Lake of Sorrows

Nora turned the thing over in her hand. Most of the ones she’d seen had been bronze, but the body of this pin—bright yellow metal, uncorrupted by damp—was unmistakably gold. It was exquisite: a stylized bird with furled claws, its eyes set on either side of a long beak that formed the arching bow. Even with Dawson looking right at her, the first impulse she felt was to fold this beautiful object into her palm and slip it into her pocket. It was almost like the urge she’d felt as a child, to hide when another person entered the room.

Watching Dawson mark the findspot and deposit the pin in a clear polythene bag marked with the excavation number, Nora felt a small part of herself resisting the very idea of collection, collation, enumeration. Her hand remembered the pin’s lovely heft. How easy it would have been to slip it into her pocket, and say not a word to anyone. She remembered the poster in Owen Cadogan’s office, requesting bog workers to report the things they found. An idea began to rattle around in her brain.

As they were going back to the shed at the tea break, Nora caught up with Dawson. “Niall, supposing I found something valuable out on the bog, and decided to keep it.”

Dawson seemed a little reluctant to engage on the subject. “If you were caught you’d be looking at a hefty fine, and probably jail time if it was deliberate poaching and not done just out of ignorance. The National Monuments Act is very specific and very strict.”

“What’s to keep me from coming out here with my trusty metal detector and looking for treasure?”

“You mean apart from it being illegal and unethical? Even archaeologists have to have a license when they’re using metal detectors on sites. The answer, unfortunately, is not much.”

“Supposing I wasn’t caught?”

Dawson threw her a look. “You’d be lucky. Illegal trade in antiquities is big business, but hard to keep secret for long. There was a pair of cousins prosecuted a few years ago. The Guards got a tip-off and nailed them with more than four hundred artifacts in their house—figured they’d probably made off with hundreds more before they got caught. Another woman down in Wexford went around wearing a thousand-year-old Viking brooch as a lapel pin for about three years before anyone realized it was a valuable artifact.”

“So how do you get people to resist temptation?”

“Well, with ordinary law-abiding citizens, fear of prosecution is a great motivator.”

“What about rewards and finders’ fees?”

“Oh, there’s that as well. Things found on private property are handled a bit differently from discoveries made on Bord na Mona lands. But according to the law, the finder’s fee is at the discretion of the state—more specifically, the museum’s director.”

“So that pin I just found—how much would it have been worth if I’d just dug it up perfectly legally in my back garden?”

“Are you asking about its value, or what the museum would actually pay?”

“What’s the difference?”

“The reward is usually just a percentage of the actual value. It can be a delicate negotiation, particularly if we know somebody’s got something we want, and we’re not sure who they are, what the object is, and whether they’ll ever turn it over.”

“Does that happen a lot?”

“More than we like to admit.”

“So what’s your estimate?”

“I couldn’t really say, not without examining it further. I’m not just being coy, Nora; that’s the way it is. Depends on the object’s value, the archaeological and historical value, and the amount of rewards made for similar objects. And it all comes from the state treasury, so we’re usually talking a maximum in the thousands rather than the millions. Just to give you an example, when the Derrynaflan hoard turned up in Tipperary in 1990, the finder and the landowner received about twenty-five thousand pounds each—and that was for a whole hoard that included a silver chalice inlaid with gold.”

“But depending on what you found, it could be serious money.”

“Oh, aye, surely—if it was found legally, and reported as required. Why this burning curiosity all of a sudden? Tell me you haven’t been tainted by one touch of saint-seducing gold?”

“Not to worry, I’ve no plans to turn treasure hunter. Thanks, Niall.”

Someone else farther back in the group called for Dawson’s attention, and Ursula Downes maneuvered into his place beside Nora.

“How’s your accommodation working out, then?” she asked.

Something in the innocent way she’d posed the question made Nora suddenly wary. “Just fine,” she answered cautiously, curious about where Ursula might be heading.

“What do you think of the Crosses?”

“It’s a wonderful place.”