The Subtle Serpent Read Free

bonds which fastened the ankle of the corpse to the well rope. Then she helped Sister Síomha haul the headless body over the side of the well’s small surrounding wall and onto the ground. The two religieuses stood for several moments staring down at the corpse, unsure of what next to do.
    ‘A prayer for the dead, sister,’ muttered Brónach uneasily. Together they intoned a prayer, the words meaningless as they vocalised the ritual. At the end of it there was a silence for some minutes.
    ‘Who could do such a thing?’ whispered Sister Síomha, after a moment or two.
    ‘There is much evil about in the world,’ replied Sister Brónach, more philosophically. ‘But a more pertinent question would be — who is this poor unfortunate? The body is that of a young woman; why, she can be no more than a girl.’
    Sister Brónach succeeded in dragging her eyes away from the bloodied, mangled flesh around where the head should have been. The sight of the gory mess fascinated yet appalled and sickened her. The body was plainly that of a young and previously healthy woman, perhaps scarcely out of puberty. The only other disfigurement, apart from the missing head, was a wound in the chest. There was a bluish bruise on the flesh above the heart and, looking closer, the cutting wound
marked where a sharp blade point, or some such implement, had entered the heart. But the wound had long since ceased to bleed.
    Sister Brónach forced herself to bend down and reached for one of the arms of the corpse to place them across the body before the stiffening of the flesh made such a task impossible. She suddenly dropped the arm and let out a loud gasp of breath almost as if she had received a blow in the solar plexus.
    Startled, Sister Síomha followed the direction of Brónach’s outstretched hand, now pointing to the left arm of the corpse. Something was tied around the arm which had been hidden from them by the position of the corpse. It was a length of wood, no more than a stick with notches carved on it. Sister Brónach knew Ogham, the ancient form of Irish writing, when she saw it, though she did not understand the meaning of the characters. Ogham was no longer in general use throughout the five kingdoms for the Latin alphabet was now being adopted as the form of characters in which Irish was written.
    In bending forward to examine the wooden stick, however, her eyes caught sight of something clutched in the other hand of the corpse. A small, worn leather thong was wound around the right wrist and travelled into the clenched fist. Sister Brónach had steeled herself again to her task, kneeling beside the body and taking up the small white hands. She could not prise apart the fingers; the stiffening of death had already locked the hand permanently into a fist. Nevertheless, the fingers were splayed just wide enough for her to see that the leather thong was attached to a small metal crucifix and this was what the lifeless right hand was clutching so tightly.
    Sister Brónach let out a low groan and glanced across her shoulder to where Sister Síomha was bending, with a fixed expression, to see what had been discovered.
    ‘What can it mean, sister?’ Sister Síomha’s voice was taut, almost harsh.

    Sister Brónach’s face was grave. She was now fully in control of her features again.
    She breathed deeply before replying in a measured tone as she stared down at the poorly wrought crucifix of burnished copper. Obviously no person of rank and wealth would have such a cheap object as this.
    ‘It means that we should now summon Abbess Draigen, good sister. Whoever this poor headless girl was, I believe that she was one of our own. She was a sister of the Faith.’
    Far off, in the tiny tower overlooking their community, they could hear the striking of the gong to mark the passing of another time period. The clouds were suddenly thickening and spreading across the sky. Cold flakes of snow were drifting across the mountains again.

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