Free The Subtle Serpent by Peter Tremayne Page B

an average religieuse might possess. If this belonged to the girl whose body you found then it denotes that she was an anchoress.’

    ‘In that, I concur. Most of our community have similarly worked copper crucifixes. We have an abundance of copper in this area and local craftsmen produced many such as that. The girl does not appear to be local, though. A farmer from nearby thought it might have been his missing daughter. He came to see the body but that turned out not to be the case. His daughter had a scar which the body did not possess.’
    Fidelma raised her head from contemplation of the crucifix.
    ‘Oh? When was this farmer come here?’
    ‘He came to the abbey on the day after we found the body. He was named Barr.’
    ‘How did he know the body had been found?’
    ‘News travels rapidly in this part of the world. Anyway, Barr spent a long time examining the body, he obviously wanted to make sure. The corpse may be that of a religieuse from some other district.’
    Indeed, thought Fidelma, it would fit in with the condition of the corpse’s hands if she was a member of a religious house. The women who did not labour in the fields, indeed the men also, prided themselves on having well manicured hands. Fingernails were always kept carefully cut and rounded and it was considered shameful for either men or women to have unkempt nails. One of the great terms of abuse was to call someone créhtingnech or ‘ragged nails’.
    Yet it did not fit with the coarsely-kept feet, the mark of an ankle manacle, and the signs of scourging on the girl’s back.
    The abbess had picked up another piece of cloth and laid it carefully on the table.
    ‘This is the aspen wand which was found tied on the left forearm,’ she announced, carefully throwing back the cloth.
    Fidelma was gazing at a wand of aspen some eighteen inches in length. The first thing that she noticed was that it was notched in regular measurements and then, to one side,
was a line of Ogham, the ancient Irish form of writing. The characters were more newly cut than the measurements on the other side of the stick. She looked closely at them, her lips forming the words.
    ‘Bury her well. The Mórrígu has awakened!’
    Her face whitened. She sat up stiffly and found the abbess’s eye quizzically regarding her.
    ‘You recognise what that is?’ Abbess Draigen asked softly.
    Fidelma nodded slowly: ‘It is a fé .’
    A fé , or rod of aspen, usually with an Ogham inscription, was the measurement by which corpses and graves were calibrated. The fé was the tool of a mortician and was regarded with utmost horror so that no one, on any consideration, would take it in their hand or touch it, except, of course, the person whose business it was to measure corpses and graves. A fé had been the symbol of death and ill-luck since the days of the old gods. Still, the worst imprecation that could be uttered at any person was ‘may the fé be soon measuring you’.
    There was a silence as Fidelma sat for a long time staring down at the aspen wood.
    It was only when she heard a soft but exasperated sigh that she stirred herself and raised her eyes to meet those of the Abbess Draigen.
    It was clear that the abbess knew well what the rod symbolised for her face was troubled.
    ‘You see, now, Fidelma of Kildare, why I could not allow the local bó-aire to assume his magisterial powers on this matter? You see now why I sent a message to Abbot Brocc to dispatch a dálaigh of the Brehon courts who was answerable to none save the king of Cashel?’
    Fidelma returned her gaze with serious eyes.
    ‘I understand, mother abbess,’ she said quitely. ‘There is much evil here. Much evil.’
     
    It took Fidelma some time to fall asleep. Snow was falling
heavily now but it was not the chill air permeating her cell which caused her to have difficulty in sleeping. Neither was it the conundrum of the headless body that stirred her thoughts and kept her awake as she tried to quell the