Valley of the Shadow Read Online Free PDF

of Éireann to know how fastidious the Irish were about cleanliness. He waited patiently until she had finished. When she returned, her face was still sombre and she halted again before the circle of bodies.
    ‘Well, Eadulf, what have you observed?’ she asked, after a pause of a moment or so.
    Eadulf started in surprise. He had not realised that she had noticed his inspection. He thought rapidly.
    ‘They are all young men,’ he offered.

    ‘That is true.’
    ‘They have been lain out in some sort of order, in a circle, and they were not killed here.’
    Fidelma raised an eyebrow in query.
    ‘Why do you think that?’
    ‘Because if they had been killed here then there would have been a struggle. The ground around is not disturbed nor is it bloody. They were killed elsewhere and placed here.’
    She nodded appreciatively at his observation.
    ‘What about their feet?’
    Eadulf looked at her curiously.
    ‘Their feet?’ he faltered.
    She pointed downwards.
    ‘If you examine their feet, you will see that each young man has callouses, sores and blisters, as if they have been forced to walk over rough ground or for many miles. The abrasions are recent. Doesn’t that contradict your argument that they were carried here?’
    Eadulf thought furiously.
    ‘Not necessarily,’ he said after a moment. ‘They may well have been marched a distance to the place where they were killed and then brought here after death to be laid out in this curious fashion.’
    Fidelma was approving. ‘Well done, Eadulf. We’ll make a dálaigh of you yet. Anything else? You have not mentioned the marks of a leg-iron around their left ankles.’
    In truth, Eadulf had not spotted these abrasions which, since Fidelma pointed them out, were now clear. However, Fidelma went on: ‘Did you count the number of bodies?’
    ‘About thirty, I think.’
    There was a momentary expression of annoyance on her features.
    ‘One should be more accurate. There are precisely thirty-three bodies.’
    ‘Well, I was near enough,’ he replied defensively.
    ‘No, you were not,’ she countered sharply. ‘But we will return to that in a moment. You mentioned that they were laid out in some sort of order. Do you have any other observations?’
    Eadulf regarded the circle and grimaced.
    ‘No.’
    ‘You have no comment to make on the fact that they were laid on their left side, every one of them with their feet placed towards the centre of the circle? Does that not mean anything to you?’
    ‘Only that it must be some form of a ritual.’

    ‘Ah, a ritual. Look again. The bodies are placed on their left side. Start at the top of the circle and follow round … they are placed facing right-hand-wise. In other words – sunwise, what we call deisiol .’
    ‘I am not sure that I follow your meaning.’
    ‘In pagan times we performed certain rites by turning deisiol or sunwise. Even now, at a burial, there are many among us who insist on walking round the graveyard three times sunwise with the coffin.’
    ‘You mean this might be a pagan symbol?’ Eadulf shuddered and raised a hand to cross himself, a gesture he thought better of.
    ‘Not necessarily,’ Fidelma reassured him. ‘When the Blessed Patrick was given land at Armagh, on which he eventually raised his church, it was said that he had to walk deisiol around it holding a crozier and, in that fashion, solemnly consecrated the land to the service of the Christ by using our ancient customs and rites.’
    ‘Then what are you saying?’ frowned Eadulf.
    ‘That these bodies are laid out as part of a ritual but what form of ritual – pagan or Christian – we must endeavour to find out by other observations.’
    ‘Such as?’
    ‘Have you observed the manner in which these unfortunates were precipitated from this world?’
    Eadulf confessed that he had not.
    ‘Have you ever heard of The Threefold Death?’
    ‘I have not.’
    ‘There is an ancient tale that once, long ago, our people forsook the ancient