Haunted Ground Part 3

"I said I'd have to think about it. It's too much work for one person--"

"I could help. I've got Easter holidays the next two weeks."

"I couldn't ask you--"

"But you're not asking, I'm volunteering. I want to do it. And going back there would give us a chance to find out more about this girl."

"She could be a hundred or a thousand years old."

"And in all that length of time, how many red-haired girls do you suppose have been executed in the vicinity of Drumcleggan Bog?" She touched his hand. "Look, I'm not trying to press you into doing something you really don't want to do. But Cormac, look into her face and tell me you feel nothing, no obligation to find out what happened to her."

Dropping his gaze to the dead girl's face, he was again overcome by a familiar, unbidden swell of pity as he answered: "I can't."

Even as he spoke, however, Cormac felt the warmth and weight of Nora's hand on his own, and suddenly realized that the strongest obligation he felt at this moment was not to the red-haired girl on the table, but to the living person who stood across from him, her eyes filled with fierce intelligence and compa.s.sion. Hers was the unknown story he felt compelled to explore. Above all, he had the strongest craving to hear her speak his name again.

7.

It was nearly nine when Nora left the conservation lab. She navigated the narrow streets just north of Collins Barracks and pulled up near a pub in Stoneybatter called The Piper's Chair. She had never been in the place, but knew its reputation, and that Cormac Maguire was a regular at its Wednesday night session. The pub itself was a nineteenth-century corner building of no great architectural interest, except that its burnished bar, worn tapestry snugs, and tall windows provided a reminder of dirty old working-cla.s.s Dublin, and a stark contrast to the trendy, modern bistros that were popping up only a few streets away.

She knew about Cormac's allegiance to this session through their mutual friend Robbie McSweeney--scholar of history, guitarist, and singer, though she wasn't sure Robbie himself would put his occupations down in that order. Had he been born five hundred years ago, she thought, Robbie would surely have been in great demand as a harper in the houses of the aristocracy. According to what he'd told her, the same musicians had been coming to the Wednesday night session here for nearly ten years. She gathered there was a strong West Clare connection in this group, most of the players having come from there, or having parents or grandparents who came from that part of the country. The Piper's Chair was a place tourists were unlikely to find just wandering in off the street, and the regulars liked it that way, because it meant there was little performance pressure and plenty of time for the craic and the chat.

Nora found Robbie sitting at the bar, polis.h.i.+ng off a prawn c.o.c.ktail with his first pint. He raised his eyebrows in greeting as he licked the last of the c.o.c.ktail sauce off his left thumb.

"Hiya, Nora," he said, pulling up a seat for her, and signaling the barman. "Will you have a drink?"

"No, thanks, Robbie. I'm just on my way home."

"So what brings you here to grace our humble presence?"

"I've got something to show Cormac."

"Oh, so it wasn't music you were looking for, then?"

"Well, that too." And to try to persuade Cormac to return to Dunbeg, she thought, if he still hadn't made up his mind. She felt a twinge of guilt that she hadn't come clean about her own motivations for returning to Galway, which perhaps had as much to do with Hugh Osborne's missing wife as the red-haired girl.

"You'll forgive me, Nora, but I have to ask--what's all this about a head?" Robbie asked. "The academic world was abuzz today about you carrying around a severed head in a box."

"I did no such thing. I took it straight to the lab."

"G.o.d, you make me suddenly grateful I stuck with history," Robbie said in mock disgust. "The worst thing I can dig up is a lurid eyewitness account, not an actual corpse."

At that moment, Cormac came through the door, and Robbie tipped his head to make sure that his friend had noticed her presence as well. Nora could contain her news no longer: "Cormac, you'll never guess what we found. There was something odd on one of the X rays. Right up against the molars on the left side of her jaw. It looks like a piece of metal. Hard to tell what, exactly. We'll do an endoscopic exam in the morning." She watched the furrow in his forehead deepen. Had he forgotten what he'd said in the lab this afternoon?

"So this head belongs to a she, then? Anyone we know?" Robbie said.

"Not a clue so far," Cormac said. "Although Nora's convinced me we ought to try and find out."

"Well, especially now," Nora said. "This piece of metal might be a clue. Robbie, what do you know about beheading?"

"A popular choice, I believe, ranking just after being hanged, drawn, and quartered in centuries past. Not a lot of women would have been beheaded, though. You're sure it was an execution, not just a do-it-yourself murder?"

"That's my best guess. It's such a clean cut across the neck. You can see for yourself." Nora pulled a folder of photographs from her bag and handed them to Robbie, who blanched slightly, but took the file. She was gratified to see his curiosity quickening when he laid eyes on the face of the red-haired girl.

"And no sign of a body?"

"None. Will you help us, Robbie? Find out about any women who might have been executed this way--and why."

"What time period are we talking about?"

"That's the trouble," Nora said. "We don't really know."

"Probably only the last couple of thousand years," Cormac said. Robbie looked back and forth, as if trying to decide which one was going to convince him.

"Sure, what the h.e.l.l," he said, handing the photos back to Nora. "It's not like I've anything more interesting to be doing in the next few months."

"Thanks, Robbie. You're a dote."

"Well, put it down to the fact that you're just a bit more fetchin' than he is."

"Oh, I don't know," she said. "But whatever works."

"We'd better get stuck in there if we're going to, Robbie," Cormac said. He turned to her. "Will you stay for a few tunes?"

She hesitated. "I was really only stopping by--"

"Ah, do, Nora," Robbie said.

"At least let me get you a drink," Cormac said. His serious dark eyes had a rather unnerving effect at this proximity, and just past his shoulder she could see Robbie silently urging: Go on.

"All right," she said. "Thanks."

8.

Wading into the session, Cormac negotiated a spot for Nora to sit, on a bench near the window just beside Robbie, where she could be within the arc of the musicians' circle. The evening's repertoire consisted of reels, reels, and more reels, a pattern broken only occasionally by a jig or a horn-pipe. He was delighted that Nora had decided to stay for the music. As he played and felt a dozen pairs of feet thumping out the rhythm to the left and right of him, Cormac watched her body move slightly, almost involuntarily, to the same pulse. Toward the end of the evening, at a point where the tunes trailed off, and the musicians reached in unison for their pints, he saw Robbie look sideways at her.

"Would you ever give us a song, Dr. Gavin?"

Nora shrank back with a dismissive wave. "Ah no, I couldn't. Play away there," she said. Cormac hadn't realized she was a singer. But reticence was the expected response to this first request; coaxing the shy singer was very much a part of the tradition. After a few more words of encouragement from Robbie and calls from the rest of the group, she finally yielded, took a quick drink of whiskey for courage, and leaned forward, clearing her throat and trying to find the right pitch. When she tipped her head up again, her eyes were closed.

The first time I saw my love, happy was I, I knew not what love was, nor how to deny; But I made too much freedom of my love's company, Saying my generous lover, you're welcome to me.

Cormac was stunned by the dark, earthy voice that seemed to pour from Nora's lips. Nervousness caused it to falter slightly, and he could see her eyes flicker under their lids, an intimacy that was almost too much to bear. He closed his eyes, and heard Nora's uneasiness begin to subside as she relaxed. The song picked up strength and fervor like some powerful incantation, spinning a familiar, sad tale of faithless love and abandonment.

So fare thee well, darling, I now must away, For I in this country no longer can stay; But keep your mind easy, and keep your heart free, Let no man be your sharer, my darling, but me.

Oh this poor pretty creature, she stood on the ground, With her cheeks white as ivory, and the tears running down; Crying Jamie, dearest Jamie, you're the first that e'er wooed me, And I'm sorry that I ever said, you're welcome to me.

O happy is the girl that ne'er loved a man, And easy can tie up a narrow waistband; She is free from all sorrow and sad misery, That never said, my lover, you're welcome to me.

There was a brief silence when she finished, then a roar of approval from the gathered musicians, and even from some of the pub regulars who'd hissed one another into silence to hear the song. Cormac sat back in his chair and watched Nora open her eyes, looking as if she'd awakened from some dream to find a whole room full of people staring at her. She seemed astonished, and a little embarra.s.sed, by all the admiring faces leaning in, the hands reaching in to touch her knee, her arm, her shoulder. She looked across at him, but he felt unable to move or speak.

"Time, please," the bartender shouted over the din. "Drink up, ladies and gentlemen. Time, please." There was the usual unwillingness to let the evening end so soon, as everyone seemed determined to remain talking and to stretch out the last pint. Finally the crowd began to disperse, and Cormac was able to make his way toward her through the noisy crush of pub patrons just outside the bar. "Nora, wait," he said. "Let me walk you to your car."

By day, Stoneybatter was a busy thoroughfare lined with dozens of small businesses. But at night, its shop faces were closed up tight with solid metal gates, which combined with blowing litter to give this part of the city center its nightly guise of a war zone. As they walked slowly down the nearly deserted street, Cormac fingered the wooden flute case he had tucked under his arm, and chanced a sideways glance at her. "That song was mighty, Nora."

She smiled. "Thanks. I was a bit nervous."

"Where did you ever learn to sing like that?"

"I don't know. Listening to records, I guess."

"You're joking."

"Where else? But did you ever get the feeling with a certain tune that it was something you'd been waiting to hear? I don't know what it is about old songs. Maybe it's their plainness, or that they're so sad, and so true. And I love the way songs get handed on. It's almost like they're alive, in some way. I'm no good at explaining it. Anyway, here's my car." She unlocked it with a tiny remote, then opened the door and turned to face him. They both began to speak at once: "I wanted to ask you--"

"If you'd still be interested--"

Cormac insisted that she speak first.

"I was going to ask if you've decided about going back to Dunbeg," she said.

"That's just what I was about to tell you. I am going back. I phoned Hugh Osborne this evening. I've a couple of things to do tomorrow morning, then I'm heading out there in the afternoon."

"And did you find someone to help you?"

"I thought I had a volunteer. Unless you've changed your mind."

"Oh no, not at all. I have to finish up in the lab tomorrow, but I could probably make it out there by about six." She stopped thinking aloud and looked directly at him. "Thanks, Cormac."

"Not at all. Thank you for the song." A small gust of wind blew Nora's hair across her eyes. Without thinking, he reached up to brush it away, then let his fingers rest against the soft curve of her cheek. He was startled when she twisted away from his touch.

"No," she said. "Please don't."

"I'm sorry, Nora--"

"It's not you, Cormac--please don't think that. It's just--it's just that I'm a coward." She finally looked at him again. "I hope you still want my help tomorrow."

"Yes, of course I do." She studied him thoughtfully for a moment longer, then climbed into her car and drove off down the empty street. Cormac began walking briskly back to his own car, realizing that he'd no reason at all to feel hopeful. It had been a most definite rebuff. But he had gotten to hear her say his name again--twice.

Book Two.

Wound Follows Wound.

Wound follows wound that nothing be wanting to fill up the cup of sufferings. The few Catholic families that remain were lately deprived by Cromwell of all their immovable property, and are all compelled to abandon their native estates, and retire into the province of Connaught.

--Father Quinn, a Jesuit priest, writing to the Vatican from his hiding place in the mountains of Ireland, 1653.

1.

By the time Cormac crossed over the Galway border at Portumna, the day-long drizzle had turned to las.h.i.+ng rain. The roads and ditches had melted into a watery blur of gray and green, and the poor visibility, along with the steady pulse of the wipers and the random drumbeat of the rain on the roof of the car, had begun to wear on his nerves. The journey was nearly over, he told himself, only ten miles farther. He'd been plagued by second thoughts throughout the trip west, knowing that he'd phoned Osborne for purely selfish reasons, because it meant a chance to spend more time with Nora Gavin. It was too late now to be sorry he'd agreed to the job.

He'd felt at a loss in the weeks since Gabriel's death--uneasy, and unable to concentrate. He remembered the old man's hand at rest on that pad of paper. When the ambulance drivers had taken Gabriel's body away, he'd stayed on, studying the blot of ink that obscured those final words. Of all the indelible details of that strange tableau, this was the image that haunted him. What, if anything, had been in the old man's mind the moment his pen had refused to move? Did he suffer pain? Did he understand what was happening, or was conscious thought simply swept away by the sudden insult to his brain?

They had been together at the site of so many burials, never venturing to speak about their own mortality. Gabriel must have thought about it. A man couldn't work so intimately with the meager remains of the dead without contemplating his own pa.s.sing. But they had never spoken of it. Gabriel must have shared those confidences with his wife; he had been cremated, and there was no religious service, only a memorial gathering at their home in Dublin. The McCrossans had no children, but sitting in their front room among the old man's neighbors, old school friends, colleagues from the university, Evelyn's friends from the world of writing and publis.h.i.+ng, Cormac had realized how small his own circle of acquaintances really was.

No one had gained admittance to his unguarded thoughts the way Gabriel McCrossan had. Cormac had in a sense packed his father's bags even before anyone knew that Joseph Maguire was actually leaving Ireland for good. That place in his heart had remained empty until he had met Gabriel. With only one survey course in archaeology behind him, Cormac had signed on for the summer as one of a dozen or so students helping with the excavation of a 2,500-year-old bog road.

McCrossan had had a habit of addressing the students before setting them to work. They'd stand before him quietly, fiddling with their tools, eager to begin. He'd pace back and forth in front of them, just as he would have done in a lecture hall.

"Now it may seem to you," he'd say, "that we're only uncovering a few old waterlogged pieces of timber. But what we're really after is the thinking of the people who put these objects in this place. Their beliefs, their ideals, their intentions are all present with these sodden old logs--along with information about the kinds of tools they used to fell the trees, or to bind them into a trackway, the system of labor it took to accomplish this--and these, ladies and gentlemen, are some of the only concrete clues we have as to what their whole society and way of life was like. I invite you to become the discoverers of what lies in this hallowed ground."

Cormac remembered voicing his frustration to Gabriel at the slow pace of their work; there was always too little time, too little money and manpower to do the work as it should be done. The ground was teeming with treasure, and vital knowledge of the past was being destroyed every day.

"Aye, certainly it is. You'll get disillusioned very quickly if you begin thinking like that," Gabriel had said. "Patience is the first requirement in this job. It's best to remind yourself to just keep digging."

At Clonco Bridge, Cormac turned off the main route onto the narrow road that ran past Drumcleggan Bog and Bracklyn House. The rain was still pelting down hard. The front gateway at Bracklyn resembled a graceful set of Gothic chess pieces, with arched doorways to either side of the main gate, and ravenlike birds topping each of the four capitals. A nineteenth-century add-on, he guessed, as he turned the jeep down the long gravel drive; the gate's original purpose was a.s.suredly more for ostentation than for defense.

The deep wooded area around the estate's perimeter gave way almost immediately beyond the gate to a circular drive at the front entrance of the house. Within the circle stood a formal geometric garden, separate triangles of rosebushes enclosed by a miniature box hedge. Though the place did not seem uncared for, exactly, the gra.s.s was unevenly trimmed and overrun with clover and daisies, and the strict edges of the formal garden had been noticeably softened by time. This approach had once enjoyed better days, and Cormac sensed the effort it took to keep the wildness at bay.

He parked a short distance from the house along the curve of the drive, and sat in the jeep for a moment to see whether the rain might let up. Bracklyn House itself was a well-proportioned Jacobean mansion, much larger than he had imagined upon his first glimpse of it from the road. The building's original function as fortress was still evident, from the thickness of the stone walls and the firing holes in its four-square flanking towers. But the profusion of windows also told him that this house had probably been built sometime in the early seventeenth century, a short period of peace when Ireland's aristocracy began forsaking their thick-walled towers in favor of houses that offered grand vistas of their surrounding lands. Their optimism came about a century too soon, however; some of them would have done better to keep their easily defensible fortresses in the face of the invading English. The country was littered with the burned-out ruins of such houses.

The rain only seemed to be coming down harder; he'd have to make a run for it. Grabbing his bag, Cormac sprinted across the gravel and up the semicircular steps. He was soaked to the skin, and glad to find the front door unlocked, as...o...b..rne had said it would be. Pus.h.i.+ng against the four-inch thickness of oak, he found himself in a formal front hall with a black-and-white marble floor, dark wood-paneled walls, and a huge bra.s.s chandelier, under which stood a pedestal table bearing an arrangement of long-stemmed red tulips and bright yellow budding twigs. All was still but for the echoing tock, tock, tock of a large grandfather clock that stood against the wall at the foot of the ma.s.sive oak staircase. Cormac set his case down beside the door; he was dripping all over the floor, and didn't want to venture any farther without making his presence known. He tried shouting a couple of hullos, but there was no response, so he began pulling off his sodden jacket.

"May I help you?" The female voice came from above; the accent was English and decidedly upper cla.s.s. The woman had begun to descend the last turn in the stairs, and Cormac sensed her dismay at finding him in the front hall of Bracklyn House. She was extremely thin and plain of face, but impeccably groomed, her dark hair swept up at the back and her nails manicured into perfect ovals. She wore a pale brown sweater set and a finely pleated wool skirt in shades of brown and black, cut in a style that flattered her slender figure. The woman's age was difficult to discern; her angular countenance was unlined, but her ivory skin had a translucent cast, and her hands were beginning to show the first sinuous signs of aging. Cormac imagined that if she were nearer, he might see a fine network of lines radiating from the corners of her eyes. She descended unhurriedly, conveying a sense of urgency without losing an ounce of her carefully cultivated air of decorum.

"I'm sorry, but this is a private home; we don't offer public tours. I'm sure the local tourist office has a complete list of nearby houses that are open to the public."