Chain of Evidence by Cora Harrison Read Free Book Online

Territory of the O’Donnell – of O’Donnell who had sold his birthright to bend the knee in front of an English king, Henry, the Eighth of that name; O’Donnell who had given up his birthright and his kingship in order to call himself ‘Earl’
.
    Thoughts flashed rapidly through Mara’s mind and suddenly she began to understand.
    ‘Turlough,’ she breathed as he got to his feet, deposited little Cormac on her lap and strode to the edge of the terrace. ‘Turlough, I beseech you not to go. This is a trap. O’Donnell is trying to entrap you and perhaps send you to England. Don’t go; I beseech you. Leave it to other, younger men.’
    ‘O’Donnell! That lap dog of the English!’ exclaimed Turlough in tones of such loathing that Mara realised she had made a mistake.
    ‘Let’s go back to my place, Turlough, and we’ll pick up horses and men-at-arms there,’ shouted Teige O’Brien. ‘Go on, you fellows,’ he dismissed his followers with a peremptory wave, ‘get down the mountain as quickly as you can and meet us with some good horses.’
    ‘By God,’ said Turlough with satisfaction, ‘we may not be in the front of them, but O’Donnell and his cattle raiders will wish that they had never been born by the time that we catch up with them from behind.’
    Mara breathed a sigh of relief. If Turlough was with Teige O’Brien and a detachment of men-at-arms – and, in addition, was behind the raiding party and their pursuers, not much harm could come to him.
    ‘My lord, may we go with you,’ shouted Aidan as the law scholars and their companions came tumbling down the steep, rocky path. Fiona, Mara hoped, was staying with Rhona and her son.
    ‘Certainly not,’ said Mara swiftly, before Turlough could say anything. ‘I am responsible to your parents for you. In any case, Cormac and I need you to guard us and escort us back to the law school.’
    ‘I’m going to beat up O’Donnell,’ shouted Cormac.
    ‘We’d better go back to Cahermacnaghten and get your sword first,’ said Fachtnan swooping up the small boy and placing him on his shoulders. Mara looked at him with gratitude. He was loyal to her and would make sure that the scholars got back, unharmed, to the law school.
    ‘You’ll come, Jarlath, good man yoursel f ?’ shouted Turlough over his shoulder as he lowered his bulk down from a precarious hold on a protruding rock. Fergal and Conall, his bodyguards, swung themselves down behind him, their eyes racking the surrounding mountain anxiously.
    ‘I’ll be ahead of you, my lord,’ called back Jarlath, bounding vigorously in the opposite direction, towards the north side of the mountain. ‘I’ll pick up a horse at Carron Castle and root out Garrett, too. We’ll need ropes and things. He will lose all of his cattle, I’d say; by what I saw, they’re headed in that direction, but hopefully we’ll get them back.’
    ‘And what about you, Stephen?’ queried Mara ignoring the sulky faces of Aidan and Moylan. This would be the moment, she thought, when he would slink away and find some means of joining up with O’Donnell and going back to England, probably on an O’Donnell ship. However, he surprised her.
    ‘I’m not very war-like,’ he said with a slight grimace. ‘Could I form one of your escort – Cormac will protect me, won’t you, Cormac?’ He reached up and patted the little boy on the head.
    ‘I’ll chop the heads off all the O’Donnell clan when I get my sword,’ promised Cormac with a patronising assurance. He shook Stephen’s hand from his head, wriggled down out of Fachtnan’s arms and marched ahead with dignity.
    ‘What about Rhona and Peadar?’ asked Fachtnan, looking back up the mountain.
    ‘You shouldn’t . . .’ began Mara hastily and then stopped. She had been about to say, ‘you shouldn’t have come down without them’,
but then realised Fachtnan’s dilemma: he had to stay with Moylan and Aidan; for two pins, these two would have been off chasing