“So, this Brother Gormgilla went to the chamber of the Venerable Connla on the morning of the sabbath? What then?” encouraged Fidelma.
“The facts are straightforward enough. Gormgilla entered and found the Venerable Connla hanging from a beam just above his bed. There was a sign that a valuable personal item had been taken, that is, a rosary. Some valuable objects were also missing from the chapel which adjoins the chamber of the Venerable Connla.”
“These discoveries were made after Brother Gormgilla had roused the community, having found the body of the Venerable Connla?”
“They were.”
“And your deduction was. .?”
“Theft and murder. I put it in my report to the abbot.”
“And to whom do you ascribe this theft and murder?”
“It is also in my report to the abbot.”
“Remind me,” Fidelma insisted sharply.
“For the two days previous to the death of the Venerable Connla, some itinerants were observed to be camping in nearby woods. They were mercenaries, warriors who hired themselves out to anyone who would pay them. They had their womenfolk and children with them. Our community, as you know, has no walls around it. We are an open settlement for we have always argued that there is no need at all to protect ourselves from any aggressor, for who, we thought, would ever wish harm to our little community?”
Fidelma treated his question as rhetorical and did not reply.
“You have suggested that these itinerant mercenaries entered the community at night to rob your chapel.” Her tone was considered. “You have argued that the Venerable Connla must have been disturbed by them; that he went to investigate and that they turned on the old man and hanged him from his own roof beam and even robbed him.”
“That is so. It is not so much an argument as a logical deduction from the facts,” the Father Superior added stiffly.
“Truly so?” Fidelma gave him a quick scrutiny Father Máilín read a quiet sarcasm there.
The Father Superior stared back defiantly but said nothing.
“Tell me,” continued Fidelma. “Does it not strike you as strange that an elderly man, who needed help to rise in the morning as well as to be escorted to the chapel, would rise in the night on hearing intruders and go alone into the chapel to investigate?”
Father Máilín shrugged.
“People, in extremis, have been known to do many extraordinary things: things that are either out of character or beyond their capabilities.”
“If I have the right information, the Venerable Connla was nearly ninety. In that case. .?” Fidelma eloquently spread her hands.
“In his case, it does not surprise me,” affirmed Father Máilín. “He was frail but he was a man of a very determined nature. Why, twenty and five years ago, when he was a man entering the latter years, Connla insisted on bearing the cross of Clonmacnoise in the battle of Ballyconnell when Diarmuid Mac Aodh was granted a victory over the Uí Fidgente. Connla was in the thick of the battle and armed with nothing but Christ’s Cross for self-protection.”
Fidelma suppressed a sigh, for all Ireland knew the story of the Venerable Connla, which was why the old monk’s name was a byword for moral and physical courage throughout the five kingdoms of Ireland.
“Yet five and twenty years ago is still a quarter of a century before this time and we are talking of an old man who needed help to rise and go to chapel as a regular course.”
“As I have said, he was a determined man.”
“Therefore, if I understand your report correctly, you believe that the Venerable Connla, hearing some robbers moving in the chapel, left his bed and went to confront them without rousing anyone else? That these robbers then overpowered him and hanged him in his own bedchamber?”
“I have said as much.”
“Yet doesn’t it also strike you as strange that these thieves and robbers, thus disturbed, took the old man back to his chamber and hanged him there? Surely a thief, so disturbed, might strike out in fear and seek to escape. Was Connla a tall man who, in spite of his frailty, might have appeared a threat?”
Father Máilín shook his head.
“Age had bent him.”
“Then the Venerable Connla could not have prevented the escape of the thieves nor even pursued them. Why would they bother to take him and, presumably, get him to show them the way back to his chamber to kill him?”
“Who knows the minds of thieves and murderers?” snorted Father Máilín. “I deal with the facts. I don’t attempt to understand their minds.”
“Nevertheless, that is the business in which I am engaged because in so considering the ‘why’ and ‘wherefore’, often one can solve the ‘how’ and ‘who.’ ” She paused for a moment and when he did not respond, she added: “After this barbaric act of sacrilege, you reported that they then removed some valuable items and went calmly off into the night?”
“The itinerants were certainly gone by the next morning when one of the outraged brethren went to their camp. The emotional attitude of the itinerants, as to whether they be calm or otherwise, is not for me to comment on. I will leave that to you to judge.”
“Very well. You say that Brother Gormgilla was the first to discover the body of the Venerable Connla?”
“Brother Gormgilla always roused the Venerable Connla first.”
“Ah, just so. I shall want to see this Brother Gormgilla.”
“But I have told you all. .”
Fidelma raised an eyebrow, staring at him with cold, blue eyes.
Father Máilín hesitated and shrugged. He reached for a hand bell and jangled it. A member of the community entered but when the Father Superior asked that Brother Gormgilla be summoned, Fidelma intervened. She did not want Father Máilín interfering in her questioning.
“I will go to the Brother myself. I have trespassed on your valuable time long enough, Father Máilín.”
The Father Superior rose unhappily as Sister Fidelma turned and accompanied the religieux from the room.
Brother Gormgilla was a stocky, round-faced man, with a permanent expression of woe sitting on his fleshy features. She introduced herself briefly to him.
“Had you known the Venerable Connla for a long time, Brother?” she asked.
“For fifteen years. I have been his helper all that time. He would soon be in his ninety-first year had he been spared.”
“So you knew him very well?”
“I did so. He was a man of infinite wisdom and knowledge.”
Fidelma smiled briefly.
“I know of his reputation. He was spoken of as one of our greatest philosophers, not merely in this kingdom but among all five kingdoms of Ireland. So he was a convert to the Faith?”
“As were many in our poor benighted country when he was a young man. At that time, most of us cleaved to the old gods and goddesses of our fathers. The Faith was not so widespread through our kingdoms. Connla’s own father was a Druid and a seer. When he was young, Connla told me, he was going to follow the arts of his father’s religion. But he was converted and took his new name.”
“And became a respected philosopher of the Faith,” added Fidelma. “Well, tell me. . in fact, show me, how and where you discovered his body?”
Brother Gormgilla led the way toward the main chapel around which the various circular buildings of the community were situated. Next to the chapel was one small circular building outside the door of which the monk paused.
“Each morning, just before the Angelus, I came here to rouse and dress the Venerable Connla,” he explained.
“And on that morning. .? Take me through what happened when you found Connla was dead.”
“I came to the door. It was shut and locked. That was highly unusual. I knocked upon it and not being able to get an answer, I went to a side window.”
“One moment. Are you telling me that you did not possess a key to Connla’s chamber?”
“No. There was only one key, which the Venerable Connla kept himself.”