laisran, go into the corridor and unlock Sister Scathach’s door, but do not open it nor enter. Wait outside.”

Puzzled, the abbot obeyed her.

Fidelma waited and then bent down to the hole.

“Scathach! Scathach! Can you hear me, Scathach? All is now well. You will hear the voices no more. Go to the door and open it. Outside you will find Abbot Laisran. Tell him that all is now well. The voices are gone.”

She rose up and faced Brother Cruinn, whose dark eyes were narrowed and angry.

A moment later, they heard the door of the next room open and a girl’s voice speaking with Abbot Laisran.

The abbot returned moments later. “She came to the door and told me that the voices were gone and all was well.”

Fidelma smiled thinly. “Even as I told her to do so. Just as that poor influenced girl did what you told her to, Brother Cruinn. This hole goes through the wall into her cell and acts like a conduit for the voice.”

“I did not tell her to stab Brother Sioda in the heart,” he said defensively.

“Of course not. She did not stab anyone. You did that.”

“Ridiculous! The bloodstained robes and weapon were in her cell-”

“Placed there by you.”

“The door was locked and the key was inside. That shows that only she could have committed the murder.”

Abbot Laisran sighed. “It’s true, Fidelma. I went with Brother Cruinn myself to Sister Scathach’s cell door. I told you, the key was not on the hook outside the door but inside her cell and the door locked. I said before, only she could have taken the knife and robe inside and locked herself in.”

“When you saw that the key was not hanging on the hook outside the door, Laisran, then did you try to open the door?” Fidelma asked innocently.

“We did.”

“No, did you try to open the door?” snapped Fidelma with emphasis.

Abbot Laisran looked blank for a moment. “Brother Cruinn tried the door and pronounced it locked. He then took his master keys, which he held as steward, and unlocked the door. He had to wiggle the key around in the lock. When the door was open, the key was on the floor on the inside. We found it there.”

Fidelma grinned. “Where Brother Cruinn had placed it. Have Cruinn secured, and I will tell you how he did it later.”

After Brother Cruinn was taken away by attendants summoned by the Abbot Laisran, Fidelma returned to the abbots chamber to finish her interrupted mulled wine and to stretch herself before the fire.

“I’m not sure how you resolved this matter,” Abbot Laisran finally said as he stacked another log on the fire.

“It was the matter of the key that made me realize that Brother Cruinn had done this. Exactly how and, more important, why, I did not know at first. I realized as soon as Sister Scathach told me how she was awoken by the whispering voice at night that it must have come from one of three sources. The voice must have come from one of the three neighboring cells. When she showed me where she slept, I realized from where the voice had come. Brother Cruinn was the whispering in the night. No one else could physically have done it. He also had easy access to Brother Sioda’s locked cell because only he held the master keys. The problem was what had he to gain from Brother Sioda’s death? Well, now we know the answer-it was an act of jealousy, hoping to eliminate Brother Sioda so that he could pursue his desire for Sister Slaine. That he was able to convince you that the cell door was locked and that he was actually opening it was child’s play. An illusion in which you thought that Sister Scathach had locked herself in her cell. Brother Cruinn had placed the key on the floor when he planted the incriminating evidence of the bloodstained weapon and robe.

“In fact, the door was not locked at all. Brother Cruinn had taken the robe to protect his clothing from the blood when he killed Sioda. He therefore allowed no blood to fall when he came along the corridor with robe and knife to where Sister Scathach lay in her exhausted sleep. Remember that she was exhausted by the continuous times he had woken her with his whispering voice. He left the incriminating evidence, left the key on the floor, and closed the door. In the morning, he could go through the pantomime of opening the door, claiming it had been locked from the inside. Wickedness coupled with cleverness, but our friend Brother Cruinn was a little too clever.”

“But to fathom this mystery, you first had to come to the conclusion that Sister Scathach was innocent,” pointed out the abbot.

“Poor Scathach! It is her parents who should be on trial for filling her susceptible mind with this myth about Otherworld voices when she is suffering from a physical disability. The fact was Scathach could not have known about Gormflaith. She was told. If one discounts voices from the Otherworld, then it was by a human agency. The question was who was that agency and what was the motive for this evil charade.”

Abbot Laisran gazed at her in amazement. “I never cease to be astonished at your astute mind, Fidelma. Without you, poor Sister Scathach might have stood condemned.”

Fidelma smiled and shook her head at her old mentor. “On the contrary, Abbot Laisran, without you and your suspicion that things were a little too cut and dried, we should never even have questioned the guilt or innocence of the poor girl at all.”