by Erin Hart
She couldn’t say any more, because Cormac had pulled her close and was touching his lips to hers, at first gently, then more urgently, until Nora felt dizzy, even slightly delirious.
“Let me stay with you tonight,” he said. “I can’t stand the idea of leaving you alone in that room again. I’d sleep on the sofa.”
“You wouldn’t have to do that, Cormac.”
“I don’t want to take advantage.”
“You wouldn’t be taking advantage. You’d be welcome.”
She took his hand once more, and they turned into the gate at Bracklyn House. Their feet made a rhythmic crunching in the gravel as they ambled up the long drive.
Cormac tried the front door. “Locked. We’ll have to ring the bell.”
Now that their feet were silent, Nora could barely hear a faint noise in the distance, like a motorboat propeller idling underwater. “Cormac, do you hear something?”
His hand dropped from the bell. “I hear it. Seems to be coming from the garage.” The old stable building where Hugh Osborne kept his car was set perpendicular to Bracklyn House, thirty yards from the doorway, but they both covered the ground in a few seconds. Through the window on the side door, they could see the black Volvo inside the garage, enveloped in gauzy clouds of exhaust. Cormac tried the doorknob.
“Locked.” He used one elbow to break the glass, then reached in to unlock the door. The billowing fumes made them both cough as they made their way to the car. “See if you can find a way to open the garage door,” he shouted as he pulled at the car door. “This is locked as well.” He searched around the floor for something heavy enough to break through safety glass, and finally came up with a sledge from the corner. She couldn’t see him swing it, but heard a dull thud and the rain of shattered glass as it fell into the car. Cormac pulled open the door and struggled to lift the slumped figure from the driver’s seat. It was Hugh Osborne.
“Turn it off,” he said, “then come and help me.” Nora reached in to switch off the ignition, and heard something roll off the seat onto the floor. She felt around the floor mat until her fingers closed on a small plastic cylinder, and held her breath as she read the label. She ran quickly to where Cormac was kneeling over Osborne’s still form.
“Cormac, let me have a look at him; he may have taken sleeping tablets as well.” She held up the pill bottle. It was empty.
23
Two hours later, after the flashing lights had disappeared and the ambulance had taken the unconscious Hugh Osborne off to hospital, Bracklyn House was quiet again. Lucy had rung for the ambulance and insisted on going off to hospital with Hugh. In all the chaos, Jeremy was nowhere to be found. Unable to sleep, Cormac lay on the sofa in Nora’s room, revisiting the troubling events of this night and the past few days. He looked over at her, lying on the bed, and saw that she was asleep. Nora was convinced the case was closed, that Osborne would confess if and when he ever awakened. Cormac didn’t feel sure. He’d begun to regret this whole episode, everything that had taken place since he had answered the phone call in Dublin and agreed to come to Dunbeg. Well, almost everything. He couldn’t regret coming to know Nora better. He still felt a certain kinship with Hugh Osborne, despite Nora’s suspicions about the man. He also felt bound to Jeremy Osborne, in whom he could see so much of his younger self. But how much of that understanding was real, and how much was based on illusion?
Responsibility. His father had felt it for complete strangers more than for his own family—the people for whom he should have felt truly responsible. Cormac had always told himself that he wanted no part of his father’s abstract notion of responsibility. But wasn’t that what had brought him here in the first place? What was the word Nora used in talking about the cailin rua? Obligation. He had understood exactly what she meant, and felt it acutely when he first laid eyes on the girl’s small ear exposed in that cutaway. The thought of it pierced him through, along with the memory of the expression in Hugh Osborne’s haunted eyes out on the bog, and Nora’s laughing, tearstained face on the road from Tullymore. He felt exhausted, and lay very still.
The next moment he was awakened by Nora’s voice in his ear. “Cormac. Cormac, there’s someone out there. I saw the light.” What was she talking about? The tower. She was talking about the tower. And then she was out the door. Cormac threw off his blanket and stepped hurriedly into his shoes, fully awake now. He couldn’t let her go out there on her own. He only realized he’d forgotten his glasses as he left by the kitchen door.
Nora was about fifty yards ahead of him. He watched as she vanished beyond the end of the demesne wall, and followed, unsure whether to call out or keep silent. He plunged into the brush at the place he’d seen her disappear, only conscious of the danger she was in, not of the branches that whipped at his chest and face. He plowed through the wood before stumbling and falling hard, his ribs taking the brunt of the blow against a jagged stone. The pain in his side took his breath away, but he got up and forced himself to continue through the rocky maze of the chevaux-de-frise, until he came to the tower house. Nora stood outside the door, and as she swung it open, a golden light spilled out and seemed to surround her. The glow came from a hundred or more flickering candles inside the tower. Each of the tiny flames cast a wavering light, and the undulating shapes on the walls seemed to take on life and movement, an effect further exaggerated by his astigmatism. He stood for a moment, transfixed, before stepping inside. Jeremy Osborne sat at the foot of the stone staircase, arms wrapped tightly around his knees, rocking rapidly back and forth, as if he were in a trance.
“Jeremy,” Cormac said, “are you all right?”
The boy looked up. The wavering light accentuated both his thinness and the recent bruises, and the naked panic in his face. He picked up the first weapon he could find, a screwdriver, from the floor at his feet.
“Get out—get out!” he screamed, backing slowly up the first two steps. “You’re not supposed to be here. No one’s allowed in here!” Nora seemed about to speak, when Jeremy flung the screwdriver, which bounced harmlessly against the door behind Cormac’s head. Jeremy spun around and scrambled as fast as he was able up the crumbling stone stairway. Cormac followed, taking the steps two and three at a time, until he was suddenly engulfed in darkness.
“Jeremy,” he called. “Jeremy, wait.” The sound of footsteps continued, and Cormac could hear Nora shouting to him as well as he continued climbing blindly to the top of the tower, panting and dry-throated when he came out upon the battlements. The sky above was clear, and in the dark he could just make out the edge of the steep roof and the silhouettes of spindly weeds that sprouted from the cracks. He slid against the stone wall, stepping sideways cautiously; there was no telling when any of these floors or walls might give way, rotted as they were by centuries of neglect.
“Why did you have to come here?” Jeremy’s anguished voice cried from beyond the pitched roof beams.
“Jeremy, I’m sorry if we startled you. Everything’s all right.” There was nowhere to run, only a narrow circular walkway around the battlements, and Cormac stayed where he was. He didn’t want to lose access to the stairs below. Again he heard Nora’s voice, more urgent this time: “Cormac, you’ve got to come down.” He smelled the smoke in the same instant that he heard her voice. “There’s a fire—I can’t put it out. Cormac!”
“Jeremy, did you hear? We’re in danger if we stay here.” He inched along the wall, feeling his way with one arm, thinking he might be able to bring Jeremy along if he could only reach him. There was no time to lose. The smoke from below was getting thicker. He could hear the roar and crackle of the flames, and then a strangled cry from below.
“Nora, are you all right? Nora?” he shouted over his shoulder through the battlements, searching for her figure through the acrid smoke that billowed from the stairwell, filling his lungs and stinging his eyes.
“I’m here,” she shouted. He could hear that she was outside now, safe. “I’m all right. Jeremy, please c
ome down. You can still make it.”
Cormac had edged his way around the top of the tower, moving toward the spot where he’d last heard Jeremy’s voice. “Come on,” he said. “There’s no more time.”
Cormac pictured the melting candles on their wooden crates, the dozens of paint cans, the stacks of books and papers, and the rotting beams that would begin to catch fire any minute. He knew that once a fire started, a tower house was little more than a giant chimney, its windowless walls containing and encouraging the flames upward until they burst out the roof. He was counting the seconds until it happened. Why did the boy delay?
“Leave me,” Jeremy shrieked. “Everything I do, everything I touch is fucked. It’s fucked. Just leave me.” He held his head in his hands, rocked his body against the wall in terror and despair.
“I can’t do that.”
The heat from the fire was becoming intense. There was no way they could go down the stairs now. Cormac pressed himself to the wall, and as he did, what was left of the tower roof gave way, crumbling into a gaping pit of fire before them. Jeremy let out a howl through clenched teeth, and pushed himself from the wall, as if to pitch himself headlong into it. Without thinking, Cormac lunged forward and seized the back of the boy’s shirt with one hand, nearly losing his balance, and pulling with all his strength until Jeremy’s full weight slammed back against him, knocking the wind from his chest. And with the force of the blow, time seemed to telescope. The spaces between seconds allowed an almost unbearably acute perception of each sensation as it passed through him. He was conscious of the grinding sound of stone and mortar giving way, of sharp pain and snapping tree branches, then falling, falling into darkness, and the earth seeming to meet him too soon, with a shuddering thump. And then silence. A most pure and sublime silence roared in his ears as he struggled to take a breath.
Then Nora was beside him, close, touching his face, saying, “Cormac, Cormac!” Her horrified face was upside down, and he wanted to laugh, but found tears starting to his eyes instead.
“Can you breathe? Just try to breathe. Please breathe!” He took a gasp of air, and began to cough. Nora turned her attention to the motionless shape just beside him. “He’s alive,” she said. “I’ve got to go for help. Don’t try to move.” She hesitated only a second before disappearing into the woods.
Beside him, Cormac could see Jeremy’s eyes flutter. The boy’s lips moved as though he would speak.
“No,” Cormac said. “Lie still.” Jeremy made a noise that was like a gurgling cough. Cormac desperately tried to remember what to do, but he couldn’t seem to think straight. He struggled up on one elbow, wincing in pain, and put his ear down to the boy’s lips, hoping he wouldn’t pass out himself. He heard a whisper.
“They’re here,” Jeremy said. “There’s a place underground.” He paused to gather what strength he could. “She knows,” the boy muttered urgently. “She knows. She’d never tell—” He lapsed into unconsciousness. Cormac felt himself sinking as well; his head drooped until it rested against Jeremy’s chest.
Book Four
HEAPS OF BONES
It is a grievous situation that has befallen Ireland
Wild blows heaped upon her by ruffians
Her nobility struck to the ground, unable to rise
Her heroes now heaps of bones.
—Irish poet Daibhi Cundun, 1651
1
When Cormac awoke, it was daylight, and Nora dozed in the chair beside his hospital bed. He wanted to speak, to let her know he was awake, but his head felt huge and thick. She stirred, looked about for a second, as if she didn’t quite remember where she was, then pulled her chair up to the bedside and put her face close to his. The mark of the crow’s sharp claw had begun to heal, but there were fresh, raw scratches where brambles had cut her face, and he dimly began to recall what had taken place. It seemed so long ago now.
“Shall I call the nurse?” she asked. He tried to shake his head no, but couldn’t manage it. He winced instead, then licked his lips and tried them out.
“Never should have had those fifteen pints,” he mumbled. She took his hand and smiled, but her chin wavered slightly.
“Please don’t. This is all my fault,” she said.
“It’s not.” He tried again to move.
“Lie still, Cormac.” He liked the sound of her voice, the way she said his name. “The doctor said you have a mild concussion, and some nasty bruises—but no fractures, which is a miracle. The tree branches must have helped to break your fall. And you’re only slightly singed from the fire.” Cormac looked down at white gauze bandages on his left arm and hand.
“Jeremy?”
Nora looked down. “He’s badly hurt. Broken bones, some internal bleeding. A possible head injury—it’s too early to tell.”
“Has he said anything?”
“He’s been unconscious.”
Cormac closed his eyes to consider what he should do. He opened them again, and said, “Nora, could you find Devaney for me?” The strain of the last twelve hours showed in her eyes, and it seemed to Cormac that she finally understood his reluctance to be drawn into this story, as if he somehow knew from the beginning what would be asked of him. He sank back into a half-sleep, and in what seemed like only a few seconds, Nora was back with the policeman at her side.
“Hell of a night,” Devaney said. “You and the young lad are lucky to be here. Osborne likewise. You needed to see me?”
“I did,” said Cormac. His own voice sounded strange and far away in his ears. “Jeremy said something last night—at the time I hadn’t a clue what he meant, but I think I do now.”
Devaney’s voice was quieter than usual. “Go on.”
“He said, ‘They’re here. There’s a place underground.’” Cormac watched as the substance of the words struck his listeners. Neither apparently had any doubt as to whom Jeremy’s words referred.
“Oh God, Cormac,” Nora said, and sank into the chair beside his bed. Devaney’s eyes closed, and his lips were set in an expression of disappointment and finality.
Cormac felt exhausted, and had to close his eyes as well. But there was more. He tried to remember what it was, though his head was pounding like a bass drum. “I think he said something else as well. Something like: ‘She knows. She’d never tell.’”
Devaney’s voice was sharp. “Are you sure? ‘She knows? She’d never tell’?” Cormac could hear the words stick in the policeman’s throat.
2
By the time Devaney had phoned in the request for a full-scale crime scene detail to meet him at Bracklyn House, he was already playing out the next few days in his head: the cameras flashing, and tarps rigged to keep away rain, the barriers set to fend off the prying reporters who invariably descended. Before he left the hospital, it might also be prudent to check on Hugh and Jeremy Osborne, and put a couple of the local lads on duty outside their rooms. The boy’s words finally gave them something to go on, but still left open the question of responsibility.
What had prompted Hugh Osborne to try the ultimate escape? A suicide didn’t fit with any way Devaney had figured the case. If Osborne wasn’t guilty, maybe he just couldn’t go on any longer. And if he was, perhaps he saw things beginning to unravel. When Devaney stopped at the door, Osborne was turned on his side, facing away from the corridor. A thin cotton blanket was drawn up over his shoulders, but there were no restraints. Nothing to keep him from walking away—or to keep him from doing himself further harm, Devaney thought.
“He’s sleeping now,” whispered the young nurse who came up behind him. “Just as well. When he wakes up he’ll have a right bugger of a headache.”
“How’s he getting on?”
“Are you a friend?” The girl’s porcelain skin was lightly freckled, and her green eyes fixed him with a compassionate gaze. He looked away.
“Acquaintance.”
“Much improved this morning, but the doctor says they’re going to keep him another day or two for observat
ion. Carbon monoxide can have some rather nasty effects, and they don’t want to let him go too soon.”
“I see—thanks,” Devaney said. He’d see what turned up at the tower before he had a chat with Hugh Osborne. Two young Garda officers approached, and Devaney took them aside.
“What are your names?”
“Molloy,” said the first young officer.
“O’Byrne, sir,” said the second.
“I want you to stay here as my eyes and ears. Molloy, you’ll stay with Hugh Osborne. Try to be as unobtrusive as possible.” When he saw the blank look on the young man’s face, he added: “Blend in. O’Byrne, you can come with me.”
Jeremy Osborne’s status was still critical. Devaney approached the room where the boy lay propped up in bed with his left leg and arm in casts, and his head swaddled in bandages. Jeremy’s face was distorted and discolored by bruises, and a breathing tube was taped to his open mouth. Beside him, his mother sat upright in a chair, as if by keeping straight, she could hold her son back from the brink of death by sheer force of will. Lucy Osborne’s whole body turned toward Devaney as he entered the room. Her dry eyes seemed to overflow with pain, but the rest of her face remained masklike, frozen into a stoic calm.
“I blame myself,” she said. “If he had stayed near me, I might have kept him safe.” Her eyes flickered to the Garda officer beyond the door. “What’s going on?”
“It’s just routine. Until we have the full story of what happened last night,” Devaney said. “I promise he won’t be in your way.”
As he drove to the tower, Devaney thought of Mina Osborne’s letters, and of the mother in India, waiting patiently for news. People knew that the person they loved was dead, but let themselves be deluded, buoyed up for a while on the notion that what their gut was telling them could be wrong.
