‘In the cause of science, Fergus. And history.’
Fergus’s own stomach somersaulted but he nodded. ‘D’you think she was sacrificed then?’
‘Possibly.’
‘I think the sacrifice theory’s a load of rubbish,’ Cora said.
‘Really? Why?’ asked Felicity.
‘It’s just us looking back and thinking they were savages.’
Felicity walked around the trestle, smiling. ‘You know, Cora, you may be right. Tacitus talks about the tribes of Britain and Germany as if they were primitives. He calls them barbarians. It’s what the Romans always called the supposedly remote peoples they conquered. But we know from archaeology that Iron-Age people had villages, social systems, even coinage. They had well-made clothes, furniture, farms. On the other hand—’
She paused at Mel’s back, riveted.
‘On the other hand, what?’
Felicity pointed to a spot just below the back of Mel’s shoulder. ‘Do you see what I see?’ she gasped.
Fergus and Cora peered. In a fold of tanned skin was a neat split, about an inch long. Fergus reached out his hand, following the line with his forefinger.
‘A cut,’ he whispered.
Cora winced. ‘Hanged, then stabbed in the back.’
‘Or maybe stabbed then hanged,’ said Felicity. ‘Poor child.’
‘Whichever way you look at it,’ Fergus blurted, ‘it must have been a brutal time.’
Felicity took a cotton bud and gently cleaned the area further, so that the stab wound was more apparent. ‘Another thing Tacitus tells us,’ she said as she worked, ‘is that the Germans of the time punished crimes in two separate ways: deserters and traitors were hanged as a warning. Other criminals–those guilty of truly shameful crimes–were “drowned in miry swamps”.’
‘How could Mel have done anything shameful?’ Fergus protested. ‘She was a child. It must have been a sacrifice. Perhaps they just drew lots. And she pulled the short straw.’
He noticed Cora shivering, turning her eyes away from the wound.
Felicity sighed, straightening up. ‘Perhaps we’ll never know what happened to Mel. The evidence points every which way.’ She shifted her examination to Mel’s arms and hands. Her gloved fingers gently touched the clasped hand. She leaned forward again, peering. ‘Pass me those tweezers, Cora.’
‘What?’
‘They’re on the side.’
Cora looked dazed.
‘I’ll get them.’ Fergus found the little metal implement in a dish and handed it to Felicity.
Cora had turned away, gripping the radiator by the wall.
‘I’m trying to get something out of Mel’s hand, Fergus, without damaging her.’
Fergus felt his heart pumping as Felicity worked. Tiny shreds of hair were appearing, bog-tanned in colour.
Cora turned round again, just as Mel’s thumb flopped back on itself, almost breaking away from the hand. She gasped. A whole knot of hair appeared, tied up with a tiny thong.
‘I’ve never seen anything like it,’ Felicity said. She whistled through her teeth, holding it up to the light. ‘It’s like an Iron-Age love knot. Sweet Jesus.’
There was silence.
Fergus became aware of Cora gripping his arm. ‘I can’t take any more of this, Mam. I feel sick.’
Felicity put down the knot of hair, then the tweezers. She came over and gave Cora a hug. ‘Would you rather wait outside?’
‘Yes please.’
‘Fergus,’ Felicity said. ‘Why don’t you and Cora have a walk around the town? I’ll meet you back at the car in about an hour.’
Fergus nodded. ‘OK. We’ll go to the café in the park.’
Cora made straight for the door, almost colliding with Professor Taylor and another gowned man as they came through. The professor beamed at Fergus and rubbed his gloved hands, as if anticipating a splendid dinner. ‘Hello, Felicity.’
‘Hello, Angus.’
‘I’ve a date made for the radiography in Omagh for Friday, Felicity. And here’s Dr Lavery, to get a sample of the stomach’s contents.’
‘Great. But come over here, Angus. Just you take a look at this.’
Fergus made his escape too.
Twenty-two
Cora and Fergus walked into the centre of Roscillin in silence. His ankle gave odd twinges but he could walk without limping, almost.
‘The one thing I don’t want to talk about,’ said Cora as they strolled past the shoppers, ‘is her.’
‘Mel?’
Cora nodded. ‘Mam’s obsessed. It’s all she thinks about.’
‘I can understand it. Mel’s a way of getting under your skin. She’s an odd-looking girl. All hunched and leathery.’
‘You’d look odd if you’d been pulled out of a bog after two thousand years.’
Fergus shook his head. He didn’t know what he meant but it wasn’t that.
‘Let’s talk about anything else,’ Cora pleaded. ‘Not her. Not now.’
‘OK.’ They passed the chip shop where he’d been with Michael Rafters yesterday. He picked up his pace. ‘The park’s this way.’
‘Is she still talking to you in your dreams?’
‘Sometimes.’ Fergus laughed. ‘I s’pose it’s just my subconscious.’
‘You talk about her as if she’s still alive, the pair of you.’
They paused at the second-hand TV shop. Twelve identical screens of the weather map flickered in the window. Symbols of clouds, partial sun and rain were spangled across England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, but stopped short at the border, as if the Republic had no weather at all. Then they went on down the steps, through the alleyway and past a wall on which somebody had painted in white BRITS OUT. This had been crossed out in red paint and under it, in small letters, was written the familiar joke: What’s Sands’s phone number in the afterlife? 8nothing8nothing8nothing.
Fergus pointed the graffiti out to Cora. She frowned, pinched her own wrist, then groaned, leaning against the wall. ‘Jesus. This place,’ she said. ‘Dunno if I could live here.’
Fergus looked at the smeared walls and flaking paint of the town, the northern heaviness of it, the grimness even when the sun shone. ‘Can’t say I blame you. It’s a vale of tears, all right.’
They walked on.
‘You’re limping, Fergus.’
‘’S nothing. I twisted my ankle when I was out running this morning.’
‘Running?’
‘Yeah. I go running up the mountain most mornings. You should try it.’
‘I couldn’t run to save my life.’
At the park café, Fergus bought tea and two currant buns for himself and a Diet Coke for Cora. When they’d settled down at a quiet table outside, he watched Cora drink through a straw. The tiny hairs on her lower arm were dark. Her wrist was slender with the bone prominent. On her hands, the slender blue rivers of her veins showed through her white skin.
‘D’you want a bun?’
‘No thanks, Fergus. I’m sorry I was rude.’
‘Rude?’
‘About your home town.’
‘I don’t think of Roscillin as my home town.’
‘No? What is, then?’
Fergus considered. ‘Drumleash. The mountains. The lough. Ireland, really. All Ireland.’ He swallowed half a bun at once and grinned. ‘I’d love to see Dublin.’
‘You’ve never been?’
‘No.’
‘It’s a dump. Beggars everywhere and junkies jumping in the bloody Liffey.’
‘No!’
‘’S true. I prefer Belfast. At least there’s a posh shopping centre. A bit more action.’
‘You could say that.’
‘Mam and I were there last year for a conference. We were up in this B & B on a hill. And I loved how you could look down on the docks below. Packing, unpacking, crates, cranes. Activity all night long. And there was stained glass everywhere, even in this pub we went into. And the people were dead friendly
.’
‘You should’ve gone down the Falls Road. Dead friendly is right.’
‘Next time I will.’
He caught her eye and laughed. ‘You wouldn’t like it down there any more than the abattoir.’
‘You weren’t that keen on the abattoir either.’
‘Who says?’
‘I do. I saw you go green when they took us through the main part.’
He remembered the long hall with cattle carcasses hanging in rows. ‘I wouldn’t like to work there,’ he admitted.
‘It would make you think twice about eating meat.’
‘Not me, it wouldn’t. There again, Mam says I’d eat the contents of the hoover.’
Cora giggled, brushing the bun crumbs off the table. ‘It’s not the butchery so much. It’s more the way dead things look. Humbled. Apologetic.’
‘Apologetic?’
‘As if they’re sorry they ever lived.’ Cora’s hand stopped the brushing. It hovered over the tabletop, right by his own hand. It would be the simplest thing in the world, Fergus thought, to take her hand in his. His fingertips tingled. Should I or shouldn’t I?
Cora’s hand clenched into a fist. ‘And the thought that one day you’ll end up like that,’ she whispered.
Fergus stared into his tea. He thought of a photo of a dead hunger striker he’d seen recently in a Republican paper. The man was lying in his open coffin, eyes shut, hands folded in prayer. He looked like a man in his eighties, not his twenties. His ravaged, waxen face spoke of a hideous journey to the grave. Joey. Oh, Joey.
‘I’m sorry. It’s too morbid,’ Cora said. ‘Let’s talk about something else.’ She drained off the Coke and then crushed the can between her fingers with surprising strength and rested it back on the table.
Fergus shook his head as if to expel Joe and the strike from his mind. He picked up the dented can. ‘Whoa, Cora. Miss Iron Fingers.’
‘Yeah. Bet I could beat you in an arm wrestle.’
‘Bet you couldn’t.’
‘Wanna try?’
‘OK.’
He put down the can and they clasped right hands. His thumb-pad rubbed up against her finger-joints.
‘My elbow’s half off the table,’ Cora protested.
‘OK now?’
‘Yep. Let’s go.’
Fergus got her hand down in one second flat.
‘I wasn’t ready!’
‘OK. Another go.’
‘After three. One, two, three—’
Fergus laughed. She’d a fair bit of strength but it didn’t take much for him to keep his own arm upright. That would have been patronizing you, Uncle Tally’s voice echoed. Gently, he forced Cora’s hand down.
‘There.’
Cora shook out her hand.
‘I didn’t hurt you?’
‘No.’ She smiled. ‘You’re stronger than you look.’
‘Thanks.’
‘Must be the running.’
They sat in silence. On an empty table nearby, two goldfinches fought over crumbs, their frantic wings hovering in one place, like tongues of Pentecostal flame. Fergus nibbled at the second currant bun, then discarded it, leaving it to the birds. ‘D’you believe in an afterlife?’ he asked.
‘Me? No.’
‘You’re not religious?’
‘No. Nor is Mam.’
‘I noticed you didn’t go to church that Sunday you were here last.’
‘Mam and I aren’t Catholics.’
‘You mean you’re Protestants?’
‘We’re not anything. Mam was brought up a Unitarian.’
‘A Unitarian? What’s that?’
‘It’s a kind of Protestantism, I s’pose. It says Jesus was just normal, like you or me. Not God.’
‘I never heard of a Unitarian Irish person before.’
Cora shrugged. ‘We’re not really Irish. Mam was brought up in Warwick in England. She moved to Dublin to study when she was eighteen.’ She shrugged. ‘My dad’s the Irish one.’
‘Your dad?’
‘He and Mam split up. He lives in Michigan nowadays. With a new woman. And kids. Good luck to him. I haven’t seen him in years.’
‘I’m sorry. D’you miss him?’
‘No.’
There didn’t seem anything to say to that. He picked up the Coke can again. ‘I’m not religious either, Cora.’
‘No? So there’s no afterlife in your book either?’
‘Unless you count cells breaking down and reforming. Or Mel, being unearthed. With her noose and her knot of hair.’ He frowned, thinking of what Mel had been hiding in her fist. ‘Strange.’
Cora put a finger to her lips. ‘Shush. Remember?’
Mel was not to be spoken of. They’d agreed. They sat in silence. The goldfinches had gone. Fergus turned the wrecked Coke can around his hands. Cora leaned over and took it from him.
‘Say, Fergus?’
‘What?’
‘What d’you think an archaeologist would make of this in two thousand years’ time?’
Fergus chuckled. ‘He’d probably say it was a late-second-millennium torture device. Used by the barbarians of that time.’
She put her little finger in through the opening at the top. ‘You put the victim’s digit in like so and smash.’
‘You’re certifiable.’
She waggled the crunched-up tin at him. He tried to catch it and she jerked it away. Then his hand landed on it and carefully he prised the tin off her. She caught his eye and made as if to tuck a strand of hair behind her ear, as though she’d forgotten her new cropped hairstyle. She shivered. ‘Fergus?’
‘What?’
‘I’m cold. Let’s go back to the car.’
The sun was blazing. Even the grass was wilting. He was in a T-shirt, she was in her sweater, absorbing heat like a black hole. There was a taut look to her face. She was pale.
‘Course, Cora. If you like.’
When they got to the car, she realized they’d no keys to get in.
‘I’ll run in and get them from Felicity,’ he offered.
Cora shook her head. ‘I’m all right now. It’s a sun trap here.’
She leaned against the smooth green metal and glass of the Renault 5’s hatchback and tapped the place next to her. ‘Try it.’
His heart was hammering as he went and leaned back against the metal next to her.
‘Nice day,’ he said.
Cora slapped him, laughing. ‘You don’t say so.’
‘Youch. The metal’s scalding.’
‘Stop messing.’
He shuffled, then she did. Then they were arm to arm. Her elbow jutted into his side and somehow the wool of her sweater became bunched up in his own hand. He wasn’t sure if she pushed him or he pulled her but he’d his arms full of her and they were hip-joint to hip-joint. He’d an image of them like two Halloween skeletons on the make. He wanted to laugh and whoop and discovered her mouth brushing against his.
‘Jesus,’ he said.
His body shook as if he’d cracked an all-time gag. She was laughing too and then they were kissing for real. He’d a hand on her back and another ruffling her short hair. Roscillin and its troubles, the peeling paint and graffiti and the dead of the abattoir flew off like sparks. It was just Cora and himself joined at the hip like Siamese twins and tongues of flame coming down on them and the metal hotness of the hatchback. The sun blared down, egging them on, and why wasn’t the whole world doing this all the time, why?
Twenty-three
Boss Shaughn and the gang came through the fog the next morning. They stood in the curve of the track with their dogs and weapons. Da laid his kidskin cloak across the threshold. Mam was inside with the younger ones. Brennor and I hid together by the goats’ pen, looking on.
Words were exchanged, challenges, then spears were shaken, just as I’d foretold to Brennor the previous day.
‘You’ll be sorry if you don’t pay up,’ Boss Shaughn said. ‘Won’t he, Rur?’
The
figure to Boss Shaughn’s right made a gesture with his arm. ‘The whole mountain’s sorry these days.’
Boss Shaughn cackled. ‘D’you hear that, lads? That was my son. He’s a sense of humour, has my son.’
The silhouettes in the curve of the track laughed to order. Boss Shaughn raised a hand. They fell quiet.
‘Shall we go up the track, Shaughn?’ I heard my da say. ‘And fight it out?’
‘Told you,’ I hissed to Brennor. ‘They’ll go up the bog road and come down friends with the payment deferred.’
‘Up the track?’ Boss Shaughn laughed, doubling up. His cronies slapped their thighs. All save Rur. He stood with his spear, motionless.
‘Fight it out,’ Boss Shaughn wheezed. ‘D’you hear that, lads?’
‘We did, Boss.’
‘He’s a scream.’
‘A scream with cheek, Boss.’
The band of men approached. Dogs were let loose. They yapped around the yard, chasing the hens. The men came towards where Brennor and I were hiding. I grabbed Brennor’s hand, but he shook me off and I fell over in the straw. I pinched his calf and dragged him by the hem of his coat and he fell over too. The men were upon us. They opened the pen and drove out the goats, shouting and swaggering.
One of them saw Brennor in the straw. ‘A brat,’ he said. ‘Nearly took it for a kid.’
Brennor bit his heel.
‘Wee shite!’ The man kicked Brennor hard in the ribs and hounded out the last goat. Its little talisman tinkled as it sprang up the track.
As Boss Shaughn’s men herded the goats away, Da shouted, ‘You’d have us starve, Shaughn, would you?’
Shaughn’s men’s laughter was the only answer, apart from the tinkles of the talismans. But Rur lingered. He stood motionless in the curve of track, his spear loose in his hand.
‘I’m sorry, friend,’ he called over when the last tinkle faded. ‘It’s the fog. It’s driven every last one of them demented.’ His voice was like that of a ghost coming through the murk.
I heard Brennor spitting. ‘Sorry, my ass,’ he hissed. ‘You Shaughns. You’ll pay for this.’
The figure of Rur retreated into the fog. The moanings and gurnings of Mam and the wee ones started up in the hut. ‘It’ll be the dead you rule, Shaughn,’ Mam wailed. ‘Only the dead.’