Erin Hart - Lake of Sorrows

Lake of Sorrows: A Novel

Book Jacket

SUMMARY: HIDDEN RELICS. SUBMERGED SECRETS. BURIED EVIDENCE....American pathologist Nora Gavin has come to the Irish midlands to examine a body unearthed by peat workers at a desolate spot known as the Lake of Sorrows. As with all the artifacts culled from its prehistoric depths, the bog has effectively preserved the dead man's remains, and his multiple wounds suggest he was the victim of the ancient pagan sacrifice known as the triple death. But signs of a more recent slaying emerge when a second body, bearing a similar wound pattern, is found -- this one sporting a wristwatch. Someone has come to this quagmire to sink their dreadful handiwork -- and Nora soon realizes that she is being pulled deeper into the land and all it holds: the secrets to a cache of missing gold, a tumultuous love affair with archeologist Cormac Maguire, the dark mysteries and desires of the workers at the site, and a determined killer fixated on the gruesome notion of triple death.Hailed for her multiple award-winning debut novel Haunted Ground, Erin Hart melds Irish history, archeology, and modern forensics in her eloquent, suspense-charged thrillers.

LAKE OF SORROWS

Erin Hart

Before delving into LAKE OF SORROWS, American pathologist Nora Gavin uncovered murderous secrets long-buried under Irish sod in HAUNTED GROUND

Don't miss Erin Hart's nationally acclaimed debut mystery!

"A CHILLING MURDER MYSTERY that spans centuries.... Masterfully weav[es] Irish folklore and traditional music into an eerie plot.... Immensely enjoyable.... Hart [is] a talented newcomer."

--Minneapolis Star-Tribune

"AN UTTERLY BEGUILING MIX of village mystery, gothic suspense, and psychological thriller.... [Hart]brings new texture and psychological acuity to the village mystery.... A debut to remember."

--Booklist (starred review)

"SPOOKY AND COMPELLING.... [Hart] does for Galway what Sharyn McCrumb does for Appalachia."

--Kirkus Reviews

"HIGHLY ATMOSPHERIC.... One of the best mystery debuts of 2003."

--Sun-Sentinel (Fort Lauderdale, FL)

"Hart writes with a lovely eloquence about how character is shaped by the music, the architecture, and the history of this harsh and beautiful land."

--The New York Times Book Review

"Remarkably assured and highly readable.... Absorbing."

--The Denver Post

"The most auspicious mystery debut of the year, with a unique feeling for place and a depth of forensic details that chill."

--The Book-of-the-Month Club

"A fine thriller.... The brilliance is in the way Hart presents her story, which reeks of bogs and superstition and even thick, milky tea.... Haunted Ground deserves your attention."

--Star-Telegram (Fort Worth, TX)

"Beguiling...probes the mysterious connections between the dead and the living in a moody Irish song of innocent blood, shattered hearts, and life's unquenchable flow."

--Perri O'Shaughnessy

"[Hart] lays bare all the buried bones...a murderous tale of intrigue and betrayal."

--Linda Fairstein

"The originality of the background and Hart's homework regarding Celtic music and tradition makes for an absorbing novel."

--The Buffalo News

"The setting, the humanity of the characters, and the sympathetic portrayal of Irish history, landscape, and music all come together in a well-written mystery."

--Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

"Impressive.... Haunted Ground is a mystery, but it's more correct to categorize it as a literary mystery since Hart takes plenty of time to explore her characters' inner lives."

--Capital Times (Madison, WI)

"This is a riveting tale, which grips from the first page."

--Publishing News (UK)

Also by Erin Hart

HAUNTED GROUND

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Copyright (c) 2004 by Erin Hart

All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. For information address Scribner, 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020

ISBN: 1-4165-3192-0

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To my mother and father

I am the womb: of every holt,

I am the blaze: on every hill,

I am the queen: of every hive,

I am the shield: for every head,

I am the grave: of every hope.

--from the Song of Amheirgin, an ancient Irish poem

CONTENTS

BOOK ONE

DEEP CRIMSON ON THEM

A Feidelm banfaid, cia facci ar sluag.

Atchiu forderg forro, atchiu ruad.

"O Fedelm, woman prophet, What do you see on the host?"

"I see deep crimson on them, I see red!"

--from the Old Irish epic Tain Bo Cuailnge

PROLOGUE

I t was the cold that roused him. The moment he plunged into the frigid water at the bottom of the bog hole, his eyes fluttered open, and his mind grasped the fact that he would certainly die here. He knew it was the reason he had been brought to this place, the reason he had been born. His body, however, seemed to require further persuasion. He shook his head, groggy, as though awakened from sleep. Was all this real, or only a vision of what was to come? He remembered running, a glancing blow, and before that-

For a moment he remained very still; then he struggled to right himself in the bog hole's narrow fissure, pressing against the walls with his hands and elbows, treading slowly against the dark, pulpy liquid into which he'd already sunk to his hips. It was pulling him in, downward. Nothing would stop him now. He gasped for air, feeling the leather cord encircling his throat, all at once aware of a strange, spreading warmth upon his chest--blood, his own blood, sticky and metallic. But the primary sensation was cold, a deep, numbing chill combined with an utterly astonishing softness, whose deceitful purpose, he knew, was to draw him into its familiar, bosomy grasp and keep him here forever.

Above his head the midsummer evening remained fair and mild, and his eyes reflected the waning twilight still visible at the top of the bog hole, scarcely more than an arm's length above his head. His muscular shoulders were those of a man who had herded cattle milked at daybreak and evening, who each spring broke the virgin soil with his plow, who sowed corn and reaped it with sharpened blade--a man ruled by circular, circadian rhythms of light and darkness. The slight hollows in his clean-shaven countenance bespoke hard labor and scant harvests.

He knew this place, this bog. It was a mysterious, holy place, home to spirits and strange mists, a place of transformation and danger. He had crossed it countless times, treading carefully among glittering blue and green damselflies while tracking a hare or a slow-moving grouse. He'd seen the same evening light in its pools of standing water that recalled a hero's footprints or fragments of firmament fallen to earth. At their edges he had crouched, watching crimson masses of bloodworms as they transformed almost before his eyes and rose from the water to join quivering clouds of midges that hovered, faintly droning, above. He would never see them again, for he had entered a place from which there was no return.

Trapped by the weight of his own body, he could feel himself sinking with every passing second, could feel his hands moving uselessly against the seeping walls of the bog hole. Letting go an involuntary howl, he began to twist and claw furiously, reverting to the instinctive behavior of a trapped animal, baring his teeth and straining with every fiber, unable to reason or comprehend. But his feet were firmly mired in the slurrylike peat and would not come away. He was getting light-headed. His legs were numb, and as the frigid water seeped steadily higher, he began to tremble violently. Even as he felt the dread chill envelop him, he knew that his heart's blood would soon begin to slow. He ceased struggling and kept still, feeling each breath flow in and out, each one shallower than the last. A memory brushed like spider silk across his consciousness--a luminous face, a woman's voice soft against his ear. He had sunk to his shoulders; soon he would be swallowed up, devoured by the insatiable earth, the origin and end of life.