Lake of Sorrows

When she answered the door, Ward’s face wore a somewhat worried expression. “Sorry for intruding, Dr. Gavin. I was just at—I was passing by, and I had a few more questions for you about the postmortem, if you have a few minutes.”

“Of course. Come in.”

The policeman stepped into the tiny front hall and offered his hand to Cormac. “I don’t believe we’ve met. Liam Ward.”

“Cormac Maguire.”

“Won’t you sit down?” Nora asked, ushering him into the inner room. Ward eyed the two places set at the table and moved to one of the leather chairs near the fireplace. Nora sat down across from him, and Cormac perched on the arm of her chair.

“Any luck yet in identifying the body?” Nora asked. “Everyone’s been talking about it.”

“As a matter of fact, someone did come forward with information, and the positive ID came through yesterday. The victim was Danny Brazil. You probably heard some speculation about it. His family thought he’d emigrated to Australia twenty-five years ago. They say they didn’t expect to hear from him, and they never did.”

“How can I help you?”

“Well, you mentioned something yesterday at the postmortem, and it’s been with me ever since—this notion of ‘triple death.’ Can you tell me any more about it?”

Nora felt embarrassed. “I’m not sure I’m the one you should be asking. Cormac probably knows much more about it than I do.”

“There’s not much to know,” Cormac said, “but I can tell you what I’ve read. The whole idea of triple death stems from the fact that some bodies found in bogs seem to have sustained multiple mortal injuries. Up to this point, all the clearest examples have come from Britain and the Continent, but that could change as forensic methods improve. The man from Gallagh in Galway—he’s on exhibit at the National Museum—is from the Iron Age, and it’s quite possible that the twisted sally rods around his neck were some sort of noose or garrote. And from what Nora’s told me, the older body from Loughnabrone was strangled with a narrow cord, then had his throat cut, and was deliberately sunk in the bog. At first glance that certainly seems like overkill, since any one of the three would have been enough to dispatch him. But taken together, they might add up to a classic triple death.”

Ward pulled at his left ear. “So this triple death was a form of human sacrifice?”

“It’s one possibility,” Cormac said. “I’m not deliberately being difficult, but the Iron Age Celts operated in a completely oral culture; they never wrote anything down about their religious practices. Much of what we know about them was actually written by others, like the Romans, and a lot of that was based on hearsay rather than firsthand accounts. But something like the triple death probably did exist, according to the current scholarship.”

“What was its purpose?” Ward asked.

Cormac said, “There are Roman sources that say each of the three major Celtic deities who required human sacrifice had a preferred method: the thunder god Taranis was appeased by fire or heavy blows like thunderbolts. Then there was Esus, who preferred his sacrifices hanged from a tree and cut until they bled to death. Sacrifices to the war god Teutates were usually dispatched by drowning. Personally, I don’t think the Romans really had a firm grasp on barbarian religious practices. I think the reality was a bit more complicated than they imagined; after all, they considered other cultures inferior, barbaric. The Celts had numerous triple deities, one entity with three different aspects, sometimes three separate identities…when the early Christians were teaching about the trinity, the concept was already pretty old news in these parts. There’s a strong streak of triplism that remains in us, even today.”

Ward pulled at his lower lip and nodded slowly. “All those old pishrogues—making the sign of the cross three times.”

“Exactly,” Cormac said. “When it came to those ancient sacrifices, the three-in-one combination seemed to be all about augmenting power—both the power of the deity and of the person making the invocation. And a triple sacrifice, likewise, was intended to magnify and make an offering more powerful. To combine all three forms may have been a very powerful offering indeed, perhaps reserved for times of great crisis. And of course there were variations; sometimes the victim wasn’t bashed over the head, or his throat wasn’t cut. The hanging or strangling seemed to have been pretty consistent, as was disposition in the bog. Sometimes the victims were pinned down with wooden stakes.”

“The older body from last week was clearly staked down,” Nora said. “I didn’t see any stakes around Danny Brazil’s body, but it might be worth asking Rachel Briscoe if she remembers removing any sticks or branches from around the body—if someone is trying to make it look like a triple death, a small detail like that might be important.”

“So who were the usual victims?” Ward asked. “How were they chosen?”