by Erin Hart
And so it came to be that Aine Rua Mag Annaigh was arrested and charged with her child’s foul murder, and brought before the assizes, where she was swiftly convicted and sentenced to die by the sword. Within a fortnight she was spirited to the place of execution and her head cleft from her shoulders with a single stroke. When I entreated the sheriff’s men to grant me her wretched corpse for burial, they enform’d me that her head had been took by Hugo Osborne off the block. I know not where it lies.
This secret chamber was known to me from earlier days, when I was oft hid here by old Flaitheartaigh, and much use have I made of it since in this latest fearful time. I brought her here, my fear being great that Osborne, in his wrath, would cause her corpse to be disinterred, were she buryed in any rough patch of unhallowed ground. And so within this ancient, private place, along with my forbidden priestly goods, I have entombed the remains of Aine Rua Mag Annaigh. And against her breast I have lodged the hapless infant Edmund Osborne, who drew mortal breath but for an houre.
My confessors all are dead or banished. I therefore confess to whomever shall find this writing that I am a weak and worthless man, who have been hindered by mortal fear from revealing the wicked dealings in which I have played so villainous a part. I dare not seek absolution. I can never rest, for I am haunted by the face of that flame-haired creature, bound upon her knees, and the piteous cry that leapt from her as the swordsman did his evil work. If any person ever find this document, I do heartily beg your prayers, and those of all good Catholics and Christians. I go to my grave beseeching God’s mercy upon my eternal soul. Mea culpa. Mea culpa. Mea maxima culpa.
The paper was signed Miles Gorman, and dated the twenty-fourth of May, 1654. Osborne had waited in profound stillness for them to finish deciphering the words he must have read over and over again. Nora looked up and saw him sitting in the chair across from them, waiting for a reaction with an anxious, guarded expression. “My God,” she said, “if this is true—”
“If it’s true, then the last three hundred and fifty years of my family’s history is built upon an act of judicial murder,” Osborne said. “Hugo and Sarah had no other children. That’s what all these papers are; I spent half the night digging up the whole family tree.”
“And all those portraits on the stairs—” Cormac said.
“Only the first one, Hugo, was actually an Osborne. The man they called Edmund Osborne was the son of Aine Rua and Cathal Mor O’Flaherty, if this Miles Gorman can be believed. That’s the question I keep asking myself. Why would he lie?”
A commotion of voices came from the front hall, and Aoife McGann appeared at the library door. “We’re here,” she announced, then retreated, and returned with Jeremy Osborne in tow. A profound change had come over the boy: his hair had grown out into dark curls, and his hollow cheeks had filled in. Jeremy actually looked healthy, and appeared both pleased and embarrassed by Aoife’s attention, especially in present company.
“How are you, Jeremy?” Nora asked.
He glanced at her. “All right.”
“It’s good to see you,” Cormac said. The boy’s eyes flashed as he checked to see whether the remark had been made at his expense; when he found it was genuine, he seemed at a loss to respond.
Una stood at the library door now. “As long as you’ve still got your coats on, you two, how would you like to go and get me some potatoes out of the kitchen garden? About a dozen ought to do.” Aoife seized Jeremy’s hand once more, and pulled him after her before another word was spoken.
“God, if I had only half her energy,” Una said. “Will you come down to the kitchen, so we can talk and chop at the same time?”
Una put the men on the onion and garlic detail at the table, while she and Nora took on washing some greens. “You’re going to ask me how things have been since you left,” Una said as she stood beside Nora at the sink. “It’s been hard. Hugh won’t admit it, but he still doesn’t sleep at night. Jeremy’s been doing much better, but he may need more help than we can give him. Hugh’s trying, he really is. We all are.”
“Any word about Lucy? Does he ever see her?”
“No. She’s in a special hospital unit at Portlaoise. The psychologist says it may be better for now that he not see her.”
“Aoife seems to have great time for him,” Nora said, watching the small fair head, the arms gesturing as the child both directed and assisted Jeremy, who was digging for potatoes with a spade in the raised vegetable bed outside the kitchen window.
“She’s delighted to have a playmate since Fintan’s gone away,” Una said. “And I really think Jeremy dotes on her as well. He really has come a long way. He goes to see the counselor faithfully every week. It’s going to take a long time, but I know Hugh’s right—I know there’s goodness in him.”
“It’ll get better,” Nora said, hoping her words carried the weight of conviction. “Are you still living at home? I hope you don’t mind me asking.”
“We’re still there. Brendan’s calmed down a lot since you were here. He’s realized that Fintan leaving wasn’t the end of the world, and he’s hired a young fella to help him out with the farmwork. I think it helps knowing that even if Aoife and I should leave, we wouldn’t be going far. I don’t think I could ever leave this place entirely.”
Hugh Osborne came over to set his plate of chopped garlic on the counter beside them, and stopped to give Una’s hand an affectionate squeeze before returning to the table. Nora could see that Una was both pleased and a little discomfited by this gesture.
“Hugh’s asked whether Aoife and I might like to come and live here. I still haven’t decided what to tell him. But sometimes we actually do feel like a family.”
“It seems to me you both deserve a little happiness, after all that’s happened.”
They worked for a moment in silence. Nora glanced at the two men, wondering whether Hugh had mentioned anything to Una yet about the confession, and the astonishing twist it put in the whole Osborne family history.
“Una, I was wondering—the name Mag Annaigh wouldn’t by any chance be a variation of McGann, would it?”
“Oh, aye, all those names, McCann, McGann, MacAnna, makes no difference, sure, they’re all just different spellings of the same name. Why do you ask?”
“Just curious. We think we may have found out who our red-haired girl was after all.”
3
When the supper was finished, the dishes washed and dried and put away, it was getting close to Aoife’s bedtime, and Hugh offered to walk Una and her daughter home. As they were leaving, he turned and spoke to Jeremy: “Why don’t you show Nora and Cormac what you’re working on while I’m gone?”
The boy’s expression didn’t change, but he led them to the room on the ground floor directly across from Hugh’s workshop, and switched on the lights to reveal a spacious whitewashed studio, its walls taped with rough pencil sketches. On a table against the near wall was a miscellany of twigs and leaves, a fox pelt, and a collection of feathers. Nora started slightly when she noticed a large hooded crow, awakened and blinking in the bright light, on a perch in the corner.
“Don’t worry,” Jeremy said, approaching the bird and gently stroking the feathers on its belly. “He won’t hurt you. He’s only an old pet. But he’s very smart.”
Nora began to peruse the drawings and the paintings. This work was not at all like the desperate splashes of paint they’d seen covering the walls of the tower, Nora thought, but it did retain a certain measure of the raw expression they’d witnessed there. Jeremy leaned against the wall by the door with his hands in his pockets, trying to affect a look of bored nonchalance.
“You did all these?” she asked. “They’re really wonderful.”
The boy shrugged. “Hugh thinks it’ll keep me from topping myself.” There was a glimmer of the old defensiveness in Jeremy’s tone; he obviously wanted a reaction.
“And does it?” Cormac asked.
Jeremy deflected the question. “There’
s something seriously wrong with this one,” he said, lifting the nearest canvas up for them to see. “I can’t figure out what it is. What do you think?”
“I don’t know,” Nora said. She studied the finished and nearly finished pieces, looking closely at the intricate layering of paint on the canvas, and remembered wandering through the silent studio upstairs, surveying the veiled, dreamlike images of wings, strange tropical plants, and exotic animals. These pictures shared with Mina’s work a certain technique that suggested dappled light and shadow, though the subjects were the ordinary flora and fauna of the Irish countryside: the owl and the woodcock, the fox and the wren. And, Nora noticed, in nearly every composition, some representation of a crow. In one piece only the bird’s beak and bright black eye intruded into the lower corner of the frame; in another, the tip of an open wing seemed to brush the edge of the canvas.
“Jeremy,” Nora asked, “did Mina teach you anything about painting?”
The boy had been studying her, with his hands still in his pockets, bouncing slowly against the wall. When she asked the question, the bouncing stopped, and he looked down at his feet. “I used to watch her up in the studio. She showed me how to draw, looking at the thing you’re drawing, not at the paper. She said it was a way to find out how you really saw things.”
“These are wonderful, Jeremy. And I’m not just saying that; I really mean it.”
“Would you take one?”
“I’m sorry?” Nora said.
“If I gave you one of these pictures, would you take it?”
“I’d be very honored.”
Jeremy pushed off from the wall and waded through his paintings, searching for something suitable. The piece he selected wasn’t the largest of the canvases, but one of the most sophisticated and abstract compositions. “Take this one,” he said. “It’s the best.”
“I’d like to give you something, Jeremy.”
“It’s not for sale. Take it as a gift, all right?”
4
Hugh had laid a fire in Cormac’s room, but the air was still brisk; a sharp November wind whipped around the house, occasionally creating a low, howling noise as it gusted against the leaded windows in the corner tower. He wondered whether Nora’s bedroom was as chilly as this one. Neither of them had raised an objection when Hugh put them in separate rooms, the same ones they’d occupied last spring. Cormac was just regretting that fact when he heard a soft rap, and saw Nora’s head peer around the edge of the heavy door.
“Cormac, it’s absolutely freezing in my room. Could I please, please, warm my feet on you?”
“I was just about to come and ask you the same thing.”
“God, it’s just as bad in here,” she said, making a dash for the bed and pulling the coverlet up around her shoulders. “Well, if the cold does prove fatal,” she said through chattering teeth, “at least we’ll be together. What? Why are you looking at me like that?”
“It’s nothing.” He switched off the lamp and slid under the duvet beside her. He lightly traced the pale outline of her face against the dark bedding, and studied her lovely features, which were now and again illuminated by firelight. “It’s just that I once imagined you in this very spot. And now that you’re actually here, it’s proved a very rewarding sight.” He twined his limbs around hers, feeling her body begin to relax into his as she absorbed some of his radiating warmth. “Go ahead, put your feet on me.” He let out a sharp, involuntary noise when her icy toes made contact with his calves. “Jesus.”
“Sorry,” she said. “Can you stand it?”
“Barely. But you’ll warm up soon enough.”
“Cormac, do you think Aine Rua and Cathal Mor ever slept in this room?”
“Not out of the question, I suppose.”
“I know it sounds crazy, but I can feel a difference in this house,” Nora said. “What was here is gone, and it’s as if some benevolent spirit has taken its place.”
“The ghost of the cailin rua?”
“Don’t be making fun,” she warned. “It’s nothing that specific, I just feel something different.”
“I’m not making fun,” Cormac said, pulling her closer. “I feel it too. And it is rather eerie how you finally got your wish, to see the red-haired girl absolved.”
“The strangest thing is that I knew she would be, just don’t ask how I knew. I can’t get over the fact that she walked all that way from the west, trying to find him. It must have been more than fifty miles, and if she had the baby when she arrived here, she must have been very pregnant. To make that journey alone—I’ve been thinking about her walking all that way. How did she know which way to go? Where did she sleep? And when did she find out that her husband had been transported? She must have been fierce, don’t you think, to try to tell what they did to her? Even when they cut off her head, she found a way to outwit them. She never gave up, not ever.”
“Reminds me a bit of someone I know.”
“What was it that you and Hugh were talking about just before we came upstairs?” she asked.
“He wanted to know what had become of the cailin rua. I think he’s been thrown off balance a bit,” Cormac said. “You can’t blame him. If what it says is true, that confession is the single thread that unravels his entire family history.” No, that wasn’t quite right. The thing was far from being unraveled; in some ways it had become infinitely more complex. As Hugh explained it to him, Edmund Osborne had married his first cousin, also an Osborne, and several similar matches in succeeding generations meant the Osbornes were not mere usurpers, but had become inextricably enmeshed, truly bound up by blood and fortune to the property and progeny of Cathal Mor O’Flaherty. An ancient and familiar story, Cormac thought, with the length and breadth of Ireland peopled by various waves of invaders, from the Celts themselves to the Norsemen and the Normans, the English, and the Ulster Scots. It was a mistake to imagine the past simply buried underground. There was that element, yes, but it might be more accurate to think of it living, breathing, and walking upon the earth as well. He himself, in every cell of his body, bore the physical essence of his two parents, the blended strands of their DNA, that mysterious continuation of the ancient matter of the universe. He also bore the impressions of everything he had ever learned over the course of his brief life span so far—from his work, from the music, from Gabriel and all the others who had touched his life, Nora and Hugh and the cailin rua, each encounter sparking some new pathway, a new divergence in the nexus that bound up body and spirit.
Nora stirred beside him. “Are you getting warm now?” he asked, inhaling the clean scent of her, enjoying the weight of her hand as it rested lightly upon his chest.
“Mmm” came her reply. Could it be that she was already drifting off? He deeply envied Nora’s genius for sleep, and often lay awake beside her, admiring the seeming ease with which she became steeped in slumber. He wondered whether Hugh Osborne was in his bed at this hour, or still busy in his workshop below. Cormac tried to fathom the fate of the two men who lived in this house, each of whom had returned from a journey to find his future vanished.
Cormac looked down at Nora’s peaceful face. He would tell her tomorrow how Hugh planned to request that the remains of the red-haired girl and the infant be returned to him for reburial at Drumcleggan Priory. And how Hugh had asked for his help in convincing the National Museum. He hadn’t given an immediate answer, and though he might normally argue against such a course of action, the scientific reasons for preserving the cailin rua had to be weighed against the human need to lay the past to rest. Of course, there was no real rest, only the reassuring constant of mutability. Even the strange suspension of time in a bog was only an illusion, a lingering extension of continual, inevitable decay. The opening stanza of an old poem kept circling through his mind:
Ce sin ar mo thuama no an buachaill den tir tu?
Da mbeadh barr do dha laimh agam ni scarfainn leat choiche.
A ailleain agus a ansacht, ni ham duitse lui liom—
Ta boladh fuar na cre orm, dath na greine is na gaoithe.
Who is that on my grave? A young man of this place?
Could I touch your two hands I would never let go.
My darling, and sweet one, there is no time to lie here—
I smell of cold earth; I am sun-and wind-colored.
The image of the red-haired girl intruded upon Cormac’s thoughts once more, only this time he did not see her as he had out on the bog, in that terrible, wrenching vision that had plagued him so often in the past few months. This time he saw her features arranged as they might be figured in repose: lips together, brow tranquil, eyes closed. It was hard to conceive how a single act could have such far-reaching effect. Where would he be at this moment, if that tormented, despairing girl had not taken to the roads, and had given up her child without protest? Where would she be? There was only one thing he knew for certain: now that the cailin rua was removed from her airless, liquid vault, she had reentered the normal flow of time: her cell walls had begun to break down at an accelerated rate, opening to accept the spread of invading mold and bacteria that would gradually, imperceptibly transform her, as they did all things, living and dead. Cormac felt strangely comforted by the thought. Lulled by the crackling of the fire, the random gusts that buffeted the windows, and Nora’s warm breath against his neck, he closed his eyes and let himself be pulled down, rocked, and finally swallowed in the watery darkness of sleep.
Acknowledgments
I thank the many people who contributed to the writing of this book: my friend Daithi Sproule, for a long-ago invitation to visit his family in Donegal, and for his indispensable and ongoing assistance with questions about Irish language and literature; Eilis Sproule, who first sparked my imagination with the tale of a nameless, beheaded red-haired girl; Dr. Barry Raftery, of the Department of Archaeology at University College Dublin, who generously shared his firsthand experience with the real-life cailin rua, and who, in addition to providing invaluable advice and information on archaeological matters, was kind enough to offer introductions to many of his colleagues; the late Dr. Maire Delaney, of Trinity College Medical School, for sharing her expertise and experience with rare bog remains; Garda Siochana officers Patrick J. Cleary and the late Vincent Tobin of the Collator’s Office in Cork City, and Detectives Frank Manion of Tralee, County Kerry, and Michael Ryan of Loughrea, County Galway, for essential background and assistance on police procedure; Dr. Raghnall O Floinn, of the Irish Antiquities Division at the National Museum of Ireland, for help with museum information and procedure; Rolly Read, Keeper of Conservation at the National Museum of Ireland, for allowing me access to the conservation lab at Collins Barracks; archaeologist Malachy Conway, who generously offered a guided tour of his excavation work at a medieval ecclesiastical site; Terry Melton of Mitotyping Technologies, for information on mitochondrial DNA; Angela Bourke, Thomas O’Grady, Anne Kenne, Peter Costello, and Donna Wong, for much-needed assistance with literary and historical sources. Many thanks also to Mary and Sean O’Driscoll, James Kelly, John and Mary Kelly, Susan McKeown, Niamh Parsons, Dolores Keane, and the many other wonderful traditional players and singers who inspired the music in this book. The help of these people undoubtedly prevented many factual errors; any that remain are solely my responsibility.
