Condemned to Death Read Online Free

holiday. You’re looking tired, so you are. I said the same to Cumhal, last night. She looks tired and worried, that’s what I said.’
    ‘That’s good news,’ said Mara, ignoring the bit about herself. Brigid had been her nurse, almost her mother, and she still fussed over her as though she was only five years old. Cumhal was a very sensible, experienced man and there was a good view of the ocean from the farm’s bog, which lay in a dip between two mountain peaks. He would have been able to see whether all came in good order – and they would not have been singing unless all had gone well with this fishing trip.
    Her scholars would be having a holiday of a lifetime, going out in boats, eating and sleeping on the beach of Fanore, helping to smoke the enormous catch of mackerel and herring that was brought in from the sea by the fishermen and themselves. Mara missed the sound of the eager voices from the law school, but revelled in the quiet that allowed every note of the larks’ high song and the swallows’ chirping to be heard clearly in the still air.
    It was a beautiful late June morning, she thought as she walked on down the road, averting her mind from the problem of Finbar and just luxuriating in the calm and peace. The cows and their calves wandered in a leisurely way over the limestone that paved the fields and snatched morsels of succulent green grass from between the stones. It was interesting that they avoided the clusters of dark and light purple orchids which grew amongst the grasses. Instinct was a marvellous thing, she reflected, watching how the bees seemed to go straight towards a cluster of pale woodbine flowers that had just opened that morning – instinct was something that she never ignored in herself, though the long training of the law school had guided her towards overlaying it with reason, with probability and with a strong respect for the law.
    Her thoughts had strayed to some past cases when she was roused by the sound of hoofs on the paved road that led from the law school to the coast. Immediately she was alert. The sound alarmed her. It was not a neighbour trotting along to see to cows in an outlying farm, nor yet a visitor – the hour was far too early. This was someone coming fast towards her – coming for an urgent reason. Mara stood very straight and waited until around the corner came, very quickly, on a powerful pony from the Connemara Mountains, the oldest pupil in her law school, and her grandson, Domhnall O’Davoren. Had something happened during the three days since she had left her scholars at Fanore?
    Is all well?
She almost said the words, but then checked herself. If all was well, Domhnall would not be here. He would be helping to beach the morning catch of fish, would be slotting them in line above the fires made from dried seaweed and pieces of sun-baked driftwood. No, something was wrong and she braced herself for the news. Cormac, she thought, and realized how vulnerable any woman with child would always be.
    But Domhnall, when she pulled up his pony in front of her, said nothing about Cormac.
    ‘Brehon,’ he said with his usual calm air of respect, ‘Brehon, we’ve found a body.’
    ‘What happened?’ she asked when they arrived at Fanore less than an hour later. She had already heard the story from Domhnall, but he was discreet beyond his years and said nothing when she asked this question of the small crowd assembled to meet her, and it was Fernandez, the natural leader, who came forward. His voice was quite loud, almost as though he deliberately pitched so that it would be heard by all who were on the beach.
    ‘Well, it happened like this; we came in on the tide, Brehon,’ he said. ‘Just about an hour before full tide. We left the boats in the water while everyone got buckets and bags and emptied the nets and boats of the fish.’ He told the story well, thought Mara, imagining how the beach would have been alive with activity, the children, the women