by Erin Hart
“So what do you think yourself?”
Dolly Pilkington’s eyes narrowed, and she regarded Cormac as if trying to decide whether he could be trusted. Evidently he passed muster, for she gestured for him to come closer so that she could speak more quietly. “I can only tell you the same thing I told the police. Missus Osborne was upset over something that day she went missing. You could see she’d been crying her eyes out, poor thing. I don’t believe she and the child are still walking this earth,” she whispered. “God forgive me for saying such a thing. It’s just a feeling. But I can’t credit the husband having any hand in it. No way.”
“Why not?”
“Because he was standing right before me where you are now when he got the news about the bog. The very spot, and he was absolutely devastated. Nobody could just put on something like that.” Cormac pitied anyone who might try to budge Dolly Pilkington’s opinion on the matter. “Now ask me about some others, and I might be able to tell you a few things,” she continued. “That cousin of his, she’s a quare customer if ever there was one, and the young lad—” She clucked and gasped and crossed herself again. “So wild! I get down on me two knees every day and thank God my Oliver’s not that way inclined.” Sensing another imminent tirade, Cormac tried desperately to steer her off.
“Ah—I wonder, Mrs. Pilkington, you seem very knowledgeable. I’m trying to find out whatever I can about the girl in the bog, and I wonder if you could help me locate any local historical records.”
“Well, there’s the Heritage Center over in Woodford.”
“And what sorts of documents might they have?”
“Ah, sure, I wouldn’t have a clue. I just know they have loads of Americans going up there searching for their ‘roots.’”
“What about anybody who has a particular interest in the local history or folklore?” He waited while Dolly Pilkington measured his words, and endeavoring not to boast, she said, “Well, there’s nothing happened here in the last fifty years I wouldn’t know about, meself, you know.”
“I’m afraid we might have to go back a bit further than that. The bank of turf where the girl was found hasn’t been cut in the last hundred years or so, maybe even longer.”
“Is that so? Well, in that case, I’d go and speak to Ned Raftery if I was you.”
“The schoolteacher?”
“The very same—or used to be, I should say, before he lost his eyesight, God bless him. You’d think being stone blind was not a bother on him at all. Why, he was in here the other day, buying a garden shears, if you don’t mind, and what do you think he’s going to get up to with them things?”
8
While Cormac was in town, Nora showered off the muck and sweat of the day’s work. They’d only scratched the surface at the excavation site, but her muscles ached from wielding a shovel all afternoon. As the water coursed down her limbs, she remembered the policeman’s words: At this point, I’m willing to follow any sort of lead.
She dressed and decided to go in search of Cormac; maybe by now he’d returned from the village. The hallway was a twisting maze of right angles, its dark wood wainscoting featuring the same carved motif she had seen in the downstairs rooms, but the wood was cracked in places and looked in need of repair. Just outside her room, however, she noticed an open door leading into a side stairwell. The space was darker, narrower, and much less grand than the carved masterpiece of open stairwork to the ground floor. There was no illumination here, apart from the wan daylight that struggled through a narrow and dusty leaded-glass window on the landing, and not a whisper from above or below. Casting a quick glance back down the hallway, Nora ventured upward.
The few small rooms directly at the top of the stairs seemed to be used for storage. The largest door opened into a long gallery-like space. Unlike the rest of the house, this room was sparsely furnished, and filled with light. About a dozen blank stretched canvases were stacked against the wall, and a large easel draped with a scrap of linen canvas stood in the center of the bare wood floor. A few finished but unframed paintings leaned against the bits of furniture around the room. Nora stepped closer to the nearest canvas. Its central subject was a pair of detached, slightly abstracted white wings. The painting’s surface had the texture of a decaying fresco, and its background was filled with shadowy images of exotic plants and animals behind a veil of golden light. She could make out a few scarlet petals of a flower, the sinuous curve of a snake, and the irregular spots on a leopard’s shadowy flank—like a hazy impression of some unreachable Eden. Each canvas was more obscure than the last, until the elements had become completely abstracted, like a dream retreating into the subconscious at the moment of waking. On the easel, she found an unfinished canvas in which she could see the painter’s technique of layering and scraping that gave these works their unique texture and depth. The table beside her was filled with tubes of paint and jars full of brushes. Nothing out of the ordinary for an artist’s studio, but how curious that most of the items were brand-new, and unused. Nora ran her fingers over the thick bristles of one brush. There were no curtains on the windows, and she finally noticed that this room offered a breathtaking view of the lake, and a small island about a hundred yards from shore.
She paused for a moment. Had she heard something? It came again, the barely audible but unmistakable pitch of a child’s voice. The sound seemed to be coming from the stairwell. Nora abandoned the silent paintings and retraced her steps to the floor below.
She approached the door just opposite her own and tried the handle. Locked. She continued down the hall, until she heard a child’s laughter, closer this time. “No, you” came a small voice, followed by a low adult murmur. “No, Mummy, you.” The voice came from a room just past the main staircase, whose door was slightly ajar. Nora knew she shouldn’t, but felt compelled. She knocked at the door. No reply. She pushed it slowly open. This room was full of dark, ornately carved furniture, much like her own. There was no one here, but a television in a large corner cabinet was on, and the video image showed the same woman and child Nora had seen in the photograph downstairs. The little boy was older here, a toddler now, sitting on his mother’s lap. Her back was to the camera. The mother leaned forward, pretending to tickle the little boy; he shrieked with helpless delight. Who had left this tape running? It couldn’t have been Hugh Osborne; he’d been away all day teaching at the university in Galway. That left Jeremy, or Lucy Osborne, whom Nora had yet to meet. She switched off the television and video player, and suddenly realized that she was probably in Hugh Osborne’s bedroom. She was paralyzed for a moment by feelings of both guilt and curiosity, and had to fight a sudden urge to fling open the wardrobe doors and dig through the chest of drawers. How absurd to think that she might discover something that the police had missed. And yet she couldn’t leave, not yet. She walked around the huge four-poster bed, which Hugh Osborne must once have shared with his wife.
What was it that made a person think he could just discard another human being, like something he’d got the best use of and no longer needed? The one thing that she could not begin to fathom was the frightening absence of feeling such an act must require—not even a lack of love or tenderness, but simple fellow feeling. Nora closed her eyes; when she opened them, she saw another door straight ahead of her. Crossing the threshold, she saw that it was a child’s room, a nursery. An old rocking horse stood in one corner, sporting a painted saddle on its well-worn hide, and a real horsehair tail. A small table and chairs, a toy box, a brightly painted wardrobe, and a chest of drawers completed the furnishings. The air in the room was cool and musty, as in the studio upstairs, as if it had been closed up for a long time. She crossed to the nearest window and pulled it open, drinking in the freshness of the scented spring air. Only then did she turn and notice the figure in the bed. Jeremy Osborne was much too large for the child’s cot, but lay curled up on his side. The coverlet was halfheartedly drawn around him, as if he’d grown cold but couldn’t manage to pull it up properly.
Abruptly awakened, Jeremy sat up looking slightly disoriented, but also as if he might bolt for the door. He wore the same clothes he’d had on the night before.
“Hello again,” she said, and from the deep flush rising in the boy’s cheeks she surmised that he remembered their first meeting all too well, despite his considerable state of inebriation at the time.
“Sorry, I heard the television and didn’t realize anyone was in here.” Jeremy said nothing, and looked as if he wished he could disappear. He made a feeble attempt to smooth the coverlet beside him. “I’m afraid we got off on the wrong foot last night. What if we forget about it, and start again?” Still no response. “It was you looking at that video, wasn’t it?” Jeremy Osborne looked up for the first time, and Nora thought she saw the faint glimmer of hope in his eyes, only to see it abruptly extinguished.
“You must be Miss Gavin,” said a woman’s voice from the doorway. Nora turned to the elegant, smoothly coiffed woman standing at her elbow. “I’m sorry I haven’t had the opportunity to meet you before; I’m Lucy Osborne.”
“Please call me Nora.”
“What part of America are you from?” Lucy asked. Her cool fingers pressed lightly into Nora’s warm palm.
“Minnesota,” said Nora, aware that this probably meant nothing to Lucy Osborne. “The Midwest. I was actually born in Clare, but my parents emigrated when I was very young.”
“And what made you decide to return to Ireland?” Lucy asked pleasantly, crossing to close and latch the window Nora had left open.
“A temporary teaching job at Trinity College. But I’ve spent summers here since I was a child. It’s always seemed like home to me.”
“I’m sure it has,” Lucy said, with the slightest glance around the room that suggested Nora shouldn’t be feeling quite so much at home here. She changed the subject. “Hugh phoned a short while ago to say that he mightn’t make it home in time for your evening meal, so I’ve taken the liberty of preparing a cold supper for you.”
“That’s very kind. Cormac should be back very shortly, if you wouldn’t mind waiting.”
The polite smile that crossed Lucy Osborne’s face suggested that Nora had a lot to learn about the inhabitants of Bracklyn House. “Jeremy and I usually take our supper in my sitting room.” Lucy crossed to the bed, where her son sat staring silently at the carpet.
“Are you feeling all right, darling? You look a bit pale.” She pressed the back of a hand to his forehead. He still said nothing, so she straightened his collar, which had gotten tucked in on itself. The boy’s reaction to this motherly gesture was nothing more than a slight shrug of one shoulder, but it did not escape Nora’s attention. From below came the sound of a car on the gravel driveway.
“That must be Cormac now,” Nora said.
“If you’d like to go down to the kitchen,” Lucy said. Nora gathered that it was not really a suggestion.
“It was very kind of you to fix a meal—”
“Nonsense, you’re our guests,” Lucy said, finally taking her eyes from her son’s face. “Run along, now, my dear.”
As Nora turned to pull the door closed behind her, she caught a glimpse of mother and son sitting together on the edge of the small bed. Jeremy’s hands still rested, inert, in his lap. Lucy put one hand up to stroke the hair at the nape of his neck once more, and again, he seemed to tense slightly at her touch. Lucy inclined her head until it was touching Jeremy’s, and whispered something in his ear. He made no reply, but nodded twice. Lucy said something more, and although his dark head remained downcast, Nora could have sworn that on the boy’s lips played the barest suggestion of a reluctant smile.
9
“I don’t know about you,” Nora said to Cormac as they were finishing their meal in the kitchen, “but I find this place depressing as hell. Would you like to go for a walk or something? We’ve a good hour of daylight left.”
“I was going to try to write up some notes from the dig—” he began, but was stopped by Nora’s incredulous look.
“We’ve put in nearly nine hours today already, and we haven’t even had a good look around the place.” She stood up. “Come on. Aren’t you the least bit curious? Have you been down to the lake?” she asked.
“Not yet. Lead on.”
They left by the kitchen door, and walked slowly to take in the magnificent scene. The clouds had broken, and the sun was just beginning to descend, its waning golden light playing on the small, random waves that clapped together on the surface of the lake. A long expanse of green lawn stretched before them, and the forested area that surrounded the lake had been judiciously cleared to afford an almost surreally beautiful vista, a painter’s landscape come to life. A hundred yards from shore on a small island stood a tumbling ruin of gray stone. The lawn sloped gently downhill toward the water, where a low shelf of earth blocked the view of the shallow, stony beachfront from the house.
“Look, there’s a boat!” Nora said, pointing a short distance down the shore, and Cormac had a sudden vision of what she must have been like as a child, with a curiosity and sense of adventure that remained undiminished all these years later. Before he knew it, she was struggling to overturn the bright blue rowboat, so he leapt down the small ledge to give her a hand. The craft was small, but seemed seaworthy enough.
“Hop in,” he said to Nora, “I’ll shove off.” Once aboard, he set the yellow oars in their locks, then turned the rowboat toward the island, and began to pull against the water with long, steady strokes.
“You’re a pretty handy oarsman.”
“We had a boat like this when I was a kid. And I still row a bit, when I have the time. It’s a great place to be alone with your thoughts, out on the water.”
Within a moment or two he managed to pull the little boat alongside the island. What a place to live, exposed out here on a treeless, rocky island, at the mercy of wind and water. Some of the earliest settlements in Ireland had been built on islands in the middle of great marshy lakes, timber-fenced earthwork fortresses surrounded by water to defend against raiders. Later had come stone forts like this one, then the Norman-style tower houses, and eventually fortified mansions like Bracklyn House. All built to keep invaders out. All failing in their purpose, until they were piled, one almost on top of the other. Where in that continuum did the cailin rua fall? Would she ever have seen what Cormac was seeing now? What name might she have had for this island, this body of water?
The only sounds were the hollow lapping of the waves against the sturdy side of the wooden boat, and the steady creaking of the oars. They came around the far side of the island, and Cormac stopped rowing. From this distance, Bracklyn House was more impressive, more the stately fortress and less the crumbling manor house than it seemed up close. It cast a sharp, looming shadow over the brilliant emerald lawn, and the rough surface of its stone walls looked almost gilded against the faintly purpled clouds of the gathering dusk. One day, it too would be reduced to a ruin like the pile of rubble on the island. It was impossible not to think of all the human lives that had been bound up in the defense, the capture, the possession of this particular parcel of land in the long march of history. And of the lives Bracklyn House contained now, including his and Nora’s, which had eventually been touched by that conflict.
He watched her, only an arm’s length away in the stern of the boat. She seemed oblivious to his scrutiny, and stared down into the clear water. He was intrigued by the way Nora’s dark hair fell softly against her face. What was her story? He studied the hollow at the base of her throat, the way her right hand gripped the boat’s rim, the soft curve of her hip on the bench seat, remembering the abandon in the way she’d sung those words:my generous lover, you’re welcome to me. What he felt right now, looking at Nora, was something even stronger than physical desire—though he felt that intensely, too, he had to admit. But desire was swallowed up in a larger yearning to gain entrance, to wander the rooms and passageways inside her head, her heart, if she would allow him. Of course
, that meant throwing open the doors, allowing her into his own hidden places as well. And for the first time in his life, that prospect actually seemed possible.
“Nora—”
“Do you think they’re down there somewhere?” she asked suddenly.
Cormac felt his momentary chance dissolve. “Who do you mean?”
“Mina Osborne and her son.”
“Devaney said the divers never found anything.”
“It’s an awfully big lake.” She turned toward him. “By the way, I met Jeremy’s mother while you were in town. I heard a noise down the hall from my room. It turned out to be a video of Mina Osborne and the little boy.”
Cormac remembered the notice he’d seen in the shop window. “Christopher.”
“Was that his name? Christopher. There was nobody watching the video, but I found Jeremy sleeping in the next room—what looked like a nursery. It was very weird. Anyway, that’s when his mother made her entrance. I don’t think we hit it off.”
Cormac recalled his own first encounter with Lucy Osborne. “If it’s any comfort, I didn’t make a very good first impression either.”
They floated for another while, until the boat gradually drew near the shore, where O’Flaherty’s Tower stood in silhouette against the darkening sky. There was no sign of the mob of crows Cormac had first seen around the tower’s top.
