Haunted Ground Part 20

The boy looked up. The wavering light accentuated both his thinness and the recent bruises, and the naked panic in his face. He picked up the first weapon he could find, a screwdriver, from the floor at his feet.

"Get out--get out!" he screamed, backing slowly up the first two steps. "You're not supposed to be here. No one's allowed in here!" Nora seemed about to speak, when Jeremy flung the screwdriver, which bounced harmlessly against the door behind Cormac's head. Jeremy spun around and scrambled as fast as he was able up the crumbling stone stairway. Cormac followed, taking the steps two and three at a time, until he was suddenly engulfed in darkness.

"Jeremy," he called. "Jeremy, wait." The sound of footsteps continued, and Cormac could hear Nora shouting to him as well as he continued climbing blindly to the top of the tower, panting and dry-throated when he came out upon the battlements. The sky above was clear, and in the dark he could just make out the edge of the steep roof and the silhouettes of spindly weeds that sprouted from the cracks. He slid against the stone wall, stepping sideways cautiously; there was no telling when any of these floors or walls might give way, rotted as they were by centuries of neglect.

"Why did you have to come here?" Jeremy's anguished voice cried from beyond the pitched roof beams.

"Jeremy, I'm sorry if we startled you. Everything's all right." There was nowhere to run, only a narrow circular walkway around the battlements, and Cormac stayed where he was. He didn't want to lose access to the stairs below. Again he heard Nora's voice, more urgent this time: "Cormac, you've got to come down." He smelled the smoke in the same instant that he heard her voice. "There's a fire--I can't put it out. Cormac!"

"Jeremy, did you hear? We're in danger if we stay here." He inched along the wall, feeling his way with one arm, thinking he might be able to bring Jeremy along if he could only reach him. There was no time to lose. The smoke from below was getting thicker. He could hear the roar and crackle of the flames, and then a strangled cry from below.

"Nora, are you all right? Nora?" he shouted over his shoulder through the battlements, searching for her figure through the acrid smoke that billowed from the stairwell, filling his lungs and stinging his eyes.

"I'm here," she shouted. He could hear that she was outside now, safe. "I'm all right. Jeremy, please come down. You can still make it."

Cormac had edged his way around the top of the tower, moving toward the spot where he'd last heard Jeremy's voice. "Come on," he said. "There's no more time."

Cormac pictured the melting candles on their wooden crates, the dozens of paint cans, the stacks of books and papers, and the rotting beams that would begin to catch fire any minute. He knew that once a fire started, a tower house was little more than a giant chimney, its windowless walls containing and encouraging the flames upward until they burst out the roof. He was counting the seconds until it happened. Why did the boy delay?

"Leave me," Jeremy shrieked. "Everything I do, everything I touch is f.u.c.ked. It's f.u.c.ked. Just leave me." He held his head in his hands, rocked his body against the wall in terror and despair.

"I can't do that."

The heat from the fire was becoming intense. There was no way they could go down the stairs now. Cormac pressed himself to the wall, and as he did, what was left of the tower roof gave way, crumbling into a gaping pit of fire before them. Jeremy let out a howl through clenched teeth, and pushed himself from the wall, as if to pitch himself headlong into it. Without thinking, Cormac lunged forward and seized the back of the boy's shirt with one hand, nearly losing his balance, and pulling with all his strength until Jeremy's full weight slammed back against him, knocking the wind from his chest. And with the force of the blow, time seemed to telescope. The s.p.a.ces between seconds allowed an almost unbearably acute perception of each sensation as it pa.s.sed through him. He was conscious of the grinding sound of stone and mortar giving way, of sharp pain and snapping tree branches, then falling, falling into darkness, and the earth seeming to meet him too soon, with a shuddering thump. And then silence. A most pure and sublime silence roared in his ears as he struggled to take a breath.

Then Nora was beside him, close, touching his face, saying, "Cormac, Cormac!" Her horrified face was upside down, and he wanted to laugh, but found tears starting to his eyes instead.

"Can you breathe? Just try to breathe. Please breathe!" He took a gasp of air, and began to cough. Nora turned her attention to the motionless shape just beside him. "He's alive," she said. "I've got to go for help. Don't try to move." She hesitated only a second before disappearing into the woods.

Beside him, Cormac could see Jeremy's eyes flutter. The boy's lips moved as though he would speak.

"No," Cormac said. "Lie still." Jeremy made a noise that was like a gurgling cough. Cormac desperately tried to remember what to do, but he couldn't seem to think straight. He struggled up on one elbow, wincing in pain, and put his ear down to the boy's lips, hoping he wouldn't pa.s.s out himself. He heard a whisper.

"They're here," Jeremy said. "There's a place underground." He paused to gather what strength he could. "She knows," the boy muttered urgently. "She knows. She'd never tell--" He lapsed into unconsciousness. Cormac felt himself sinking as well; his head drooped until it rested against Jeremy's chest.

Book Four.

Heaps of Bones.

It is a grievous situation that has befallen Ireland Wild blows heaped upon her by ruffians Her n.o.bility struck to the ground, unable to rise Her heroes now heaps of bones.

--Irish poet Daibhi Cundun, 1651.

1.

When Cormac awoke, it was daylight, and Nora dozed in the chair beside his hospital bed. He wanted to speak, to let her know he was awake, but his head felt huge and thick. She stirred, looked about for a second, as if she didn't quite remember where she was, then pulled her chair up to the bedside and put her face close to his. The mark of the crow's sharp claw had begun to heal, but there were fresh, raw scratches where brambles had cut her face, and he dimly began to recall what had taken place. It seemed so long ago now.

"Shall I call the nurse?" she asked. He tried to shake his head no, but couldn't manage it. He winced instead, then licked his lips and tried them out.

"Never should have had those fifteen pints," he mumbled. She took his hand and smiled, but her chin wavered slightly.

"Please don't. This is all my fault," she said.

"It's not." He tried again to move.

"Lie still, Cormac." He liked the sound of her voice, the way she said his name. "The doctor said you have a mild concussion, and some nasty bruises--but no fractures, which is a miracle. The tree branches must have helped to break your fall. And you're only slightly singed from the fire." Cormac looked down at white gauze bandages on his left arm and hand.

"Jeremy?"

Nora looked down. "He's badly hurt. Broken bones, some internal bleeding. A possible head injury--it's too early to tell."

"Has he said anything?"

"He's been unconscious."

Cormac closed his eyes to consider what he should do. He opened them again, and said, "Nora, could you find Devaney for me?" The strain of the last twelve hours showed in her eyes, and it seemed to Cormac that she finally understood his reluctance to be drawn into this story, as if he somehow knew from the beginning what would be asked of him. He sank back into a half-sleep, and in what seemed like only a few seconds, Nora was back with the policeman at her side.

"h.e.l.l of a night," Devaney said. "You and the young lad are lucky to be here. Osborne likewise. You needed to see me?"

"I did," said Cormac. His own voice sounded strange and far away in his ears. "Jeremy said something last night--at the time I hadn't a clue what he meant, but I think I do now."

Devaney's voice was quieter than usual. "Go on."

"He said, 'They're here. There's a place underground.'" Cormac watched as the substance of the words struck his listeners. Neither apparently had any doubt as to whom Jeremy's words referred.

"Oh G.o.d, Cormac," Nora said, and sank into the chair beside his bed. Devaney's eyes closed, and his lips were set in an expression of disappointment and finality.

Cormac felt exhausted, and had to close his eyes as well. But there was more. He tried to remember what it was, though his head was pounding like a ba.s.s drum. "I think he said something else as well. Something like: 'She knows. She'd never tell.'"

Devaney's voice was sharp. "Are you sure? 'She knows? She'd never tell'?" Cormac could hear the words stick in the policeman's throat.

2.

By the time Devaney had phoned in the request for a full-scale crime scene detail to meet him at Bracklyn House, he was already playing out the next few days in his head: the cameras flashing, and tarps rigged to keep away rain, the barriers set to fend off the prying reporters who invariably descended. Before he left the hospital, it might also be prudent to check on Hugh and Jeremy Osborne, and put a couple of the local lads on duty outside their rooms. The boy's words finally gave them something to go on, but still left open the question of responsibility.

What had prompted Hugh Osborne to try the ultimate escape? A suicide didn't fit with any way Devaney had figured the case. If Osborne wasn't guilty, maybe he just couldn't go on any longer. And if he was, perhaps he saw things beginning to unravel. When Devaney stopped at the door, Osborne was turned on his side, facing away from the corridor. A thin cotton blanket was drawn up over his shoulders, but there were no restraints. Nothing to keep him from walking away--or to keep him from doing himself further harm, Devaney thought.

"He's sleeping now," whispered the young nurse who came up behind him. "Just as well. When he wakes up he'll have a right b.u.g.g.e.r of a headache."

"How's he getting on?"

"Are you a friend?" The girl's porcelain skin was lightly freckled, and her green eyes fixed him with a compa.s.sionate gaze. He looked away.

"Acquaintance."

"Much improved this morning, but the doctor says they're going to keep him another day or two for observation. Carbon monoxide can have some rather nasty effects, and they don't want to let him go too soon."

"I see--thanks," Devaney said. He'd see what turned up at the tower before he had a chat with Hugh Osborne. Two young Garda officers approached, and Devaney took them aside.

"What are your names?"

"Molloy," said the first young officer.

"O'Byrne, sir," said the second.

"I want you to stay here as my eyes and ears. Molloy, you'll stay with Hugh Osborne. Try to be as un.o.btrusive as possible." When he saw the blank look on the young man's face, he added: "Blend in. O'Byrne, you can come with me."

Jeremy Osborne's status was still critical. Devaney approached the room where the boy lay propped up in bed with his left leg and arm in casts, and his head swaddled in bandages. Jeremy's face was distorted and discolored by bruises, and a breathing tube was taped to his open mouth. Beside him, his mother sat upright in a chair, as if by keeping straight, she could hold her son back from the brink of death by sheer force of will. Lucy Osborne's whole body turned toward Devaney as he entered the room. Her dry eyes seemed to overflow with pain, but the rest of her face remained masklike, frozen into a stoic calm.

"I blame myself," she said. "If he had stayed near me, I might have kept him safe." Her eyes flickered to the Garda officer beyond the door. "What's going on?"

"It's just routine. Until we have the full story of what happened last night," Devaney said. "I promise he won't be in your way."

As he drove to the tower, Devaney thought of Mina Osborne's letters, and of the mother in India, waiting patiently for news. People knew that the person they loved was dead, but let themselves be deluded, buoyed up for a while on the notion that what their gut was telling them could be wrong.

Maguire's second bit of information had given him pause. She'd never tell. Could mean she'd done it, or they'd done it together. But it could just as easily mean that the boy and his mother had stumbled across the evidence, and--for whatever reason--decided to keep quiet. He should have realized the boy knew something, should have pushed him more at the interview about the cars. But there wasn't time now to worry about all the possibilities; he had to find out whether Jeremy Osborne was telling the truth.

As Devaney pulled up at the side of the road near the tower, the file on the pa.s.senger seat of his car slid forward, and some of its contents spilled out onto the floor. He reached over to gather up the sheaf of scattered papers. Among them was one of the photographs he had taken in the confessional at St. Columba's. Devaney put the car in neutral, and took a moment to look closely at the picture. There were the carved letters, crudely made, but clearly legible: HE KNOWS WHERE THEY ARE. He had been very nearly convinced that Brendan McGann carved them, as a silent accusation against Hugh Osborne. But as he looked at the photograph once more, his eyes returned to the first mark--it wasn't a letter at all, but an empty square, more deeply gouged than the rest. It could be a mistake, but whoever made the mark could also have changed his mind, and wanted to destroy what had originally been there. He tried to find any evidence that it had once been the letters. As in SHE KNOWS WHERE THEY ARE. Whoever carved those words wanted so desperately to tell someone, anyone, to relieve the burden of guilt, but couldn't muster the resolve to do it out loud. Another idea struck him. Of course. Jeremy Osborne had to be Father Kinsella's candle thief; Dr. Gavin had said the tower was full of candles. If Jeremy was the messenger, who was the subject of his message, and why had he changed it? Or could someone else have found the message and altered it to suit his own ends? Devaney remembered the praying figure of Brendan McGann in the side chapel of the church. One thing at a time, he told himself, and braced himself for what he was about to do.

It was late afternoon before the scene-of-crime officers arrived. The gray day had grown more overcast and a soft rain had begun to fall. There was a mechanical quality to the work entailed at a crime scene, what to Devaney always seemed a small amount of comforting routine in the face of horror. He stood in the woods near O'Flaherty's Tower, surrounded by a drone of activity: scene-of-crime officers in their white suits, and policemen in yellow rain gear. The fire brigade had succeeded in dousing the flames last night, but the tower had been reduced to a blackened and empty sh.e.l.l, with a few stout timbers high up that had partially withstood the blaze. Even in the rain, small plumes of smoke still wafted from the rubble, a dangerous mixture of fallen stones and charred, splintered wood. In daylight it was readily apparent where the firemen had trampled through the thick undergrowth, and the bright green of the rain-slick leaves leapt out against the tower's blackened bulk.

The boy had said, They're here. However, if there was some sort of underground chamber in the tower, the entrance was well hidden, and Devaney wasn't surprised that no one had discovered it during previous searches. Once they'd cleared the rubble from inside the tower, the dirt floor was solidly packed, and showed no evidence of having been dug up. Likewise, the team could find no areas of disturbed earth around the building's perimeter. Why should it be easy? Devaney thought. Every way into this case had been a hard road; why should this, even though it seemed the final step, be any b.l.o.o.d.y different? He was feeling the raw, edgy effects of too many hours without sleep, but couldn't force himself to leave. Even when the pa.s.sage had not been located by nightfall, he stayed and watched the team press on under the glaring white of the floodlights. When daybreak came, they switched off the lights. The sky had cleared, but they still had found nothing.

At midmorning, a police vehicle pulled up on the roadside near the tower. Molloy, the young officer he had placed outside Hugh Osborne's room, approached.

"It wasn't my idea, sir. He insisted."

"Who is it, Molloy?"

"Osborne, sir. Dr. Maguire and Dr. Gavin are with him."

Devaney watched as the three pa.s.sengers emerged from the car. The effects of his fall were evident in the careful way Maguire moved, but he was trying to put on a good front. Beside him, Osborne also moved slowly, not from any apparent physical injury, but like a man mesmerized. He looked only at the white-garbed officers as they went about their work. Dr. Gavin followed behind the two men; her dubious expression told Devaney what she thought of this impromptu expedition. He stepped in front of them.

"I'll have to ask you not to go any farther just now," Devaney said. Hugh Osborne just looked at him blankly.

"We'll stay right here," Maguire said, "if that's acceptable."

Devaney nodded, then pulled Dr. Gavin aside. "Are they all right?" he murmured, tipping his head in Osborne's direction.

"Neither of them should really be up and about, but they wouldn't stay in the hospital. Cormac insisted on telling Hugh what Jeremy said. I tried to convince him that it might not be a good idea. Hugh Osborne is still your chief suspect, isn't he?"

"Unless we find evidence to the contrary. But we're not making much headway here."

Maguire approached and spoke in a low voice: "If I might offer an idea?"

"By all means."

"Well, it looks like your team is a.s.suming the underground place and its entrance to be somehow connected to the tower. But people tend to build on the same places over and over again. It may very well be a souterrain or underground chamber left over from some previous settlement or fortification that's older than the tower. Have you got a piece of paper or something?" When he'd got it, he hastily sketched the tower, and marked the locations of the various earthworks.

"We're here." He pointed to the spot on his crude map where he and Devaney stood, about twenty yards from the tower. "Do you see the area of raised earth all around us here? That's where I'd begin, within that circle. The entrance is bound to be pretty well concealed. It might save time to use that ground-probing radar you mentioned, if you have access to some equipment."

Osborne refused to leave the scene; he hovered, sometimes sitting quite still, sometimes standing beside the yellow tape the scene-of-crime unit used to mark the perimeter, but his silent presence did not appear to disturb the officers as they went about their methodical work. It wasn't until midafternoon, when they'd got the loan of radar equipment from a surveying firm in Ballinasloe, that the team was able to make any progress. The readings showed a solid slab about four feet below the surface, within the circle Maguire had shown them. They called in earth-moving equipment, a small backhoe that trampled the vegetation in its path like some prehistoric beast. Fortunately, the operator was an artist, a man who could control the heavy steel excavation bucket as though he were measuring tea for the pot rather than a half ton of soil. The sound of metal sc.r.a.ping on stone came from the trench, and a voice said, "He seems to have hit something here, sir." Devaney peered into the pit. He could see several large, flat stones. One of them suddenly gave way and collapsed into the chamber below, taking with it loose soil from the surrounding banks.

"All right," Devaney shouted. "Hold up. That's enough." He sent one of the young Guards to fetch Maguire.

"You've more experience than we have with uncovering this sort of structure," he said when the archaeologist arrived. "I wonder if you'd mind advising us on how to proceed."

3.

Dressed in a regulation white suit and mindful of his bruised ribs, Cormac climbed carefully down into the chamber while Devaney and the rest of the team remained at the edge of the excavation. At the bottom of the ladder, he switched on his torch and peered into the darkness. The walls were exquisite dry-stone construction, battered to support the heavy lintels. At the end nearest the tower, a slab of sandstone had been cut into an archway to support the roof. As he admired the workmanship of the builders who had put these stones in place more than a thousand years earlier, Cormac suddenly realized what a terrible contradiction existed if the bodies of Mina and Christopher Osborne were indeed hidden here. Souterrains were common enough features of ancient ringforts, but in addition to their function as storage vaults, they often served another particular purpose--to protect a settlement's most vulnerable inhabitants: its women and children. The entrance creeps were often built purposely small so that a grown man could not fit through.

Everything he could see was covered with a thin layer of dust. He could smell putrefaction. As he slowly let his beam track across the small room, Cormac could see nothing but gray shadows and shapes. Wait. He turned his light back to where it had just been, and stared at the pattern that began to emerge. The eye is quick to detect the stamp of human presence in the seeming chaos of the natural world. Beneath the dust, half buried in soil and rubble, he had perceived the diamond motif and raised cable of an Aran sweater. He focused his beam on that spot, and the shapes began to make sense to his eye and mind. He could see a body lying on its right side, back toward him. Near the figure's left hip, his eye began to comprehend the meaning of another form. It was the sole of a child's tiny wellington. He turned to the company standing above him, and didn't have to say a word. They could read what he had seen in his face.

No one noticed that Hugh Osborne had moved gradually closer until he was standing among the crime-scene officers at the edge of the excavation. Before anyone could stop him, Osborne had jumped down into the souterrain and seized the torch from Cormac's hand. Devaney held up a hand to signal his fellow officers to hold off for just a moment. Osborne fell to his knees at the entrance to the hidden chamber, and drew a deep breath. Then he looked inside, and what he saw made him release that breath; with it he seemed to release all the hope and fear and antic.i.p.ation he had held in for so long, to let it all go with a faint sound that was halfway between a moan and a sigh. And when the nightmarish vision before him persisted, and did not fade away, he finally sank slowly downward, and the torch, still switched on, tumbled from his hand. No one spoke or moved until Osborne himself finally broke the silence.

"Thank you--thank you for finding them," he said in a hoa.r.s.e voice to the air before him. Then he rose somewhat unsteadily and looked vacantly around him, as if unsure of how to climb out of the chamber. "I'll go now," he said. "You know where to find me." A couple of officers came forward to help him out of the souterrain, and Devaney signaled them to escort Osborne back to the house. Cormac climbed up the ladder, and sought Nora's face in the crowd. She brushed away her tears as he approached.

4.

Cormac had just set a mug of tea in front of Hugh Osborne when a rap sounded at the kitchen door. It was Una McGann. She must have heard the news in the village; it hadn't taken long for the story to travel that far. Osborne didn't rise to meet her, but instead lowered his head to the table and covered it with his hands, in a gesture of the most abject helplessness. When she placed a hand gently on Osborne's shoulder, Cormac realized that Una was the first person to offer any expression of sympathy, and he felt ashamed. Then the door banged violently open.