Laws in Conflict Read Online Free PDF

mansion is quite near to here – but if you would prefer . . .’ he looked concerned, but she thought she discerned a note of hopefulness in his voice.
    ‘I’ll meet them tonight.’ Mara made her voice sound quite decisive. The law books would be interesting to her. Perhaps if he had an abundance he might present one to her, but if not perhaps she could commission a copy. Printing, she had heard, had almost replaced handwritten books in England, but possibly in Galway there was still some old-fashioned scribe who would take on the task.
    The lawyer’s chambers were at quite a distance from the Great Gate – almost down to the inlet from the sea and near to a fish market, she guessed, judging by the pungent smell and the cries of the stallholders.
    ‘This is the courthouse,’ said Henry Bodkin with pride, pointing to a stately stone building with matching piers outside the well-cared-for door. ‘A couple of hundred years ago this belonged to the De Burgo clan – now known as the Clanrickard and Clanwilliam – but they . . .’ he hesitated, and then said, ‘well, they did not keep to the customs and laws of their ancestors . . .’
    ‘Ulick Burke is a friend of my husband’s,’ said Mara quietly.
    ‘Indeed, I think I did meet him in your company.’ He was a little embarrassed and concentrated on explaining the layout of the courthouse to her. Everything seemed shut up.
    ‘Nothing going on there today,’ she remarked.
    ‘Nothing official,’ he replied. ‘The clerks of the court are working, of course, but they go in and out of the back door. They get the papers ready for the cases to be heard by the judges,’ he added.
    ‘I see.’ Mara was amused. She herself was the only judge in a kingdom two hundred times larger than the city of Galway but she did her own paperwork, pronounced judgements, arranged and supervised the paying of retribution fines, and in addition taught at a school.
    ‘You will find it all rather overwhelming tomorrow,’ said Lawyer Bodkin, kindly. ‘I remember how you told me that you try cases and pass judgement in a field beside an old dolmen.’
    ‘It will certainly be very different,’ said Mara cautiously. ‘And your own chambers – you don’t occupy the whole building, do you?’
    ‘I have the ground floor and my two colleagues, John D’Arcy and William Joyce, occupy the other two floors – you can see that even the lawyers belong to the great twelve trading families of Galway,’ he added with a smile. ‘Some people even, jokingly, call them the twelve tribes of Galway: Athy, Blake, Bodkin, Browne, D’Arcy, Deane, Font, Ffrench, Joyce, Kirwan, Lynch, Martyn, Morris and Skerrett.’
    ‘And the prosecuting lawyer, at the trial tomorrow, which one of the lawyers is he?’ asked Mara.
    ‘The prosecuting lawyer,’ said Henry Bodkin, not meeting her eyes, ‘is Thomas Lynch. He has his rooms at the courthouse itself.’
    ‘Lynch?’ Mara was startled.
    He nodded. ‘Yes. Thomas Lynch, the chief lawyer in the city, is a first cousin to James Lynch, the mayor. He sums up, and then the mayor, or sovereign as we call him in court, directs the jury about the verdict, passes judgement, states the penalty – he has that power.’ His voice was soft, but it was only after he had escorted her into his chambers, introduced her to his clerk and then taken her into the inner room, that he said with emphasis: ‘The power over life or death will lie in the hands of Mayor James Lynch. The two bailiffs, Valentine Blake and a very elderly man called John Skerrett, will be present, but they have no voice. They are there to observe only.’
    Henry’s chambers were extremely comfortable, well heated – too well heated, thought Mara, by a coal fire. It was the first time that she had experienced coal and though she missed the sweet peaty smell of the turf, the heat was very much greater. She almost drifted off to sleep in the comfort of the well-padded armchair where he insisted that