A Secret and Unlawful Killing by Cora Harrison

good enough for the son of a taoiseach and, by all accounts, this is a young man with great notions about himself.’
    Diarmuid nodded emphatically. ‘He’s in love, all right,’ he said firmly. ‘He would carry the clouds for her,’ he added in a low voice, almost as if he were speaking to himself.
    Mara was silent for a moment. She had never heard the phrase before. She looked at Diarmuid, but he was not looking at her, just gazing into the distance. His face had a lonely, sentimental expression. Was he thinking of young Donal O‘Brien and his love for the pretty little Maeve, she
wondered, or was he thinking of himself and his twenty years of loyalty to the friend of his youth? She felt sorry for him; she suspected that he had been in love with her all of her life. She remembered his anguish when he heard the news that she was to marry Dualta, a young student at her father’s law school, and his disgust when Dualta, contrary to Brehon law, had revealed secrets from the marriage bed in the local alehouse. Without Diarmuid’s loyalty to her, she might never have been able to divorce Dualta and to rid herself of an unworthy husband. Would it have been better for her if she had married Diarmuid rather than Dualta? They would have been very happy together and he, she knew, would have taken, as much as was possible, the weight off her shoulders. She dismissed the fanciful thought. Now she would have to deal with the present and make sure that young Maeve and her lover, Donal O’Brien, had nothing to do with the murder of Ragnall MacNamara.
    ‘I’m going down there now,’ she said. ‘I have to break the news of her father’s death to her.’
    He looked back at her then. ‘Are you going down to visit young O’Brien, too, today? Would you like me to come with you? They say that he has a bit of a bad temper. He always seems to be in some fight or other whenever he visits an alehouse.’
    ‘I think I have plenty of experience in managing bad-tempered young men,’ said Mara with a chuckle. ‘No, you go back now, Diarmuid, I’ve taken up enough of your time for today. I’ll be around to see you during the next few days.’
     
     

    The lane to Shesmore was long and winding, with hedges so high that, even mounted on horseback, Mara could not see over the top of them. Being the only farm between Noughaval and Lemeanah it must be a very lonely place for a girl, Mara thought compassionately. Still, perhaps that had added to her attractions for young Donal O’Brien. The kingdom of the Burren was a sociable place, with all the inhabitants taking full advantage of the many fairs and horse-racing events, as well as the four big festivals of Imbolc, Bealtaine, Lughnasa and Samhain, so Donal would have been meeting all the other young girls continually from childhood onwards. Maeve, with all her prettiness, would have come as a welcome novelty to him if he had suddenly met her one day in the lane that joined the lands of Lemeanah Castle to Shesmore.
    Shesmore itself was a prosperous-looking farmhouse, originally a cottage Mara surmised, but with additions so that now the whole was a substantial, L-shaped, two-storeyed building with windows filled with thick opaque glass. Ragnall had obviously done well for himself during his stewardship of the MacNamara clan. Very few people in the Burren had glass in their windows; most were content with wooden shutters and perhaps a piece of linen nailed across the window frame during the summer months.
    Maeve was at home; she came out at the sound of the horse hoofs on the well-paved yard.
    ‘Brehon,’ she said. Maeve was startled to see her; there was no doubt about that. It took a minute before she added politely: ‘Tá failte romhat.’ There was a definite note of wariness in the young voice, despite the routine words of welcome.

    ‘Dia’s Muire agat,’ replied Mara, walking her mare to the mounting-block. She eyed the girl carefully. She bore no apparent signs of sorrow or