Act of Mercy Read Online Free PDF

dizziness since coming aboard The Barnacle Goose , and it had less to do with the sea’s swell than with the welling of her emotions.

Chapter Three
    ‘Cian!’
    Like a wraith arising from some ghostly past, there stood before her the man who had been her first love; who had awakened her sensuality as a young girl and then brutally discarded her for another.
    In one breathless moment, memories came pouring through her mind. Fidelma remembered their first meeting as vividly as if it had been yesterday. Yet it had been ten years ago now; ten long years …
     
    Old Brehon Morann had allowed his students time off to attend the great triennial fair of Tara – the Féis Teamhrach. Had he not allowed them time off, then they would probably have attended anyway, for the great fair was a major event of the year. The fair had been founded by the High King Ollamh Fódhla some fourteen centuries ago. Its official purpose was to review the laws of the Five Kingdoms. The High King and the provincial Kings were in attendance, together with the most distinguished representatives of all the learned professions from the Five Kingdoms.
    Even though it had been a hundred years since the High Kings had abandoned Tara as their principal royal residence, on account of a curse pronounced against it by the Blessed Ruadan of Lorrha in Muman, the great festival itself had not been so abandoned and was held there every third year. No one could devote themselves to study during the seven days of the fair. It started three days before the Feast of Samhain and ended on the third day afterwards.
    While learned professors and lawyers, and the Kings and their advisers, discussed affairs of state and the application of the laws, and considered what, if any, new laws should be applied, sports, competitions and feasting were provided for the general public as well as the richer folk who came to see and be seen. Merchants arrived from not only the Five Kingdoms but from many corners of the world – as did entertainers, songsters, jugglers, fools and acrobats. It was a time for relaxing and making merry, for the ancient laws of the fair
proclaimed that a sacred armistice was in force during its existence, when all were exempted from arrest or prosecution unless they violated the peace of the fair itself by rowdiness, violence and theft.
    Fidelma was barely eighteen years old and had never been to one of the great fairs like Tara. She and her companions from Morann’s law school moved eagerly through the good-natured jostling crowds, gazing at the stalls selling all manner of food and drink and also goods from far-flung lands. They paused now and then to look in awe at groups of professional clowns and jugglers, while musicians and songsters created a not-unpleasing cacophony of sound.
    Fidelma and her friends halted before one juggler who had nine sharp short swords in his hands which he flung up into the air, one by one, and which he did not let fall to the ground but caught and flung up again quickly and without injury to himself. The whistling sound the swords produced as they passed through the air was like the sound of buzzing bees.
    A terrific cheering drew Fidelma and her companions on to the edge of a crowd around a sward of ground where a game of immán was in progress. Each player, armed with a wooden camán, or stick of ash over a metre in length, carefully shaped and smoothed with the lower end flat and curved, attempted to strike at a ball of leather filled with wool. The name of the game meant urging or driving while the stick took its name from the word cam reflecting on its crooked or curve part.
    A goal had just been scored by one of the two teams, and as the young students pushed their way to the front of the crowd, the play had commenced again with the ball being thrown up into the middle of the field. The two teams, at opposite ends of the level grassy rectangle, began to run towards it, each trying to drive the ball through their