Uch a lám,
ar scribis de memrum bán!
Béra in memrum fá buaidh,
is bethair-si id benn lom cuail cnám.
Alas, O hand,
so much white parchment you have written!
You will make the parchment famous,
and you will be the bare peak of a heap of bones.
Nora pushed through the wide door at the morgue just as Catherine Friel pulled the sheet over Tessa Gwynne’s body on the mortuary table, shaking her head in resignation.
“The poison was mercifully quick. I think we’ll find it’s strychnine, when the toxicology reports come through. She hadn’t much time, in any case. There were some fairly advanced histopathologic changes in her brain and muscle tissue, consistent with multiple myeloma. I’m sure the disease was beginning to affect her quite significantly by this stage. I’m amazed that she had the strength…”
A moment of silence hung between them. Nora thought of the desperate act of a grieving mother, unable to countenance the continued existence of the man she held responsible for her child’s living death.
“I would never condone what she did,” Dr. Friel said. “But that doesn’t mean I can’t imagine what she felt. If it had been my child—”
The door opened, and one of the local mortuary staff stuck his head in. “There’s someone here to collect one of your patients, Dr. Friel—Anca Popescu.” Nora could see Claire Finnerty and Diarmuid Lynch standing just outside the mortuary.
“You can tell them to come through,” Dr. Friel said.
“So you’re taking Anca back to Killowen?” Nora asked Claire. “Does she not have family in Romania?”
“None that wanted her,” Claire replied. “So we’re going to keep her here, with us.” She looked away, trying to keep her composure.
Diarmuid Lynch asked, “May we see her?”
“Of course.” Anca Popescu’s body was draped, but her face—pale bluish in hue, bruised and scraped—silenced them all for a moment.
Claire reached out and touched Anca’s hair. “She was so often sad. And who could blame her, with the life she had? But if you could see the work she’d done for Martin. There was a quality to it, almost like there was something so immense within her that it couldn’t be contained. I don’t know how else to describe it.”
Nora asked, “Are you planning any sort of observance?”
“Yes,” Claire said. “We’ll wash the body and wake her tonight.”
“If you need help,” Nora said, “I have some experience. I know what to do. Why don’t I come back with you now?”
Following Diarmuid and Claire in the van, with the simple wooden box visible through the back window, Nora felt herself part of an odd funeral cortège, a small procession that wound its way through the hills that had been crossed in turn by chieftains and cattle herders, monks and raiders, croppies and yeomen, all characters in the great book of human events.
Cormac was in the Killowen car park, loading his site kit into Niall Dawson’s vehicle, when he heard a voice behind him: “I need to show you something.”
Cormac turned to see a figure on the bench outside the door. Martin Gwynne seemed to have aged forty years in the space of a day. He stared out toward the oak wood as Niall Dawson joined them. Gwynne said, “Anthony’s back from hospital. And he has something that he’d like you both to see.” He turned to Cormac. “Perhaps you’d bring your father along, too.”
When they arrived at Beglan’s farm, Anthony stepped outside. “You’re all right with this, are you?” Martin Gwynne asked. “I want to make sure, Anthony, because it’s bound to change things. I just need to know that you’re prepared.”
“I uh-uh-AM prepared!” Beglan said, his chin thrusting forward.
The kitchen looked exactly as it had been left by the crime scene investigators yesterday, with remnants of Beglan’s everyday life everywhere: bread crumbs and tea mugs and a buttery knife beside the sink. A basin of water stood on the table, along with a bowl of oak galls and a small Bridget’s cross that Cormac had not noticed before.
Dawson zeroed in on the objects on the table as well and turned to Anthony. “Were you making ink here?”
“No, it’s the cuh-cure,” Beglan said.
“A cure for what?” Dawson asked.
Beglan grimaced and pointed to Cormac’s father, seated at the kitchen table. “Eeh-he can’t talk right. I have a cuh-cuh-cure for it.” He smiled. “I know, cuh-cure myself first, right? But it hum-huh-doesn’t work that way. Un-fuh-fortunately.”
“What way does it work?” Cormac was genuinely curious.
“Be patient. You’ll see the connection very soon,” Gwynne said.
Beglan fetched a bundle from the next room and set it down on the kitchen table. He began peeling back the canvas until he had revealed what was inside. On the table lay an ancient manuscript, its worn leather wrapper closed with three buttons. Cormac could see a knot-work design faintly scratched in the surface of the cover. He glanced at Niall Dawson, who appeared dumbstruck.
“My God,” Dawson finally managed. “Is this… ?”
“A legacy,” Gwynne replied. “An unimaginable treasure, a responsibility laid upon the Ó Beigléighinns, descendants of the little scholar, more than a thousand years ago.”
“And was the book shrine connected to this manuscript?”
“Yes, but the police have that. The Cumdach Eóghain and its contents had been separated for centuries—Anthony’s grandfather only succeeded in reuniting them in 1947. It’s strange. There’s been so much squabbling over the shrine, with its gold and precious stones, when the real treasure was what lay inside it all those years. Gentlemen, I give you the Book of Killowen.”
Cormac felt a surge of adrenaline. He couldn’t imagine what Niall must be feeling.
“I thought we’d found our missing manuscript when we came across that Psalter in the bog,” Dawson said. “So where does this book fit in?”
“I believe the artifacts you found in the bog—along with this book—tell a story.” Martin Gwynne motioned them to sit. “It’s a story of philosophical rivalry and heresy and hatred. Let me begin with my own story. I came to this place nearly twenty years ago in search of a dazzling creative thinker, an Irishman with a Greek name, Eriugena—it means ‘Irish-born.’ I followed him here, based on a brief passage in a medieval history, a mention of his return, at the end of his life, to the place where he had been born in Ireland. That birthplace was named for the first time. And it was this place, an area known as An Feadán Mór—Faddan More.”
“This medieval history you mention, it wouldn’t happen to be a revised edition of Gesta Pontificum Anglorum by William of Malmesbury?” Cormac asked.
“Ah, so you know of my disgrace,” Gwynne said. “Yes. But I didn’t take the Gesta Pontificum. It disappeared a few days after I’d made my discovery, and I don’t believe that was pure accident. Someone else must have intended to make it look as if I’d helped myself. After all, I was the last to consult that manuscript, at least according to the library records.”
“Who would do such a thing?” Cormac asked.
“I have a few theories, all unprovable. Perhaps archaeology as a field of study is less contentious than medieval history,” Gwynne said. “I hope so for your sake. History and philosophy are full of treacheries, rivalries I knew nothing of. And there are certain factions within institutions like the Church who make it their business to carry philosophical feuds from a thousand years ago into the present. People who feel threatened by the ideas presented in books like this.”
“I can’t believe you actually came here looking for Eriugena,” Dawson said.
“And I was not the only one—others followed the same trail. I should explain that Tessa and I lived here for some time before I resumed my work again,” Gwynne said. “After my dismissal from the library, and our daughter’s… injury—” He paused. “It was really all I could manage, looking after Derryth, and Tessa, as best I could. But after a while I began to see signs, undeniable evidence that the man I sought had been here and had left his mark. The first clue was at the chapel.”
“That doorway,” Cormac said. “The carving of the scribe—the initials IOH. And the letters. Eriugena was one of the few Greek scholars of his time.”
“Yes, and so I began to suspect that there was some little truth to the story of his return. But there was no grave, no name carved in stone, no other physical evidence to say that the figure was Eriugena. So I started digging through the old texts, the Dinnsenchus and the Annals of the Four Masters, and the work of antiquarians like O’Donovan. Through their research, they were able to discover accounts of a mysterious manuscript called the Book of Killowen and trace it right back to the ninth century. O’Donovan reported that the book had been burned, the shrine sold and melted down, because that’s what the Beglans wanted everyone to believe. It was their family’s sacred charge, you see, to protect the book from harm. I only convinced Anthony to show me his book about two years ago.”
Dawson’s gaze was still riveted on the manuscript. He glanced up briefly to address Anthony Beglan. “May I have a look?”
Anthony nodded, and Martin Gwynne placed the codex carefully into Niall Dawson’s outstretched hands. The cover was rather ordinary, plain leather, more like an envelope than a bound cover. Apart from the one scratched design, there was no gaudy gold or stamped embellishment of any kind. Dawson gingerly undid the buttons and opened the wrapper. His eyes glinted with the curator’s heightened passion, a feverish curiosity bordering on greed.
Gwynne said, “I think you may be surprised at what you find inside.”
Cormac felt his breath halt as Dawson lifted the front cover to find a page inscribed in Latin. It began with a fantastically decorated capital and contained several margin notes in a tiny hand. “Looks like insular minuscule,” Dawson said, his voice filled with awe. “The text is definitely not Psalms. And am I mistaken in thinking there are two hands here?” he asked Gwynne.
“No indeed. The first part of the book has been set down by two different scribes, but the primary hand disappears about two-thirds of the way through. The last portion is completed by the second scribe. Some people know him by the name Nisifortinus—”
Dawson’s head turned sharply. “You realize what you’re saying?”
“I do,” said Gwynne. “And as I’ve had ample time to study the manuscript, I feel no qualms about making that claim.”
“I wish I knew what the hell you were talking about,” Cormac said.
Dawson turned to the title page and read aloud: “Periphyseon. Liber sextus…” Dawson’s voice wavered when he spoke again. “My God, you know what this means?”
“That last bit is ‘Book Six,’” Cormac said. “If I’m remembering right.”
“But there were only five books in Periphyseon,” Dawson said. “There was never any mention of a sixth book, only a note from Eriugena himself at the end of Book Five that he hadn’t covered all the topics that he’d promised to write about.” He began to turn the pages, ever so gently, studying the handwriting on the vellum surface. “If this is truly authentic, it’s earth-shattering. In all sorts of fields—philosophy, history, paleography. I can’t even get my head around it properly.” He turned to Martin Gwynne. “If this truly is Eriugena’s last work, are you thinking he finished it here, in Ireland?”
“Not quite. I’m afraid he might have died before he could complete it,” Gwynne explained. “I’ve gone over the handwriting again and again.” He turned to Cormac. “There are often two Irish hands in Eriugena’s major works, two individuals that paleographers have dubbed i1 and i2. Some scholars think one of them might be Eriugena himself, and the second his pupil and protégé, the man some call by the name Nisifortinus, for the way he introduced his additions, ‘Nisi forte quis dixerit’—Unless, perhaps, anyone shall say that… I’ve often wondered if this mysterious second hand wasn’t perhaps founder of the monastery at Cill Eóghain. As I said, the first hand disappears partway through this book, and it’s completed by the second hand. I think you may find, when you have a closer look at your bog Psalter, that it may be the work of Nisifortinus as well.” Gwynne paused. “I have a theory—entirely unprovable, but plausible all the same, I think—about what transpired here back in the latter ninth century. You’ll forgive my wild speculation. I am only a scholar, after all, and not a scientist.”
“Enlighten us, please,” Dawson said.
“I see two men, scholars and scribes, camped at the edge of this bog. They had come here to withdraw from the world of men, returning to the place from which they’d sprung. But they were not alone. One day while his young companion is absent, the older man is approached by the men who’ve followed him here, paid ruffians who fall upon him and stab him to death and fling his body in the bog. Since your recent discoveries, I have imagined the book and satchel flung after him, perhaps in frustration, because a Psalter, wonderful though it might have been, was not the book the assassins sought. They were after a book full of dangerous, heretical ideas, mistaken in the notion that they could destroy those ideas by destroying the written word.”
“And where was this dangerous book, sought by assassins?” Dawson asked.
“Perhaps the younger man had it,” Gwynne said. “One book, one satchel looks much like another. It’s true even today. But as I said, I have no proof. I merely speculate.”
Cormac said, “So, if our bog man is indeed this philosopher, Eriugena, what reason would anyone have had for killing him? Was there such great harm in what he wrote?”
“His ideas questioned the very foundations of the church in Rome,” Gwynne said. “To church theologians, Eriugena’s writings skirted too close to pantheism. They were condemned by two separate councils in his lifetime. His argument against predestination, his thoughts about the presence of God in nature, about the nonexistence of evil—these things were considered subversive, heretical, dangerous. They remain so to this day.”
“So how did you come to know that Anthony was in possession of this book?” Dawson asked.
“I had noticed that Anthony shared a name with the heirs of the termon lands, the Ó Beigléighinns of Killowen. And I thought it a little strange that Anthony hadn’t learned his letters, being the descendant of scholars. Perhaps it should have been no surprise that schoolteachers always underestimated Anthony, because of his tics and stammers. But as it turned out, here was a man possessed of knowledge that none of his ignorant schoolteachers dared dream of. I heard him speak it, when he didn’t know I was listening.” He cast a weary glance at his friend. “Would you grace us with a bit of that knowledge now, Anthony?”
Beglan had been standing to one side, an arm’s length from them, watching the commotion over the ancient book, listening to the story. Now he looked self-conscious, as if he’d rather have been anyplace but the spot where he was standing. “Where shall I stuh-start?” he asked Gwynne, his jaw flexing as he spoke.
“What about ‘Si enim libertas naturae,’” Gwynne said gently. “Don’t mind us, Anthony. Just imagine you’re out with the beasts.”
Cormac felt a twinge of memory, harking back to the strange sounds coming from Beglan as he drove the cattle down the lane. Anthony closed his eyes and began to sway slightly as he recited the words from memory: “Si enim libertas naturae rationabilis ad imaginem Dei conditae a Deo data est…”
Gwynne turned to what seemed to be a familiar page in the book, marking the words with his finger. Cormac and Dawson could only stand by as Beglan continued: “necessario omne quod ex ipsa libertate evenit, malum seu malitia recte dici non potest—”
It was the same passage that was on the wax tablet, the one they’d brought to Gwynne for translation. And it was only after Anthony finished his recitation that Cormac also realized that the tics and stammers had ceased as the Latin words fell from his lips. Perhaps repeating the text of this book over and over like an incantation somehow stopped the errant brain waves that caused his muscles to contract, his tongue to shudder, his voice to come unbidden.
“Is that your cure?” Cormac asked. “That recitation?”
“N-n-n-not exactly,” Beglan said. “You take the book and duh-duh-dip it in the basin, and then get two cuh-cupfuls of that down yeh—”
Dawson couldn’t hold his tongue. “Wait, you put this book into water?” He looked down at the manuscript in his hands.
“Aye, to buh-bless the water,” Beglan replied. “Does no harm.”
Gwynne said, “He’s right about that. Iron gall ink doesn’t just float upon the surface, you see—it bites into the page. Gallotannic acid bonds with vellum. That’s why this ink cannot run. Not anymore.”
“And that’s why the writing in our bog Psalter is intact,” Niall Dawson added. “Despite being wet for centuries.”
“Indeed,” Gwynne said. “It’s the gall that makes the words indelible.”
“You said you weren’t the only one following Eriugena’s trail,” Cormac said. “We know about Kavanagh, and the corrupt detective Molloy and his accomplices who were after the shrine, but were there others as well?”
Martin Gwynne smiled wearily. “Remember what I said a few moments ago, about Eriugena’s ideas being too dangerous still? We have had in our midst these last eighteen months a Catholic priest, an investigator sent here by the Vatican to find and destroy the Book of Killowen.”
Cormac shook his head. “How do you know—”
“I have it from the man himself. I always knew that Diarmuid Lynch wasn’t what he claimed to be,” Gwynne continued. “Tried to pass himself off as an itinerant when he came here, but anyone could see that his hands were far too soft for any farm laborer. Diarmuid finally confessed his true purpose to us just the other night, how the Church had been seeking the Book of Killowen for years and had given him the mission to discover its location. But in doing all that digging, he had a chance to study Eriugena’s work in detail, and he’d been won over by the man’s ideas. So he began lying to his superiors at the Vatican about new information he’d found, about the book’s location. He realized, long before he ever came here, that he could never go through with destroying such an important manuscript.” Gwynne looked at Dawson. “And that was why he phoned you with a story about treasure hunters, hoping the National Museum would take an interest and send someone down to investigate. He reckoned that the Church would be in an awkward position if the book’s existence were made public in that way.”
“Why didn’t he just hand it over when I was here?” asked Niall.
“Cuh-cuz he never knew where I kept it,” Anthony said.
Cormac was still puzzled. “Kavanagh, he’d been after the manuscript as well for years, hadn’t he?”
“Indeed,” Gwynne said. “And I was going to show it to him. That was my grand plan, God help me. I wanted to invite him here, to see the blackguard’s face as I snatched away the one thing that was most precious to him.”
Gwynne sank into one of the chairs, looking spent. “At first, I simply closed my eyes to Kavanagh’s crimes, because I knew we could do nothing. We’d no evidence against him, only our daughter’s word about what he had done, and since she’d gone from us—” He paused briefly, overcome. “I’d told Tessa about all my discoveries here, the carving at the chapel and the notes in O’Donovan, about the Beglans and their legacy. I never mentioned Kavanagh by name, but I didn’t have to—she knew very well that he would stop at nothing to get this book. And she had the courage to act, while I…” His head dropped forward, and he let out a long breath. “My beautiful Tess, she suffered a long and painful death, these past twenty years. Punishing herself, wrestling with demons. And I stood by all that time and did nothing. I ought to have protected her, I ought to have helped her.”
Cormac’s father had been silent, taking in the strange conversation all around him. Now the old man reached over and placed a hand on Martin Gwynne’s arm.
“Peas,” he said. “Now your author shall have peas.”
Stella Cusack sat at her desk, just having returned from the required visit to the district commander’s office. Since she’d managed to bring embarrassment on the force by arresting her own partner for murder, inquiries had to be made. Just as she anticipated, Molloy had stopped talking the moment he was extracted from the furze. His solicitor was probably going to argue coercion on the confession, but they still had the mark of his shoe on Anca Popescu’s skin. And Stella was hopeful in that regard, because Catherine Friel was known as an outstanding expert witness.
Tessa Gwynne’s husband had given his full cooperation. He swore that he had begun to suspect his own wife’s involvement only after Benedict Kavanagh’s murder was discovered. According to the Director of Public Prosecutions, simply suspecting one’s wife was not enough to warrant criminal charges as an accessory after the fact. Vincent Claffey’s death had finally been ruled an accident, from the blow to the head when Anca Popescu apparently pushed him. It looked like premeditated murder only after Molloy mutilated the body and shoved the gallnuts in Claffey’s mouth to throw Stella off the scent. She blushed to the roots of her hair, remembering how had she let that bastard play her. Best not to think about that now.
She turned the key in her largest drawer and brought out a metal strongbox that looked as if it had been through the wars. It had turned up in a search of Molloy’s flat, this nest of secrets that he’d removed from Claffey’s shed. She hadn’t had a chance to go through the whole jumble of newspaper cuttings, official documents, scribbled notes, and photos, but it was clear from the contents that Molloy himself had been feeding Vincent Claffey blackmail fodder for months, a way to keep him mum about the treasure-hunting ring. It turned out that Claffey had been writing cryptic threatening notes to the people at Killowen, hoping to extract money from everyone. And he’d evidently succeeded. Stella found Mairéad Broome’s fat packet of cash, along with a few rolls of twenty-euro notes. Hard to fathom how Molloy had managed to scrape up some of this dirt. Everyone at the farm was represented. There was information on Shawn Kearney being slighted by the academic committee that had turned down her bid for a doctorate, newspaper cuttings about Tessa Gwynne’s father attempting suicide in police custody after he was charged with fraud in the 1980s.
There was also a series of photographs, taken at Killowen Chapel, of Diarmuid Lynch, lying facedown on the ground at the altar. She found a piece of paper stuck to the back of the last photo. It was an image clipped from a magazine, showing three smiling men looking over an architectural drawing. Stella adjusted her desk light and reached for her magnifier, peering through the glass at the picture. Nothing but a concentration of dots, so close up. Still, the man in the center looked familiar. All three were wearing clerical collars. The caption read: “Monsignor Guido Mariani, the papal nuncio, and members of the Vatican party, Monsignor Andrew Fothergill, and Canon Michael Feery, looking over plans for the new building at the Apostolic Nunciature on Navan Road, Dublin.”
She spotted one of her uniformed colleagues approaching and moved to cover the image. Guarda Pollard tipped his head toward the front of the building. “Stella, someone to see you. Duty sergeant asked me to pass it along.”
Stella headed to the front reception area, a tiny cramped foyer with a window for the duty sergeant. She pushed open the security door to find Claire Finnerty waiting outside.
“Detective Cusack, I wanted to let you know that we’re holding a wake for Anca, tonight, at the farm, in case you’d like to—”
“Thanks for letting me know. I’m not sure if I can make it.”
“There was something else I wanted to ask.” Claire Finnerty looked away. “We could have done so much more for Anca. She probably arrived at Killowen thinking it would be a safe place, and it turned out to be anything but safe. I don’t know how we could have been so blind. None of us had any idea what Vincent Claffey was doing—”
“What was it you wanted to ask?”
“Maybe it’s a foolish notion, but I thought you might know of people who find places for young women like Anca, where they can recover from everything they’ve been through. I’ve talked it over with the others, and we’re all agreed. We’d like Killowen to become a sort of sanctuary. We’ve got the space, and, well, digging in the dirt and growing things sometimes has a healing effect.”
“Interesting proposition,” Stella said. “I’m not sure how I can help—”
Claire Finnerty’s voice was low but urgent. “You must know people. It’s too late for Anca, but we want to do something—we have to do something—to make amends.”
Stella looked into the eyes of the woman before her and saw the whole picture: the resolute expression, the sweat-stained clothing and worn hands, dirt under the nails, unruly hair only partially constrained by a head scarf. Here was a simple portrait of human need, a need that, for once, was within her power to answer.
“All right,” Stella said. “Let me make some inquiries. I’ll see what I can do.”
“Thank you.” Claire Finnerty’s expression was still intense, but something in her eyes seemed to brighten. As she bent to collect her packages, Stella glimpsed a small strip of ink inscribed on her lower back—a delicate scalloped pattern in blues and greens. The shirt rode up slightly as she slung one of the bags over her shoulder, briefly exposing the whole tattoo. Stella could see that it was a snake swallowing its own tail. At the door, Claire Finnerty turned back to her. “Anytime after eight tonight. Just a simple home wake.”
Stella returned to her office, feeling that she hadn’t probed deeply enough. Why had the person who called herself Claire Finnerty taken the identity of a dead child? What was she running from? It might be wise to find out more about the circumstances of Tricia Woulfe’s disappearance before trying to throw the light on someone with an assumed identity. A person could have all sorts of reasons for not wanting to be found. Interesting that Claire Finnerty was so eager to make amends for Anca Popescu’s death. Perhaps the clue was embedded in that need.
Her desk was covered with open files and half-finished reports, not to mention all the piles she’d begun to try and organize Molloy’s stuff. Time to force a bit of order and logic on the clutter of thoughts and images that filled her mind, as well as the mess of papers on the desk.
Her gaze caught on a photo of the Cregganroe conspirators, and this time her eye was drawn not to the shaggy young men but to a pair of peripheral figures, a young woman locked in an embrace with a tall man at the edge of the frame. Neither of their faces was visible, obscured by moppish haircuts of the time. They seemed disconnected from the others, Stella thought, with the fella’s hand right up under the back of his girl’s jumper. And then she saw it: the scalloped pattern on the girl’s right hip. Stella flipped the photo over, looking for the note about the identities of the subjects, but the label mentioned only the five young men at the table, nothing about the other two. She reached for the magnifying glass, trying to get a read on the tattoo. If she could enhance the image, there’d be a much better chance… and all at once, the marks took shape: the head of a knotwork snake, twisted around itself and swallowing its own tail. Claire Finnerty.
The alleged warning call about the bomb was supposedly made by a young woman, but they’d never found any young female associated with the bomb makers. If the call had come in to the police, there would have been phone records, recordings—but there was nothing. Call or not, it made no difference now to the seven people who had died. But allegations in a scandal like that could have shaken both the Irish and the British governments to their foundations.
She set down the photo, her mind reeling. Molloy must have discovered that Claire Finnerty was a party to the Cregganroe bombing, and that was how he kept her silence about anything else she knew.
They’d never been able to nail the Snake, the head of the serpent, because no one knew who he was—that was the way paramilitary cells operated, then as now. But remaining incognito, even to the people you commanded, meant that the bloody Snake could be in their midst, even listening in on their conversations, and they’d never know.
She glanced down at the picture once more and through the distorted glass saw the man’s hand magnified. His thumb and first two fingers were tucked up under the girl’s jumper, but the last two digits were visible. Stella sat forward and peered at the black-and-white surface of the photo again, not quite believing what her eyes were relaying to her brain. Around his left pinkie the man wore a distinctive rectangular gold signet ring.
Nora stood in the shower, letting the hot water course over her. She’d just finished helping Claire wash and lay out Anca Popescu’s body for the wake. These were not things she’d learned in medical school, but it seemed now that they should have been. Taking care of people in life ought to extend at least a little past that final threshold. She and Claire had worked in silence, gently washing, applying scented oils, and delicately daubing the girl’s dark bruises with makeup.
When their work was finished, Martin Gwynne had come to watch over Anca—according to tradition, the body was never left alone—and he’d brought along a single goose quill. “From her writing desk,” he’d explained. “Her favorite. Any scribe will tell you, the quill becomes a part of you—like your own fingernail moving across the page.” He gently lifted Anca’s pale hand and slipped the feather between her thumb and forefinger.” On her way out, Nora saw that Martin also had framed Anca’s unfinished work and set it on a small easel at her head.
Anca’s body was at rest now, in a plain wooden box in the yoga room adjacent to Martin Gwynne’s studio. Shawn Kearney and Anthony Beglan had gathered late-summer flowers, and the normally bare room had been transformed into a bower, filled with the scent of autumn ripeness and even the occasional bee arriving to collect the last and sweetest nectar before the flowers faded.
As Nora stood in the shower, enjoying the pinpricks of the spray, she pictured the intricate letters and patterns from Anca’s page, the rich colors, the sharp teeth and staring eyes of the living creatures that leapt off the vellum. There was a nod to tradition, certainly, but also Anca’s own individual, inimitable stamp. As if some part of her were still present. And so it was.
Nora had just laid out her clothes when Cormac came through the door. His face glowed with excitement as he took a seat at the edge of the bed. “You’ll never guess what Martin Gwynne’s just showed us,” he said, and began describing the scene he’d witnessed at Anthony Beglan’s farmhouse. Like a boy who has stumbled upon a long-buried treasure map, Nora thought, watching the light that danced in his eyes, the animated gestures that punctuated his story. He told her about the Book of Killowen, the generations upon generations that had taken up the sacred charge of protecting one of the world’s most dangerous books.
“I keep thinking about what Tessa was saying, Cormac, that someone like Kavanagh could debate the existence of evil on a purely intellectual level, all the while behaving in unspeakable ways himself. If evil doesn’t really exist, does it mean that things like goodness and decency aren’t real either? What does it say about me, that I can’t bring myself to condemn Tessa Gwynne for wanting to stop Benedict Kavanagh once and for all?”
Nora pulled the robe tighter around her, feeling her limbs take on the character of an ancient furze, a primeval, hobbled thing, covered in spikes and twisted by wind.
Cormac drew her in, as if he couldn’t feel the barbs of her bristling anger. “It says you’re human, Nora. It says you desperately want to believe that kindness is real and justice is possible. I want to believe it, too.”
He held on, tighter and tighter, until her shoulders sagged, the gnarled wood inside her let go its cramp, and she gradually became flesh again.
Stella arrived at Killowen at half past eight. The evening light was still bright, but a sliver of moon had risen over the oak wood, a silver crescent magnified by the late-summer damp. She entered by the front door, following the sound of a flute playing a slow air to the yoga studio, where the wake was under way. Flowers and candlelight, and a low murmur of conversation filled the room.
She paid her respects, standing beside the girl’s pale body laid out in the coffin, again feeling a twinge at the realization that this was someone’s daughter, not much older than her own child. She noticed Cormac Maguire in the opposite corner, elbows on knees, ebony flute in one hand. He must have been playing the air she’d heard coming through the house. As Stella withdrew, he lifted the instrument to his lips again and launched into another slow air, a lament.
Claire Finnerty entered the studio and crossed immediately to the coffin. She stood for a long while, five minutes or more, looking down into the dead girl’s face. She bowed her head and began to whisper, her lips moving silently. Was it a prayer, a message to carry into the afterlife, some sort of incantation? Eventually, Claire straightened and reached for a thorny branch among the flowers. She snapped a sharp thorn from the cane, then drew back her sleeve, and plunged it into the flesh of her forearm. She made no sound but drew the thorn out again and pressed the flesh to stop any bleeding.
Stella knew that she must be invisible, behind a huge spray of leaves and flowers. As Claire left the room, Stella slipped from her place of concealment and followed, making sure not to be seen. She peered into the corridor, where Claire Finnerty stopped in front of each of the seven illuminations in turn, repeating the same ritual with the thorn in front of each. What strange sort of penance was this?
After Claire left, Stella approached the first picture. She was standing quite still, and yet there was a feeling of movement, going down and down, like the steps of a spiral staircase, until the outlines of a letter—no, several letters—suddenly loomed before her eyes: E, D, M. They were not just letters, but words—and they formed a name.
She stared at the picture again, and there was the name, still, where before she had seen only a jumble of shapes. Edmund Callan. She moved to the next picture and this time saw the name immediately: Margaret Rice. The third bore another, Gerard Nolan. And then she knew: these pictures were hidden memorials to the seven victims of the Cregganroe bombing. Visited daily by the person who felt responsible for their deaths. Perhaps there should have been an eighth, bearing the name of Tricia Woulfe, the girl Claire Finnerty had once been.
Stella stopped and gazed out the window. If Martin Gwynne had made these pictures, surely he had to know of Claire’s past—perhaps everyone at Killowen had known all along.
She suddenly felt the weight of the file in her bag and began to hear the never-ending echoes that would bounce from the walls of these farm buildings if she were to produce that file right now and start asking questions.
She reached the end of the corridor. Seven pictures, seven names. Stella could see Claire Finnerty’s head in the garden, stooping to gather herbs for the meal that would be a part of the wake. Diarmuid Lynch emerged from the kitchen to join her. They worked side by side for a moment, until Claire’s head dropped forward. Lynch put out a hand to lift her up, then he set aside his herbs and gathered Claire to him, smoothing her hair, drying her eyes with kisses.
Stella remembered the words Claire had spoken in the entry at the station this afternoon. Digging in the dirt and growing things sometimes has a healing effect. And Stella understood what this place was, what it could become, if she made inquiries as she’d promised. She left the farmhouse and crossed the haggard to the burned-out creamery storehouse, pulling a handful of photographs from her bag and setting them on fire in a metal bin, watching as the flames consumed them.
“She has my author,” Joseph Maguire said. His eyes pleaded with Cormac to draw sense from his urgent words. “My author, my author!” His hands pressed against his chest, then bounded forward. He was in his pajamas and robe, pacing back and forth across his tiny room, refusing to go to sleep this night until they took his meaning.
“Author,” he said again, and this time the pitch of his voice rose. Cormac stopped his father pacing and stood directly in front of him.
“Show me,” he said, seizing Joseph’s wrists and holding his hands up between them. “Please. Use your hands and show me what you mean.”
The old man looked down at his hands, and the agitation seemed to drain out of him. “Peas,” he said weakly, his voice reduced to a whisper.
Back to the vegetables, Cormac thought. And it always came back around to peas, never runner beans or beetroot or cabbage.
“La imagen de mi paz. Mi preciosa paz.”
Cormac cursed his limited knowledge of Spanish. Paz was peace, that was all he knew. His father seemed to be saying, My precious peace—but what did that mean?
The old man sat down on the edge of the bed, exhausted and frustrated, and with one sweep of his arm sent everything on the bedside table flying: the drinking glass shattered against the wall, and all the familiar, comfortable things Cormac had brought along to re-create his room at home scattered across the hard floor.
He couldn’t blame his father for lashing out, even though the sudden violence was jarring. Cormac took a deep breath and sat beside the old man on the bed, looking down into the tumble of books and pictures. Why had he even brought these things on this journey? The books had been on his father’s nightstand when he’d had the stroke. It had never occurred to him that the old man might be frustrated that he could no longer read them.
A white square stood out against a book cover. Cormac bent to pick it up and found a photograph with a date faintly penciled on the back: Noviembre 1983. The spelling was Spanish, but it was definitely his father’s handwriting, still so Irish in character. Turning it over, Cormac found a black-and-white image of his father with a lovely dark-haired young woman. A wedding photo. If he hadn’t spied the date, he could have sworn the bride was Eliana—
Suddenly, he knew. The subtle evasions he’d sensed when asking about her home and family; his father’s obsession with the girl, which he and Nora had mistakenly read as unseemly intemperance. But it was something more.
He knelt beside the bed and reached for the old man’s hand, placing the tiny photo on his outstretched palm. “Who is she?”
“Peas-Pease,” he began, and stopped. “PAZ!” He’d finally managed to spit it out. Then he added, “Es-esposa.”
Cormac knew that much Spanish, at least—wife. “Where is she now?” he asked.
The old man did not reply in words this time but drew together the fingers of his right hand, which then exploded. Poof.
“She disappeared?” The old man shook his head, and Cormac suddenly remembered where on the planet his father had spent all those years. “She was ‘disappeared’? She’s so like Eliana—”
Joseph reached out and placed his two palms on Cormac’s chest. “My sum,” he said. His left hand stretched to the doorway, pointing to Eliana’s room next door. “My author,” the old man whispered, and this time Cormac felt the sense of it shining through at last. My daughter. For days, his father had been trying to tell them who the girl was, and every day he’d been flailing in that whirlwind of garbled words inside his brain.
Cormac glanced up to see Eliana peering around the doorjamb, fist pressed to her lips as if she were afraid of crying out, silent tears streaming down her face. Nora stood behind her.
“You knew,” he said to Eliana. “That’s why you came to us. You came looking for my father because you knew that he was—”
The girl nodded.
Nora took Eliana’s hand and led her into the small room as Cormac cleared a spot beside his father on the bed. He drew the two chairs closer. The whole scene was so unreal.
Eliana had to take a moment to compose herself before speaking. “I didn’t know anything about that agency you rang about a minder. I only happened to come to your house on that day, and you said we were going to Tipperary. That we would be in time for lunch. And so I came along. I wanted to tell you, all the time, but I was afraid.”
Cormac shook his head. “That doesn’t matter now. What I want to know is, how did you find us?”
“It is a strange, sad story. I think you know I’m not from Spain. I was born in Uruguay, in 1984. I have no memory of another place, but I always felt as if I… didn’t belong. I never knew why until the man I called my father, he was very ill, dying. It was not so long ago. He asked me to bring him a book. I can never forget this book—Los Años del Lobo—it was about all that happened so long ago in Uruguay, in Argentina, and Chile—and this man, my father, he asked me to forgive him.”
Eliana took a breath and continued. “After he died, my mother—the woman I called my mother—she finally told the truth, that I was not her child. She knew no more than that. But then a few months later, I received a visit from a priest. He said someone was looking for me, a woman in Chile. That this woman was mi abuela, my grandmother.”
Joseph’s expression changed. “Vee-veelet,” he said, becoming agitated.
“Yes, you know her, Violeta Mendes-García. She loved you as her son, and she sent me here, to find you. Because she always believed that my mother was eh—” She gestured, giving herself a round belly. “How do you say embarazada?”
“Pregnant?” Nora asked.
“Yes, yes, pregnant when she was taken. No one knew but mi abuela.” Eliana turned to the old man, who crumpled slightly and let out a low groan, the terrible knowledge like a dull spike to the heart. “How could you know? And mi abuela, she said she could not punish you that way. What if my mother had been killed, and there was no child? But she could not stop, she had to know. It’s strange to think now, but the people in charge, they kept such good records of their prisoners, of all the people they killed. And so my grandmother found my mother’s name in the secret files of the military hospital in Montevideo. She found a man there also who remembered my mother and how he was told to put her child into a basket and to bring that basket to the wife of a policeman, a woman who had no children of her own.”
Joseph closed his eyes. “Cóndor,” he murmured.
“Sí,” Eliana replied. “Operación Cóndor.”
Cormac felt a knot under his rib cage. Twenty years after it ended, the whole world knew of Operation Condor. About the torture and the killings, the kidnapped children of the “disappeared,” who were robbed of their families, their very identities.
“When did all this happen, Eliana? I mean, when did your grandmother find you?”
“Three years ago. But still we didn’t know the truth, not for certain. The man in the hospital, he could have lied or made a mistake. And so I went for a test, ADN, which you call by something else, I think—”
“DNA,” Nora said.
“DNA, yes.” She turned to the old man, gripped his hand. “That’s when I knew, when I could be certain. Yo soy su hija.”
The old man’s fingertips reached out and barely brushed her face. When he finally spoke, his voice was hoarse: “He soñado—contigo.”
“And I have dreamed of you also, papá—” Eliana broke off, unable to speak. Her eyes locked on the old man’s, and his on hers, and upon that thread hung a look of such infinite joy and desolation that Cormac felt his own heart might crack.
Eliana managed to smile through her tears. “How strange it is, to feel at once so full and yet so empty still.”
Cormac could bear to look no longer. He turned away. The earth itself had broken open, the continents shifted, and nothing would ever be the same.
Stella Cusack snapped into action when she returned home from the wake, pegging all the dirty delft straight into the dishwasher, picking up the sheets she’d stripped from her bed and bundling them into the washing machine. She knew that it was only a feeble attempt to erase all imprints, all residues of Fergal Molloy, but it was the best she could manage right now. She sat on a chair, watching the water sloshing around inside the machine and sobbing like a child.
When the cycle finished, she sat in the silent kitchen, staring at the mobile phone resting on the table before her. She was trying to screw up her courage—time to ring her daughter, see if they could talk things over before it was too late.
Stella reached for the phone and flinched as it began to buzz and vibrate on the table. The blue window said “Cusack.” She punched a button to answer.
“Stella, it’s me.” He’d always been on to her that way, ever since she’d known him. It’s me. As if he were the only possible me. “It’s Barry.”
But something was up. She picked up on a subtle difference in the sound of his voice, a note of something—was it regret?—that she had never heard before.
“Barry, where are you?”
He hesitated. “Outside.”
She found him standing in the shadows, wearing his olive-green mac, even though the sky was clear. “Thanks. Didn’t want people to think you had a stalker.” He glanced sideways at the twitch of a curtain at the neighbors’ window. “Can I come in?” She turned and walked away, leaving the door open. He stepped into the foyer but didn’t remove his coat.
“What is it, Barry? What do you need?”
He seemed insulted. “Do I have to need something to come and talk to you? Why do you—” He closed his eyes and stopped himself from saying any more.
“Whatever it is, Barry, just say it and get it over with. We need to talk about Lia.”
He looked so awkward and miserable, standing in the middle of the foyer with his raincoat on, that Stella found herself beginning to take pity on him.
“Take your coat off, then. Do you need a drink? I know I do.”
“I wouldn’t mind, if you’ve got something. That’s one of the things I miss, just having a drink with you, Stella.” He was looking at her strangely as he peeled off the mac and draped it over the back of the sofa.
She’d crossed to the liquor cabinet and was pouring out a couple of short glasses of whiskey when she felt Barry standing behind her. So close that she could smell him, could feel his warm breath against her hair.
“Where’s Allison tonight?” she asked, her own breath coming fast and shallow.
Barry didn’t respond, just slipped his hands around her shoulders. “Stella—”
She turned, seizing the two glasses and ducking under his arm in one motion, before he could react. She shoved one of the glasses into his hand as she passed.
Barry squinted at her in puzzlement. She could almost hear the gears turning inside his skull. They were both adults. What was the point of denying physical need? And besides which, hadn’t he got lucky here just a couple of weeks ago?
Stella took a sip of the whiskey to steady herself. “Well, since you won’t tell me what you want, I’ll tell you what I need: Lia home with me, now. I want her to stop playing us. She knows exactly how to get what she wants, and we both know she’s better off here. We also know that you can’t keep this up forever, the whole engaged father act. It’s been what—four whole days now? That’s got to be getting old.”
Barry looked at her with an expression she’d never seen before. He was sizing her up, taking her measure. “I’ll drop Lia home on my way to the office in the morning.”
Stella still couldn’t suss out what was going on. Why was he being so agreeable? “You never said where Allison was tonight.”
Barry’s head dropped forward. “You know, I’m not sure where she is, and I’m not sure I care. I was wrong about her.” He glanced up. “And wrong about you as well.”
Stella could feel him checking for a reaction, so she didn’t react, but she found herself backing up as he moved closer. “Relax,” he said, gently bumping her glass against his own. “Just offering a toast. To you, Stella, for being a great mum.” He paused. “And, all told, a pretty fuckin’ great wife.”
“Cormac? Are you awake?” Nora’s whisper came whooshing out of the velvety darkness to curl around his ear.
He turned to her. “Can’t sleep. You?”
She brushed his cheek with a cool palm. “Too much going on. Would you be up for a soak downstairs? Might help you sleep.”
They slipped, hand in hand, past the closed doors of the other slumbering guests, down the main stairs, and into the corridor outside the thermal suite. As they passed the courtyard windows, the garden was awash in pale moonlight. All at once a bolt of lightning seemed to flash through the grass at the edge of the herb beds. Nora jumped. “Did you see that? What the hell was it?”
At first Cormac couldn’t imagine, but after a moment, he understood. “Do you know something odd? We’re quite far inland, but this place seems overrun with eels. They must come up the rivers and canals into the bogs.”
“I suppose they’ve been here forever, if the monks figured a way to use their gallbladders for ink,” Nora said. “Maybe they’re like salmon, living their whole lives in the sea, until they return to freshwater to spawn.”
Cormac had a sudden feeling that he had been forever tracing a line inside the twisted maze of the past. “Strange…”
“What’s strange?” Nora asked.
“To think that the gold ink in our bog Psalter, or the Book of Killowen, could have been made from the ancestors of eels who still swim up the rivers here. If you keep going backward, it’s entirely possible. That homing instinct—part of the great mystery, I suppose. All we know about the natural world at this stage, and we’re only beginning to scratch the surface.”
They continued to the thermal suite, and ten minutes later the soaking tub was full of brown peaty water, and candles around the room cast a flickering, golden light. Two piles of clothes sat at the top of the stairs down into the pool.
“Have you heard any news of what’s going to happen to Deirdre Claffey and her baby?” Cormac asked.
“Claire told me Mairéad Broome is working with Social Services,” Nora said. “She’s going to see if she can bring Deirdre and the child to live with her. What’s going to happen to the Book of Killowen?”
“Anthony’s decided to donate it to the National Museum. The book, and the Psalter, and all the other artifacts discovered here will make an amazing exhibit someday. I think that’s what Anthony would like, to see his family’s legacy preserved. And I’m sure there are academics who’d like to pick his brain about the Book of Killowen and its whole colorful history. What’s happened here in the last few days could change his life completely.”
“I don’t know. It seems to me that Anthony might be content to carry on tending his cattle, fishing for eels, and making vellum for Martin Gwynne. Although Martin did tell me that he’s finally teaching Anthony how to read and write.”
“I wish you had seen the Book of Killowen, Nora. I can’t begin to describe the illuminations. It’s almost like the creatures in it are alive—and from what Martin Gwynne says, the ideas in it are equally electrifying. He believes the book contains the handwriting of this ninth-century scholar Eriugena and his scribe. Gwynne says it may be the final proof that scholars needed to establish their identities, once and for all. I don’t suppose there’s any way to be certain of our bog man’s identity, whether he could be the great man himself? I mean, we’ve got his wax tablet. Maybe the writing in the tablet could be linked to the text in the Book of Killowen—”
“I just don’t see how his identity could be definitively proved, unfortunately. We have no way to run his fingerprints, nothing to compare his DNA. We’ll just have to be satisfied with the tantalizing possibility, I’m afraid.” Her expression turned serious. “Speaking of identity, can I ask you something? Did you ever suspect that your father had another family in Chile?”
Cormac winced. “Jesus, Nora, you make it sound like he was a bigamist.”
“I didn’t mean—”
“I know, I’m sorry. For so long, I was certain he had another family. Another son. At one point, I had myself convinced that it was the reason he left. It never occurred to me that he might have felt bound to a cause rather than to any flesh-and-blood person. I suppose I always thought if it was danger he was after, he could have found that just as easily in Ireland.”
“Some people—and maybe your father is one of them—I don’t know how to describe it, exactly, except to say that they aren’t born in their own skins. I’ve known people like that, who have to go looking for a place, or a purpose, that feels like home to them.”
“What are you saying? Do you not feel at home here?”
“I wasn’t talking about myself. No, I’m afraid you’re stuck with me, like it or not.” Cormac felt Nora’s hand under the water, her fingers twining through his own.
He said, “Do you know what baffles me? That even though they spent all those years apart, my father and mother were still married, right up to the day she died. My father offered to come back to Ireland then, and I wouldn’t have it. I sent him packing. It never occurred to me that he would have been grieving as much as I was. That wedding picture we found, of my father and Paz—it was taken long after my mother died.”
“Are there not some things that defy understanding, things we just have to let be?” Nora’s chin rested on her drawn-up knee, a pale island in their peat-laden pool. Her eyes glowed, even larger and more luminous in the wavering candlelight.
“When my mother died, it seemed as if I’d lost the only person to whom I felt… bound. I had to learn to be on my own, and I got used to it. Then came you, Nora. And now I suddenly find my family doubled, tripled”—he glanced up to the ceiling, beyond which his father and sister slept—“quadrupled. Just like that. Difficult to take it all in.”
Without a word, Nora slid over and tucked herself around him, wrapping her legs about him, twining her arms through his, until they were bound together like a pair of interlaced figures from the pages of an ancient book. She leaned forward and laid her head on his shoulder, and he could feel her heart beating, through solid flesh, in quiet double rhythm with his own.