Echo of Glory, page 14
“It’s man-made, isn’t it?” Ailsa asked, standing with her hands on her knees outside the shallow trench to watch Gemma work.
Niall crouched alongside Gemma. “Good eye, yes. The shape’s too regular to be natural. Could be a piece of jewelry—a pendant or a brooch maybe.”
“Want a go, then?” Gemma handed the bag over to him with the artifact cradled on top while she took a couple of additional photographs. Then she extracted soil from the area around where the item had been found and placed that into a second bag.
Niall turned the object over, his blood quickening as it always did when he held a fragment of history, a missing piece of an intricate puzzle that finds like this and modern science were only now beginning to fill in. He handed it back to Gemma. “It’s all yours. I’ll record while you do the assessment. And Ailsa, good job spotting this. You might as well come along and see the lab work in process.”
The timing was an enormous bit of luck, and Niall seized the chance to gather the volunteers around. “This may turn out to be one of those rare moments when the ground offers up a glimpse of something that hasn’t been seen in a few hundred years,” he said. “You witnessed tensions running high this morning, and I’ll admit that happens more often than we’d like. We spend too many days working with little to show for the effort, so people get anxious. That’s why, when we do make a find, it’s important to take a minute out to celebrate. And I want to use the opportunity to thank you all for your hard work. In this case, we have Ailsa Cameron to thank for her keen attention, but a find belongs to everyone—to all of you.”
Gemma took the artifact back to the lab and after a bit more consultation, they agreed it was too risky cleaning the object with anything but a dry, soft brush. They couldn’t afford to damage it or lose any clues to what it was, how it had gotten left in the ground, or who had left it there. Even the dirt embedded around the item might hold traces of blood, and metal in it could have picked up useful contaminants.
It was the first potentially significant find of the current five-week session, so Niall split the volunteers into smaller groups and let them take turns watching the cleaning progress. Gemma worked patiently, using one-directional strokes with a paintbrush and letting the deposits fall onto a white cloth she’d laid out on the table. The earth packed around it was relatively soft, easing away to reveal a silver and gilt pendant with glass affixed to the metal surface on both sides.
“What do you think?” Gemma bristled with energy that she tried to hold back as she finally set down the brush.
Niall felt his own pulse quicken as he turned the object over. It was double-sided, two small paintings—or possibly two objects—covered in protective glass, and he’d seen something similar to the first image in the collection at the Royal Irish Academy, a face blurred by an obscuring cloth.
“I’d say it might be a personal reliquary, if I had to make a guess. It could even be a double reliquary, and there’s a symbolism to those. This covered face could signify that it’s meant to contain a piece of the Turin shroud on one side—”
“The actual shroud that Jesus was wrapped in?” Gretchen Falsberg’s face held a reverent hush.
History and religion didn’t always play well together, so Niall was careful in how he phrased his answer. “I would doubt it,” he said, “but whoever wore it almost certainly would have thought so. Relics were big business back then—holy objects, splinters of the true cross, bits of bone from various saints. The validity of the claims would have been impossible to prove but faith made them worth a lot of money to the people who believed.”
“And the other side? That could be the Virgin Mary, couldn’t it?” Gemma asked, turning the pendant over, but the image there had faded and darkened more, making it harder to see. It looked—possibly—like the figure of a woman in a veil, with her head bent. A trace of blue in the veil remained, but blue colors often faded more slowly than others.
“If it’s another reliquary, I wouldn’t even want to guess who the figure is meant to be. We’ll need more tests to find out if there is anything inside—or ever was. With an object like this, we may never know anything for certain, not unless we find a written record.”
Ailsa Cameron shifted closer, peering down at the object with one fragile blue-veined hand clutching the chain of the necklace at her throat. “It’s important, though, isn’t it? Whatever it was?”
“No doubt.” Niall was surprised at how much she seemed to need affirmation—she was one of those women who came across as if they had all the confidence in the world. “Something like this would have belonged to someone with money. We know Owen O’Sullivan’s wife was held hostage here for Owen’s part in helping the English and betraying Donal Cam O’Sullivan Beare. She was freed by Carew’s men when the fort surrendered.”
“Then it was a hostage rescue before the massacre?” Ailsa asked.
“Carew wouldn’t have wasted a single soldier on that. He meant to destroy Donal Cam’s last refuge, but Owen provided the intelligence that let them take it. Whatever happened to the other people on the island later, we know she was released and the soldiers who surrendered after the fortress fell were taken to Dunboy for execution.”
“He means Sir George Carew—Kieran Stafford’s ancestor,” Gemma added. “He was Lord President of Munster and acting for Queen Elizabeth.”
“The massacre was either done by his men or troops under Sir Charles Wilmot, the Governor of Cork, who came through in December of that same year. The records aren’t clear.”
“But Wilmot’s mother was a Stafford, too,” Gemma said, her eyes glinting with malice. “They’d still be related.”
Niall sent her a quelling look, and she gave him a defiant shrug, then bent to sweep the debris that had come from the pendant into a plastic bag. The nape of her neck was flush with sunburn where her hair fell on either side.
In the excitement of the find, Niall’d had moments when he’d been able to let what had happened that morning slip to the back of his mind. Meg and Adam had returned, and they stood together near the entrance of the tent, neither one of them appearing the worse for wear. If anything, Adam looked marginally less in danger of exploding. James had taken the metal detector out to Kilmichael, but there’d been no sign at all of Kieran. Graeme hadn’t returned Niall’s message, either, but on checking his phone, Niall realized he had no signal. And it was going on three o’clock.
He studied Adam across the room, then pulled Gemma aside, out of earshot of the volunteers. “I know I shouldn’t have brought Kieran up,” she said. “But I won’t apologize. No one would even care if he and his father are related to George Carew—if he wasn’t making a point of insisting it was Irish men who’d done the killing.”
“I’m not here to be your conscience, Gem. I wanted to ask a favor. Adam needs a bit of fun, and I need to get somewhere with better mobile coverage to speak with Graeme.”
“You want me to hold the fort again?” Gemma gave him a wide, elfin grin.
He couldn’t help smiling back. “As long as that’s the one and only time you use that joke.”
She glanced across the tent at Adam. “Yeah, go on, then. We’ll be fine here, and I’d like to have a look around where we found this and see if there was a chain that went with it.”
Her voice was level, but their eyes met and he recognized the sense of mingled excitement and awe in her, the enormity of holding history in their hands. “I know it’s not the bones you were hoping we would find,” he said, “but it’s a start, isn’t it?”
“Maybe James’ certainty is contagious, but I’ve a hunch this is only the beginning,” Gemma answered. “I think things are looking up.”
Justification
“I lie to myself all the time.
But I never believe me.”
S.E. Hinton
The Outsiders

Flush with the success of her find, Meg’s mother objected as soon as Meg said she was going to eat with Adam and Niall and drive down to the site of Dunboy Castle with them. Ailsa had been crouched at the edge of the trench, watching Gemma brush away the soil from around the area where the pendant had been. Now she straightened and her lips narrowed into petulant lines.
“But I thought you and I could celebrate. I thought you would want to celebrate with me,” she said.
Meg’s conscience stirred uncomfortably. “I do—but I’ll be back later. Or better yet, you could come with us.”
“They’re strangers.”
“Not really. Not anymore. But if you don’t want to come, you have plenty of people here and at the Bay Point to help you celebrate until I get back. I wasn’t even here for most of the action.”
“All the more reason to stay now instead of running.” Ailsa stood up and dusted off her hands, then pulled Meg away from the rest of the volunteers who were watching Gemma work. “Is it Niall?” she asked. “Because I don’t want you making a mistake that you’ll regret. I can understand you think he’s attractive. He’s good-looking, even charming in his own way, and being in charge adds to his appeal. But we’ll be gone again before you know it, and you’ve never been the type to fall into relationships that don’t have a hope of going anywhere.”
Meg fidgeted with the rolled-up sleeve of her shirt and watched one of the sea gulls arguing with a yellow-beaked crow of some sort over a bit of food someone had dropped in the grass. “Maybe a go-nowhere relationship is exactly what I need—not that I’m planning on having a relationship with Niall.”
“I’m not blind, child. And he’s an academic, for pity’s sake.” Ailsa frowned at her. “He can’t make any money—certainly not enough to fly back and forth to see you—and he’s Irish. Temperamental.”
“Stop, Mom. Just stop.” Meg raised her hand to ward her mother off as Ailsa opened her mouth again. “First, I’m going along for Adam’s sake—because I like him. I like them both. But second, even if I was interested in Niall, that would be my business. There’s nothing wrong with a holiday romance. You had one.”
“Which is why I don’t want you making the same mistake.”
“So you think that was the mistake—the relationship, not the pregnancy?” Meg said, feeling suddenly cold, as if a window had opened on her parents’ marriage and an icy wind was blowing too hard to allow her to force it closed again.
Ailsa’s head snapped back as if Meg had hit her, and Meg felt contrite but angry, too, on her father’s behalf. Angry all over again. Normally she would have apologized for saying something like this, but she didn’t.
“I don’t know what’s wrong with you lately,” Ailsa said, “but you’re being cruel—and heedless. You’re trying to be kind to the boy, but consider it from his perspective. He’s only just lost his mother. If you get involved now, what’s he going to feel when you leave? He’s vulnerable, and so are you. Don’t you think I know seeing your sister about to have a baby must be hard for you? I saw you with Connal’s daughter at their wedding. You’ve always been soft about children. But mothering Adam won’t help either one of you.”
The wind and waves filled the silence, and Meg looked across Dursey Sound to the ancient backdrop of green hills and checkerboard fields and pastures. She told herself that taking an interest in Adam wasn’t about mothering him. It wasn’t about anything except wanting to help. But she hated that her mother saw inside her to that vague incompleteness she thought she had hidden so well after her barren and short-lived marriage.
“It’s dinner and a drive, that’s all,” she said, leaning forward to kiss her mother’s cheek. “We’ll still have plenty of time to celebrate together. I’ll see you in the bar.”
“Don’t think I’ll stand around here waiting for you,” Ailsa called after her with such a mixture of anger and pleading in her voice that Meg nearly turned back out of guilt.
On the other hand, her mother excelled at guilt.
An hour later, Adam was in an almost manic mood as they sat in the cable car with a young couple from Boston who’d come to Ireland on their honeymoon and a middle-aged man who was taking his vacation to walk the Ring of Beara. The couple chatted to Adam about Dublin and Adam managed to sound relatively civil.
Niall seemed bemused by that at first, then he leaned close to Meg as they stood to climb out at the mainland station and whispered in her ear. “I don’t know what you said to Adam, but thank you.”
“Wait until we have an opportunity. There are things you need to know. Meanwhile, I think he’s just happy to escape for a while.”
Niall nodded, then caught up with Adam, who had walked a few feet ahead. “So what’s it going to be? Restaurant or fish and chips?”
“Fish and chips. Then ice cream somewhere for afters?” Adam raised his eyebrows, and in that moment, to Meg, he looked absurdly, touchingly young.
Niall laughed and squeezed his shoulder. “Done and done. There’s meant to be an ice cream and sweet shop in Castletownbere that’s worth the trip. According to Gemma, anyway, and I wouldn’t want to argue with her.”
They queued up for fish and chips at Eamon’s van, but there was a line seven customers deep to wait through. When they reached the counter, Eamon wiped his fingers on a rag and leaned across, beaming his Santa Claus smile at Meg. “You’re back, then. Come to try the other half of my menu?”
“Absolutely. What’s good?” Meg said, finding herself smiling, because it was impossible not to smile at Eamon.
“Your choices are fish or fish.”
“I’d better have fish in that case.”
“I’ve some nice haddock caught fresh in the bay this morning, or smoked cod if you like that better. It comes beer battered and served with homemade tartar sauce, and chips from my own fresh-grown potatoes.”
“The cod sounds perfect.” Meg stood back while Niall and Adam placed their own orders.
The hands Eamon had rested on the counter were peppered in scars, thin ones from cuts and rounder ones from hot splatters of grease, and Meg wondered how many years he’d spent in this van, peeling and cutting potatoes and working the fryers morning and night. “Have you always been here?” she asked. “Or did you do something else before?”
He leaned back and the usual smile faltered, making Meg wish she’d kept her curiosity to herself. “I was in the army a long while,” he said. “But Dursey’s where I was born.”
Turning his back, he pulled out a stack of round chips wrapped in paper towels from the refrigerator and dropped them into the deep fryer behind him before dipping glistening pale shanks of haddock into a bowl of batter and then dropping them into a separate fryer. While the fish was cooking, as though he couldn’t bear to be idle for even a moment, he began to slice potatoes that had been soaking in a bucket. His knife flew, steady and in perfect rhythm.
“I don’t mean to be rude to you, you know.” He glanced up at Meg. “It’s not that I mind talking about the army, like. Only, for good or ill, it was hard being away from here, not being able to be here, so I don’t much like thinking about those other years. It’s nice being home again and having honest work—at least while it lasts.”
Seeing Ireland now, Meg hadn’t thought too much about how recently it had been very different. But Eamon must have lived through the Troubles and the economic problems of the eighties when people had left Ireland in droves, only to see the boom economy bring many home again, along with jobs and EU regulations and mounting debt that made the subsequent financial collapse even worse. With the internet and more tourism, there was opportunity again, but Meg could imagine that Eamon’s generation might find it hard to believe anything good would last.
He finished the meals and wrapped them in foil, and they bought sodas to take along. Niall drove a short distance, then parked in the lay-by with the nose of the car facing the water, and he got out and patted the hood near the windshield. “Up you get,” he said, holding his hand out to help Meg up. “Might as well enjoy the view.”
“Up there?”
“Why not?” He had that look in his eyes again, half amused, half serious, entirely too charming.
Meg gave Adam the bag of food and scrambled up onto the car. Minutes later, sitting between Niall and Adam, leaning back against the windshield and watching the water turn gunmetal gray beneath gathering clouds, she felt an unfamiliar sense of peace. The air was calmer than it had been, too, reduced to a breeze like a caress across her skin.
It wasn’t quite the end of Ireland, the end of land, looking out this direction, but it was close. “I wonder if there’s a psychological aspect to living beside the ocean,” she said. “If it changes you.”
Niall glanced at her as he tipped his head back to take his first bite of fish. “There’s something called the blue-mind effect. I swear. A mild meditative state that makes you happier. That’s provable through neuroscience.”
“Maybe that’s why Fergal is so happy. Music and water. A neurological whammy.”
Niall chuckled, a deliciously low rumble of sound. He was an overhead fish-eater, Meg noted, rather than bringing the fish to his mouth from below, and she decided his option was somehow bolder, more adventurous, though she didn’t know why she thought so.
Compromising, she broke off a piece and tipped her own head back to drop it between her lips. She savored the sweet, salty crunchiness of it, letting the batter dissolve on her tongue and melt into the flakiness of the fish before she looked over at Niall again. “Okay, the fish is as good as advertised, but I’m not sure I’m sold on your neuroscience. Given that Ireland’s surrounded by water, you’d think the Irish would be more even-tempered if the science was real.”
“You’ve noticed a certain lack of calm in us, have you?” Niall broke off a bite of his own fish to dip into the container of tartar sauce.
“Just think if we were worse without the water,” Adam said with a grin.
It was the closest thing to a joke Meg had heard him make, and her heart lifted. Niall, too, snuck a look at him, then nodded with a bemused half smile.
