Erin Hart - Lake of Sorrows

“You think somebody jumped over this fire?”

“Looks that way to me. After the fire died down, you were supposed to drive the animals through the ashes or singe their backs with a hazel wand. Everyone carried a burning stick home from the bonfire, and the first one to bring it into the house was supposed to bring good luck with him. They’d also take home a glowing ember from the fire and carry it around the house three times, and save some of the ashes as well, to mix with the seed for the following spring. I didn’t know anyone here still built a midsummer fire. I’d love to know who it was.”

You could ask Brona Scully, Nora thought, but she said nothing. Perhaps Brona and Michael Scully would like to keep their family matters private, and she wasn’t about to talk about things that had been told to her in confidence, even with Cormac. “I meant to ask what Mrs. Foyle said about your father. Is it something serious? You’ve never had to go up there to sort them out before.”

“No, it’s not that. My father’s had a small stroke,” Cormac said, trying to downplay it, no doubt for her benefit. “Not life-threatening, but Mrs. Foyle doesn’t want to be overstepping her bounds, she says. I’ve got to go and see what’s going on. I’ll probably be back in Dublin before you have to leave; I just won’t know what’s happening until I get there.”

“I could come with you for a couple of days—”

“Ah, no, I couldn’t ask you to do that, to miss the exam on the bog man. It’s important.”

“You’re important to me too.”

He took her hand. “Thanks. I appreciate the offer. But I know how much that examination means to your work. You’ll never have another chance at him, not like this one.”

“Why does Donegal have to be so far away? Why couldn’t your father be from Kildare?”

“I suppose he could be, but then he wouldn’t be my father, would he?”

Nora thought of Joseph Maguire, whom she’d never seen except in pictures, a fierce-looking, white-haired oak tree of a man. “No, you’re right.”

They came over the top of the hill and the sudden sight of Brona Scully’s fairy tree, bedecked in all its ragged finery, once more took Nora’s breath away. She leaned her back against its trunk and looked up into the twisting branches. “What is it about this place that I love so much? I just wanted to come here once more, because it might look very different when I come back, and I want to soak up every detail.”

Cormac leaned on a low branch beside her. “Are you saying you will come back?”

His doubt was a quick knife. “I know I’ve not been very forthcoming. I hope you can understand why I have to go home. It’s not that I want to be away from you—”

“I understand loyalty. I understand keeping a promise. So even if you have to go away for a while, it can’t be for too long. Too long doesn’t exist.”

“I want to believe that…. I just don’t know that we should make any promises.” The searching look in his eyes unsettled her.

“Maybe you’re right,” he said. “Maybe it’s best if we just leave things as they are. But wait here for a minute, will you?”

She stretched out beneath the tree while he crossed to a stand of hazel wands growing from a nearby stump. Taking a penknife from his pocket, he sliced through several narrow green shoots, cutting pieces about twelve inches in length. Then he came back and stretched out on the grass beside her. “It’s well known that hazel is a powerful charm against mischief,” he said. She watched intently as he bent the supple greenwood in his hands, then quickly fashioned a simple plait, like those she had seen in museums—a love knot. “Here,” he said, “keep this with you.”

She took it, knowing that, whatever happened, she would never let it go. She would carry it with her always, that hopeful pledge, unspoken. She pulled him down beside her and they lay in the tall grass, limbs tangled together, gazing up into the fairy tree’s wild profusion. She thought of what faced each of them in the days to come—an opportunity to look death in the face, to find out more about themselves and the people they loved than they ever wished to know. She would be far from this sanctuary. She knew it was just an illusion, that there was no real protection here, no place of safety, and yet she felt it more strongly than in any other place she’d ever been.

As if he’d been reading her thoughts, Cormac turned to her and said, “There’s just one thing… I don’t want you to go around thinking you’re invincible, now that you have that.” He reached out and fingered the hazel knot. “It may be powerful, but it doesn’t mean you can throw caution to the wind. Please be careful, Nora.”

She hadn’t told him the real reason she was going home. How would she have explained it—that she hoped to prevent her sister’s killer from claiming any new victims? But at that moment she realized that Cormac knew why she had to go and that, even if he feared for her, he understood.

The sun hung just above the western horizon, a bright orange disc in the dark haze of churned-up peat dust. She thought once again of Mide, the middle province, and felt Cormac close beside her. If she left now, it was possible that they would never find their way back to this place. Would she remember this spot as a sanctuary, or as a place of sacrifice? Perhaps the ancients had been right in their belief that those things were one and the same.

Keeping Cormac’s hand tightly clasped in her own, Nora sat up and faced out toward Loughnabrone, Lake of Sorrows, thinking of the ancient people who had named this place. What sacrifices, what sorrows, what infinite griefs had they borne here? What riddles had they tried to answer about the beginning of life and its end? She held very still and watched a solitary heron wading slowly, elegantly through the shallows until a passing flash of silver caught its downcast eye.

M any thanks to the people who helped with research for this book: Barry Raftery, for help with all things archaeological, and for his wonderful book Pagan Celtic Ireland; archaeologists Jane Whitaker and Ellen O’Carroll, who answered hundreds of questions, and allowed me access to their bog excavations; Conor McDermott, Cathy Moore, and Cara Murray, of the Irish Archaeological Wetland Unit, whose knowledge of bog archaeology could fill volumes; Dr. John Harbison, Ireland’s state pathologist, for sharing his vast experience of crime scenes; Heather Gill-Robinson, for sharing her expertise on bog preservation; Kevin Barry, for showing me where he found the body in the bog, and his wife, Betty, for her hospitality; Eamon Dooley, for his fascinating history of Bord na Mona at Boora; Paul Riordan, Boora Bog general manager; Boora workshop foreman Cormac Carroll, and all the men at the workshop; Eddie O’Sullivan, of the Federation of Irish Beekeeping Associations, and John Donoghue, who let me tag along around his apiary one soggy afternoon; retired Garda Siochana officer Patrick J. Cleary, for continuing advice and information on police procedure; Daithi Sproule, for helping once again with Irish translations; and finally all the wonderful musicians who have inspired the music in this book. Thanks also to my remarkable editors, Susanne Kirk at Scribner and Carolyn Caughey at Hodder & Stoughton; to Sarah Knight at Scribner, for her invaluable support; and to my incomparable agent, Sally Wofford-Girand. To all who offered encouragement, most especially my writers’ group, my family, and my wonderful husband, go raibh mile maith agaibh.

HAUNTED GROUND

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.