Erin Hart: Lake of Sorrows

Ursula let go of Nora’s hand and finally turned to acknowledge Cadogan. “Owen.” The remarkable sea green eyes flickered across his face. “Mr. Cadogan usually pretends not to give a toss about what I’m up to out here, but he’s actually terribly, terribly interested.” Though these words were presumably addressed to Nora, Ursula’s eyes remained on Cadogan. “Thanks for escorting Dr. Gavin,” she said, glancing toward the television news vans. “I’ve been up to me oxters out here, trying to keep all the feckin’ reporters from tripping into the cuttings.”

Owen Cadogan’s simmering annoyance was visible in his eyes, and in the grim set of his lips. “Could I have a word, Ursula?” he asked. “If you’d excuse us just one minute, Dr. Gavin…”

“I’ll get my things,” Nora said. She went around to her trunk to collect the gear she’d need for the day, and to climb into her waterproofs. She tried not to listen as she stepped into the baggy rubberized trousers, but couldn’t help overhearing snatches of whispered conversation above the sound of the wind. “…treat me like your fucking errand boy,” Cadogan was saying to Ursula, his right hand in a close grip on her elbow. She shrugged him off.

After Cadogan climbed into his car and roared away, Ursula Downes approached again, showing no apparent concern about the taut conversation.

“I’m sorry if I caused any trouble,” Nora said. “I couldn’t get exact directions—”

“Not to worry,” Ursula said. “Owen’s just in a poxy mood today. He got some bad news recently.” She didn’t elaborate, but somehow Nora got the impression that the source of Cadogan’s dire bulletin had been none other than Ursula herself. “That was Niall Dawson on the mobile when you were arriving; he said they’re about halfway here and should be arriving in the next hour.”

Once again, Nora felt like a fifth wheel. “I’d love to have a look at what you’re doing until the others get here.”

“I suppose. Come along, then.” Ursula led the way across a low-lying area beside the ditch, walking along in the impression left by a giant tractor tire. “It’s still a bit soft in the low spots. Just put your feet down where I do.”

Nora followed, carefully treading the same path Ursula took, her legs unsteady in the soft peat. To their right stood a rectangular pool—no doubt the end of a drain—reflecting the deep blue sky and billowy clouds. Beside it sat a twisted stump of bog oak, whose striated, ash gray surface had the segmented, half-burned look of charcoal. No fire had burned it, Nora realized. The effect came from the foreign touch of parched air after centuries of immersion.

“The wind is brutal today, isn’t it?” she said, trying to make conversation.

Ursula turned back slightly, but kept walking. “I’ll warn you—after a whole day out here, it feels as if you’ve been scrubbed raw. The peat gets everywhere: in your eyes, in your hair, even in your pores. It’s almost impossible to get clean, and usually not worth the trouble.” Nora glanced down at Ursula’s hands, and saw black peat beneath the sculpted nails.

As they climbed the gentle rise of a slightly rounded field between two drains, Nora felt the familiar, not-quite-solid sensation underfoot. It was like walking on dry sponge. The first half-inch of peat had curled and cracked into irregular puzzle pieces, like the mud of a dry lakebed. It was clear that the peat in this area hadn’t been cut in several years. Green plants sprouted at random; she recognized grass and sedge plants, sheep’s sorrel and butterwort, and behind the clumps of rushes lay whitish pellets left by the hares who had used the rushes for cover.

“Your man’s away down here,” Ursula said. She pointed to the white tent, another hundred yards past the excavation site. A lone uniformed Garda officer sat on watch outside, his temporary seat an upturned white plastic bucket. The wind was still strong, and the blue-and-white crime-scene tape marking out the findspot trembled vigorously.

It was hard to imagine what this place must have been like thousands of years before. It must have taken a similar communal effort to make the roads that Ursula and the crew were digging up today, to cut down hundreds of trees, to fashion spikes, to weave hurdles from saplings. Whole villages must have turned out. If bogs had been sacred, then this area must have been a very holy place indeed. There were only sporadic patches of dry land, scattered like islands across the marshy center. What had it been then? A place of offering. Larder. Death trap. Quagmire. Healer of wounds. Nora tried to imagine the time when all this had been wild bogland, crisscrossed by floating roads, a fearsome place roaming with wild beasts and bandits. She played the picture in her head, of the last hundred centuries, from glaciers to forests and solitary meadows, lakes gradually filling in, building up until the peat was ten and fifteen meters deep, dead but undecayed, immune to corruption. Home to strange and primitive carnivorous plants, delicate orchids, clouds of midges.

When she looked up, Ursula was yards ahead of her, easily jumping the drain to the next bank. Nora’s palms began to sweat as she approached the drain, unsure if she could make it across. She saw Ursula turn to watch her, a subtle challenge in her expression. What had she done to earn this woman’s scorn? They’d barely met, and already Ursula seemed to dislike her. She gathered her courage and cleared the drain in one hopping step. Safe.

“Who actually found the body?” she asked.

“I did,” Ursula said. “We were clearing out this drain yesterday, getting ready to start another cutting here. I was directing Charlie Goggles, one of the Bord na Mona lads, who was driving the Hymac, trying to make sure he didn’t put the spoil where the cutting was supposed to be. After he dropped the first bucket, I saw something sticking up out of the peat. Thought it was an animal bone at first, but it wasn’t—it was the bog man’s thumb. Still attached to his hand, which was still attached to his arm, which was still attached to his torso. Poor Charlie Goggles. Nearly pissed himself when he saw it.”

“Charlie Goggles? You don’t mean Charlie Brazil?”

“Ah, you’ve met him. None other.”

When they reached the tent, Ursula ignored the Garda officer’s cautious gesture of greeting and ducked through the flap. Nora followed. The space inside was an oasis of diffuse light and sublime calm after their windy trek across the bog. Stepping inside felt like entering another realm, another dimension. As she looked around, Nora felt Ursula studying her once more, making sure that her anticipation reached full fruition before lifting a corner of the black plastic sheeting that had been staked to the ground over a mound of loose wet peat. Nora’s eyes searched the sodden heap until she saw a glistening, dark brown patch that she knew immediately was human skin. Like the previous bog remains she’d seen, it had an iridescent, slightly metallic cast.

“Do you think it would be all right if I—”

Ursula cut her off: “Do what you like. I’m not in charge of him; Niall Dawson has made that perfectly bloody clear.”

Nora was aware for the first time that she had blundered into a potentially hazardous competition. Archaeologists had their turf wars, the same as everyone else, and maybe it was just the fact that she was part of the museum team that had put Ursula in bad humor. Whatever the politics here, she had to remain neutral. The problems of the living were the least of her business.

She knelt down and realized that she was holding her breath. The peat was wet and crumbly, like very damp, fibrous cake. She removed several handfuls of the stuff and saw how the excavator’s gargantuan teeth had bisected the man at an angle just below his diaphragm, exposing muscle tissue and shrunken internal organs. The thought of such violence done to a fragile human being, even one centuries dead, suddenly made her feel queasy.