Valley of the Shadow by Peter Tremayne Page B

was seated in their proper place according to their rank. Sometimes, or so Eadulf had been told, it was known that serious arguments could break out over the seating arrangements at a feast.
    At the top table, Fidelma was seated next to Laisre by right of being an Eóghanacht princess. On her other side was Colla, the tanist, then his wife Orla and their daughter, Esnad. Other members of the chieftain’s family were ranged on both sides. The warriors were seated at another table; the intellectuals, men like Solin and Murgal with others Eadulf could not identify, were seated at another table. Eadulf’s table apparently contained those of lesser professional rank. Sub-chieftains and minor functionaries sat at yet another table.
    Eadulf noticed that Brother Solin’s scribe, Brother Dianach, had taken the next seat to his left, just as Fidelma had anticipated. Eadulf decided to begin the conversation by remarking on this emphasis on placing people thus as if it were a strange custom to him. The young cleric overcame his apparent shyness to shake his head in serious reproval at Eadulf’s implied criticism.
    ‘In my father’s time, it was the placing of Congal Cloén below his proper place at the banquet of Dún na nGéid, which was the main cause of the Battle of Magh Ráth,’ he said in quiet seriousness.
    Eadulf decided to develop the conversation.
    ‘What battle was that?’
    ‘It was the battle at which the High King, Domnall mac Aedo, annihilated Congal and his Dál Riada allies from across the water,’ answered the young scribe.

    An elderly man, seated on the opposite side of Dianach, who had introduced himself as Mel, scribe to Murgal, intervened.
    ‘The truth of the matter was that the battle marked the overthrow of the old religion among the great kings of the north.’ There was disapproval in his voice. ‘True there was an argument about the insult offered Congal as to where he was seated at the feasting table. But so far as the great chieftains of Ulaidh were concerned, they had long resisted the new Faith and the Christian king Domnall mac Aedo was determined to impose it on them. Their resistance finally came to an end with their defeat by Domnall mac Aedo at Magh Ráth. The old faith was thereafter confined to the small, isolated clans.’
    The young scribe, Brother Dianach, tried to repress a shiver and crossed himself.
    ‘It is true the Faith triumphed after the battle at Magh Ráth,’ he conceded, ‘and thanks be to God for that. It was told that just before the feast two horrible black spectres, one male and one female, had appeared to the assembly and, having devoured enormous quantities of food, vanished. They left a baleful influence. So it was that King Domnall had to lead the forces of Christ against the forces of the Devil. He overcame them, Deo favente !’
    The elderly scribe, Mel, uttered a laugh of derision.
    ‘When did you say this happened?’ Eadulf ignored him and addressed the boy as if he were in sympathy with him.
    ‘It was in my father’s time; scarcely three decades ago when he was a young warrior. He left his right arm behind at Magh Ráth.’
    It was only then that Eadulf realised that he had heard of the battle before. He had studied at Tuam Brecain and in that ecclesiastical college there had been an elderly teacher called Cenn Faelad. He had been a professor of Irish law but had also written a grammar of the language of the people of Éireann which had helped Eadulf increase his knowledge of the language. Cenn Faelad walked with a limp and, when Eadulf had pressed him, he had revealed that as a young man he had been wounded in a battle which Eadulf, mishearing the pronunciation, had thought was called ‘Moira’. As Tuam Brecain was already a leading medical college as well as having a faculty of law and of ecclesiastical learning, Cenn Faelad had been taken there and the abbot, himself a skilled surgeon, had brought him back to health. There Cenn Faelad had stayed