Condemned to Death by Cora Harrison Read Free Book Online Page B

bent down and examined the narrow, brittle shafts of blue-green grass. It was a marvellous grass for knitting the sand into a bank – its roots spread and entangled each plant with the others around it, but its very brittleness made it vulnerable and the narrow keel of the small boat had sliced the stems and leaves, leaving the broken edges to mark the path between the top of the sand dune and the channel of the Caher River which wound its way through the mountains and discharged its fresh water into the ocean. The puzzle of how the body got to the sea was now solved.

Four
Uraicecht Becc
(Small Primer)
    The physician has an honour price of seven
sét
s and this does not increase for any reason so a master of the profession has the same honour price as an ordinary physician.
    Before a physician is allowed to practise in a kingdom, he (she) has to have public recognition. This is bestowed by an examination of the candidate’s training and proficiency by two recognized physicians.
    A fine is exacted if the physician does not cure a curable illness, either through lack of knowledge or because of malice.
    N uala was with them half an hour later. She had brought her apprentice Liam and a man who worked on her farm with her and all three had panniers suspended on either side of their horses. Domhnall conducted the horses across the firm sand and courteously helped her to dismount before organizing the others into various tasks which allowed Mara to speak to Nuala in private. She was glad to see the physician, glad to have her professional advice in this case, which had started off as a sad occurrence, and now, in her mind, had changed into a puzzling case of murder.
    ‘I thought that I could probably do an autopsy here on the beach rather than bring him all those miles through the mountain back to Rathborney,’ Nuala said in an undertone to Mara as she surveyed the dead man in the boat. ‘I can put up a screen, we’ve brought a tarpaulin and there will be plenty of sea water to wash away the marks afterwards. We’ve brought a bucket, but I thought we could probably get some more from the fishermen, if necessary, and I’ve got my tools here. The boat will do as well as a table, or we can use one of the flat rocks. In any case,’ Nuala took a quick look at the damp, firm sand beneath her feet and nodded, ‘yes, it’s certainly tidal up to here. By the next low tide all marks will have been washed away. An ideal place for an autopsy; I must tell some of my colleagues about this.’ She gazed thoughtfully at the body, bending over and examining the tongue and then straightening up.
    ‘What is it that you want to know, Mara?’ she asked.
    ‘The cause of death, certainly; and I suppose,’ continued Mara, ‘I am wondering whether this is a death from exposure – a man who was judged in some place south-west of here and who was set upon the tide as a murderer of close kin and was abandoned to the wind and the ocean waves, or whether,’ and here she could hear her own voice hardening, becoming direct and focused, ‘or whether,’ she continued, ‘this man was killed somewhere near here, and that the appearance of a death by the sentence of
fingal
has been faked and the corpse should be investigated as a secret and unlawful murder.’
    ‘Last meal – time of death, you’ll need to know all that sort of thing.’ Nuala, as always, was brisk and professional. Even when she was twelve years old she was so accomplished in medical matters that it was whispered in the Burren that the child was a better physician than her father, Malachy, and was, in fact, a reincarnation of her grandfather. Many people sought the advice of the daughter rather than the father and this made tensions and divisions grow between them. Now, twelve years later, after long years of study under the supervision of the physician at Thomond and travel to Italy to learn the latest methods and knowledge of the human body, she was the envy of many kingdoms.