by Erin Hart
“Are you joking? Of course I do.” She lapsed into a broad West Clare accent: “Didn’t I spend every summer at my granny’s below in Inagh? What else was there to do on a Sunday night?”
Dawson laughed. “Very good.”
Nora smiled back at him, and her own American voice returned. “Been a while, though; I’m probably very rusty. Thanks for the invitation, Niall. We might see you there.”
At the parking area, she spotted Charlie Brazil unloading several welded metal grids into the supply shed. He hadn’t had cause to employ his gas mask over the past couple of days, but it was still hanging around his neck, facing backward. In profile, he looked like a strange two-faced Janus. He set down the heavy grids, then gave one of the joints a proprietary check. “Did you make those?” Nora asked.
He seemed startled. “I did, yeah.”
“What are they?”
“Drawing frames. The archaeologists use them as grids when they’re drawing the cuttings.” His ears went bright crimson. “I’m allowed to make what they need here, as long as all my other work gets done.”
“I’ve been meaning to ask you about a newspaper cutting I saw in Owen Cadogan’s office when I first arrived. It had a picture of two men who made a big discovery here years ago. Their name was Brazil too. Owen Cadogan said they were relations of yours?”
He answered quietly: “My father and his brother.”
“How did they come across the hoard, do you know?” Charlie’s expression told her he’d heard this question before. “Sorry. You must get sick of people asking about them.”
“It’s never been any other way. I only get tired of people asking me where the gold is buried.”
“They don’t. Really?” At first she couldn’t tell if he was serious; another quick glance told her that it was true, but that he managed to keep a sense of humor about it. Charlie Brazil was a quare hawk, all right, just as Owen Cadogan had described him.
“Do your dad and uncle still work on the bog?” she asked.
Charlie’s defenses came up again, and quickly. “Why do you want to know?”
“It’s just that I might like to talk to them as part of my research.”
He looked away, then down at the ground. “My father took the pension last winter. Had to—his lungs are gone.” From the set of his jaw, she sensed some rift between father and son.
“I’m sorry.”
“Not your fault, is it?”
“And what about your uncle?”
“Never met him. He emigrated before I was born.” Charlie lifted two more drawing frames up into the high container door. “I’d like to have known him, though. I’ve been looking after his bees, and I have a few questions.” He spoke as though he was just a temporary caretaker—typical, Nora realized, of all the beekeepers she’d ever known.
“My grandfather used to keep bees,” she said, “down near the bog in Clare. He’d let me help him tend them sometimes. He never let me mark the queens, though; I always wanted to but he said it was too dangerous, too delicate.” Charlie looked over at her with a new appreciation. Nora thought he was probably one of those keepers so enmeshed in the bees’ world that he would be one of them, if only he could. She suddenly saw him veiled, hands sheathed in white gauntlets, sorting through the writhing insect mass, gently brushing aside the courtiers to capture the queen in her tiny cage, making the mark that set her apart as the necessary mother of replicants, a unique being in a universe of clones. Her grandfather had explained it to her: the queen was the anointed one, chosen at random—the first to hatch. Her first royal duty was to dispatch every one of her sisters, to the last. No sentiment, just a quick spike to the head.
“You must get heather honey, this close to the bog,” she said. “You don’t happen to have any left from last year’s run?” She felt a sudden craving for the taste—dark, almost musky, and never liquid. It was like end-of-summer fruit, sweetness teetering on the edge of decay, the last breath of summer, intensely distilled. “I’d love to see the apiary. I could just stop by—”
“No!” His vehemence seemed to surprise even himself. “There’s no need. I can bring you some.”
Perhaps the place was remote and hard to find. And an apiary could be dangerous to someone with no experience of bees. But the alarm in Charlie Brazil’s voice had seemed slightly out of proportion. Was there something at the apiary he didn’t want her to see?
4
“A set dance night?” Cormac’s eyebrows lifted as he repeated the phrase, and Nora understood it might not have been his first preference for something to do that evening. “You’re aware that Gough’s is reputed to be the dirtiest pub in all of Ireland?”
“Well, no, I wasn’t. But now I’ve got to see it. Come on, Niall Dawson is going down with a bunch of his people. He said you could join the session if you were afraid to dance.”
As they walked through the front door of Gough’s, Nora understood the designation, but thought it a bit exaggerated. True, the floor was plain concrete and could do with a good sweeping. But the bar’s reputation was probably due to its bohemian decor—no tidily upholstered tapestry benches and barstools here, but swaybacked antique settees in threadbare brocade, as if the owners made a habit of haunting country-house estate sales and snapping up the worn castoffs of a dwindling aristocracy. Above the bar, an antique pendulum clock advertised Golding’s Manures. Behind the front room and up a few steps lay a modern addition, a large open room with a fireplace and limestone walls lined with benches and tables. The stout pine dance floor was already filled with eight-person sets.
While they waited for drinks at the bar, Nora looked up at the fluttering streamers of green, white, and gold that made a bright pinwheel above the punters’ heads. The championship season was in full swing, and hopes were high this year for the Offaly hurlers. Hurling wasn’t a sport in this part of Offaly, Cormac had explained; it was closer to the local religion. And of all the sports Nora had ever halfheartedly followed, it was one of the most beautiful. It was an ancient game, played since the days of legend—the hero Cuchulain was supposed to have been a great hurler, though in his time the losing team was usually put to death after the match. There was something still very primal in watching lean young men racing down the field, scooping up the small leather ball with flat hurley sticks, balancing it while running at full speed, then batting it over the bar for a point—from a hundred meters out. Set dancing and everything else would be forgotten on Sunday afternoon during the match.
Drinks finally in hand, they headed toward the back room and spotted Niall Dawson and his group at the far side of the dance floor. The crowd was an interesting mix of older and younger people; the musicians sat in one corner near an upright piano, leaning hard into a set of reels, and four couples stood in squares, the ladies lacing their way surefootedly around the gentlemen with a brisk battering step. Then the couples faced one another, and danced around the square, stopping in each place with two emphatic stamps. When they reached home to their original places, the figure was over, and the dancers returned, flushed and perspiring, to their tables, while the musicians started up another set of tunes.
“This will be a Plain set,” shouted the organizer, an energetic white-haired man in shirtsleeves and a loose tie. “Who’s for a Plain set?”
Nora set her drink down on the table in front of Dawson, then took Cormac’s pint and flute case from him and pulled him out onto the floor. “Back in a minute, Niall.”
“Oh, I don’t know, Nora,” Cormac said, hanging back. “It’s been too many years.”
“Don’t fret,” she said. “I’ll pull you along.”
She placed Cormac’s right hand snug against her waist, lifted his left arm and let her hand rest lightly against it. The music began with two thumps on the piano, and they both fell naturally into the subtle toe-heel rhythm of the Clare set. They stepped in tandem, forward and back, then Cormac swung her into ballroom position and around the square. It was clear this wasn’t his f
irst time on a dance floor.
“You’re a man of many surprises,” she said.
Cormac smiled and spoke quietly in her ear. “I gave it up when I started playing music, but it’s like riding a bicycle. You never forget.”
When the dance ended, they headed back to Dawson, who was deep in conversation with the couple at the next table. He waved them over and introduced them to Joe and Margaret Scanlan, an elderly pair who’d been sitting out the set. Joe, silent and barrel-chested, was filling his pipe and barely nodded in greeting, but Margaret Scanlan leaned forward and shook hands, scanning their faces with bright eyes. Dawson said, “Would you ever enlighten these fine people with what you were just telling me, Mrs. Scanlan?”
“We got chatting,” Margaret said, “and when I found Mr. Dawson was working on the excavation over at Loughnabrone, I asked if he’d heard the latest on the murder victim. Everyone around here thinks it’s a fella from these parts, Danny Brazil.”
Dawson broke in: “The strange thing is, Brazil’s family—”
“Says he emigrated,” Nora said.
“That’s right. How did you know?”
“I was just talking to his nephew this afternoon.” Joe and Margaret Scanlan exchanged a significant look. “I was asking about Danny and his father finding the Loughnabrone hoard, and Charlie said people still ask him where the gold is buried.”
“Seems we’ve nothing to tell that you don’t already know,” Dawson said, feigning disappointment.
“No, it’s news to me that people think the body belongs to Danny Brazil. Mrs. Scanlan, why do people think it’s him?”
“Well, Joe’s niece Helen works at Dr. Morrison’s dental surgery right beside the Garda station in Birr. About half-ten yesterday morning she saw Teresa Brazil—that’s Charlie’s mother—going into the station and leaving again a few minutes later. And the Guards came ’round to the surgery that very same afternoon, asking for Danny Brazil’s records.”
Nora said, “I hate to seem skeptical, Mrs. Scanlan, but surely the man’s own family would know whether he emigrated or not. How could he be missing for twenty-five years and his family know nothing about it? That doesn’t make sense.”
Dawson said, “It all depends on the family.”
Margaret Scanlan leaned forward. “Indeed. And it makes great sense if you knew the Brazils. All a bit quare in the head, if you know what I mean—every last one of ’em.”
Cormac asked, “Any theories about why he might have been killed?”
“I think everyone assumes it’s something to do with the gold,” Mrs. Scanlan said. “It’s been a great source of speculation for years.”
Dawson broke in: “Everyone thought—maybe just assumed—that there was more to the Loughnabrone hoard, that the Brazils hadn’t turned quite everything over to the museum. I suppose it’s what people always think, even when it isn’t true. It’s nicer to think of treasure still being buried somewhere, accessible.”
Margaret Scanlan said, “But now Danny’s turned up dead, everyone’s looking for answers about the brother and the gold.”
“But there’s no actual evidence that the Brazils kept anything back from the hoard?” Nora asked.
“None that I’m aware of,” Dawson said. “We’ll probably never know for certain.”
“But it’s certainly not the first time that family have had their dealings with the police.” Margaret Scanlan took a sip of sherry and settled herself in to tell the story, while her husband sat back, sucking on his pipe and nodding. “About ten or twelve years ago there was an awful scandal, over terrible things that were done to several sheep and a kid goat—too horrible to mention. I don’t even like thinking about it. Everyone said it was Charlie Brazil that did it, but they couldn’t prove anything against him, so he was never up in court. Dreadful, it was. Shocking. And you know what they say, the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.”
5
By the time Nora reached the bog on Wednesday morning, the Loughnabrone man was already packed into his crate, ready for his trip across the Bog of Allen to Dublin. She felt sorrow for some reason, seeing him leave this place where he had been cradled for so long. But she told herself she would see him again, get to know him through whatever intimate secrets his flesh and bone and marrow might divulge.
When the museum van drove out of sight, she turned to Dawson, who was remaining to oversee the next step in the excavation process. Over the next few weeks, a full-scale excavation of the site would look for any additional remains beneath the turf. But today they would begin the search, going through every scrap of spoil looking for bone fragments, skin, and any associated artifacts. They’d have to go through a ton and a half of wet peat with their bare hands, looking for objects as small as a single fingernail. The ridge of spoil had been marked out into sections, so that each person had a manageable amount, and any finds could be pinpointed on a drawing. Nora’s section was just beside Niall Dawson’s.
One of the bog man’s fingernails turned up after three-quarters of an hour, but it was slow, painstaking labor. Nora finished going through her fourth bucket of wet peat, and had just shifted to another position to keep from going numb, when something jabbed her, hard, just below the knee. She gasped and rolled to one side to find whatever it was that had made such a sudden impression. Straightening her leg, she found a sharp point stuck right through her trouser leg and a good quarter-inch into the flesh of her shin. She pulled it out.
Dawson was up on his knees, peering over her shoulder. “What is it?”
“I don’t know. Looks like part of a clasp.” She rubbed the place where it had stabbed her and tried to remember when she’d last had a tetanus shot, then held the thing out to Dawson. He gave a low whistle, and she saw his eyes grow large. “What is it?”
“It’s a fibula. I’m sure you’ve seen them in the museum collection—Iron Age safety pins.”
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 wear
ing 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.”