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won’t take long. Cormac, you measure two paces from the wall. Art, the next two paces …’
    ‘Did you go into the stables at all, Sorley?’ asked Mara with feigned anxiety. ‘That would be more difficult with all the straw … No? Well, that’s good. Let’s walk along the path towards the church together. The sun should pick up a gleam from the metal. Where were you when you noticed that it was missing?’
    At that moment there was a shout from Domhnall. ‘It’s been found, Brehon.’
    With a feeling of thankfulness, Mara turned back. She had better things to do than searching fields and roadways for a key. She was not, moreover, surprised to be summoned back so quickly. Mór was bold and decisive.
    ‘Found it under that chest near the hooks,’ she was shouting, waving the large key triumphantly. ‘You must have dropped it and it got kicked under there when we were serving.’
    It was a possible story. The kitchen would have been hectic with the three women and the serving boys dodging in and out of each other’s way, carrying heavy trays, their eyes stinging from the heat of the fires and the smoke from the braziers. Sorley, however, looked sceptical, and as he tied the key back on Mara observed the complication of the knot which secured it to his jerkin and guessed that he was not convinced that it could just have fallen off and then been kicked under the chest. He drew in a long breath and Mór looked at him defiantly.
    However, at that moment Blad came out with Father MacMahon and Ardal O’Lochlainn on either side of him. Ardal was, as usual, grave and slightly withdrawn, but Father MacMahon was positively merry with a broad smile on his lips and a slight stagger to his walk. Blad had, Mara guessed, drowned the memory of an unsatisfactory amount of pilgrims with a bowl of brandy and the priest had taken his full share.
    ‘Wonderful day, Sorley,’ he said exultantly. ‘All the pilgrims praised how beautifully you keep the tower. They thought our arrangements so much better than at other places of pilgrimage.’
    None of them had said anything of the sort, to Mara’s knowledge, but, she thought charitably, perhaps a priest had a God-given ability to read minds. She hastened to add her morsel towards obliterating the painful memory of the missing key.
    ‘Everyone must admire the tower,’ she said solemnly. She had heard again and again how Sorley and his father had built that little tower when the church of Kilnaboy had purchased the relic of the true cross from a church in Rome. ‘It is so wonderfully built and so cleverly designed. It’s like Jacob’s ladder ascending to heaven,’ she concluded. That was, she modestly considered, a stroke of genius. For the first time during the day, Sorley smiled the smile of a satisfied man.
    Father MacMahon positively beamed. He cleared his throat pompously and turned to the boys. ‘What is it that the Bible says?’ he demanded, and then without waiting for an answer he continued: ‘“
And he dreamed, and behold a ladder was set up on the earth, and the top of it reached to heaven: and behold the angels of God ascending and descending on it.
” That’s right, isn’t it?’
    He hiccupped slightly, and while Domhnall assured him solemnly that he was correct in his memory of the quotation, Cormac and Art, once more overcome by giggles, bolted across the courtyard and set off running towards the church, followed by Slevin and Finbar. Mara smiled at Domhnall.
    ‘Better get them back,’ she said with a glance at the stables where her Arab mare, a gift from King Turlough ten years ago, was standing patiently in the cool shade, tolerating the companionship of the boys’ ponies. ‘Such a marvellous meal and a wonderful occasion, as always, but now we must return,’ she said, addressing Father MacMahon and Blad. ‘Will you ride back with us, Ardal?’
    His reply was drowned by Cormac’s shriek and then a deeper roar. In a moment the boys were back in the