Eadulf cleared his throat nervously.
‘There is a door through there that leads to the cells where Basil Nestorios and I were held. It also gives access to Uaman’s chambers.’
‘Take me there. Conri, you and your men can search these outbuildings.’ She turned and made for the door that Eadulf had indicated without waiting for an acknowledgement.
The living chambers of the fortress were certainly deserted and had been ransacked of furniture. They must have been picked bare of goods when the local villagers, long dominated by Uaman, had attacked the place. It was not long before they all met up again in the courtyard, certain now there was no one else in the ruined fortress. However, Conri was standing with some excitement showing on his face.
‘Come and look at this, lady,’ he invited, waving his sword towards the doors of what appeared to be storerooms. ‘What do you make of this?’
The storerooms seemed full of cases and barrels.
Fidelma went to them and examined them quickly.
‘These cases have been immersed in the sea,’ she observed. ‘It looks as though someone has rescued them from the remains of the shipwreck.’ Fidelma noticed the watermarks on the boxes and barrels. ‘Mostly oil and wine from Gaul, but look at these.’
They came forward and peered over her shoulder. One of the boxes had been prised open.
‘Gold!’ exclaimed Eadulf.
‘Gold, indeed, and not our native gold because it is too pale,’ added Conri. ‘Our gold has a reddish tinge to it.’
Fidelma stood up and regarded the stored goods, head on one side. ‘Come,’ she finally said. ‘Let us go outside and see if there is anything else this island can reveal.’
They left the circular fortress, walking along the grassy knoll. The low tide revealed long stretches of sandy pebbled beaches but at the southern end there were rocks that stretched out under the water. They had no difficulty in spotting the rotting timbers of the main bulk of a wreck still protruding from the water. It was clearly a merchantman but it had been dashed so hard against the rocks that its masts were broken and timbers smashed. Only its stern seemed intact, and even that was fast decaying in the rough winter seas.
Then the smell caught at their nostrils. Among the prickly bushes that lined the beaches lay more decomposing bodies. They had been there for some time and the carrion had been feasting. Trying to control her look of distaste, Fidelma approached one of them. Her eyes took in the remnants of clothing.
‘Seamen, foreign seamen,’ she muttered. ‘I have seen that style of clothing somewhere.’
It was Eadulf who supplied the answer.
‘When I was returning from Rome, I took passage on a Gaulish merchant ship, and they wore a similar style of clothing.’
‘Gaulish? Mugron identified the boot that was found as that of a Gaulish seaman. That makes sense.’
‘Those poor wretches, drowning so near to land,’ muttered Conri.
‘Look at this.’ Fidelma pointed to one of the corpses.
Holding a hand over his mouth to avoid the stench, Conri, with Eadulf at his shoulder, did so.
‘This man did not drown. He has a broken sword blade snapped off between his ribs.’
Eadulf was aghast.
‘You mean these men made it ashore and were cut down?’
‘The man who killed this sailor thrust his sword in but it must have been ill tempered, for when he tried to withdraw the blade it broke,’ Fidelma explained. ‘Thus the tip of the blade remains in the rotting flesh as a mute testimony to the crime.’
Eadulf pointed to another corpse which lay on its back.
‘The skull of this one seems smashed. It might have been done in the wreck or against the rocks…’
‘Then how did the man manage to crawl up here so far above the waterline?’ queried Fidelma. She slowly shook her head. ‘We are seeing nothing but plain and gruesome murder. Either that ship was deliberately wrecked or people stood on this shore waiting for the survivors and killed them.’
The usually silent warrior, Socht, had been looking at the channel between the tip of the island and the southern shore.
‘It would take a bad seaman and bad luck to run ashore here even in darkness, lady,’ he muttered.
‘Could it be that the Abbess Faife and her companions were passing here when this deed occurred? They saw this crime and had to be silenced?’ Conri speculated.
‘If so, then there are matters that puzzle me,’ said Eadulf.
They turned to him with expressions of curiosity.
‘Well, if it was the intention to keep this matter a secret, why leave Abbess Faife so close to the scene, along the roadside where Mugron found her a short time later? Why have these bodies been left strewn on this island and floating in the waters around it? Why leave the booty in the fortress with gates and doors wide open so that anyone could — even as we died-enter and discover it?’
‘The questions are pertinent,’ agreed Fidelma.
‘But are there answers to them?’ demanded Conri.
‘It shows that whoever did this thing is supremely confident,’ Eadulf concluded. ‘That they fear no one in this area.’
No one commented and so Eadulf continued.
‘There was only one person who had such power and overweening belief in himself…’ Eadulf paused and then shrugged. ‘But I saw him die. Now there is only one undisputed chief of this land.’
‘Slebene!’ muttered Conri.
‘Is there any other?’ Eadulf challenged.
‘Well,’ agreed Conri, ‘only the wronged dead are allowed to come back from the Otherworld on the night of the feast of Samhain to wreak vengeance on the living of this world. As Uaman was not wronged when he perished here, though he wronged many himself, he does not qualify to return on the feast of Samhain. So I agree with Eadulf, we must beware of Slebene.’
Fidelma peered around the deserted island and a cold wind caught at her, causing her to shiver slightly.
‘There seems much wrong in this land of the Corco Duibhne. Yet before we can accuse Slebene we must gather proof against him.’
Eadulf was unhappy that Fidelma did not support his view that it was more than apparent that Slebene was to blame.
‘There can be no other explanation,’ he said determinedly.
‘Perhaps not, but I am only interested in what can be argued before the Brehons.’ Conri was about to speak when Fidelma held up her hand. ‘We will speak of this no more until we can argue fact and not speculation.’
Another gust of cold air hit them and Eadulf glanced at the darkening, grey sea with its choppy waves. The hour was growing late.
‘The tide is on the turn,’ he said. ‘I think we should go back across the sands to the mainland before we are cut off for the night.’
‘What of the goods in the storeroom? What of the gold?’ demanded Conri.
‘We must leave it. Our first consideration is to find the missing women,’ snapped Fidelma. ‘We can deal with that matter later.’
The journey back was an easier one as they had their own footsteps in the sand to guide them safely over the sand dunes to the firm shore. The sky was darkening when they left the island and they could hear the sibilant whispering of the sea as the oncoming tide gathered for its onslaught across the sand.
‘We have a short time before darkness. Let me see where the body of the abbess was found.’
They collected their horses and Conri led them a short distance along the road and then up through some trees towards the dark shape of a conical stone hut.
‘Mugron found her outside the coirceogach and then dragged the body behind it, packing it with snow to preserve it until he reached Ard Fhearta to alert us.’
Fidelma dismounted and looked about. She realised there would be little to find. Too long had passed and too many people had been here. Also, there had been several falls of snow since the incident, obscuring everything. But the hope of discovering some significant clue was not the reason for her coming. She merely needed to see and feel the atmosphere of the place where the deed was done as it helped her to recreate it in her mind. She looked around. They were out of sight of the island, being round a bend in the road, and the road itself was a short distance away below them.