Read Condemned to Death for Free Online

recollected, Fergus had talked of a visit from his lawyer cousin, another MacClancy, from the south of the kingdom and surely a matter like this would have been discussed.
    ‘If the dead man is the result of a sentence of
fingal
, and I’m not sure of that,’ she said in answer to Cael, ‘then I suppose our only duty is to see that he gets a decent burial. It seems to me that if it is, then the body must have been swept up from beyond the River Shannon, from the Kingdom of Kerry. Brehon MacClancy, the cousin of the Brehon that you knew, Cael and Cian, the one that died at Bunratty, well, he said nothing to me about judging such a case and his cousin, Brehon MacClancy from the south of the kingdom, has recently visited him, therefore this body must have come from further down the coastline.’ The MacClancy dynasty of legal families stretched over the entire south-west of Ireland.
    ‘So, it must be Kerry. Cian and me have been to Kerry, went across on a boat when we were living with that old man, Brehon MacClancy, the old goat,’ she added with her usual downrightness.
    ‘
De mortuis nihil nisi bonum
,’
said Cormac with a lofty air and then spoiled it by saying, ‘Mind you, he deserved to be killed.’
    Mara allowed them to chat on about the events surrounding the death of the former Brehon MacClancy for a few minutes, though she was surprised that their attention was so easily diverted from the present to the past. It was not like any one of the three. They were still discussing the death of the elderly Brehon as she walked up to meet Finbar and take from him her satchel and to give him an errand to take his mind off his troubles. He looked, she thought in a concerned fashion, very white-faced and worried.
    ‘Finbar,’ she said, ‘could you move all over the beach, top, bottom, sand dunes, and let me know any places from which the boat with the body can be seen. Be very thorough about it, won’t you.’
    That she thought would keep him busy until Nuala arrived and also keep him away from the rather awkward and excessive pity that the other scholars still showed towards him ever since the end-of-year results had been announced. She would have to make up her mind what could be done with him if he was sure that his own father, the Brehon of Cloyne, would not welcome him home. He wrote a neat hand and perhaps it might be possible to get him a job as a clerk to a man of affairs – even perhaps someone in Galway, she thought, and resolved to have a word with a lawyer friend of hers in that city.
    ‘How many fishing families are there at this camp?’ she asked when she returned to the other three. They seemed to have exhausted the subject of Brehon MacClancy and were sitting silently gazing out to sea. She took from her satchel a sheet of vellum, her horn and a well-mended pen. The flat rock made a good surface and she handed the pen to Cian and Cormac began to recite the names – he had known them all since babyhood:
    ‘Fernandez MacFelim; Brendan and Etain, the samphire-gatherers; Setanta and Cliona …’
    One by one the names were mentioned and checked by frequent glances to the top of the beach and when they had finished Cian had written a neat column of ten families, including Brendan and Etain. To her relief her scholars did not then do what she had expected them to do, which was to speculate on this death, but began questioning her about the lands ruled over by McCarthy Mór, who still styled himself King of Desmond – although the majority of the lands in his one-time kingdom were now owned by the Earl of Desmond. They all, she thought, fancied a jaunt down into the southern part of the country and were rather more stimulated than made anxious by the news that most of the Kingdom of Kerry was in enemy hands.
    ‘Brehon MacEgan,’ she said now in answer to their questions about the household of McCarthy Mór. ‘He is a relative of the MacEgan who runs the law school of Duniry in east Galway.’
    ‘We