by Erin Hart
In contrast to the work clothes he’d been wearing at the site this afternoon, Osborne was dressed expensively, even elegantly now, in a black silk jacket and camel-colored slacks. But it wasn’t just the clothing; the man had a natural physical grace that was all the more noticeable because of his height. Fintan followed Cormac’s gaze.
“You get the story on him?” he asked confidentially. Cormac nodded, and Fintan continued: “I don’t know if he’s as guilty as everybody around here likes to make out. A lot of ’em are just fuckin’ delighted seeing the big man down in the mud. I think that’s a load of bollocks. But I wish Una would wise up all the same.”
“Maybe they’re just friends,” Cormac said.
Fintan looked at him. “Right,” he said, “maybe they are.”
A while later, on his way back from the gents’, Cormac passed by the end of the bar, near the young man to whom Osborne had spoken. The crowd hushed as one of the fiddles began to play “The Dear Irish Boy,” an old air whose haunting melody never failed to raise the hairs on the back of Cormac’s neck. He stopped for a moment to listen, feeling his chest and throat tighten at the desolation in the pleading notes. The boy at his side drew back and stared hollowly at Cormac for a long moment, then turned unsteadily, lifted a glass to his lips, and drank greedily, as if by draining the glass he could dive headfirst into oblivion. And so he could, Cormac thought. The young man rapped his glass once on the bar and Cormac heard the publican whisper furiously: “You’ve had enough, now. Clear off.” There was no response but another rap of the glass. “Go home, will yeh? Before you get us both in a rake of trouble.” The boy peered blackly at the barman, then lurched away and stumbled in slow motion through the crowd and out into the night. Hugh Osborne followed the boy, ducking his head as he pushed his way out the door. Cormac saw that he wasn’t the only one watching: Devaney was taking it all in as well.
6
It was morning. Cormac could hear the pub coming to life downstairs, the unloading of aluminum casks of beer, the clink and rattle of bottles in wooden crates, the puttering diesel roar of a lorry as it pulled away to the next delivery. He’d slept wretchedly, his rest disturbed by fearful, brackish dreams of being pursued by a shadowy assailant through a dark wood.
He turned over to try to sleep again, but a knock sounded at the door. “Mr. Maguire?” a raspy, adolescent voice inquired. “It’s nine o’clock. You asked to be called.”
“Bollocks,” Cormac muttered under his breath. Aloud he said, “Yes, all right. Thanks very much. Any chance of a cup of tea?” There was no reply except the sound of a large pair of trainers bounding down the narrow carpeted stairs. He’d better make a move if he was going to meet Nora in the lab at two.
There was tea—a full breakfast, in fact, waiting for him in the bar below. He’d just tucked into a mighty-looking fry of eggs, sausages, rashers, and tomatoes when the pub door opened. Una McGann entered, followed by Hugh Osborne, who appeared reluctant to be disturbing anyone’s breakfast.
“Please forgive the interruption,” Una said. “I’ve just had a brain wave.” The two men shook hands, then stood for a moment awkwardly.
“Won’t you join me?” Cormac asked. Behind the bar, he could hear Dermot Lynch, the publican, clattering together spoons and crockery.
Settling his large frame onto one of the small upholstered stools that stood like dwarves about his knees, Hugh Osborne first cast a glance at Una, then addressed Cormac: “I’m developing a parcel of land for a workshop that will demonstrate and sell traditional crafts.” Cormac realized at that moment that he’d never heard the man’s voice. It had a deep bass timbre, and an accent that was neither Irish nor wholly English, but somewhere between the two. Osborne leaned forward, and the dark circles under his eyes suggested that he’d not slept well the previous night either.
“We’ve enlisted a couple of other weavers, a metalsmith, and several potters,” he continued. “And of course, Una’s dyeworks is a central part of the plan.” Listening to him, Cormac got the sense that Hugh Osborne was a naturally diffident person. He remembered what it was like to live an eventful life in a small town, and felt a surge of compassion for the lanky figure who faced him across the table.
“It’s an ideal setting, really, given the history of the place….” Osborne’s voice trailed off.
“Sounds promising,” Cormac said, “although I’m not quite clear how it involves me.”
“Sorry, sorry, I should have explained that at the outset,” Osborne said, coloring slightly. “We’re due to be putting in electrical and gas lines in a few weeks’ time. And I’m sure you know that in order to get planning permission, we first have to make an archaeological survey of the site. We were all set to begin, and the consulting firm I originally hired to do the work pulled out. Conflict with another project that’s taking longer than anticipated. And every other licensed archaeologist I’ve contacted is fully booked. I realize you probably don’t normally do this sort of thing, but we’re behind schedule as it is. I’d pay the usual fees, of course. It might take a week or two. Rather a busman’s holiday, I suppose—but you could stay at the house while you work. Of course, I don’t know what your schedule looks like.”
“I’m actually on sabbatical this term,” Cormac said. “The thing is, I’m supposed to be finishing a book; the publishers are breathing down my neck.”
“I understand completely,” said Osborne.
“And I told Dr. Gavin I’d be back in Dublin this afternoon for the exam on that girl from the bog.” Cormac realized that he had been vaguely unsettled by Devaney’s suspicions. He looked across the table, where Una and Hugh studied his face in anticipation. “I don’t know what to say. Can I let you know?”
“By all means. Think it over.”
“I’m sorry I can’t be more definite just now.”
Osborne rose. “Quite all right. I do understand.” He offered no handshake this time. One flicker of the deep-set eyes was enough to let Cormac know he wasn’t the first to balk.
“Good-bye then,” Osborne said as he moved toward the door of the pub. “I’m sorry if we disturbed your breakfast.” Una McGann gave Cormac a bewildered look, and pressed a slip of paper in his hand. “Here’s the telephone number.”
“Tell him I’ll ring this afternoon,” Cormac said. The words sounded unconvincing even to himself.
At one o’clock in the afternoon, the head of the nameless red-haired girl lay, still embedded in peat, on an examining table in the conservation lab at Collins Barracks in Dublin. Perched on a stool at one end of the table, Cormac studied the strange bundle as he waited for Nora Gavin. The scent of wet turf filled the room, and diffused daylight streamed in from a single unshaded casement window that looked out onto the expansive stone-paved courtyard. Just over a century ago, when this building was still the largest army barracks in the British empire, Queen Victoria had made a visit here to inspect her troops. Something of the spartan, military ambience of those days remained in these chambers, despite the fact that two wings of the quad were now occupied by the National Museum.
Cormac could hear Nora speaking on the phone in the adjacent office. “That would be great. Okay, see you soon. Thank you so much.” She pushed open the door to the lab. “That was radiology up at Beaumont Hospital,” she said. “They can fit us in for a CT scan at six, so we’ll have to get a move on here.”
Nora reached into a drawer beneath the table for a pair of surgical gloves, pulling them on over the cuffs of her lab coat. As she performed this ordinary task, her professional demeanor seemed to snap into place as well, fitting her as smoothly as the thin layer of latex against her skin. She gingerly removed the black plastic, then began to remove the larger piece of sopping turf, and to arrange the matted strands of reddish hair. As the young woman’s features emerged in the merciless fluorescent glare of the lab, her expression was even more ghastly than it had seemed out against the earthy blackness of the bog, but Nora’s hands were steady, and as gent
le as if her patient lived. Whatever had so visibly affected her yesterday seemed to have loosened its hold. Cormac wondered what sort of a life Nora Gavin had left behind her in the States, and in particular why she had pulled up stakes midcareer and moved to Dublin. He had a suspicion that Gabriel McCrossan had known more about her circumstances than he’d been willing to share.
“We’ll have to wait for Drummond to do the official postmortem, of course. He said he might be available tomorrow, provided things remain quiet.”
As she spoke, Nora was carefully removing bits of peat from the red-haired girl’s face, and applying a mist of deionized water from a spray bottle. Cormac suddenly realized that if he apologized for the way he’d behaved the night of Gabriel’s dinner party, she would have absolutely no idea what he was talking about. There was something about that realization, and about sitting here watching Nora Gavin at her work, that he found enormously enjoyable. As he drew closer to observe, Cormac saw that the red-haired girl’s skin, now washed clean of its protective peat, was soft and brown as tanned leather. He studied the lifelike curve of her upper lip, the faint covering of down on her cheek, and had to resist an urge to smooth her furrowed brow.
“Is she the first you’ve ever seen up close?” she asked. He nodded. “Me too. You can help if you like,” she said. “But you’ll have to wear these.” She handed him a pair of gloves from a drawer. “We have to keep her as clean as possible.” She crossed to the door and called into the next office, “I’m ready for a hand, Ray, whenever you are.” Raymond Flynn, the conservation technician, joined them. Cormac watched and occasionally lent a hand as Nora and Flynn measured the circumference of the girl’s cranium and the length of her damp red hair, taking photographs and carefully noting their measurements as they went along, pausing frequently for the spray bottle. When they were finished with that phase of the exam, Nora carried the girl’s head at arm’s length to the adjacent X-ray room, positioned it on a negative plate, then retreated outside and closed the chamber door while Flynn activated the machine.
“We might be able to hazard a few guesses about how old she is,” Nora said when they’d returned to the examining table. “It’s tough to determine age with any accuracy unless we can get a closer look at her molars. The jaw looks pretty pliable, but we’ll have to be extremely careful.” She used surgical tweezers and a pair of scissors to extract a small piece of skin and a lock of hair for chemical analysis, then a tiny sample of muscle tissue from the girl’s severed neck. She saw Cormac watching closely as she carefully removed a small section of an artery.
“Turns out cholesterol is the most reliable stuff for carbon-dating bog bodies; it’s insoluble in water, less likely to be contaminated by the surrounding material. Without the rest of the body, cause of death is probably going to be an educated guess. There don’t appear to be any ligature marks around the throat. I see several things that point toward decapitation as the cause.”
“Such as?”
“Well, come here for a second. Look at the wound.” Nora reached for the magnifying glass on the tray beside her. “It’s a very clean cut. Look at the way the blood vessels have been sliced through, not torn. Probably a single blow from a fairly sharp blade.” She gestured for him to take the glass, which he did with some trepidation. “You wouldn’t bother being quick about it if the person were unconscious or already dead. And what else could make a person bite down through her own lip like that? She was probably lucky, if that’s how it happened. At least it was over quickly. And look at this.” She pointed to what appeared to be a small abrasion on the girl’s chin. “See how the adipocere, that yellowish waxy material under the skin, is exposed here? Looks to me like a small section of the skin has been cut away. That could have been done with the same blow of the axe—or sword, or whatever kind of blade it was that severed her head.”
He must have looked puzzled. Nora leaned forward impulsively to demonstrate, holding her hands behind her back as if they were bound. She lowered her head to the level of the tabletop.
“Look, if I’m on the block, my natural reaction would be to contract, to become as small as possible.” He studied the back of Nora’s slender neck, the edge of dark hair that stood out against her pale skin, the small hollow between the tendons that supported her head. How easy it must seem, at first, to sever such a vulnerable connection. But how difficult it must prove, as well, considering the toughness of bone and sinew that must be cut through.
“Do you see how it would happen? If my chin is tucked tight, it comes in line with the blade.” She straightened again. “We can probably figure out all kinds of things about how she was killed. But the real question is why? This girl is hardly more than a child. The other thing I can’t get over is how incredibly well-preserved she is. The lab will check of course, but I can’t see any visible evidence of insect eggs or larvae. She must have gone into the bog very soon after her death—which means she was probably killed at or very near the bog.”
“You realize we’ve probably found out all we’re going to about this girl,” Cormac said. He wished there were more as well, but they had to be prepared for reality.
“Yes, I know. But I’m not ready to be perfectly rational about all this yet.”
Should he mention the offer he’d had from Osborne this morning? He could easily drop the whole thing, go on as he had been, finishing his book, preparing to go back to teaching in the fall. He could see his entire future so clearly down that course. Why did he feel that once he stepped from that comfort zone, he would never be able to return? Then again, what was the point of this or any convergence, if not to create new paths?
“Hugh Osborne asked if I’d be interested in coming back to do a small job for him—a general archaeological survey on a construction site.” A light seemed to spring from Nora’s dark blue eyes as she turned to him.
“Oh, Cormac—” she began, then stopped abruptly. “Please tell me you didn’t turn him down.”
“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 compassion. 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-class 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, guitar
ist, 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, polishing off a prawn cocktail with his first pint. He raised his eyebrows in greeting as he licked the last of the cocktail 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.”
