Erin Hart: Lake of Sorrows

“Excuse me,” she said, reaching out to touch the man’s arm in case he hadn’t heard her. The other workers looked up, their torches still blazing. The tractor driver turned to face her, and it was only then that the gas mask came off, revealing a youthful face with strong features and intensely blue eyes.

“Excuse me—I just wanted to say thanks.” She offered her hand. “Nora Gavin.”

He looked at her for a split second, then dropped his gaze, and Nora wondered whether it was her red eyes, her dirty face, or her obvious American accent—or a combination of all those things—that had this young man so mortified. He took her hand very briefly. “Charlie Brazil,” he finally said, pronouncing his surname the Irish way, with the emphasis on the first syllable. He colored deeply and glanced at the other men, who had stopped working when she approached.

“Well—thanks, Charlie. I’m grateful for your help.” She could feel the workmen’s eyes upon them, and understood that all poor Charlie Brazil wanted was to be shut of her as quickly as possible. “I’m afraid I have to ask another favor. Could you point me toward the manager’s office?”

“Over there,” he said, indicating a single-story pebble-dashed building about fifty yards away.

“Right,” she said. “Thanks again.” Heading toward the manager’s office, she heard a leering voice behind her inquire: “What’d you do for the lady, Charlie?” There was an unsettling chorus of sniggers, and Charlie Brazil’s deep voice muttered darkly: “Ah, feck off and leave me alone, why don’t you?”

There was no one at reception inside the manager’s office. Nora considered ringing Cormac to let him know she’d arrived safely, but decided against it. She wanted to put off talking to him as long as she could. Her emotions were too much in turmoil. A small sign on the nearest wall bore a single word, “Toilet,” and an arrow pointing to her left down a short hallway, so she ducked in to have a look in the mirror. It was a shock: her eyes were horribly bloodshot, and her insides felt rubbed raw. Bits of peat dust clung to her hair and eyebrows, and to the tear tracks that lined her cheeks. No wonder Charlie Brazil had looked at her so strangely. What a fine state for meeting the brass here. She brushed as much of the peat from her hair as she could, and splashed her eyes with cold water, which stung as much as the dust had. As she dried her face on the cloth towel, the door swung open, and Nora stood face-to-face with a vigorous, casually dressed man of about forty, whose expression betrayed astonishment and a certain amount of suspicion. Perhaps she hadn’t paid close attention to the sign and had accidentally wandered into the gents’ by mistake.

“Sorry if I’m somewhere I shouldn’t be,” she said. “I got caught in a windstorm out on the bog, and I was just trying to get a bit of the dust off before I found the manager.”

“You’ve found him,” the man said.

“You’re Owen Cadogan?”

“I am,” he replied. “And you are…”

“Nora Gavin. I’m here for the bog body excavation.” Surely he’d known she was coming down from Dublin. “I think you spoke with Niall Dawson at the National Museum—he said he’d explained all the arrangements.” A subtle change came over Cadogan’s demeanor; she thought it safe to surmise that the Dr. Gavin he’d expected was neither female nor American.

“Ah, right, Dr. Gavin. You’re early.” He ushered her down the hall toward his office. “We’re not expecting the museum crowd until later in the day. Anyway, sorry you were caught out there in the dust. Been dry as a desert here for two weeks, and that’s one of the rare hazards of fine weather.”

“I’ve never seen anything quite like it. But one of the workmen was kind enough to make sure I got here in one piece—Charlie Brazil?”

“Ah, yes,” Cadogan said, with a grimace that suggested she ought to consider giving Mr. Brazil a wide berth in future.

“I have to admit the gas mask had me rather taken aback at first.”

“Ah, he’s all right,” Cadogan said. “Bit of a quare hawk, Charlie is—an oddball.” He led her back through reception and into his tiny office, where he gestured for her to have a seat. The place reminded Nora of her auto mechanic’s office at home with its practical, no-frills atmosphere, its metal desk and uncomfortable vinyl chairs. “Afraid I’m fending for myself here at the moment,” Cadogan said. “The girl’s out sick today. Can I get you a cup of tea—or coffee, is it?”

Cadogan gave the impression that he was a very busy man: the quick gestures, the eyes that never settled in one place for too long. Whether consciously or not, he gave Nora the distinct impression that she was keeping him from duties much more important and necessary than her comfort. But breakfast had been three hours ago, and she realized that she was actually quite hungry. “Tea would be great.”

“Won’t be a minute.” He ducked out of the room, and Nora tried to put a finger on what she sensed about him. Brisk, businesslike, still stirred by ambition—but on the cusp of forty, when a lot of men began to feel themselves softening into middle age, and to wonder why it was that the responsible job and the family and the new house weren’t enough to keep them from feeling somehow anesthetized inside. A dangerous age.

She stood up to take a look at two large black-and-white charts hanging on the walls of the office. The first showed average rainfall at Loughnabrone over the past four decades, sometimes as much as a thousand millimeters a year. How was it even possible for the earth to soak up that much water? Alongside the rainfall chart was a bar graph showing annual peat production by the kiloton. She noted the inverse symmetry between the numbers, and the downward slope of the peat production stats for the past few years. Another poster on the wall had photographs of the various artifacts bog workers might encounter, and a series of exhortations:

Under Your Feet in This Very Bog

There could be hidden objects up to 10,000 years old.

Because of waterlogged conditions, the bog has preserved objects, such as wood, leather, textiles, and even human bodies!

Once unearthed, these ancient finds begin to decay instantly and if not cared for they will be lost forever.

Help us record our history by preserving these buried objects.

No doubt ignorance was the greatest enemy; if workers didn’t know what they should stop the machines for, they might just keep cutting. But theft had to be a major concern as well. It must be tempting, if you did find something of value, to keep it to yourself. That was human nature. Nora wondered idly how much the average bog worker made these days. Probably the same as most other factory workers—not a fortune, certainly, just enough to keep a man with a family from cutting the tether.

Her attention was drawn to a framed and yellowed newspaper cutting. It was dated August 1977, and showed two lean-faced, unsmiling men in boilersuits looking up from a drain. One of the workmen held up what looked like a corroded sword blade. The caption read:

Illaunafulla men Dominic and Danny Brazil with the large Iron Age hoard they discovered while working at Loughnabrone Bog last week. The men uncovered numerous axe-heads, several amber bead necklaces, a scabbard and sword hilt, and twelve bronze trumpets. After excavation is complete, the artefacts will be transported to the National Museum of Ireland in Dublin.

Brazil, like her rescuer. She wondered whether it was one of those unusual surnames, like Spain, that had something to do with where your ancestors had traveled. Or maybe it was simply an old Irish name, misspelled by the English. She’d have to ask Cormac. At the picture’s edge, almost entirely cut off, a third man leaned in above the Brazils, down on one knee at the edge of the drain. He was dressed, quite inappropriately for the bog, in a tweed jacket, collar, and tie. Three-quarters of his head had been cropped out of the frame.