Lake of Sorrows ng-2 Read online

  Driving across the border into Offaly, she had been acutely aware that she was approaching the ancient region known as the Mide, the center. It was a place that had been ascribed all sorts of magical attributes, the powerful locus represented by the central axes of the crosses on Bronze Age sun discs, from a time when the world had been divided up into four quadrants, North, South, East, and West, and a shadowy central place, which, because it was not There, had to be Here. Where was her own Mide, her center, that point where all the pieces of her life met and intersected at one infinitesimal but infinitely powerful place?

  She had tried very hard to avoid thinking about Cormac on the trip down here, but she felt her resolve weakening. It was just over a year since she’d made almost the same journey westward, to the place where their lives had been bound together by the untimely death of a beautiful red-haired girl whose head they’d recovered from the bog. She hadn’t meant to find someone like Cormac Maguire. She hadn’t meant to find anyone; she’d come to this place as an escape, a retreat from too much feeling. It hadn’t happened suddenly, but gradually, like a slow envelopment. There was no question that she had soaked up the warmth he offered like a person nearly perished from cold, but were those moments of intense happiness real, or only an illusion? It seemed as if the entire year had passed like a dream. With the coming of spring, she’d known that the dream couldn’t last; that certain knowledge was like a goad in her side, sharp and getting sharper with each passing day. She couldn’t wait to see him, but her eager anticipation was tempered by mounting anxiety.

  She had no business fashioning a life for herself here. Her stay in Ireland was supposed to be temporary, a period of respite after her long struggle to find some semblance of justice for Triona’s terrible death. Sometimes she dreamt of her sister’s battered face, and woke up weeping and distracted. The dream would linger, encroaching on her waking mind, a heaviness remembered in body and spirit that sometimes took days to dissipate. Worse still were the dreams where Triona came back, whole and restored, as if she’d never been away. Though Nora knew these visions to be false even as her subconscious conjured them, upon waking from such a dream she still experienced new shock and sorrow.

  She had picked up the phone two days ago, and heard the tremor in her mother’s voice: “He’s getting married again.” There had been no need to ask; Nora knew that she meant Peter Hallett—Triona’s husband, and her killer.

  Remembering the conversation, Nora suddenly felt her stomach heave. Afraid she was about to be sick, she brought the car to a screeching halt and climbed out, leaving the car door open and the engine running. She walked back along the road the way she’d just come. If she forced herself to breathe slowly, she might be able to keep from hyperventilating. She sat down abruptly on the roadside and dropped her head between her knees, feeling the pulse pounding in her temples.

  After a moment the steady noise of the wind began to calm her, and she felt the nausea subside. Suddenly buffeted by a strong gust from behind, she raised her head. The breeze encircled her, then picked up a scant handful of peat dust. The tiny whirlwind danced over the surface of the bog, spinning eastward into the low morning sun, and then dissipated, nothing more than a breath of air, briefly embodied and made visible.

  She sat for a moment longer, listening to the strange music of the wind as it whistled through the furze bushes along the road, watching the bog cotton’s tiny white flags spell out a cryptic message in semaphore. Bits of organic debris danced overhead, caught in the updraft, and the strangely dry air contained something new, a mineral taste she could not readily name. When she stood up to return to the car, Nora understood instantly what had given the air its metallic flavor: an immense, rapidly moving wall of brown peat dust bore down on her from only about thirty yards away. She froze, momentarily stunned by the spectacle of the storm’s overwhelming magnitude, then made a headlong dash for the car, but it was already too late. The dust cloud engulfed her, along with the road and the vast expanse of bog on either side, closing her eyes, filling her nostrils and throat with stinging peat. Suddenly unable to gauge any distance, she ran blindly until her right knee banged hard into the car’s rear bumper. The glancing pain took her breath away. She didn’t dare open her lips to cry out, but limped around to the driver’s side and climbed in, closing the door against the dust that tried to follow her. After desperately trying to hold her breath out in the storm, she gasped for air and promptly burst into a coughing fit. Once the car door was closed, the dust could not penetrate the sealed windows, but a fair amount of peat had blown in through the open door, and now the tiny airborne particles began to settle, covering the seats and dashboard with fine dark-brown organic material. The outside world had disappeared, and Nora gripped the steering wheel, feeling like a cocooned caterpillar at the mercy of the wild elements. It was far too dangerous to try driving across a bog when visibility was so poor. There was little she could do except wait, and listen to the wind whistling under the car and around the radio antenna, furiously pummeling away at any object, animate or inanimate, that had the audacity to remain upright in its path. She rubbed her throbbing knee; she would have a lovely bruise tomorrow.

  All at once, she made out a figure standing just ahead of the car. Although its general shape was human, the face was strange and horrible: huge exophthalmic eyes stood out above a flat black snout. She and the insectlike thing stared at each other for a surreal moment, then another heavy gust blew up, and it was gone. A second later, a solid thump sounded on the window just beside her ear, and she felt a rush of fear, until at last it began to dawn on her that the mutant creature was actually nothing more dreadful than a Bord na Mona worker in an old-fashioned gas mask. She could see that the man was trying to communicate, but his voice was hopelessly muffled by the mask and the wind. He pointed a gloved finger to her, then to himself, and then forward. He wanted her to follow him. The wind was beginning to diminish, and she could just make out the back end of a tractor about ten yards in front of the car. She realized in horror that she might have crushed her rescuer if she’d simply put the car in gear and started driving. She watched through gusty clouds of peat as he climbed up into the cab and turned the tractor around. When he drove forward, she followed.

  It was impossible to tell how far they traveled; time and distance were distorted in the strange dark fog. Gradually the peat cloud began to thin away, the world began to reappear, and they were once again in the clear air. Nora watched the brown wall recede eastward, all the while keeping a close tail on the lumbering tractor until they reached the Bord na Mona sign at the entrance to Loughnabrone. Inside the grounds, the driver pulled up to a row of hangarlike metal sheds and climbed down from the cab; Nora caught up to him just as he was entering the large open door of a workshop, where several other men in grease-spotted blue boilersuits toiled over a huge earth-moving blade with acetylene torches.

  “Excuse me,” she said, reaching out to touch the man’s arm in case he hadn’t heard her. The other workers looked up, their torches still blazing. The tractor driver turned to face her, and it was only then that the gas mask came off, revealing a youthful face with strong features and intensely blue eyes.

  “Excuse me—I just wanted to say thanks.” She offered her hand. “Nora Gavin.”

  He looked at her for a split second, then dropped his gaze, and Nora wondered whether it was her red eyes, her dirty face, or her obvious American accent—or a combination of all those things—that had this young man so mortified. He took her hand very briefly. “Charlie Brazil,” he finally said, pronouncing his surname the Irish way, with the emphasis on the first syllable. He colored deeply and glanced at the other men, who had stopped working when she approached.

  “Well—thanks, Charlie. I’m grateful for your help.” She could feel the workmen’s eyes upon them, and understood that all poor Charlie Brazil wanted was to be shut of her as quickly as possible. “I’m afraid I have to ask another favor. Could you point me toward the manager
’s office?”

  “Over there,” he said, indicating a single-story pebble-dashed building about fifty yards away.

  “Right,” she said. “Thanks again.” Heading toward the manager’s office, she heard a leering voice behind her inquire: “What’d you do for the lady, Charlie?” There was an unsettling chorus of sniggers, and Charlie Brazil’s deep voice muttered darkly: “Ah, feck off and leave me alone, why don’t you?”

  2

  There was no one at reception inside the manager’s office. Nora considered ringing Cormac to let him know she’d arrived safely, but decided against it. She wanted to put off talking to him as long as she could. Her emotions were too much in turmoil. A small sign on the nearest wall bore a single word, “Toilet,” and an arrow pointing to her left down a short hallway, so she ducked in to have a look in the mirror. It was a shock: her eyes were horribly bloodshot, and her insides felt rubbed raw. Bits of peat dust clung to her hair and eyebrows, and to the tear tracks that lined her cheeks. No wonder Charlie Brazil had looked at her so strangely. What a fine state for meeting the brass here. She brushed as much of the peat from her hair as she could, and splashed her eyes with cold water, which stung as much as the dust had. As she dried her face on the cloth towel, the door swung open, and Nora stood face-to-face with a vigorous, casually dressed man of about forty, whose expression betrayed astonishment and a certain amount of suspicion. Perhaps she hadn’t paid close attention to the sign and had accidentally wandered into the gents’ by mistake.

  “Sorry if I’m somewhere I shouldn’t be,” she said. “I got caught in a windstorm out on the bog, and I was just trying to get a bit of the dust off before I found the manager.”

  “You’ve found him,” the man said.

  “You’re Owen Cadogan?”

  “I am,” he replied. “And you are…”

  “Nora Gavin. I’m here for the bog body excavation.” Surely he’d known she was coming down from Dublin. “I think you spoke with Niall Dawson at the National Museum—he said he’d explained all the arrangements.” A subtle change came over Cadogan’s demeanor; she thought it safe to surmise that the Dr. Gavin he’d expected was neither female nor American.

  “Ah, right, Dr. Gavin. You’re early.” He ushered her down the hall toward his office. “We’re not expecting the museum crowd until later in the day. Anyway, sorry you were caught out there in the dust. Been dry as a desert here for two weeks, and that’s one of the rare hazards of fine weather.”

  “I’ve never seen anything quite like it. But one of the workmen was kind enough to make sure I got here in one piece—Charlie Brazil?”

  “Ah, yes,” Cadogan said, with a grimace that suggested she ought to consider giving Mr. Brazil a wide berth in future.

  “I have to admit the gas mask had me rather taken aback at first.”

  “Ah, he’s all right,” Cadogan said. “Bit of a quare hawk, Charlie is—an oddball.” He led her back through reception and into his tiny office, where he gestured for her to have a seat. The place reminded Nora of her auto mechanic’s office at home with its practical, no-frills atmosphere, its metal desk and uncomfortable vinyl chairs. “Afraid I’m fending for myself here at the moment,” Cadogan said. “The girl’s out sick today. Can I get you a cup of tea—or coffee, is it?”

  Cadogan gave the impression that he was a very busy man: the quick gestures, the eyes that never settled in one place for too long. Whether consciously or not, he gave Nora the distinct impression that she was keeping him from duties much more important and necessary than her comfort. But breakfast had been three hours ago, and she realized that she was actually quite hungry. “Tea would be great.”

  “Won’t be a minute.” He ducked out of the room, and Nora tried to put a finger on what she sensed about him. Brisk, businesslike, still stirred by ambition—but on the cusp of forty, when a lot of men began to feel themselves softening into middle age, and to wonder why it was that the responsible job and the family and the new house weren’t enough to keep them from feeling somehow anesthetized inside. A dangerous age.

  She stood up to take a look at two large black-and-white charts hanging on the walls of the office. The first showed average rainfall at Loughnabrone over the past four decades, sometimes as much as a thousand millimeters a year. How was it even possible for the earth to soak up that much water? Alongside the rainfall chart was a bar graph showing annual peat production by the kiloton. She noted the inverse symmetry between the numbers, and the downward slope of the peat production stats for the past few years. Another poster on the wall had photographs of the various artifacts bog workers might encounter, and a series of exhortations:

  Under Your Feet in This Very Bog

  There could be hidden objects up to 10,000 years old.

  Because of waterlogged conditions, the bog has preserved objects, such as wood, leather, textiles, and even human bodies!

  Once unearthed, these ancient finds begin to decay instantly and if not cared for they will be lost forever.

  Help us record our history by preserving these buried objects.

  No doubt ignorance was the greatest enemy; if workers didn’t know what they should stop the machines for, they might just keep cutting. But theft had to be a major concern as well. It must be tempting, if you did find something of value, to keep it to yourself. That was human nature. Nora wondered idly how much the average bog worker made these days. Probably the same as most other factory workers—not a fortune, certainly, just enough to keep a man with a family from cutting the tether.

  Her attention was drawn to a framed and yellowed newspaper cutting. It was dated August 1977, and showed two lean-faced, unsmiling men in boilersuits looking up from a drain. One of the workmen held up what looked like a corroded sword blade. The caption read:

  Illaunafulla men Dominic and Danny Brazil with the large Iron Age hoard they discovered while working at Loughnabrone Bog last week. The men uncovered numerous axe-heads, several amber bead necklaces, a scabbard and sword hilt, and twelve bronze trumpets. After excavation is complete, the artefacts will be transported to the National Museum of Ireland in Dublin.

  Brazil, like her rescuer. She wondered whether it was one of those unusual surnames, like Spain, that had something to do with where your ancestors had traveled. Or maybe it was simply an old Irish name, misspelled by the English. She’d have to ask Cormac. At the picture’s edge, almost entirely cut off, a third man leaned in above the Brazils, down on one knee at the edge of the drain. He was dressed, quite inappropriately for the bog, in a tweed jacket, collar, and tie. Three-quarters of his head had been cropped out of the frame.

  “That was quite a find,” said Cadogan from behind her. “Colossal. Nothing like it before or since. There was even a rumor that they’d turned up some gold pieces as well, but that turned out to be a load of—nonsense.”

  “Would these Brazils be any relation to Charlie?” Nora asked, accepting the mug of gray, watery-looking tea he proffered, and wishing she’d been prudent enough to refuse.

  “His father and uncle,” Cadogan said, taking a seat behind the desk. “We’ve got Brazils galore here. A lot of the lads come from families who go back four or even five generations on the bog. All the turf used to be hand-cut, of course, but even when they brought the big machines in we’d have whole families footing the turf for the summer.”

  “What happens to the peat you produce here?” Nora asked.

  “Some of it goes to the briquette factory at Raheny, but most of what comes out of Loughnabrone is only suitable for use in the power plant.”

  “That place with the two towers down the road?”

  “Used to go there, until a few years ago. It’s closed down now. Obsolete. They’re going to demolish it in a few weeks’ time. No, all our production gets shipped up to the new station at Shannonbridge.” Cadogan looked at her as if he didn’t consider this a suitable topic of conversation for visitors, and abruptly changed the subject: “I was meaning to ask how you happened
to be out in the storm. You weren’t traveling on foot, surely?”

  “Oh, no,” Nora said, suddenly acutely aware that she wasn’t prepared to give an exact account of how she had happened to be out on the road. “I stopped the car and got out to watch a—I don’t even quite know what to call it, a small whirlwind. I’d never seen anything quite like it—”

  Cadogan nodded, as if he understood. “The fairy wind.”

  “Excuse me?” Nora thought she’d misheard.

  “That small whirlwind you saw. The lads around here call it the fairy wind. They also say nothing good comes after—ah, it’s a load of auld rubbish, that kind of talk, but what can you do?”

  “Well, in my case it was true. When I turned around, there was a huge dust cloud bearing down on me. I barely made it back to my car. Thank goodness Charlie Brazil came along when he did.”

  Again Cadogan studied her with a skeptical eye, as if he didn’t quite believe the tale. Why did she keep feeling as though she was missing the joke here?

  “If you’ll excuse me just a moment, I’ll get you fixed up here straightaway.” He reached for his mobile and dialed a number from memory, then turned away slightly, with a small smile and a glance back in Nora’s direction. He wanted to be rid of her, and soon. She was getting to be a nuisance.

  “Ursula? It’s Owen. Dr. Gavin’s arrived in the office. Did you want to come round and fetch her—?” Cut off in midsentence, Cadogan listened for a moment, then colored and turned abruptly, as if the person on the other end of the connection had asked an embarrassing question. One hand flew up to the side of his face, an unconscious gesture of protection. “Look, I really can’t…Yes, she’s here with me now,” he said, glancing up. Nora went back to perusing the office walls again, and did her best to pretend she wasn’t listening. She stared at the newspaper cutting once more, at the nearly headless man in suit and wellingtons, noticing the interesting pin that anchored his tie—a sort of three-legged spiral. She’d arrived too early, and they didn’t know what to do with her. Well, if that was the case, she could find her own way to the site. It beat standing around here like an idiot while they argued. She tried to catch Cadogan’s eye. “I don’t think that’ll be necessary,” he said, “but if you—” Ursula evidently cut him off again. “All right then…Yes, right away.” Nora wondered idly whether it was a command or an acquiescence.