The Celtic Riddle

Chapter Seven. THE BEAUTY OF A PLANT

WE found Michael in his garden, among the roses, out of sight of the house. Eight o'clock had come and gone; then eight-thirty; then nine. He was lying facedown, and from the look of the tracks in the mud behind him, he had dragged himself a hundred agonizing yards before he died. There was not a mark on him that I could see. But if John Herlihy had not fallen forty feet onto a pile of rocks, perhaps there'd have been no mark on him either.

Better trained eyes than mine found the tiny tear in the fabric of his jeans, the puncture in the skin behind his knee. "Poison," they said. "If only someone had found him in time."

In his rigid hand, Michael held a torn piece of paper so tightly it was as if he'd wrestled the Devil himself for it. EONB, it said, and Second Cha. The ragged clue was marked as the seventh, 'The beauty o.' "

I remember two things about that horrible moment when we found him. One is the light. The sun, preter-naturally bright, seemed to have sucked the color from all the flowers, the blood from the roses, the heart from the purple hydrangeas, the living breath from the ivy. The other was the sound: Breeta, beside me, making small animal noises, like a kitten being drowned or a child's pet strangled.

And then, some days later, I found myself in a churchyard. It was raining, a bone-chilling drizzle, as it damn well should have been. Michael's coffin, adorned with the flowers he had coaxed into life-a bunch of white roses, a spray or two of tiny orchids- was lowered into the ground. He was buried less than a hundred yards from where he was born. The priest spoke of dust and ashes. I could taste both of them in my mouth.

I looked about the churchyard. There were many among the mourners I did not recognize, townspeople, Michael's friends. Breeta was there, standing apart from the others. Her eyes were strangely opaque, and she twisted her handkerchief over and over. Sometimes her lips moved, but no sound came out. At some point, I edged over to try to comfort her, but she turned away.

My friends were there: Alex with a look of inconsolable sadness; Jennifer, ashen, realizing for the first time, perhaps, that people her age can die. Looking at her, I remembered the feeling of suffocating panic as I lost her for a moment in the cold sea. I looked at Rob who, as a policeman should know sudden death, but whose face barely hid his pain. I came to know as I stood there that it is not possible to be inured to the death of anyone, let alone someone so young, so fine, as Michael. I knew Rob was thinking of Jennifer too. Maeve Minogue was there, in uniform, her face solemn and sad, but also watchful.

Padraig Gilhooly stood way to the back, dark, enigmatic, and solitary. From time to time, he looked over toward Breeta, but made no move in her direction. Ma-lachy, Kevin, and Denny clung to each other as if together they could outwit death.

On the other side of the churchyard was the rest of the Byrne family, all in black, protected from the rain by large black umbrellas that reminded me of black sails on death ships. Deirdre of the Sorrows stood with them, but alone. She looked as if her heart would break. I saw Margaret, who reminded me of nothing so much as a large black crow; Eithne, more tremulous than ever; Fionuala, a little startled somehow. Conail O'Connor was not among them nor anywhere to be seen. Sean McHugh was, though, looking bored, as if there from a sense of noblesse oblige alone, the lord of the manor at the funeral of his vassal.

As I looked across at him, I had a stirring of memory of that fateful morning, which was coming back to me slowly and in flashes, under the careful prodding of Rob and Garda Minogue: Sean McHugh, who appeared at the sound of our cries, tapping Michael's body with his foot. In my head, I knew he was trying to see if he could wake him. In my heart, I saw it as the most callous of gestures, one that ripped open McHugh's soul for all to see, a shrivelled and blackened shell.

I looked at the Byrne family across the great gulf that was Michael's grave and coffin, and I realized, that with the exception of Deirdre, I hated them. He'd asked what there was to lose, looking for the treasure, and now the answer was clear. I knew in that instant that if I could bring every single one of them down, I would. I came to terms with the fact that I was very, very angry. I would avenge him if I could. But even more than that, I had a suffocating sense of a creeping evil that threatened everyone I held most dear: Alex, who as one of the recipients of Byrne's largesse, was surely a potential victim; Jennifer, who might have drowned that day on the water, a careless casualty in a vicious game.

Then I remembered I had made a promise to Michael Davis. I told him I would help him find the treasure. I felt I would do anything to fulfill that promise, not just because I had made it, but because to find the treasure seemed the only way to put an end to the horror. But even as I thought this, I knew I had no idea where or how to start. All I had was a chant, an ancient spell, perhaps, recited by a Celt who might or might not have existed, and two clues the poem had led us to, clues that told me nothing, just scribbling, a cruel joke perhaps, of a bitter, dying man.

The priest was talking about God, and I concentrated on that, and on the ancient Celtic deities, the Dagda, Lugh the Shining, the triple goddess, Banba, Fotla, and Eriu. And I thought whoever or whatever is out there, I could use a little help.

Then the wind whipped the sea into whitecaps, and the rain swept in undulating sheets across the land, like a lace curtain in the breeze, and I had a horrible feeling that in looking for divine assistance I had blasphemed, and the gods were warning me with this rain. The service over, people headed for cover, some to the church, others to their cars to steal away. Denny left with some people I took to be his family. Rob walked Maeve to her car.

Alex, Malachy and Kevin, Jennifer and I ducked under some trees to wait it out, hoods pulled over our heads, shoulders hunched against the damp. It was inexpressibly dreary.

"Very bad day," I said to Kevin. It was all I could manage to say.

"The worst," he sadly agreed. Then, just as suddenly as it began, it was over. The sun came out, and with it, not one, but two rainbows arched across the sky. It was breathtakingly beautiful, almost painfully so, the world's colors back again, huge drops of rain on the large leaves of a plant nearby. I thought of Amairgen's ray of sun and the beauty of a plant. I looked out across the little cemetery, the headstones worn until the names on them could barely be deciphered, the carved figures fading with time, now just a little clearer because of the rain. At one corner of the graveyard, just a few feet away, stood a single stone, a miniature and rough obelisk, about three or four feet high. Carved on one face at the top of it, I could see a Celtic cross. Below that a series of cuts, some straight, some angled, had been slashed into the stone along one edge. I turned away, but then looked back again. I knew my prayer had been answered. I saw that help had come. Alex followed my glance across the graveyard. "Good heavens!" he exclaimed.

"Ogham," Alex said, "an ancient Celtic script and the first known written language in Ireland. Named for Og-mios, sometimes called Oghma, the Celtic god of poetry, eloquence, and speech, and the supposed inventor of the script. It's thought to have originated in this part of Ireland and is apparently based on the names of trees. As I understand it, it's a linear script composed of groups of lines, up to five of them, either horizontal or angled from upper left to lower right, across a vertical spine or stemline. In the case of the standing stone we saw in the cemetery, the sharp edge on one of the front corners of the slab was the vertical stemline. The slashes, if you'll remember, went to either side of that edge of the stone.

"Now, each group of lines can be made to correspond to a letter in the Roman alphabet. Some groups of lines cross the vertical stem, others are restricted to either the right or left of it. The position of the lines relative to the vertical is important. Do you understand what I'm saying?"

"I do, and it's brilliant," Jennifer said.

"I think I do too," I said. "But just to clarify, are you saying that it makes a difference whether the lines are to the left or right of the stemline?"

"I am. For example, five horizontal lines to the right of the vertical make an 'n'; five horizontal lines to the left is a 'q.' A group of five horizontal cuts right across the stemline is an 'i.' Five diagonal lines across the stemline make an 'r.' It's not very sophisticated, I suppose, as written languages go, rather cumbersome in fact, and I think it was mainly used for commemorative purposes, inscriptions and the like, rather than as a daily, working language, but I should think it will work well enough for our purposes.

"Now, here are the letters," he said, pointing to a chart. "I got them from the local library. Let's get out the clues and see what we can see."

My hands were almost trembling with excitement as I got out Malachy and Kevin's slip of paper with Byrne's initials and home address at the top and carefully smoothed it for Alex's study.

"I think this is the most exciting thing I've ever done in my whole life," Jennifer sighed. "What does it say, Uncle Alex?"

"We'll have to see, won't we?" Alex replied. "Here we go. Four lines to the right of the vertical is… "- he paused and looked at his chart.-"an 's.' Then there's four lines that go straight across the spine which is," he paused again, "an 'e.' Then five to the right, an 'n.' Are you getting this all down, Lara?" "I am," I replied, showing him the piece of paper on which I'd written SEN.

"All right then, let's go on. Two horizontal lines running across the stemline: an 'o.' Then three horizontals, to the left of the line which is a 't.' Another V is next, I believe, then another 'e,' then an 's.' No wait, it's a 'u,' another 'e,' then one to the left: an 'h.' "

And so it went until Alex had deciphered them all. There were lines to the left, lines to the right, horizontals, verticals, and diagonals. In the end, I looked at my piece of paper. SENOTSESEHTNOEB ESRUCA was what I had written. My heart sank.

"Do you think it's Gaelic?" I asked no one in particular.

"I'm not sure, but it's not Latin," Alex said. "That I do know. An anagram perhaps?"

Jennifer peered at it. "Senat seset nob es ruca," she exclaimed, or something like that. We looked at ner.

"A curse be on these stones!"