The Book of Killowen (Nora Gavin #4) (4 page)

Nothing for it now but to wait. He climbed back up into the digger to break out his lunch, three cello-wrapped sandwiches and a couple of boiled eggs he’d picked up at a petrol station this morning. Biting into one of the boiled eggs, he caught the empty eye sockets staring up at him from the car boot, the dead man’s mouth hanging open like the beak on a hungry fledgling. Suddenly he had no appetite.

As he thrust the half-eaten egg back into the carrier bag, the presence of malice overwhelmed him, a roundly sweeping paranoia, bringing with it all the nights he’d spent as a child listening to his grandparents sitting around the fire with the neighbors, as each in turn described the eerie happenings they’d witnessed or heard tell of.

At that exact moment, a dark cloud passed in front of the sun, casting the whole bog into shadow. Kevin reached down to roll up the cab window. Why take a chance? The scorching weather they’d been having these past couple of weeks was well known to bring on chills. He checked his mobile—only four minutes since he’d rung off with the emergency services. Kevin shoved the phone back in his pocket. And suddenly twenty minutes seemed like an awfully long fuckin’ time to wait.

Claire Finnerty set down her nearly full egg basket beside the massive oak and checked the path behind her to make sure she hadn’t been followed. She crouched beside the tree and, reaching deep into its woody hollow, drew out a battered tea tin. Settling into the natural seat provided by the old tree’s twisted roots, she opened the tin, pushing aside the small green booklet with the gold harp stamped on the front, and took out a box of matches, a packet of rolling papers, and small bag of cannabis. She fashioned a thin joint with practiced hand, lighting it with the last of the matches—she must remember to bring a fresh box tomorrow.

Drawing the smoke deep into her lungs, she leaned back and looked out through the trees to her private patch of ripening meadow. Not many people in this upland corner of Tipperary, an untraveled cul-de-sac that pushed its way north into the Offaly boglands. That was one reason she’d finally settled here. This ancient oak had grown up beside a crumbling wall and slab of limestone embedded in the earth, probably the last vestige of some monk’s retreat. She understood why he had built his shelter here: the field laid out beyond the trees was covered in blue pincushion plant, dark pink marjoram, sweet clover, and white sprays of cow parsley. Looming low and purple to the southeast lay the Slieve Bloom Mountains.

These few snatched moments in the mornings were her only real opportunity for solitude and privacy. While everyone else at Killowen was busy with chores, she could sit here for a few minutes and indulge in her one remaining vice—and try not to think about the troubles that pressed in upon her, more each day. Christ, how she detested being in charge.

Claire took another long toke and her limbs began to relax. She could actually feel her brain switch into a lower gear as the buzz kicked in. A thick cloud of guilt began to descend upon her, one of the unwelcome side effects of the pot. She ought not to be coming here.

On the other hand, if she were to give it up, she’d have to have a little chat with Enda McKeever. Claire had never thought of the boy as her dealer, though the police certainly would. To her, he was just the polite, enterprising lad who cycled up the lane once every fortnight to swap a small bag of homegrown cannabis for the three dozen eggs she left beside the gatepost. He was responsible for feeding his eight brothers and sisters, she was sure of it. Money was of no use to Enda; his mother was away with the fairies a good portion of the time, and that shiftless, ne’er-do-well father of his was on the way to drinking away every cent they’d ever had, and the farm as well, no doubt. What Enda’s brothers and sisters needed most of all was food, and the boy would rather starve than take anything that smacked of charity. So what would the family do for their breakfast if she suddenly decided to turn over a new leaf?

Besides, she needed these few moments of peace to get through the rest of the day. Always so much to be done. The eggs and the milking were just the first chores, then there were the herbs and vegetables to tend, tools to keep in good repair, meals to prepare, not to mention the cleaning and mowing and trimming, and all the paperwork that came with juggling visiting artists and their schedules. Even with a full complement of eight workers, they had a difficult time keeping it all under control.

She still couldn’t believe that there were seven other people now living at Killowen. How on earth had that happened? In some ways, she had been better off alone, those first years. There were days she missed it dreadfully, the silence, the weeks and months of soul-scouring solitude. Asking two human beings to live in close quarters without coming to blows was hard enough—but
eight
? And all eccentrics, to boot—everyone at Killowen was an oddball in some way, there was no denying it. She must have been out of her mind. Look at her, retreating to this private bolt-hole every day, thinking she might avoid dealing with the whole situation by coming out here and getting stoned—again. Pathetic, that’s what it was, really and truly. If she had any sense, she’d have left long ago, before the place had turned into something . . . unmanageable. But when was that point, exactly?

When she arrived here, the first imperative had been putting distance between herself and what had happened. That was the way she thought about it now. On that fateful day so long ago, she had just started walking away from the blood and the chaos, the sound of the
sirens. And she had kept walking, thumbing a lift when she could, until by sheer chance she had arrived here. For the most part, she had succeeded in walling off her past. There was no reason to return. Claire took another drag and held the smoke inside her lungs. That familiar, comforting buzz was becoming a little harder to achieve, a bit more difficult to sustain every day. Claire leaned back, letting the weight of her body slump into the oak tree’s gnarled roots, remembering. She watched the smoke curling around her head, suddenly back again in the warmth of a pub’s wooden snug, the lofty words and ideas wafting as dense as the curling cigarette smoke in the air. The conversation, fueled by whiskey and porter, was no more than youthful railing against the status quo. Nothing was ever resolved—did anyone really expect resolution? Once in a great while, she allowed herself to miss the innocence and arrogance of those days, when action was still only hypothetical, and idle words had no consequence. Raising one hand in front of her, she studied the worn palm, the stretched skin and enlarged knuckles. Who’d have thought, after everything, that she’d end up as a farmer?

The place had been an absolute tip when she arrived, abandoned for years. The eighteenth-century granary, now the main house, had been a complete ruin, just four walls and gaping windows. The cottage roof was stoved in and the windows were broken, the frames peeling paint; every wall seemed invaded by damp and mold. There was no electricity, no plumbing to speak of. The sad death and even sadder life of the last bachelor-farmer occupant was evident in the mismatched jumble of crockery still on the table, the remains of a final dinner left to molder on the range. She had slept poorly that night, on the old farmer’s rough straw mattress. The following morning, she had staked her claim. Picking up a rusty sledge from the shed, she’d gutted the whole cottage in a single day, right down to bare stone. In the days and weeks after, she had cleared away cartloads of mildewed junk and found scraps of sheet metal that would do for temporary roofing. When at last the cottage was marginally livable, she had dug in beds for herbs and vegetables, built a chicken run out of scrap lumber and odd bits of fencing, started trading eggs for paint and lamp oil. It had taken her more than a year to make the place habitable, but after months of hard labor, the cottage walls were finished and fairly glowed with several coats of fresh whitewash. She often thought back to the texture of those early days, the bone-weariness that allowed her nights without dreams. Occasionally
her precarious standing as a squatter had triggered a sleepless night, but eventually even that fear had worn away. What might happen was kept at bay by the here and now. And the combination of work and solitude had suited her then. There were times when she’d spoken to no one for weeks on end.

But the need for companionship must have been much more deep-seated than she realized and reared its head quite unexpectedly. She remembered the day in great detail. She’d been taking advantage of rare good weather, staking out beans in the garden, when a middle-aged couple on a walking tour stopped to ask where they might find lodging.

“We’ve no guesthouse nearby,” she’d told them, “but you’d be welcome to stay here. I won’t say the accommodation’s deluxe, but it is free—that is, if you’d be willing to lend a hand for a day or two.”

Her own words had taken her by surprise. But the offer, once made, could not be withdrawn. That couple—Martin and Tessa Gwynne—planned to stay on only a few days at Killowen. Eighteen years later, they were still here. She couldn’t imagine how she’d ever got on without them. Martin, tall and slender, with elegant long hands, was an artist with the quill, something she found out only after he’d been at Killowen for more than two years. Tessa was nearly as tall as her husband, with a cascade of dark hair long since turned to white, and hands strong and sinewy from playing the harp. They were both like characters from the ancient sagas, out of place in the present. Martin, in particular, had made himself indispensable, with his esoteric understanding of compost toilets, wattle-and-daub construction, and drystone walls, all subjects about which Claire herself knew next to nothing. Even after all this time, she still knew precious little about Martin and Tessa, except that they were roughly fifteen years older than she was and had lived and traveled the world—London, Switzerland, Paris, North Africa. Claire knew virtually nothing about what had led them to those places, but if she had been forced to speculate, she might have guessed that they were on some sort of spiritual quest. That was quite all right—as long as they didn’t try to tell her about it. She had a low tolerance for that sort of thing.

For years, it had been just the three of them. Then, nearly a decade ago, Martin had proposed converting the ruined granary into an artists’ retreat, and everything else had progressed from there. It had never been Claire’s aim to create anything; to her way of thinking, Killowen
had just
happened
as she was trying to survive. But they had built something here, bit by bit, as the years piled up, the tilling and planting, the circle of seasons, round and round.

Over time, a whole rootless menagerie of misfits had arrived on her doorstep like strays, all looking for something. Some never found what they were seeking and moved on; some stayed, perhaps content just to work in a garden after being chewed up and spat out by the world. At Killowen, they were fairly well insulated from all that. It wasn’t that they were purposely egalitarian, it just worked out that way. They all pitched in with the farmwork, according to their interests and abilities, shared cooking duties in turn, and had time to pursue their own creative inclinations. A French couple had come to stay last year, through a scheme that matched volunteers with small organic farms. Lucien and Sylvie had launched a cheese-making operation and now supplied local co-ops and farmers’ markets. Claire didn’t really understand what had drawn them to Killowen, but she needed the extra hands—and, she had to admit, the overall quality of the communal meals had vastly improved since the Francophone contingent had arrived.

She had purposely avoided asking questions of the residents, knowing all too well that any idle curiosity might be turned back upon her. No one at Killowen knew of her former life either. It was almost as if the past didn’t exist, as if in coming here everyone had acquired a fresh start.

None was more enigmatic than one of their latest arrivals. Eighteen months ago, Martin had discovered a stranger, apparently ill and wandering the bog on foot—with no identification and no sign of where he’d come from. It being the depths of winter, Martin really had no choice but to bring him back to Killowen before he froze to death. Claire closed her eyes, remembering her first glimpse of the man at the door of her cottage—wet and wild-eyed, ill clothed, chilled to the bone.

“Bring him inside, Martin,” she’d commanded. “Put him in my bed.” While Martin stoked the fire, she had wrapped the shivering stranger in blankets and watched over him for three days and three nights as he sweated and chattered and mumbled about fierce beasts and mysterious visions like Tom O’Bedlam. For three days and nights, she had studied his face against her pillow—dark hair and eyes, flawless pale skin that had somehow retained the high color of youth, though he was probably at least forty. He was in a bad way those first few days, sweating through the bedclothes several times a night. Claire felt her face burn,
remembering the illicit ache she had experienced each time she lifted the drenched linens from his nakedness. After living alone for twenty-two years, it was the first time another prospect had entered her mind.

When the fever broke, the stranger in her bed seemed perfectly sane, but he claimed not to know his own name. She had been deeply skeptical at first, but as the days wore on, he seemed utterly sincere in his ignorance. In the end, they had to take him at his word, which also meant they had to christen him. Martin had suggested Diarmuid, after the most famous abbot of the now-ruined monastery near the bog where he was found, and Claire herself had added a surname, Lynch, after her maternal grandmother. And so Diarmuid Lynch he became. As his physical health returned, Diarmuid had moved from her cottage to his own room in the main guesthouse. She had taken to watching him secretly as he went about his work, trying to convince herself that she was concerned only for his well-being but knowing it was just cover for a vaguely unhealthy obsession. For his part, Diarmuid seemed to suffer no anxiety over his lost identity, no hint of curiosity about what he’d been doing on the bog. On the contrary—he’d fallen quite easily into life at the farm, helping Anthony tend the cattle and goats, taking up stone carving and carpentry as if born to that work, even though his soft hands hinted otherwise.