Erin Hart - Lake of Sorrows

“Would you like to come in for a drink or something?” he’d heard himself ask. Even as he extended the invitation, he hoped it wouldn’t be something that he would later regret.

“Maybe just a quick one. Thanks.” She stepped across the threshold and glanced around. “This place hasn’t changed much, has it?”

“What can I get you?” he asked, when she’d pulled up a chair at the kitchen table.

“Red wine?” She looked over at the half-dozen bottles waiting to be stowed in the kitchen cabinet. “Unless you’re saving it. Trying to impress someone.”

“Just experimenting.”

As Cormac opened a bottle and poured them each a glass, Ursula continued, “I find I’m not at all particular about wine. Cheap plonk is just as effective as the posh stuff, if you’re in the right mood. And I’m generally in the right mood.” She turned to face him and took the glass from his hand, her luminous green eyes as mischievous as ever. The lamp on the table beside her cast a warm gold glow that caught her skin tone and highlighted the angular shape of her face, the slight hollows in her cheeks. Only a few lines at the corners of her eyes marked the passage of time. “So what are you doing down here?”

“Working on an article for the Journal. Some new findings about Bronze and Iron Age gold work.”

“Really?” She started to peruse the books he’d strewn across the table in an attempt to get his materials organized. “You know, people always say there was gold in the Loughnabrone hoard, but the two brothers who uncovered it swore up and down they never found any.” She pulled a book from a stack on the table. “Any chance I could borrow this one? I promise to return it promptly whenever you need it back.” Checking the spine, Cormac saw it was one of the more obscure and detailed references on Iron Age metalwork.

He made a gesture of offering. “Be my guest.”

“Oh, I would in a minute,” she said, “but I believe you already have one.”

Still quick as ever, Ursula. He didn’t see any point in being coy. “I expect you’ll meet her tomorrow—Nora Gavin. She’s coming down to help with your bog man.” He tried changing the subject. “How’s your own work going these days?”

“Oh, you know. It’s a living. We’re finding bits of things, but it’s a bit of a mess at the moment, a real hodgepodge of odd stuff: platforms and short stretches of plank trackway, a couple of nice willow hurdles. We’ve come across some really interesting peat samples—you might be interested in taking a look. But the regional manager is a desperate whinger, giving me a lot of pointless grief about hurrying it up so he can get this area back on his precious production schedule. The bog man turning up hasn’t exactly made his day, although it’s improved my mood considerably.”

She looked at the open wine bottle, but apparently decided not to ask for another glass, for which he felt grateful. She leaned back in her chair and looked at him thoughtfully. “One of these years I’m going to give up fieldwork. Get myself one of those desk jobs. I’m sick to death of being out in all weather, of peat dust in my hair, and ten solid weeks of this—” She held up her hand, the fingers and nails black with ground-in peat. “Next year I’m going in for one of the consulting jobs, even if I have to switch firms. Those lucky sods barely get their feet wet once a year. It’s either that or pack it in altogether.” As she spoke, Cormac thought he perceived a change in Ursula. It had been a long time since they had met, and she no longer seemed to have that razor edge he had once so carefully tried to avoid.

She drained the last swallow of wine from her glass and stood up. “Time to push off home; I’ve an early start again tomorrow. Could I just run up to the loo before I go? I remember the way.”

Cormac switched on the light at the stairs for her. He’d always had an uneasy feeling about Ursula. From the time they’d first met, he had sensed danger in her presence, a moodiness and manic energy that was draining to be around. There was, he had to admit, an unabashed and frank carnality about her, something he’d once been close enough to know about firsthand. But it wasn’t that quality itself that he found worrisome; his reservations were about how she used it, as a weapon. Ursula had always possessed a very sophisticated—one could almost say scientific—understanding of sexual attraction in all its varying forms. He was still unsure whether “predatory” was the right word to describe exactly the way Ursula was, but she clearly got some sort of thrill from her ability to get another person’s pulse racing. Years ago he’d watched her in action, toying with fellow students, then colleagues at otherwise deadly dull faculty functions. She loved causing a stir, and seemed to draw energy directly from the amount of social discomfort she could engender during the space of a single evening, with a glance, or with fingertips that lingered just a fraction of a second too long. She excelled at pulling every eye after her, making them see she didn’t give a tinker’s curse what they thought of her. He always imagined tense arguments erupting in cars as everyone headed home. Ursula had not made these people unhappy, but she was a catalyst who could concentrate unhappiness and set it loose.

He had once tried to convince Ursula that it was only herself she was damaging with those antics, but she didn’t seem to care. He’d always sensed an edge of mistrust in her as well, of hurt or betrayal. Being in a room with her now filled him with unaccountable and overwhelming sadness. In all these years, had she ever found someone who was willing to risk everything, to get past all the defenses to reach her wounded soul?

She returned to the kitchen and breezed past him toward the door; he followed to open it for her. “Great to see you, Cormac,” she said, and leaned forward, apparently to offer a quick embrace. But when he moved to reciprocate, she reached up with both hands, turned his face down to hers, and kissed him full on the mouth. He felt her tongue dart between his lips for an instant, and he pulled back reflexively.

His startled reaction seemed to amuse her. “Ah, come on, now. Don’t pretend you wouldn’t.” Then she’d been out the door and into her car before he could say a word. He’d stood looking after the receding taillights, and when he’d reached up to wipe his mouth, his fingers had come away touched with plum-colored lipstick. He had rubbed his hands together, then scrubbed them against his trouser legs.

Feeling perplexed by the surge of emotion his memory of the scene had unleashed, Cormac climbed the stairs and looked at his clothes hung neatly in the wardrobe, his toothbrush and shaving things on the ledge above the sink in the adjacent bathroom. He sat at the edge of the armchair across from the bed, seized by a sudden gust of melancholy, similar to the feeling that had driven him from his own house to Nora’s flat almost precisely fourteen months ago. The prospect then had been a different sort of life from his ordinary, orderly existence, and the decision he’d made at that time had certainly lifted him to a new level. Had he reached a point where another decision was required, where what he and Nora had was no longer enough for him? He thought of her tears again and felt far away from her, closed off from all those interior passages in her soul that he had once imagined. What impulse was it that pressed for access there? And was he really willing to reciprocate? Was he prepared to make an offer—to lay himself bare, metaphorically speaking, and hand Nora a knife?

Death set all sorts of wheels in motion, especially when a body turned up where it ought not to have been. Within a few minutes, a quartet of brisk young Guards in two police cars had arrived on the scene and set to work. They herded everyone away from the cutting and marked out the crime scene—if crime scene it should turn out to be—with their familiar blue-and-white tape. The archaeology crew had been banished for the moment to their roadside hut, but on discovering that Nora was a physician, the policemen had asked her to stay behind, to certify for the record that the man in the cutting was in fact deceased, and did not require medical attention. It was a routine procedure, but seemed the ultimate redundancy in this case. The coroner’s crew had arrived a short while later; the uneven ground prevented them from erecting yet another tent over the cutting, but they did their best, rigging up some plastic sheeting to shield the body from prying eyes and cameras.