Dying Fall, A (15 page)

As the house is quiet, she decides to do a bit of work.

She opens her laptop and clicks on her inbox. She has sent messages to a few labs that she knows, hoping that Dan might have used them for his isotopic analysis. Maybe one of them will have answered. But there are only two new emails: one from Max enclosing a jokey picture of his dog, Claudia, in a hard hat and one from a company called University Pals. Where has she seen that name before? She clicks onto the message. ‘Hi Ruth! Your friends from University College London, Archaeology 89 miss you. Why not get back in touch? Just click on the link below.’

Ruth looks at the email with its cheery message of emotional blackmail. Why does it give her a slightly uneasy feeling? Because she first heard from this company the day after she heard of Dan’s death? Because it brings back memories, not only of Dan, but of Caz, Val and Roly, the friends who were once central to her life but have now, somehow, become lost to her? She is going to see Caz tomorrow. Maybe that will help put things in perspective. They can talk about Dan, maybe find a way in which they can resurrect their old friendship or, better still, forge a new one. Ruth bets that Caz would never join a site calling itself ‘University Pals’.

She is so deep in the past that when her phone rings she assumes it must be Caz. But it’s Max.

‘Hi, Ruth. How’s it going?’

‘Hi, Max.’ She starts to relax. Max sounds so cheerful and normal that she’s suddenly incredibly grateful to him for not being a shadowy figure from her past or a sinister one from her present. Besides, she wants to tell him about Dan’s discovery.

Max is fascinated, as she knew he would be.

‘I’ve never seen a temple dedicated to a raven god but the Romans were good at this, taking a local religious cult and making it their own. It’s one of the ways they assimilated. Sometimes they even combined a Roman and a native God, Minerva and Sulis, for example, in Bath. How old is your temple?’

‘Dan thought mid to late fifth century.’

‘Interesting.’ Ruth can hear a genuine note of excitement in his voice. ‘The Romans banned ancient religions in 391 AD and Christianity became the established religion. But, of course, by 410 AD they’d left. There must have been plenty of belief in the old religions left. And, of course, the further north you go, the less Roman people were. Up there, you’re near the very outposts of the empire. They might have had Roman roads and Roman engineering but they were still natives at heart.’

‘What about the inscription? Could it really be King Arthur?’

‘Depends who King Arthur was,’ says Max, echoing Clayton Henry. ‘But certainly some historians think he was a Romano-British figure. Also the raven link could fit. There’s a tradition of Britishness about ravens; think of the legend that if the ravens leave the Tower of London, Britain will fall. Your Roman chap could be using the raven as a symbol of British unity against the Picts, the Celts and the Saxons.’

Rex Arthurus,
thinks Ruth.
Britannorum Rex.
King Arthur. King of the Britons. Aloud, she says, ‘There’s a legend that Arthur’s spirit left his body in the form of a raven.’

‘There you are then. It all fits. Have you seen the bones?’

Ruth explains about the two sets of bones. ‘My guess is that the original skeleton is missing and these other bones were put in its place.’

Max whistles. ‘But why?’ he says. ‘Why would anyone want to do that?’

‘I don’t know,’ says Ruth. ‘But I do know that someone wants to stop me looking at the bones, Arthur’s bones. I don’t know why or even who’s behind it. There’s lots of weird stuff going on at the university.’

‘It sounds a bit serious,’ says Max. ‘Look, I can come up next week if you want. I could take a look at the bones, maybe scare off the bad guys.’

Ruth is silent for a moment, watching two seagulls fight over the crumbs Cathbad put out in the garden that morning. Why doesn’t she want Max to come to Lytham? Is it because she still doesn’t want to surrender Dan’s discovery to his expertise? Is it because he used the words ‘bad guys’ as if the whole thing is some silly children’s game? Or is it just because she doesn’t want to see him? Not enough, anyway.

‘Let’s talk about it nearer the time,’ she says at last. ‘I’d better go now. I think I can hear Kate and Cathbad coming back.’

Caz lives in St Anne’s, the posh part of Lytham where the houses all look as if they are made out of Lego. It’s quite a long walk, but since Cathbad has taken the car to visit Pendragon Ruth has no choice but to stride out with Kate in her pushchair. When Cathbad first asked if he could have the car, Ruth had quite fancied the idea of a long, bracing walk, but when Tuesday morning dawned it was a grey blustery day with the promise of rain in the clouds.

‘Are you sure you don’t mind walking?’ asked Cathbad at breakfast. ‘What if it rains?’

‘It’ll be OK,’ said Ruth heartily. ‘Kate won’t shrink, will she?’

She didn’t want Cathbad to change his plans. She knew he was worried about Pendragon and, besides, she didn’t want to be the sort of pathetic woman who can’t walk for half an hour in the rain. Her own mother has never learnt to drive but Ruth remembers, as a child, accompanying her all over London, on buses and trains sometimes, but usually on foot. ‘Come on, Ruth,’ she’d say. ‘Best foot forward.’ Ruth used to wonder which was the favoured foot, as her mother never specified, but, it has to be said, in those days both feet worked pretty well.

Now, she checks that the rain cover is on the pushchair and sets out, intrepid in her yellow cagoule. It’s not quite the sophisticated image that she wanted to present to Caz but you can’t have everything. Cathbad has already driven off in the Renault. ‘I’ll be back this evening,’ he said. ‘I’m sure Pendragon is OK really. It’s just that he seemed worried, all that business with the gun . . .’

‘He’s got Thing to protect him,’ Ruth pointed out.

‘That dog’s as soft as they come,’ said Cathbad. ‘Still, I’m glad Pen’s got some company. He’s a funny bloke, a bit prone to black moods.’

He’s a druid, Ruth wanted to say, of course he’s odd. He wears white robes and leaves gifts out for a witch who died four hundred years ago. But she didn’t say any of this because, despite being a druid, Cathbad had unblocked the sink that morning. As she trudges along the coast road she thinks about the phrase ‘black moods’. Isn’t there another phrase, about having a black dog on your shoulder? A black dog sounds a bit like a witch’s familiar. She remembers Max once telling her that the Romans sacrificed black animals, particularly dogs, to Hecate, the goddess of witchcraft. Black birds too, she remembers, thinking of the Raven God and the birds’ bones found in the temple at Ribchester. Animals and birds are everywhere in language and mythology, something that probably started as soon as the first primitive man and dog decided to team up together. Cats too. As far back as the Egyptians, cats have been found buried with honour. Ruth thinks of her own familiar, her beloved Flint, now being looked after by Bob Woonunga, a man who believes that the world was created by a sacred rainbow snake. Maybe humans need animals to help them understand the world. Certainly it’s hard to see what else cats do for humans, aside from looking cute and killing the odd mouse. But then, thinks Ruth, pushing her untidy hair back inside her cagoule hood, looking cute has always had too high a value in society.

As soon as she sees Caz, Ruth realises that she needn’t have worried about looking good. She’s clearly out of her league. Caz’s whole lifestyle oozes sophistication and laid-back style, from the rambling Victorian house to her beautifully cut jeans and crisp white shirt, to the photogenic offspring seen scattered in photo frames around the house.

‘How old are your children?’ asks Ruth, hanging her wet cagoule on a curly coat stand (it started raining roughly five minutes into her walk).

‘Fifteen, twelve and eight,’ says Caz. ‘Pete’s taken them sailing but they’ll be back after lunch. Pete’s dying to catch up with you.’

Ruth and Kate follow Caz into a dauntingly perfect kitchen, all islands and French windows and retro chrome. There is even a sofa and a piano, displaying a Grade 5 scales book. Ruth feels sunk into inadequacy. Not only has Caz got a fifteen-year-old child (something chronologically possible but, to Ruth, almost miraculous) but she’s got children who play Grade 5 piano and go sailing. Sailing! Who on earth does that on a Tuesday morning?

‘How is Pete?’ she asks. Pete was also at UCL; he studied maths and played rugby. But, even so, he wasn’t a bad bloke.

‘Fine,’ says Caz. ‘Going bald, longing for retirement. Aren’t we all?’

Ruth doesn’t know how to answer that one. She never thinks about retirement, except as a far-off dream involving a lake in Norway. She’s only forty-two, and at this rate she’ll have to carry on working into her seventies to pay for Kate to go to university. Are there really people who retire in their forties?

Caz gets out a basket of toys for Kate and she plays happily on the floor. Caz crouches down next to her, helping her assemble a wooden rail track. The trains are battered and chipped, obviously much-loved family heirlooms.

‘Oh, you are lucky, Ruth,’ says Caz. ‘Having one this age. I’d give anything to go back.’

Ruth takes this with a pinch of salt, looking round Caz’s perfect kitchen. If she had a baby, the house and Caz herself would probably look a bit different. Ruth reckons that those jeans are a size eight.

Caz makes coffee in a professional-looking machine that takes up half her working surface. She gets out carrot cake and animal-shaped biscuits for Kate.

‘So, Ruth,’ she says, perching on a chrome stool that looks like something from
Happy Days.
‘What are you doing these days? It seems like ages since I saw you.’

Ruth feels uncomfortable. She’s always acutely aware of how dull her life sounds to others. ‘Oh, not much,’ she says, watching Kate enact a high-speed rail crash. ‘Still working at the university. The head of department’s a bit of a pain but the students are lovely and I get to do a few digs.’

‘How do you manage with Kate?’ asks Caz. ‘Have you got a nanny?’

A nanny? She’s speaking a different language again. ‘No,’ says Ruth, ‘but I’ve got a child-minder. She’s very good. Very flexible.’

‘What about Kate’s father?’’ asks Caz. ‘Are you still with him?’

‘No,’ says Ruth. ‘We were never really together but he does see Kate.’

‘Who was that I spoke to on the phone?’ asks Caz. ‘He sounded nice.’ When Caz rang up to arrange this meeting she had, of course, got Cathbad, who had talked at length about the magical powers of sea air.

‘Cathbad. He’s just a friend.’

Caz looks at her curiously, head on one side, the sun catching the expensive highlights in her short hair. Is my life as alien to her as hers is to me, wonders Ruth. All the same, it’s lovely to see Caz again. Within minutes they are off down memory lane, reminiscing about Dan and university and the day that Roly dressed up as a nun for rag week.

‘Dear Roly,’ says Caz. ‘I haven’t seen him for ages, have you?’

‘No, just cards at Christmas,’ says Ruth. ‘He’s living in Edinburgh now.’

‘Still with Christian?’

‘I think so,’ says Ruth. ‘Do you think Roly knows about Dan?’

‘I don’t suppose so. Why?’

‘Oh, just that Dan mentioned him in the letter he wrote to me. He asked about you, Roly and Val.’

‘Well, that was our group at uni, wasn’t it? The four of us.’

Ruth thinks about the four of them—sardonic Caz, sweet Roly, easy-going Val, earnest Ruth—how is it possible that they have lost touch like this? But Roly is in Scotland and Caz and Val lost to the land of marriage and motherhood. And Dan, Dan who was always too cool for their group, is lost forever.

‘It’s so strange that he wrote to you,’ says Caz. ‘Just before he died.’

‘I know,’ says Ruth. She doesn’t mention her recurring nightmare that Dan is calling for her help, trapped in some nightmare hyperspace between life and death. She thinks of his answerphone message:
I’ll get back to you. Promise.
She tries to rid herself of the notion that Dan will, in some way, get back to her.

‘It’s been odd,’ she says. ‘Meeting his colleagues. Looking at his archaeology. I keep thinking that I’ll be able to discuss it all with him.’

‘What was the great discovery?’ asks Caz, who is now putting together a gourmet lunch with what looks like superhuman ease. On the floor, Kate slams her trains into each other. She’s as bad a driver as her father.

Ruth hesitates. She has told Caz only that the university wanted her to look at a discovery Dan had made. She considers telling Caz the whole story, about King Arthur, the Raven God, the awful suspicion that Dan was murdered. But then she thinks of the text messages, the fear in Clayton Henry’s face. It’s better for Caz if she doesn’t know.

‘It was a temple,’ she says. ‘On the outskirts of Ribchester.’

‘There’s lots of Roman stuff there,’ says Caz. ‘I took the kids to the museum once.’

‘Yes, it’s a well-known site,’ says Ruth, ‘but this temple’s interesting for a few reasons. It’s in the Roman style but Dan thought it was built after the Romans withdrew from Britain. And it’s dedicated to a god in the form of a raven.’

‘An unkindness of ravens,’ says Caz.

‘What?’

‘That’s the collective noun for ravens,’ says Caz, drizzling oil and shredding basil. ‘Like a murder of crows.’

‘Jesus,’ says Ruth. ‘What is it about these birds?’

‘I don’t like birds,’ says Caz. ‘I think I saw that Hitchcock film at an impressionable age. I don’t like the way they gather on the telegraph lines. It’s as if they’re waiting for something.’

‘I live near a bird sanctuary,’ says Ruth. ‘They’re very beautiful sometimes.’ She thinks about her ex-neighbour, David, who was the warden of the sanctuary. He loved the birds; it was just humans who were the problem.

‘How are you getting on with Dan’s colleagues?’ asks Caz. ‘Are they being helpful?’

Ruth thinks about Guy and Elaine at the barbeque, Elaine’s antipathy and Guy’s bid for ownership. She thinks about Clayton Henry drinking champagne in the rosy hue of the marquee and staring glumly at his tea in the backstreet cafe.