Haunted Ground

1

At 9:15 P. M. on a rainy Thursday night the following November, Cormac Maguire slouched on the sofa in his sitting room, reading. The front window was streaked with rain, but a small turf fire glowed in the grate, and he realized that he had never before experienced such a remarkable feeling of fullness and serenity.

Six months ago, feeling wrung out from a week of difficult conversation with his father, and weary after the long drive from Donegal to Dublin, Cormac had pulled up in front of his own house. He’d sat in the car for a while, studying the dark windows, contemplating whether he could ever return to the solitary life he had studiously built for himself behind them. The car window had been open just enough to admit the seductive scent of some unidentifiable flower. Whether it was the prompting of that sweet fragrance itself, or the prospect of the different sort of life it suggested, Cormac did not know, but he’d turned the key in the ignition and made his way through the narrow Dublin streets until he arrived outside Nora Gavin’s flat.

She opened the door as if she’d been expecting him. The time that followed was almost like a dream now. A smile tugged at Cormac’s lips when he remembered that those three intoxicating days with Nora were the first time he had felt not like a bystander in his own life, but a full participant. Now he looked down at her stretched out beside him with her head resting in his lap, appreciating the warmth and the intimate landscape of her body, the curl of her ear, the soft wisps of dark hair against her pale skin. This sleep was a good thing; she was exhausted. In the months since they’d returned from Dunbeg, she had kept searching, digging through records of Irish assizes and transportation records at the National Archives in Dublin and the Public Records Office in London, trying to find out more about Annie McCann and Cathal Mor O’Flaherty. Her search had so far borne no fruit, and it seemed at this point that she was completely stuck. Cormac tried to imagine the energy Nora had devoted to the investigation of her sister’s death, and knew that she’d not given up in that quest either. He no longer believed that evidence of the cailin rua’s true story existed, but he’d stopped trying to convince Nora. He found her tenacity extremely touching.

The phone on the desk began to ring, but Nora appeared to be sleeping soundly, and he decided to let the answerphone pick up rather than disturb her. After the tone, he heard a familiar deep voice: “Ah, Cormac, it’s Hugh Osborne. Something’s turned up here I think you and Dr. Gavin would be interested in seeing. I was phoning to see if you might come down for the weekend—and if you’d bring along any information you’ve got on the red-haired girl from the bog.”

2

The charred tower house was the first thing Nora spied through a tangled veil of wet black branches. Next spring the ivy would twine its way up the walls once more, but now in the bleak and waning November afternoon, it was a gaping ruin, collapsed even further by the rotting damp that had set in on its ancient, blackened timbers. The crows had reclaimed it as their own. Cormac craned his neck to see through the rain-streaked wind-screen, and she slowed to a stop to give him time to absorb the picture as well.

“It’s all right,” he said. “Drive on. I was just thinking of the first time I saw that place.”

Hugh Osborne greeted them at the door looking red-eyed and slightly disheveled, as though he’d slept in his clothes. “Come in, come in. The place is in a bit of a state. I was up late last night digging through old papers. I’ve just made tea.” They followed him down into the kitchen, which, like the front hall, seemed different somehow from the last time they’d been here. Nora realized, taking in the sight of unwashed breakfast dishes, an open box of Weetabix on the counter, and the wrinkled linen towel slung through the handle of a drawer, that what the room lacked was the pristine tidiness of the days when Lucy Osborne had reigned at Bracklyn. The house was by no means grubby or squalid, just lived in. She wondered if Cormac perceived the change as well.

“I realize I may have sounded rather cryptic on the telephone,” Osborne said as he poured them each a mug of tea. “It’s to do with that red-haired girl from the bog. At least I think it is. But now, please, you must tell me everything you know about her. I want to feel as if I’m in full possession of the facts.”

The way he phrased it made Nora think he was preparing to make a decision. “Well, it was fairly clear from the start that the girl had been decapitated,” she said, “and closer examination told us it was probably done with a sword or an axe. So that brought up the possibility of execution.” Nora reached into her briefcase and brought out the first photographs of the cailin rua, taken at Collins Barracks, and laid them on the table. Osborne flinched slightly, but forced himself to look. It occurred to Nora that this was only the second time he’d laid eyes on the face he had searched so anxiously out on the bog. He’d been too overwrought to grasp the full horror of her image at that time; she was simply not the person he sought. But Nora could see that something had happened since then, something that led Hugh Osborne to contemplate every detail of the grim visage that stared back at him from the photo.

“At first we had no idea about a date of death,” she said. “We had just done the preliminary exam when I found this unusual image in an X ray.” She placed the X rays, the endoscopic video stills, and, finally, the color photographs of the ring on the table before him. “It turned out to be this ring, inscribed with the initials COF and AOF, and a date, 1652. That gave us a time frame and a clue about her identity, but no real information about why she might have been killed. We started to speculate about why a young girl might have been executed.”

Osborne’s expression grew more disconcerted as he studied the picture of the ring. “Go on,” he said.

“We went to see Ned Raftery, because we’d heard he knew a lot about local history. We told him about the ring, and he told us how the O’Flahertys of Drumcleggan were transplanted, and about the son, Cathal Mor, who was shipped off to Barbados.”

“But he knew nothing about any execution,” Cormac said, “so he sent us off to his aunt, Maggie Cleary.”

“And what we got from her were some fragments of a song,” Nora said, “about a man who comes home from the Indies in search of his wife, only to find out that she’s dead, executed years ago for the murder of their newborn child. Then Ned Raftery phoned to say that he’d found an account of an execution in Portumna in 1654. A young woman named Annie McCann had been convicted of killing her illegitimate child, and was beheaded for the crime.”

“And of course we were getting frustrated,” Cormac said, “because none of this was really conclusive proof, just fodder for speculation.”

“Nothing was conclusive, until we found these remains.” Nora hesitated in producing the black-and-white images of the skeletons in situ, remembering the adult’s body curled around the infant’s tiny frame.

“Please,” Osborne said. “Show me.”

Nora set the picture down, and saw a jolt of recognition in his eyes. “Malachy Drummond, the state pathologist, was able to determine that the adult skeleton from the souterrain belonged to the red-haired girl from the bog. We thought we’d found Annie McCann and her child, the one she’d supposedly killed. But I kept going back to the words of Mrs. Cleary’s song: ‘They’ve murdered thee my own true love.’ How could she be executed and murdered?”

“At that point, we thought we’d exhausted all the physical evidence,” Cormac said. “But a researcher from Trinity did some DNA typing on the remains from the souterrain—”

“His research analyzes mitochondrial DNA,” Nora explained, “which is matrilineal; it’s identical in a mother and child. But the sequences on this woman and child didn’t match, which means they weren’t related.”

“The radiocarbon results on the red-haired girl finally came back, and they confirmed the mid-seventeenth-century date, although 350 to 400 years is right on the borderline where the C-14 becomes too recent to be extremely reliable,” said Cormac. “So what we’re left with is a really confusing set of facts. The red-haired girl could very well be this Annie McCann, who may or may not have been married to someone with the initials COF. It seems clear that she was executed for murdering her child, but the infant found with her was not her own. None of it makes sense.”

“No,” said Osborne, “it makes perfect sense. Come with me.”

They followed him upstairs to the library, where the far corner looked as though it had been ransacked. A safe hidden in the bookcase was open, and boxes of papers were piled about it, what looked like very old legal documents, some still daubed with sealing wax.

“I’ve been going through the family records,” Osborne said, gathering up some papers and motioning for them to sit on the sofa in front of the fire. “You’ll understand why when you see this. There’s some stuff that goes all the way back to the O’Flahertys.” He spread a photostat of an ancient, creased sheet of paper on the table before them. The handwriting was small and cramped, and there was something of an antique flourish in the shape of the letters.

“What is it, Hugh? Where did it come from?” Nora asked.

“Remember the strongbox found in the souterrain? And the book that was found inside it? The thing sat at the National Library for months, until someone finally had time to look at it. And when they were doing a closer examination, this document evidently slipped out from the binding. Someone at the library was kind enough to send me a copy, since the book was found on the property here.”

“It looks like some sort of confession,” Cormac said.

“Read on,” Osborne said.

“From a priest. He confesses swearing a false oath in denouncing the Catholic faith. If he hadn’t, it says, his choices were being killed or being sent to Inisbofin.”

“Inisbofin?” Nora asked.

“Island off the Galway coast,” Osborne said. “Cromwell’s place of exile for priests.”

“Look here, he mentions a second false oath.” Nora began to read aloud, stumbling over photocopied patches of mildew and strange spellings:

I had been called upon to attend the lady of that house, who was suffering through the biterest pangs of childbirth, and by chance discovered whilst crossing the bog a young woman of the locality, known as Aine Mag Annaigh (known as Aine Rua on account of her red hair), herself appearing verie great with child. She entreated me to come to her aid, and told how she had made the arduous journey on foot from Iar-Connacht, the far West country, travelling always by night, for fear of English soldiers. I carryed her with me to Bracklyn house, hopeful that she might secure lodging and succor from the servants there. My Christian duty thus discharged, I attended the chamber where the mistress Sarah Osborne was being delivered of her firstborn. The lady was much weakened by the ordeall, which had gone on for fully halfe the night, and would continue on (tho we were not to know it at the time) another twelve houres hence. The lady was at last deliver’d of a boy child she named Edmund, a poor weakling who scarcely mewl’d or cryed. Alas, the child grew weaker by the houre, and at last expir’d. Nigh on to midnight, or sometime therebye, the mistress heard a lusty mewling from afar, and made as if to fly from her childbed for to seek it out. She howl’d most piteously and carry’d on in such manner until the master promised he would fetch the child. He prevaild upon me to assist him in this task, for his lady was past all reason, past all care, and truth be told, nigh unto madness with the childbed fever, and could not be dissuaded. I was sent to fetch the child of Aine Mag Annaigh when infant and mother lay in slumber. When I approached, the lady Sarah Osborne put aside her own dead child and snatchd the living from my arms, and began to give it suck and strok’t its brow. “Take that away,” says she of the dead infant, “‘Tis but a changeling. Now I’ve found my own dear babe at last.” Her husband tryed in vain to coax her from this conviction, but none would have the babe from her. “I would fain learn,” says Osborne to me, “about the wench below.” “She is unwed, sir,” says I, but I confess now it was a cruel lie. For had I not wed her, not a twelvemonth hence, to young Flaitheartaigh of Drumcleggan?

“Wait a minute,” Nora said. “If Aine Mag Annaigh and the Annie McCann from Raftery’s account are the same person, then our red-haired girl was definitely married to Cathal Mor.”

“She was,” Osborne said. “Keep reading.”

Indeed the marriage had been not much favoured by his father, the maid being but a servant in their house, but I did agree to wed them secretly. But in the evil time that followed, the English soldiers drove the old Flaitheartaigh from Drumcleggan, and banished him to Iar-Connacht. The streams of Gaillmh flowed red with Irish and English blood, and wolf and carrion crow grew stout upon the flesh of murdered priests. I myself was forced to sweare an oath, to renounce the Catholic faith and all its teachings. And alas, when next I heard of young Cathal Mor it was not that he had flown to France, as I advised, but that he was took as a rebel gainst the English, and transported to Barbadoes. All this I knew when I answered thus: “Her child is but a bastard, sir, and has no father but the Lord God in Heaven.” Osborne tooke this news, whereupon he compelled me to press upon the girl the body of his own dead child, all wrapt in rags, and swear an oath it was her child had perish’d in the night. But when I did as he bade me, the girl flew into a heated rage, and bolted from the house. She began travelling the roads, clutching the lifeless infant to her breast, and pressing upon all passersby the tale of injustice wreaked upon her and her child, the lawful son of Cathal Mor O Flaitheartaigh.

To stop her tongue, Osborne next proposed in secret that the two of us should swear the wench had smothered her own bastard. A miserable, deserted creature half mad with grief, he reasond, who would credit her denial? In truth I fear I did not know the man till then. And how dared I oppose him, miserable as I was in my own wretched, damned plight? Osborne made haste to the sheriff for to report the murder, and I was to act as his witness that we two had seen the girl with her hands round the infant’s throat. I could not save her except by inviting my own destruction, and that of Hugo Osborne and his lady wife.

And so it came to be that Aine Rua Mag Annaigh was arrested and charged with her child’s foul murder, and brought before the assizes, where she was swiftly convicted and sentenced to die by the sword. Within a fortnight she was spirited to the place of execution and her head cleft from her shoulders with a single stroke. When I entreated the sheriff’s men to grant me her wretched corpse for burial, they enform’d me that her head had been took by Hugo Osborne off the block. I know not where it lies.

This secret chamber was known to me from earlier days, when I was oft hid here by old Flaitheartaigh, and much use have I made of it since in this latest fearful time. I brought her here, my fear being great that Osborne, in his wrath, would cause her corpse to be disinterred, were she buryed in any rough patch of unhallowed ground. And so within this ancient, private place, along with my forbidden priestly goods, I have entombed the remains of Aine Rua Mag Annaigh. And against her breast I have lodged the hapless infant Edmund Osborne, who drew mortal breath but for an houre.

My confessors all are dead or banished. I therefore confess to whomever shall find this writing that I am a weak and worthless man, who have been hindered by mortal fear from revealing the wicked dealings in which I have played so villainous a part. I dare not seek absolution. I can never rest, for I am haunted by the face of that flame-haired creature, bound upon her knees, and the piteous cry that leapt from her as the swordsman did his evil work. If any person ever find this document, I do heartily beg your prayers, and those of all good Catholics and Christians. I go to my grave beseeching God’s mercy upon my eternal soul. Mea culpa. Mea culpa. Mea maxima culpa.

The paper was signed Miles Gorman, and dated the twenty-fourth of May, 1654. Osborne had waited in profound stillness for them to finish deciphering the words he must have read over and over again. Nora looked up and saw him sitting in the chair across from them, waiting for a reaction with an anxious, guarded expression. “My God,” she said, “if this is true—”

“If it’s true, then the last three hundred and fifty years of my family’s history is built upon an act of judicial murder,” Osborne said. “Hugo and Sarah had no other children. That’s what all these papers are; I spent half the night digging up the whole family tree.”

“And all those portraits on the stairs—” Cormac said.

“Only the first one, Hugo, was actually an Osborne. The man they called Edmund Osborne was the son of Aine Rua and Cathal Mor O’Flaherty, if this Miles Gorman can be believed. That’s the question I keep asking myself. Why would he lie?”

A commotion of voices came from the front hall, and Aoife McGann appeared at the library door. “We’re here,” she announced, then retreated, and returned with Jeremy Osborne in tow. A profound change had come over the boy: his hair had grown out into dark curls, and his hollow cheeks had filled in. Jeremy actually looked healthy, and appeared both pleased and embarrassed by Aoife’s attention, especially in present company.

“How are you, Jeremy?” Nora asked.

He glanced at her. “All right.”

“It’s good to see you,” Cormac said. The boy’s eyes flashed as he checked to see whether the remark had been made at his expense; when he found it was genuine, he seemed at a loss to respond.

Una stood at the library door now. “As long as you’ve still got your coats on, you two, how would you like to go and get me some potatoes out of the kitchen garden? About a dozen ought to do.” Aoife seized Jeremy’s hand once more, and pulled him after her before another word was spoken.

“God, if I had only half her energy,” Una said. “Will you come down to the kitchen, so we can talk and chop at the same time?”

Una put the men on the onion and garlic detail at the table, while she and Nora took on washing some greens. “You’re going to ask me how things have been since you left,” Una said as she stood beside Nora at the sink. “It’s been hard. Hugh won’t admit it, but he still doesn’t sleep at night. Jeremy’s been doing much better, but he may need more help than we can give him. Hugh’s trying, he really is. We all are.”

“Any word about Lucy? Does he ever see her?”

“No. She’s in a special hospital unit at Portlaoise. The psychologist says it may be better for now that he not see her.”

“Aoife seems to have great time for him,” Nora said, watching the small fair head, the arms gesturing as the child both directed and assisted Jeremy, who was digging for potatoes with a spade in the raised vegetable bed outside the kitchen window.

“She’s delighted to have a playmate since Fintan’s gone away,” Una said. “And I really think Jeremy dotes on her as well. He really has come a long way. He goes to see the counselor faithfully every week. It’s going to take a long time, but I know Hugh’s right—I know there’s goodness in him.”

“It’ll get better,” Nora said, hoping her words carried the weight of conviction. “Are you still living at home? I hope you don’t mind me asking.”

“We’re still there. Brendan’s calmed down a lot since you were here. He’s realized that Fintan leaving wasn’t the end of the world, and he’s hired a young fella to help him out with the farmwork. I think it helps knowing that even if Aoife and I should leave, we wouldn’t be going far. I don’t think I could ever leave this place entirely.”

Hugh Osborne came over to set his plate of chopped garlic on the counter beside them, and stopped to give Una’s hand an affectionate squeeze before returning to the table. Nora could see that Una was both pleased and a little discomfited by this gesture.

“Hugh’s asked whether Aoife and I might like to come and live here. I still haven’t decided what to tell him. But sometimes we actually do feel like a family.”

“It seems to me you both deserve a little happiness, after all that’s happened.”

They worked for a moment in silence. Nora glanced at the two men, wondering whether Hugh had mentioned anything to Una yet about the confession, and the astonishing twist it put in the whole Osborne family history.

“Una, I was wondering—the name Mag Annaigh wouldn’t by any chance be a variation of McGann, would it?”

“Oh, aye, all those names, McCann, McGann, MacAnna, makes no difference, sure, they’re all just different spellings of the same name. Why do you ask?”

“Just curious. We think we may have found out who our red-haired girl was after all.”

3

When the supper was finished, the dishes washed and dried and put away, it was getting close to Aoife’s bedtime, and Hugh offered to walk Una and her daughter home. As they were leaving, he turned and spoke to Jeremy: “Why don’t you show Nora and Cormac what you’re working on while I’m gone?”

The boy’s expression didn’t change, but he led them to the room on the ground floor directly across from Hugh’s workshop, and switched on the lights to reveal a spacious whitewashed studio, its walls taped with rough pencil sketches. On a table against the near wall was a miscellany of twigs and leaves, a fox pelt, and a collection of feathers. Nora started slightly when she noticed a large hooded crow, awakened and blinking in the bright light, on a perch in the corner.

“Don’t worry,” Jeremy said, approaching the bird and gently stroking the feathers on its belly. “He won’t hurt you. He’s only an old pet. But he’s very smart.”

Nora began to peruse the drawings and the paintings. This work was not at all like the desperate splashes of paint they’d seen covering the walls of the tower, Nora thought, but it did retain a certain measure of the raw expression they’d witnessed there. Jeremy leaned against the wall by the door with his hands in his pockets, trying to affect a look of bored nonchalance.

“You did all these?” she asked. “They’re really wonderful.”

The boy shrugged. “Hugh thinks it’ll keep me from topping myself.” There was a glimmer of the old defensiveness in Jeremy’s tone; he obviously wanted a reaction.

“And does it?” Cormac asked.

Jeremy deflected the question. “There’s something seriously wrong with this one,” he said, lifting the nearest canvas up for them to see. “I can’t figure out what it is. What do you think?”

“I don’t know,” Nora said. She studied the finished and nearly finished pieces, looking closely at the intricate layering of paint on the canvas, and remembered wandering through the silent studio upstairs, surveying the veiled, dreamlike images of wings, strange tropical plants, and exotic animals. These pictures shared with Mina’s work a certain technique that suggested dappled light and shadow, though the subjects were the ordinary flora and fauna of the Irish countryside: the owl and the woodcock, the fox and the wren. And, Nora noticed, in nearly every composition, some representation of a crow. In one piece only the bird’s beak and bright black eye intruded into the lower corner of the frame; in another, the tip of an open wing seemed to brush the edge of the canvas.

“Jeremy,” Nora asked, “did Mina teach you anything about painting?”

The boy had been studying her, with his hands still in his pockets, bouncing slowly against the wall. When she asked the question, the bouncing stopped, and he looked down at his feet. “I used to watch her up in the studio. She showed me how to draw, looking at the thing you’re drawing, not at the paper. She said it was a way to find out how you really saw things.”

“These are wonderful, Jeremy. And I’m not just saying that; I really mean it.”

“Would you take one?”

“I’m sorry?” Nora said.

“If I gave you one of these pictures, would you take it?”

“I’d be very honored.”

Jeremy pushed off from the wall and waded through his paintings, searching for something suitable. The piece he selected wasn’t the largest of the canvases, but one of the most sophisticated and abstract compositions. “Take this one,” he said. “It’s the best.”

“I’d like to give you something, Jeremy.”

“It’s not for sale. Take it as a gift, all right?”

4

Hugh had laid a fire in Cormac’s room, but the air was still brisk; a sharp November wind whipped around the house, occasionally creating a low, howling noise as it gusted against the leaded windows in the corner tower. He wondered whether Nora’s bedroom was as chilly as this one. Neither of them had raised an objection when Hugh put them in separate rooms, the same ones they’d occupied last spring. Cormac was just regretting that fact when he heard a soft rap, and saw Nora’s head peer around the edge of the heavy door.

“Cormac, it’s absolutely freezing in my room. Could I please, please, warm my feet on you?”

“I was just about to come and ask you the same thing.”

“God, it’s just as bad in here,” she said, making a dash for the bed and pulling the coverlet up around her shoulders. “Well, if the cold does prove fatal,” she said through chattering teeth, “at least we’ll be together. What? Why are you looking at me like that?”

“It’s nothing.” He switched off the lamp and slid under the duvet beside her. He lightly traced the pale outline of her face against the dark bedding, and studied her lovely features, which were now and again illuminated by firelight. “It’s just that I once imagined you in this very spot. And now that you’re actually here, it’s proved a very rewarding sight.” He twined his limbs around hers, feeling her body begin to relax into his as she absorbed some of his radiating warmth. “Go ahead, put your feet on me.” He let out a sharp, involuntary noise when her icy toes made contact with his calves. “Jesus.”

“Sorry,” she said. “Can you stand it?”

“Barely. But you’ll warm up soon enough.”

“Cormac, do you think Aine Rua and Cathal Mor ever slept in this room?”

“Not out of the question, I suppose.”

“I know it sounds crazy, but I can feel a difference in this house,” Nora said. “What was here is gone, and it’s as if some benevolent spirit has taken its place.”

“The ghost of the cailin rua?”

“Don’t be making fun,” she warned. “It’s nothing that specific, I just feel something different.”

“I’m not making fun,” Cormac said, pulling her closer. “I feel it too. And it is rather eerie how you finally got your wish, to see the red-haired girl absolved.”

“The strangest thing is that I knew she would be, just don’t ask how I knew. I can’t get over the fact that she walked all that way from the west, trying to find him. It must have been more than fifty miles, and if she had the baby when she arrived here, she must have been very pregnant. To make that journey alone—I’ve been thinking about her walking all that way. How did she know which way to go? Where did she sleep? And when did she find out that her husband had been transported? She must have been fierce, don’t you think, to try to tell what they did to her? Even when they cut off her head, she found a way to outwit them. She never gave up, not ever.”

“Reminds me a bit of someone I know.”

“What was it that you and Hugh were talking about just before we came upstairs?” she asked.

“He wanted to know what had become of the cailin rua. I think he’s been thrown off balance a bit,” Cormac said. “You can’t blame him. If what it says is true, that confession is the single thread that unravels his entire family history.” No, that wasn’t quite right. The thing was far from being unraveled; in some ways it had become infinitely more complex. As Hugh explained it to him, Edmund Osborne had married his first cousin, also an Osborne, and several similar matches in succeeding generations meant the Osbornes were not mere usurpers, but had become inextricably enmeshed, truly bound up by blood and fortune to the property and progeny of Cathal Mor O’Flaherty. An ancient and familiar story, Cormac thought, with the length and breadth of Ireland peopled by various waves of invaders, from the Celts themselves to the Norsemen and the Normans, the English, and the Ulster Scots. It was a mistake to imagine the past simply buried underground. There was that element, yes, but it might be more accurate to think of it living, breathing, and walking upon the earth as well. He himself, in every cell of his body, bore the physical essence of his two parents, the blended strands of their DNA, that mysterious continuation of the ancient matter of the universe. He also bore the impressions of everything he had ever learned over the course of his brief life span so far—from his work, from the music, from Gabriel and all the others who had touched his life, Nora and Hugh and the cailin rua, each encounter sparking some new pathway, a new divergence in the nexus that bound up body and spirit.

Nora stirred beside him. “Are you getting warm now?” he asked, inhaling the clean scent of her, enjoying the weight of her hand as it rested lightly upon his chest.

“Mmm” came her reply. Could it be that she was already drifting off? He deeply envied Nora’s genius for sleep, and often lay awake beside her, admiring the seeming ease with which she became steeped in slumber. He wondered whether Hugh Osborne was in his bed at this hour, or still busy in his workshop below. Cormac tried to fathom the fate of the two men who lived in this house, each of whom had returned from a journey to find his future vanished.

Cormac looked down at Nora’s peaceful face. He would tell her tomorrow how Hugh planned to request that the remains of the red-haired girl and the infant be returned to him for reburial at Drumcleggan Priory. And how Hugh had asked for his help in convincing the National Museum. He hadn’t given an immediate answer, and though he might normally argue against such a course of action, the scientific reasons for preserving the cailin rua had to be weighed against the human need to lay the past to rest. Of course, there was no real rest, only the reassuring constant of mutability. Even the strange suspension of time in a bog was only an illusion, a lingering extension of continual, inevitable decay. The opening stanza of an old poem kept circling through his mind:

The image of the red-haired girl intruded upon Cormac’s thoughts once more, only this time he did not see her as he had out on the bog, in that terrible, wrenching vision that had plagued him so often in the past few months. This time he saw her features arranged as they might be figured in repose: lips together, brow tranquil, eyes closed. It was hard to conceive how a single act could have such far-reaching effect. Where would he be at this moment, if that tormented, despairing girl had not taken to the roads, and had given up her child without protest? Where would she be? There was only one thing he knew for certain: now that the cailin rua was removed from her airless, liquid vault, she had reentered the normal flow of time: her cell walls had begun to break down at an accelerated rate, opening to accept the spread of invading mold and bacteria that would gradually, imperceptibly transform her, as they did all things, living and dead. Cormac felt strangely comforted by the thought. Lulled by the crackling of the fire, the random gusts that buffeted the windows, and Nora’s warm breath against his neck, he closed his eyes and let himself be pulled down, rocked, and finally swallowed in the watery darkness of sleep.