Lake of Sorrows

A noise came from below; someone was in the house. Nora felt a surge of adrenaline as she flattened herself along the floor. The smell of dust and damp filled her nostrils, and she prayed that she wouldn’t sneeze or choke and give herself away. There were wide cracks between the floorboards, and she could see into the room downstairs.

It was Charlie Brazil. But he made no move toward his suit and gloves. He was here for something else. Nora held her breath and watched as he knelt by the fireplace. With the poker he prised up a gray flagstone at one corner. He removed a flat tin box from the place beneath and set it on the floor beside him, then moved the stone back into place and scattered a few ashes over it. Nora tried to pull herself along the floor without making a noise, to get a better vantage point.

Charlie opened the box, lifted out a handful of drawings like the one Nora had tucked in her pocket, then checked through the other objects the box contained. She heard the sound of metal on metal, and saw ring money, bracelets, an ax-head, coins. Charlie reached into his pocket and pulled out what looked like a primitive dagger, and drew the blade from its sheath. The dull bronze glowed in his hands, and it was clear to Nora, even at a distance, that the knife was not a modern implement. A thrill of cold fear traveled through her. This could be the knife that had been used on Ursula Downes. If Ursula had found out about Charlie’s hoard of artifacts, what would she have done? Perhaps she’d wanted in on it. Charlie had said people asked him where the gold was buried, the things Dominic and Danny Brazil had supposedly kept from the Loughnabrone hoard. Nora tried to remember exactly what Ursula had said to Charlie that afternoon. I know what you’re hiding.

She felt something on her left ankle, down near the place where the roof met the floor. One of Charlie’s bees had found the space between her trouser leg and sock, and was crawling slowly up toward her knee. She couldn’t move for fear of making a noise, so she held her breath and willed the bloody insect to turn around and go back from whence it had come. She’d have to be very careful not to provoke it; she knew from experience that a stinging bee gives off a pheromone that encourages other bees to join in the attack. And she’d seen what kind of damage a swarm of angry honeybees could do. The alternative was giving herself away and getting out now—a prospect she did not relish, looking down on the knife that might have cut Ursula’s throat.

Charlie slipped the dagger back into its sheath, then placed it carefully in his pocket and slid the tin into a cloth sack he’d pulled from another pocket. He was shifting these things; maybe Ursula had found them, and he feared another discovery. The bee inched its way toward her left knee, and Nora had to fight the urge to smash it and run. If only Charlie would get out, so she could move, get away from here…He stood, looking around the room. Nora twitched involuntarily as she felt the bee move again, then froze as Charlie started to mount the staircase. He stopped with his head just inside the upstairs room, listening intently, and Nora hoped that her breathing wasn’t audible from where he stood, that he couldn’t feel the vibration as her heart wrenched violently against her ribs. She felt the bee sting, like a nettle’s hot-cold touch, until the pain blurred together into a single throbbing mass. She tried to still her mind, deaden her senses, breathe silently despite the awful fear that she would cry out.

After a few seconds, Charlie’s head disappeared, and he climbed back down the ladder and left the shed. Nora waited as long as she could, then peeled off her jeans, batting at the bee, though she knew it couldn’t sting her again. She scrambled to her feet, flailing her arms and legs to shake it off, and almost tripped down the ladder. She ran out of the house, up onto the pasture above the apiary, trying desperately to put distance between herself and the angry bees, waving her empty trousers behind her. Her left ankle already felt swollen and hot as her body’s natural histamine rushed to fight off the poison. She began to limp, and stopped at the pasture gate to catch her breath and put her trousers back on. The ankle had started to swell. Stepping into her jeans, she heard a noise in the bushes behind her, and turned to see Charlie Brazil, red with embarrassment at her state of undress.

“What are you doing here?” he asked.

Nora’s mind raced through possible responses. Charlie had nothing in his hands now; he must have hidden the artifacts somewhere nearby. “I was just out for some air,” she said. “I wanted to thank you for the honey, if you were around. I’m afraid I strayed too close to the hives.” She lifted her trouser leg and showed off the swollen ankle. “Stupid of me. I should have known better.”