The Book of Killowen (Nora Gavin #4) (3 page)

The first horseman spurred his mount out of the wood and down to the bog’s edge, his silent second following. The master turned to them, offering the traditional greeting: “God be with you.” In answer, he received a clout across the face that bloodied his lip and robbed him of breath. He staggered slightly but did not cry out.

Hidden in the oak, Eóghan felt the air around him crackle with danger. He must do something, help the master, but how?

“Are you called John?” the first horseman demanded.

“After the Baptist,” the master replied mildly. “The very same.”

The first horseman gestured to the leather satchel at the master’s feet and exchanged a glance with his mate. “Where’s your servant?”

“I wish I knew,” the master replied. “He disappeared last night. Took our store of food—I’m left here with nothing to eat but my own words.” He gestured to the satchel on the ground.

Eóghan nearly cried out. He had taken nothing. Why was the master lying? He felt a slowly rising horror as the horsemen dismounted, and each drew a knife from his belt. The pair of them fell upon the old man, thrusting their blades with an upward motion, again and again and again. Over the assassins’ shoulders, the master raised his eyes to the tree where Eóghan crouched, hidden among the leaves. “The beginning and the end,” the old man wheezed. “Alpha and omega.”

At last the two horsemen stepped back and let the master’s lifeless body topple to the ground. Eóghan could hardly breathe, but he felt the uncontrollable sounds begin to rise within him once more. He bit down on his fist again, this time tasting salty blood.
Shield me, cover me
, he prayed to the tall oak, to each of its branches and leaves.
Hide me from the conspiracy of the wicked, from the noisy crowd of evildoers.

Suddenly a third horseman burst through the woods, pulling his beast up short and dismounting beside his fellows. “So you found him. Good.” He spat on the master’s body. “How goes it for you, heretic? No king to protect you now!”

The third man snatched up the satchel from the master’s feet and looked inside, removing the book he found there and paging through it hungrily before flinging it aside. “Bloody fools!” he shouted. “
Amadáns!
You should have checked the book before you killed him. It’s not the one we’re after; it’s only a bloody Psalter!”

Eóghan felt the last word like another blow. The Psalter was his own, the one he’d copied out for himself. But if the master had his Psalter, what was in his own bag? He suddenly felt the weight of the satchel pulling him down like a stone.

The third horseman wasn’t finished. “What about the idiot servant?”

“Gone. We looked everywhere,” the first assassin lied.

The third man narrowed his eyes, trying to gauge whether his defiant underling spoke the truth. “Well, see that you find him. It shouldn’t be too difficult. They say he howls like a banshee.” He swung his leg over his horse again. “Now get rid of the body—see if you can manage to get that right.”

Eóghan could only watch as the two men dragged his master out onto the bog. They pushed the body into a dark pool, waiting until it was swallowed up without a sound. Almost as an afterthought, the second horseman reached for the Psalter and satchel and flung them into the pool as well. Still hidden in the tree, Eóghan covered his mouth and wept silently, watching as the open book seemed to float for a few seconds, like a pale pair of wings, and then submerged.

As the assassins remounted their horses and began to ride away, Eóghan felt a noise building up inside him, and this time there was nothing he could do to stop it. “Cuh-cuh-CUH!” he shouted.

The noise being sufficiently inhuman to their ears, the horsemen never even turned around but kept riding eastward, the direction from
which they’d come. Perhaps they mistook him for a bird, nothing more than a corncrake clattering for his mate.

Eóghan waited in the oak tree for what seemed like hours, starting at every noise, listening for the sound of horses, but the assassins did not return. Finally he uncoiled himself, stiff from clinging to the sturdy branch, and crept down from the tree.

He knelt at the pool’s marshy verge and hung his head in shame. His master was gone, sunk forever into this soft and treacherous bog. Eóghan tried in vain to remember the office for the dead, but each time he tried to sing, he found he could not bring forth any sound but weeping.

At last, he reached for the satchel that hung by his side and opened its flap, drawing out the simple leather-bound volume. The master had surely switched Eóghan’s humble Psalter for his own codex, but why? This was the book they were inscribing together, by turns, the continuation of the master’s great work. Eóghan remembered the assassin’s voice:
No king to protect you now.
Were the words on these pages really worth a man’s life?

Alpha and omega, the old man had said. The beginning and the end.

Eóghan’s lips began to move as he recited the words that always calmed him.
In principio erat Verbum, et Verbum erat apud Deum, et Deus erat Verbum.
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and God was the Word.

He suddenly understood that he could not return to the monastery. Slinging the leather satchel across his body like a sword belt, he set off in the opposite direction. Preserving the precious codex had become his sacred charge. He vowed to protect this book, defend it if necessary, and keep it safe from all harm.

For chubus caich duini i mbia ar rath in lebrán col-lí

ara tardda bendacht for anmain in truagáin rod scribai.

Be it on the conscience of every person who shall be

graced by possession of this beautiful manuscript,

that he bestow a blessing upon the soul

of the poor wretch who has copied it.

—A colophon from the
Book of Deer
, a ninth-century manuscript

Kevin Donegan grasped the twin joysticks and thrust the right one forward, feeling the fierce hydraulic power in the arm of his backhoe. He loved working the controls. Truth to tell, he often dreamed that he was not driving the machine but part of it, wielding not just one but two scoops like gigantic hands. He smiled, reveling in his rusty strength, iron fingers cutting through soft peat, huge arms knocking evildoers on their arses left and right, riding to the rescue of a bewitching blonde who couldn’t wait to show her undying gratitude. He was the mighty Diggerman, feared by all who dared oppose him. Invincible.

It was early enough that mist still covered the lowest parts of the bog, an eerie presence that muffled the sharp cries of birds, the unearthly keening of a hare. He’d been on this bloody job for two days, trying to get the drain cut, and it would likely take another three days before he could be on his way. Nobody had said what the peat would go for—not that he gave a rat’s. Not his job. Diggerman just dug the holes, cut the drains, and then moved on to the next job: trenching for gas lines, foundation excavation. Whatever. He was in at the start of the job, not to see it finished. Never saw much of anything finished. Better that way.

As he saw it, Diggerman wasn’t about putting down roots; his job was turning things up. It was pretty much the same in the romance department. He usually liked being the first to open a trench, and he much preferred girls who were a little nervous and inexperienced. In and out he was, just like Diggerman, and then gone like the wind.

Remembering the ever-so-pleasant bottle blonde and the happy ending of his recurring dream, Kevin thrust the joystick forward again, maneuvering the digger’s huge arm into position for another scoop of wet peat. He jammed the left lever forward to let the bucket drop. This time it landed with a loud
clunk
.

That was odd. Apart from the noise of the machine, cutting a drain was usually dead quiet. He lifted the bucket and set it down again.
Clunk.
Could be something dangerous—a drainpipe, maybe a gas line nobody had bothered to flag. Holy Jaysus.

Kevin jumped down from his seat and grabbed the spade he kept always at the ready in case of emergency. The teeth of the bucket had struck something hard, punctured it, from the look of things. He began to recognize painted sheet metal, a bit of chrome, and . . . was that a tail-light? It was. What kind of a fuckin’ bollocks would go and bury a car in the bog? That’s what it was, and no mistake. Not something you’d see every day. He started using the spade to clear away all the peat on top of the boot, which was badly creased by the blow from the heavy bucket. As soon as the weight was lifted, the boot popped open on its own, and Kevin’s mind groped to put a name on what lay before him.

He was staring down into the sunken, sightless eyes of a wizened, bluish-brown face. He felt an almost irresistible urge to scramble up the bank, but fought it, fascinated and repelled by the horror before him. At last he managed to assemble a coherent thought. A body. His eyes traveled along the limbs sprawled in the peat—a forefinger and thumb, a shod foot, a knob of bone protruding from a twisted joint. This was a man, all right, but the parts of him were mixed up, a foot where a hand should be. This wasn’t just any dead body—it was murder. He remembered grisly accounts he’d heard of people topped over drugs and sacks full of cash. Kevin suddenly felt the blood drain from his head, and he leaned on the spade handle to keep from swaying. But he could not look away.

The possibilities skittered around in his brain: he could run, he could check for a stash of drugs or money in the boot, he could ring the Guards, ring the boss. Which was it going to be? One thought pushed its way to the fore. The job had been very hush-hush from the start. The boss, Claffey, advised him not to mention to anyone where he’d be working the next few days. Had to be off the books, illegal somehow. He usually never gave a fuck about permits or planning permission—not his trouble, and besides, he badly needed the work. Claffey might tell him to get on with it or get out. Although Kevin had realized ages ago that he didn’t have many scruples, somehow ignoring a thing like this wouldn’t seem right.

He began to recall reports of a bog man uncovered over in Offaly awhile back. That poor bugger turned out to be a couple thousand years old. Who was to say this fella wasn’t as old as that?

Suddenly he saw himself on camera, being interviewed about this body. All the television crowd were bound to cover it. He could see the reports on RTÉ, UTV, TG4, maybe even Sky or the BBC—a bog man like this was big news, no matter how old he was. It began to dawn that people would be asking him about this moment for years to come. He’d be something of an instant celebrity, if he played it right. He imagined women gathering around him, female voices breathy with a mixture of curiosity and pity.

Kevin reached for his mobile to ring emergency services, hoping to Christ he’d get a signal way out here in the middle of the bog and relieved when the call finally went through. Conscious of an unwanted edge of excitement in his voice, he started explaining to the operator exactly what he’d been doing when he found the body. He knew emergency calls were recorded—the television people might even play a bit on the news reports. Had to make sure he sounded unflappable, in control.

The operator told him not to touch anything and assured him it would be no longer than twenty minutes before the Guards arrived on the scene.