Erin Hart - Lake of Sorrows

No one had mentioned how extraordinarily well-preserved this man was. His head, shoulders, and upper chest were almost miraculously intact. And if the Hymac had cut the body in half, there was a good chance that the rest of it was still under the bank below their feet. The man’s skin was a rich dark brown, the typical tanned-leather appearance of a bog body. Tufts of hair about half an inch long stood out from his head, dark, but with the unmistakable reddish tinge of bog water. In the lab, they’d be able to tell how recently it had been cut, and with what kind of blade. Nora’s eyes traveled the contours of his face again. She didn’t want to forget anything about this moment, about the picture before her. In the next two days, he would be photographed from every angle, and finally removed from this place where he had slept so long undisturbed. There was no evidence of clothing, but a braided leather armlet circled his left biceps, and a thin piece of twisted leather lay coiled behind his head. Nora reached into her jacket pocket for a magnifying glass. Through the thick lens, she traced the cord to a triple knot just below the right ear, and saw how the leather cut into the wasted flesh. She crawled around to get a better look at the throat and noticed one end of a deep gash just below the ligature. From the position of the cut, inside the body’s protected curve, she knew it could not have been made by an errant machine blade. By all appearances, someone had strangled this man and savagely cut his throat.

She raised her head and heard a hollow noise in her ears. That sound might have been the last thing he’d heard out on the bog as well: the gusting wind, or a faint whistle as it dragged through the sharp points of furze and heather. Or perhaps what he had heard were the few words whispered by his executioner just before the fatal blow. She wondered whether the armlet signified anything. Had he been a member of the society that killed him, a high-born leader, perhaps—or a prisoner, a hostage, an outcast? Had he gone willingly to his end, or been carried here bound and under protest? She imagined his killing carried out in darkness, some secret ritual witnessed only by the moon and stars, but maybe it hadn’t happened that way at all. Maybe the bloodletting had been part of some public display.

She was suddenly aware of Ursula Downes standing beside her. “Looks like someone wanted to make sure he was dead,” Ursula said. “Did you see the stakes? Look at his arms.”

Nora saw several thin wooden stakes about an inch in diameter that had been driven through the flesh of the man’s upper arms.

“I don’t suppose you ought to do anything more until Niall Dawson gets here,” Ursula said. She looked down at the bog man again and probed at his curled fist with the toe of her boot, a gesture that made Nora cringe. She wanted to shove Ursula away from the fragile body, out of the tent. But instead she slowly replaced the wet peat over the corpse and they stepped outside, back into the harsh sun and wind.

“Might take a couple of days to get him crated up,” Ursula said. “I assume you’ve got accommodation sorted.” The extraordinary green eyes shot her a stealthy look, and Nora suddenly felt foolish. Of course—everything was falling into place now; Ursula’s having heard so much about her, the sideways glances that said she was under close scrutiny. It should have come as no surprise at all that Ursula and Cormac were acquainted—Dawson too. They were probably all old friends, and she was the mug. She should have remembered that here in Ireland, the world of archaeology was a tiny sphere, and Cormac knew everyone in it. Clearly Ursula had been toying with her since the moment they’d met, but there was no reason to let on that she knew it. Nora struggled to put on her blankest expression. “Yes, I’m staying with a friend nearby.”

Ursula gave a mysterious smile, then looked across the bog toward her crew and sighed. “What the bloody hell are they up to now?” She checked her watch. “They’re not due a tea break for another hour.”

Nora followed Ursula’s gaze. The crew were all standing about one of the cuttings. With the wind, it was impossible to hear what anyone was saying, but their postures communicated a disagreement of some sort. One young woman broke away from the group and started running toward them. “Ursula!” she shouted, voice faint against the wind, and her hail was followed by a gesture, a single sweep of the arm that said “Come.” Nora followed as Ursula began to run.

When they reached the crew, Nora could see expressions of shock and dismay around the circle of fresh, windburned faces. A dark-haired girl crouched on the bank above the drain, her wellingtons covered in fresh muck to the midcalf.

“Jesus Christ, Rachel, why didn’t you say anything?” demanded one young man.

“What’s going on?” Ursula demanded. “And you—” she said to the television cameraman who had wandered over to see what was happening “—get the hell off this bank before I run you.” He raised his free hand in a gesture of submission and beat a hasty retreat back to his van. Ursula turned to the crew. “Now, somebody tell me quick what’s going on here.”

Several of them responded at once: “Rachel fell into the drain—”

“We had to pull her out—”

“I was concentrating on what I was doing,” the girl said. “I accidentally stepped off the end of the plank. I didn’t ask anyone to rescue me.”

Ursula’s tone was incredulous. “I can’t believe you’re all in such a state about having to pull someone out of a drain. For Christ’s sake—”

“It’s not that,” said the young woman who’d called them over. She stepped aside and pointed to the corner of the cutting. “We nearly stepped on him trying to get Rachel out.”

Looking toward the spot the girl had indicated, Nora could just discern the outline of a distorted face. She dropped to her knees beside the cutaway for a closer look, and it took a moment for the totality of the terrible image to sink in. The skin was dark brown and the features slightly flattened, the nose smashed to one side, but the eye sockets, skull vault, and jawline clearly marked it as human. One skeletal, clawlike hand was curled into a fist and raised above the head, as though he’d been submerged and was trying to come up for a breath of air.

Ursula heaved an exasperated sigh. “You must be coddin’ me. Two bloody Iron Age bog men in the space of a week.”

“I wouldn’t jump to any conclusions,” Nora said, looking up into the circle of anxious faces peering down at her. “This man seems to be wearing a wristwatch.”

Detective Liam Ward had just set the phone in its cradle when he noticed the fresh drops of blood staining his shirt front. The plaster he’d applied to the shaving cut on his throat had evidently come loose. He didn’t really have time for this; the phone call had been from the duty officer, ringing with news that another body, the second in as many weeks, had just turned up at Loughnabrone Bog. The first had been officially declared at least five hundred years old, but this one looked as though it might be modern. Whatever the circumstances, it wouldn’t do to have the detective in charge show up looking as if he’d just been in a brawl. He stripped off his shirt and went into the bathroom to clean the cut and apply another plaster. When he returned to his bedroom, the bloodstained garment lay crumpled on the bed. Like evidence from a crime scene, he thought, more mindful this time of the plaster as he buttoned his collar.

Lugh seemed restless. Perhaps it was something to do with the smell of blood. As Ward put the knot in his tie, he glimpsed the dog pacing down the hall and into the kitchen, setter’s plumelike tail on alert, nails beating an anxious tattoo on the tile floor. For some reason the sound reminded Ward of his mother. He remembered the noise of her high-heeled shoes on the same floor, as she tried in vain to convince him to leave this house on the day after his wife’s funeral. Of course he hadn’t left, but had stayed on, anchored by memories, by the stones in the garden. He knew his mother thought he’d been relieved of a great burden when Eithne died. Could it already be eleven years this summer since his wife had walked down the riverbank, her pockets laden with dozens of small stones from their own garden, never intending to come up for air? He could see the stones: black, gray, white, pink, their smooth and rounded shapes. He’d put them out only a week earlier, to help keep the weeds down around the roses. He pictured Eithne at the edge of the grass, down on her knees but long past any hope of prayer, selecting the stones one by one and slowly filling the pockets of her dark green raincoat. He could imagine her performing that simple act, but he could go no further. Her final moments were obscure and inaccessible to him. They’d returned the stones with her personal effects after the inquest. He couldn’t bring himself to put them back in the garden. It seemed wrong somehow, or perhaps just bad luck, so he’d flung them back into the river where they belonged.