Free The Sting of Justice by Cora Harrison Page A

gently.
    The man grimaced. ‘It’s not new,’ he said. ‘This happened a while ago, about eight months ago. A mine shaft collapsed, the lucky ones died, but I was dragged out from under the rocks and I lived, but I could never work again.’
    Mara glanced at the wretched cabin behind. ‘You live in there, Anluan?’ she asked, appalled.

    ‘Yes,’ said the man indifferently. His speech was hard to understand, he spoke a mixture of the Welsh dialect with the Irish Gaelic language; she could follow that well enough, but his mouth had been mangled and very few teeth remained. ‘I live there, if you can call it living. The neighbours are good to me, poor things; they don’t have much themselves, none of Sorley’s riches comes to this place, but they give me a crust from time to time.’
    Silently Fachtnan opened his satchel and took from it a few oatcakes. Hesitantly he handed them to the man who instantly crammed them into his mouth, like a starving animal. But then Anluan stopped, looked at Bran’s pleading eyes, broke one cake in half and handed the larger bit to the dog. Mara felt tears come to her eyes.
    Fachtnan took the linen bag off his shoulder and placed it beside the crippled man. ‘You eat these, yourself,’ he said, gesturing to show the meaning of his words. ‘We’ve all had our dinner and so has Bran.’ He took Bran firmly by the collar. Bran gave the man’s face a last lick and then allowed himself to be hauled away.
     
     
    ‘I had to give them to him,’ asserted Fachtnan when they had left the village. He gave a challenging look at Moylan who was the big eater of the law school. But Moylan’s eyes fell beneath his gaze. Even Moylan had been shocked by the poverty and air of starvation in the little village.
    ‘This is disgraceful,’ muttered Mara between her teeth. ‘I shall speak to the king about this. How could Sorley have allowed it? Well, it’s not going to go on. I shall see to that.’
    ‘There’s thirteen cakes left in my bag,’ announced Enda
after a careful count. ‘If you have one, Brehon, then it’s two each for the rest of us.’
    Mara took the cake to avoid arguments. She bit into it and was surprised by the sudden rush of flavour from the fresh blackberries with which it was stuffed.
    ‘Last day for blackberries – shouldn’t have blackberries after Samhain ,’ said Aidan. ‘The devil spits on them on the eve of Samhain .’
    ‘Don’t talk nonsense,’ said Mara irritably, getting to her feet. ‘Why blame the devil for everything; man has enough of the devil in him to account for most evils. Come on all of you, if you’re going to see the silver mine and get back home in time for supper then you can’t delay any longer.’
    ‘I’ll eat yours if you like,’ offered Moylan, picking the last crumbs of his oatcakes from his léine before jumping to his feet. Aidan did not reply. He crammed the rest of the oatcake into his mouth, though he looked aggrieved. Mara did not often snap at them for no reason. She felt a twinge of remorse; she was still upset after what she had seen at the mining village, but that was not Aidan’s fault.
    ‘How did you know that poor fellow’s name, Brehon?’ asked Shane.
    ‘I saw him at Father David’s burial,’ said Mara. ‘I heard one of the other workers call him that.’
    ‘I’m amazed that he managed to get all the way down and then back up again,’ said Shane, with a glance over his shoulder at the steep climb.
    ‘He had a stick when I saw him.’ She spoke mechanically because her mind was still occupied with thinking about the mining village. She felt ashamed that she had never taken the trouble to come up here before. They were Welsh, the
occupants, and the Welsh had exchanged Brehon law for English law over three centuries ago, but that was no excuse. As the king’s representative, she should have made it her duty to know what was going on in all parts of the kingdom. With an effort she dismissed the thought