"That's right. The Book of Invasions of Ireland tells of several different peoples who came to Ireland in the dim past. Partholan was one of the first and is said to come from the west, from out in the Atlantic somewhere, by some accounts. He and his followers did battle with the Fomorians, those primitive creatures who were later defeated by the Tuatha de Danaan. Partholan is supposed to have driven these Fomorians north into the sea. But then they were afflicted by a plague of some kind. The place Partholan and his people are supposed to have gone to die is the Plain of Elta Edar, supposedly the first area to be settled in Ireland. It is just about due east of the Seat of the High Kings at Tara, north of where Dublin is today."
"I've got Tara," Jennifer said. "I'll mark the area east of that and north of Dublin."
"That's it," Alex said. "The others, I either can't figure out, or they refer to the object itself rather than the location, or something. One's like 'all seen and seeing fire eye,' for example. I could find no reference to such a thing in the books I've read. The same for the cursed stones and the cup lifted to the stone."
The three of us looked at the map. We had Jennifer's little circles all over the place, north, south, east and west.
"Do you think we have to go to all these places?" Jennifer wailed. "It would take us months. They're all over the country. Northern Ireland, even!"
"There must be something else here," I said at last. "First we are given clues that are lines from a poem. Then, we find these clues lead to other clues, all in ogham. At least some of these clues lead to other locations, but they're all over the map, literally. The object can't be in all these places, surely. We've circled ten spots, for heaven's sake. We can't be doing this right. I mean, is Jennifer right? Does this mean we have to travel all over the country looking for yet another set of clues? I don't believe it can be this complicated. Surely, Eamon wanted his family to find the treasure, not spend their lives in idle search."
"Maybe it's join the dots," Jennifer said. "But how?" She took a pencil and joined them. All we got was a somewhat smaller area of Ireland. "We could crisscross the dots in some way, but I don't see any pattern, do you?"
"No," Alex and I agreed. I had a feeling we could look at this map for a long time before a pattern would emerge. I studied the list of clues one more time. If I'd learned anything while I was here, it was that the Irish possessed a particularly rich mythology, with more stories, almost, than anyone could imagine. Eamon Byrne had picked only a few of them, but the ones he'd chosen were supposed to lead to a treasure.
"You know," I said, after a minute. "A lot of these are something to something else, from one ancient sacred site to another, if you get what I mean. What if we joined up these from-to's and see what we get. For example, the Grianan Ailech to Granard clue also says down the line of the noonday sun. Wouldn't that give us a north/south axis?"
"I believe it would," Alex said. "And the clue about Tailte's Hill talks about a May sunrise. When I think about it, in May, the sun would rise right about here," he said pointing slightly north-east.
"However would you know that, Uncle Alex?" Jennifer interrupted.
"Years at sea, my dear. Now, we could join the Hill of Tailte and the sun line."
"Not just join them, draw a line right through and across the map. And do the same with Partholan's plain. The clue says due east, Partholan turned to die. You said the plain where he died is east of Tara. Draw a line right through those two and then on across the map. That should give us an east/west axis," I said.
"Some of the others link the ancient political or sacred centers of the four provinces of Ireland. If we join these circles, like Hill of Allen in Leinster to the capital of Connacht at Rathcroghan, and Knockainy in Mun-ster to Emain Macha, Navan Fort, that is, we would get a big 'X' across the country," Alex said.
"And across the north/south and east/west axes," I said.
"Maybe they all intersect," Jennifer said, as she grabbed a piece of paper to give herself a straight edge to trace along.
They didn't intersect, not exactly anyway, but the lines did cross the north/south axis at approximately the same area, more less in the center of the country. We all peered at the map.
"Maybe I need reading glasses," I said.
"I have bifocals," Alex said, "and there's nothing much there to speak of. A couple of reasonable-sized towns nearby: Longford, Athlone, and Mullingar, and a few country roads. Do you see anything, Jennifer?"
"Nope. There are no ancient monument symbols in this area, either," Jennifer said dubiously.
"Not much of anything, in fact," Alex agreed. "So I guess maybe it's back to the library."
"But there must be something there," Jennifer said, pointing to the small area on the map where the lines crossed. "Maybe we should just go there and look."
"It's not all that small an area, Jennifer," I said. "We'd have to narrow it down first."
She shrugged. "I guess you're right. But I hate just sitting around here while maybe someone else gets the treasure."
Later that night, as I climbed into bed, I took the clues out of my bag and looked at them again. We had just about all there were, I decided. I was also reasonably certain the lines of the poem could now be discarded. They had served their purpose, that is to lead to the second set of clues, and were no longer necessary. It was this second set of clues, the ogham clues, that told us where and what. We had a general idea where the treasure might be hidden, although there was still a lot of ground to be covered, and we'd have to narrow it down. The question remained: what was it? What were we looking for?
I stared long and hard at it. I'm a firm believer in the subconscious, and its ability to analyze information and come to a conclusion. Whenever I have a problem I cannot seem to solve, or a decision that seems too difficult to make-open a shop or take a job, get married or not, leave Clive or stay and tough it out-these choices, I leave to my subconscious. This involves thinking over the pros and cons before going to sleep, and telling myself to make a decision. Sometimes I dream about it, sometimes I don't. I almost always awake with the decision made. I'm not going to say that the decisions are always the right ones, only that they are right for me at the time.
So when I awoke the next morning, I was pretty sure I knew what we were looking for, despite the missing clues, even if I hadn't figured out exactly where. The clues were in ogham, after all.
Chapter Fourteen. HE WHO CLEARS THE MOUNTAIN PATHS
EITHNE Byrne was born forty-five, forty-five and Irish. I have a theory, one not supported by so much as a particle of scientific evidence, that some people come into the world with a particular age stamped all over them. These are the people who seem so much older than the rest of us when we're young, but seen again after many years, a high school reunion for instance, look exactly the way they did in school. Eithne Byrne was one of these. Not that there's anything wrong with forty-five-I'm perilously close to it myself-but I realized when I got a chance to talk to her one on one, she was actually much younger, almost ten years in fact, than I'd initially thought that first time I'd seen her at Second Chance, and later when she was playing acolyte to her mother over tea.
She was also born Irish, with green eyes, slightly reddish hair, frizzed by the constant moisture, glowing skin, and a certain charming loquaciousness brought out by a few sips of sherry. She even dressed Irish, if there is such a thing, in a blouse with a lace collar, a short boxy wool jacket in dark green, and a long, pleated green skirt to match.
Her sister Fionuala, on the other hand, was the party girl, talkative, charming, and a flirt. She wore bright colors, in this case, a red suit, the jacket done up, but with no blouse under it, revealing a fair amount of lightly freckled skin and cleavage, the short tight skirt constantly riding up to show off more than a little leg.