Free Whispers of the Dead by Peter Tremayne

well. That I can follow. Continue.”
    “Brother Eolang’s first impression was that Mercury was very weak in Pisces, being in detriment and fall and also retrograde. Also Mercury was close to the cusp of the eighth house of death. Jupiter on the other hand was powerful. It was in its rulership and angular and disposed Mercury. Jupiter, importantly, also ruled the eighth house of death.”
    Sister Fidelma followed the Brehon’s pointing finger as he indicated the positions on the chart.
    “Now, see here: the moon applied to the sun, ruler of the twelfth house of self-undoing and was combust. We astrologers…,” he smiled deprecatingly, “have long regarded this as the worst condition for any planet. The sun and moon were in the eighth house and the moon in Aries is peregrine or totally without power.”
    Fidelma now found herself struggling to understand the various angles which were depicted on the chart. Her knowledge was insufficient to discern the nuances.
    “In Brother Eolang’s interpretation, what did all of this mean?” she asked.
    “All these indications told Brother Eolang that he was powerless against Abbot Rígán. It told him that he would suffer death at the abbot’s hands either by drowning or poisoning. Drowning was more likely with Pisces being a water sign. And, see, Jupiter in Pisces indicates a large, powerful man, religious and well respected in the community. Who else did that identify but the abbot?”
    “And from your knowledge, you find this interpretation acceptable?” Fidelma asked curiously. Certainly, from her own limited knowledge of how astrologers worked, she could see no flaw in his presentation.
    “I accept it completely,” affirmed Brehon Gormán.
    “Very well. Let us now send for these witnesses to see what they have to say. Firstly, Brother Iarlug who signed the chart as a witness to its provenance.”
    Brother Iarlug was thin and mournful and had no hesitation in verifying that he had witnessed Eolang drawing up his chart. Eolang had also explained what the chart portended. That within the week Eolang would be dead and at the hands of the abbot.
    “Why, then, was nothing done to protect Eolang if he believed this knowledge,” demanded Fidelma, not for the first time.
    “Eolang was a fatalist. He thought there was no escape,” Brother Iarlug assured her, while Brehon Gormán smiled in satisfaction behind him.
    One after the other, Brothers Brugach, Senach and Dubán all told how Brother Eolang had showed them his chart over a week before. He had predicted the very day on which he would be found in the lake. Each of them confirmed that they believed in inescapable fate.
    Fidelma was exasperated.
    “Everyone here seems a slave to predestination. Has no one free will?” she sneered.
    “Fate is…” began Brehon Gormán.
    “Fate is the fool’s excuse for failure,” she snapped at him. “Am I to believe that you believed this event would happen and simply sat down and waited for it?”
    “It is the fate of the leaf to float and the stone to sink,” intoned Brother Dubán. “We cannot change our destiny. Even the New Faith tells us that. In this place we have all studied the writings of the great Augustine of Hippo—
De Civitate Dei, The City of God.
Does he not argue that we cannot escape our fate? Our fate was predestined even before we were born. Even before God made the world, the Omnipotent One had decreed the fate of the meanest among us.”
    “On the contrary. Did not our own great theologian Pelagius argue in
De Libero Arbitrio
—
On Free Will
—that meek acceptance offate is destructive to man’s advancement? We are given information to make choices upon, not to sit back and do nothing. Doing nothing, as Augustine suggests we do, imperils the entire moral law of mankind. We have to take the initial and fundamental steps for our salvation. If we are not responsible for our actions, good or bad, then there is nothing to restrain ourselves from indulging