Free My Lady Judge by Cora Harrison Page B

changing your mind and going to the summit for the bonfire?’ teased Mara.
    ‘I don’t,’ said Turlough. ‘When you spoke about Brigid’s cooking I suddenly felt a great void within me. Do you think we might disappear now?’
    Mara took one last look around. Yes, Fachtnan had Enda, Moylan, Aidan and Shane with him. Hugh was still with Colman. Why didn’t Hugh go and join the other lads? she wondered. Why was he acting so strangely? Mara wished that she did not have the king with her. She wanted to climb up and see what was troubling Hugh.
    ‘Yes, let’s go down now,’ said Mara. King or no king, she thought, as they began their descent, tomorrow I’ll find out what’s going on with Hugh and Colman.
     
     
    The Burren seemed very empty, deserted except for the figure of one man on horseback, and very quiet also, as they strolled companionably back across the limestone-paved fields, their feet automatically stepping across the grykes filled with the bright green rounded leaves of the maidenhair fern and speckled with tiny rock roses. Turlough, like any country farmer, wore
nail-studded boots and his heavy tread brought out the sharp bittersweet smell of the juniper bushes which grew prostrate over the flat rocks wherever some soil lodged in the crevices. Behind them, at a discreet distance, came the king’s two bodyguards, the soft murmur of their conversation blending with the high sweet voices of birds twittering overhead. They passed the ancient dolmen of Poulnabrone, now standing sentinel over empty flat fields, and then paused for a while to rest.
    The king sat down heavily on the nearest rock and the two young bodyguards stopped at a distance, eyeing the empty landscape keenly. There had been trouble recently between the O’Kellys from north of Galway and the O’Briens of Thomond. The bodyguards would not relax until they were sure that their king was safe from attack. After a few minutes, they also sat down on a flat-topped rock.
    ‘You enjoy being Brehon, don’t you?’
    ‘I do,’ said Mara, surprised at the question, seating herself beside him. ‘I suppose it is what I have wanted ever since I was three or four years old.’ She smiled at the memory of her young self. ‘I used to come to judgement days with my father and listen to everything – it gave me a great thrill, though I’m sure I could not have understood it all. When I went back home I would play a game that I was Brehon and make a little model of Poulnabrone with a few flat stones. I would collect lots of small sharp-pointed stones and wedge them into the grass and pretend that they were the people of the kingdom and then I would address them. I must say that they never interrupted me,’ she finished with a laugh.
    Turlough did not laugh, just looked at her gloomily. ‘It’s your life; that’s what I supposed,’ he said shortly and rose to his feet again, the bodyguards immediately rising also. Mara raised her eyebrows but decided not to enquire. If something were wrong he would tell her eventually.

    ‘You must be hungry,’ she said, setting a good brisk walking pace across the fields of Baur North. Her feet stepped instinctively over the rock roses and the gentians that littered the grass between the slabs of stone, but Turlough stumped along without looking where he was going. He was hungry, she thought. Men were invariably bad-tempered when hungry. It must be getting late.
    In the distance the bell for evening compline came faintly through the air from the Cistercian abbey Sancta Maria Petris Fertilis, Saint Mary of the Fertile Rock, and automatically they both stopped and made the sign of the cross on forehead, breast and shoulders.
    ‘The wind is in the north – east,’ she said with satisfaction. ‘You can hear the bell as if it were only a few fields away. That’s a good wind for this time of year. We’ll have a few fine days now. You’ll have fine weather for your trip around the kingdom tomorrow and a good