The mists and mysteries of two thousand years surround a body preserved in Ireland’s peat bog. Dug and categorised with the hubris of C20 archaeology, by a man determined to build his academic reputation, the discovery impacts the lives of many, posing questions about the unnamed cruelty or care of the burial. Your mind will be filled with the fusion of authentic anthropology, the poetry of landscape and the pain of twisted personalities.
The next morning, two journalists trudge across the open bog with a film camera and tripod. Fleming shakes their hands and leads them to the bog-pit. They have cleared the clinging dog-flesh, the carpet of sphagnum, and most of the corpse is visible now. She is curled into the shape of a question mark, brow towards the sky, pinned down by ancient hazel rods to keep her from floating up. Her skin is swollen to plumpness and her bones are fine and small and perfect, though one of her legs ends just before the ankle bone, sliced away by that first accidental incision. Her half-ruined hands make a pillow above her head, a twist of fabric slumped over one eye. Only visible when the sun tilts downward into the pit: the shock of a slash across her throat and a knotted length of rope.
