Lake of Sorrows

When the bees had taken their fill of her, it seemed, they departed as gradually as they’d come. She stood for a moment longer with her eyes shut, as if to retain the feeling of microscopic feet by the thousands upon her flesh. She shivered, clasped herself tightly, and heaved a sigh, the kind of wordless exhalation he imagined might escape from a woman whose lover has just left her. Then she dropped her arms to her sides and opened her eyes. Charlie was taken aback when he recognized the face, returned to earth from wherever she had been. It belonged to Brona Scully, the daughter of their nearest neighbor. Someone had cut off her long hair—that might have been the reason he hadn’t recognized her earlier. Brona was perhaps the only person in the locality who enjoyed more pity than he did. People said she wasn’t right in the head—but they said the same thing about him, he knew. Charlie wanted to be near her, to understand what she had just experienced. And with a kind of gentle, settling sadness, he knew he never would. He knew it in the same way he knew that this was the third strange occurrence, the thing he’d been waiting for all along.

8

The red wine swirled in her glass, and Ursula Downes studied the sediment as the eddying liquid slowed and came to rest. The bathwater was getting cold, and she was reaching the bottom of the bottle. She reached down and poured another splash; only a couple of inches remained. Her unsteady movement made the wine slosh in the glass, and several drops escaped and fell into the water. She watched as the inky red sank in ever-decreasing rings until it disappeared altogether. Her head felt heavy from the wine. She leaned back, letting the glass rest between her soapy breasts.

She remembered the look in Owen Cadogan’s eyes this afternoon. She probably shouldn’t have laughed, but he was so pathetic. He couldn’t fathom why she wouldn’t just pick up where they’d left off last summer, and resume those desperate bouts of coupling he’d no doubt begun to think of as their “affair.” She had to admit that she had enjoyed watching his expression whenever she’d proposed anything slightly more adventurous than he was used to. But what right had he to assume that she would just take up with him again? Their relationship—if you could even call it that—had been based on physical need, nothing more. It wasn’t as if they even really enjoyed each other’s company. In fact, after what she’d seen today, she’d have sworn he actually despised her, so what was he on about? Owen didn’t know what had changed for her. She had other prospects now, not just another permanently married man who liked having it off once in a while with someone younger and more imaginative than his wife.

And Owen wasn’t her only problem. Plenty of strange things had happened today, almost as strange as a second body with a leather cord around his neck. The crew were not settling into their work. Maybe it was just her imagination, but the pool of qualified archaeologists seemed to include a larger percentage of head cases every year. Rachel Briscoe was getting moodier and more unpredictable with each passing day. And what exactly had Charlie Brazil been up to, scrabbling through her site maps in the office this afternoon? She’d walked in and caught him out, and though he’d pretended to be curious about the excavation, there was more to it than that. He’d always been far too interested in their business. She’d seen him often enough, climbing the small hill behind her house, or out on the smaller bogs around Illaunafulla. Did he sleep out there, or was it some other attraction? Everyone around here thought him soft in the head, and Charlie Brazil was anything but. She’d find out what he was looking for.

Actually, meeting Nora Gavin had been quite interesting. Ursula had to admit that she’d experienced the tiniest buzz shaking the woman’s hand, remembering her brief encounter with Cormac Maguire the night before. She’d always found it impossible to resist needling people like Cormac. She wondered if he was ever sorry about the way he’d left things between them. She’d long ago given up being sorry for anything. There was no future in regret.