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the edge of the valley, but no adults were to be seen. There was no sign of O’Halloran himself and yet she would have imagined him to be the sort of man who would be continually in evidence, continually exhorting and supervising. She rose to her feet.
    ‘Stay there with the body for the moment, Cumhal,’ she said as she walked towards the weaving shed.
    After the bright sunlight, it took her eyes a few minutes to get used to the darkness within, but then figures and objects became visible. There were three large flat looms set up within the space; natural, cream-coloured cloth on two of them, the third was a dark red. Cathal O’Halloran was there beside this one, not working a loom, but gazing fixedly at the shuttle as it passed swiftly across from one man to another, carrying the dyed thread over and under the warp thread. He stiffened when he saw Mara and then slowly and reluctantly came across to her.
    ‘You know why I am here, Cathal,’ said Mara crisply. She was conscious of feeling angry, but tried to be fair. Yes, every minute would be important to the O’Halloran clan and in the normal way of things nothing could be allowed to distract from the work. But a sudden and violent death was not normal.
    ‘I heard that there had been an accident.’ Cathal muttered the words, hardly looking at her.
    Mara let that pass. ‘Summon all of your workers,’ she said with authority, ‘and bring them over to where the body lies.’
    Not giving him a chance to reply or to raise objections, she turned and went back to the place where poor Eamon lay.
    ‘Stand beside me,’ she said to her five scholars when she returned. She took up position with her back to the steeply rising side of the mountain, facing across the valley.
    They came slowly from the sheds, dyeing vats and retting ponds. There was something unnatural about the slow pace at which they came, almost as though each person hung back and hoped another would go ahead. There was something very strange, also, about the lack of sound. The noise from the sheds had ceased, but the workers did not fill the silence with questions or exclamations. They came up and stood in a long line with their backs to the tall slabs that enclosed the precious flax crop.
    And they looked at her and the scholars.
    No one seemed to look at the body on the ground.
    Or at Muiris O’Hynes, the man who had found Eamon.
    If he had not been there to raise the alarm would the body have been tipped into one of those deep holes that were to be found everywhere on this stony mountain?

Four
    Cáin Lánamma
    (The Laws of Marriage)
    If the divorce takes place while the flax is still growing the wife is only entitled to a cup of linseed oil. If the stalks of the flax have been pulled and bound into sheaves, the wife is entitled to a ninth share. When the sheaves are dry and the flax beaten, the wife is entitled to a sixth share. If they have been scutched, then half goes to the wife. If they have been woven, the wife takes half of the cloth.
    T he sheds now appeared empty. All the workers had arrived and stood ranged up before her. About twenty adults and numerous children, thought Mara. They were a toil-worn set of people, hands roughened by the hard work. Some had hands stained red from the red dye made from the roots of the madder plants, others had pieces of fibre and seeds still stuck to their clothing; many hunched from long hours spent over a loom or a spinning wheel.
    The last to come out was Gobnait, Cathal’s wife. Mara observed a quick look flashed between husband and wife, but then Gobnait cast down her eyes. Puzzling, thought Mara. Why the constraint and the feeling of awkwardness? However, there had been a death, perhaps a violent death, and death was always disturbing.
    The people of the Burren, especially the four main clans, the O’Lochlainns, the O’Briens, the MacNamaras and the O’Connors, had confidence in Mara. They knew her well, had listened to her judgements, brought their