‘This is madness!’ cried Gobnat.
‘We will see,’ replied Brehon Baithen.
Old Brehon Dathal coughed and stood up.
‘I have listened to these accusations. In my opinion, were I still Chief Brehon, I would stop you now, Fidelma, and dismiss the case at once. There are too many suppositions, and questions pile up for you to answer.’
It was clear that Brehon Baithen was irritated by this intervention, but before he could remonstrate Fidelma replied: ‘Then let me continue and I will answer them.’
‘Indeed,’ Brehon Baithen said quickly. ‘We will hear what the learned dálaigh has to say, as is custom in my court, Dathal.’
‘Like all plans,’ Fidelma went on, ‘Gobnat’s plan went awry. First, Sárait came to her sister’s dwelling with Alchú. She thought that while she carried the child with her, Capa would not attack her again. She knew that even in his perverted lust he would never endanger an Eóghanacht baby. He was, strangely, a loyal servant of my family. Gobnat had no such loyalty — only hatred.
‘Although Gobnat planned to kill her sister in cold blood, the murder was done in a fit of rage. The number of knife wounds demonstrates that. How she must have hated Sárait. She struck her again and again in her fury. The head wound occurred when Sárait fell, striking her head against a small cauldron by the fireplace that I noticed had been dented. At least that is my guess. The murder, I believe, was done in Gobnat’s house. Where else would Sárait go in response to an urgent message from her sister but to her sister’s house? Gobnat’s aim was to hide the body at Delia’s house so that it would be found with the cloak. But before she could do so, Capa, her husband, came home. Capa was no angel and he knew what would happen to him if Gobnat was caught and told her reasons. He now had to get rid of Sárait’s body and little Alchú.
‘Something prevented him from taking the body to Delia’s house, and hence the first flaw in the plot. The other thing was that by some strange morality he could not bring himself to kill the baby. Sárait had been right. He could not do it directly, but he left the child in the woods to die.’
Capa was standing up to protest. His face was pale and the muscles were twitching around his mouth.
‘This is a fantasy! Where is your proof?’
‘When we first start on the path of deceit we have to weave through many side paths. We keep having to cover the original lie by more lies. And more actions. You took the body of Sárait into the woods where Conchoille, the woodsman, later found her. When you simply left the baby elsewhere for the beasts to devour, you did not realise that Corb and Corbnait were nearby. They took the child away with them, believing it to be simply abandoned.
‘You had probably not long returned to your home when Conchoille, who knew Sárait, came running to say he had found her body. You then went through the motions of being an outraged brother-in-law. Gobnat, meanwhile, had to bury the cloak in her own yard for the time being because the discovery of the murder and Alchú’s being missing made it difficult to do anything else.
‘This is where Capa began to act on his own to cover up this terrible affair. He feared the dwarf Forindain could identify Gobnat, and while we were searching for the dwarf in Cnoc Loinge he came across the person he thought was Forindain and killed him. That was a mistake.
‘Gobnat also made a mistake. She had succumbed to Capa’s insistence that they lay another false trail. He had her write a ransom note that would point to Uí Fidgente involvement. The three Uí Fidgente chiefs were to be released in return for Alchú. It was a good idea to do it while Capa was away at Imleach and Cnoc Loinge. But Capa had not realised that we would demand evidence that the person who wrote the note held Alchú. After the meeting when we decided to ask for evidence, he was sent to get a herald’s standard from a room near our chamber and took the opportunity to snatch a pair of baby shoes from our chest. When the shoe was presented as evidence I did not realise that Eadulf had seen it in the chest of clothes well after the abduction. Alchú had not been wearing them. They had been taken long afterwards.
‘I was confused at first by the fact that we found Gormán outside our chamber door at that time. So when Eadulf pointed out that Gormán could not have had the opportunity to take the baby shoes, I asked him how could he be sure.’ She glanced at Eadulf, who took up the story.
‘A servant was inside our chamber preparing it for the evening. If Gormán had just emerged from the chamber she would have seen him. But there had been time for Capa to slip inside and grab the shoes before she entered the room. He did so hurriedly, leaving a piece of clothing trailing out under the lid. Which we wrongly blamed the servant for doing. That was another mistake.’
‘It is still all surmise,’ Brehon Baithen pointed out.
‘Yet this surmise fell into place when Gobnat made a major slip,’ replied Fidelma. She turned towards Capa’s wife with a soft smile of triumph.
Gobnat was concentrating with a frown, trying to remember what she had said.
‘I was in your house the other night looking for Conchoille. You and Capa seemed worried by your dog’s digging in the yard.’
‘Why shouldn’t we be annoyed at the dog?’
‘No one had mentioned or described the cloak worn by the woman who sent the message to the palace that night. Only Forindain, whom you thought dead, had seen it and described it. Only Delia and myself knew the description of the cloak, and only we two knew that it was missing from her trunk … and, of course, one other person — the person who stole it and was wearing it when she gave the false message to Forindain.
‘Thinking that Forindain had been killed, you turned to me and said: “Perhaps some other person will be able to identify the woman who pretended to be me. It should be easy to find someone who wears such a distinctive cloak.” Those were your exact words.’
Gobnat shrugged. ‘So what? Forindain, as you say, was not killed. He described to you the cloak that the woman who sent him to the palace had been wearing and it was a cloak belonging to that whore…’ She was indicating Delia when she stopped. She blinked as she realised what she had said.
Fidelma continued calmly. ‘No one, at that time, had mentioned anything about a woman in a distinctive cloak. How could Gobnat know, unless…?’ She left the question hanging in the air.
There was a moment’s silence and then Capa rose. His voice came out in a scream of rage.
‘It was her … her…’ he yelled, pointing to his wife. ‘She did it and what could I do but protect her? I am not responsible for the deed. I am innocent of it. My role was to protect her…’
Gobnat collapsed as the realisation of her situation dawned on her.
When some order had been restored, Brehon Baithen turned to Fidelma.
‘You said, however, that a dog had solved the puzzle. How was this?’
‘It was Capa’s hound that brought it all together,’ Fidelma agreed solemnly.
Brehon Baithen raised his eyebrows in query. ‘I do not see…’
‘First, when Forindain was called by the woman standing in the shadows, a hound had leapt, probably in play, at him. But the woman called it away. That of itself was nothing. Then, what woke Corb and Corbnait in the wood and led them to find Alchú abandoned there? It was the howling of a hound and the sound of someone calling it away. When I saw Capa’s hound digging in the yard, I was surprised that it seemed to upset both Capa and Gobnat. I suspect that it was where Gobnat initially hid the cloak and the remaining baby shoe. That night, Gobnat dug them up and did what she had initially intended — she waited until dark and reburied them in Delia’s yard. She could not have planned it better, for I was there when the hound came along and dug them up again. But why would a hound dig up these particular clothes? The answer was that Gobnat had worn them and her scent, which the hound recognised, was on them. That is what attracted the dog to them.’