She realises that Shona is talking to her, lowering her voice so that the men won’t hear. ‘He’s promised to leave his wife. What do you think of that?’
‘I’ve heard that one before,’ is what Ruth thinks. Aloud, she says, ‘Do you think he will?’
‘I don’t know,’ says Shona, draining her plastic glass. ‘I gave him an ultimatum. Her or me. He says I’m the most important thing in his life.’
Hence his presence here, guesses Ruth. A conciliatory gesture, appearing with Shona in front of this significantly insignificant group of people. She is sure that Phil would never accompany Shona to a departmental social or the Dean’s lecture. Equally, she is sure he will never leave his wife. Just as Nelson will never leave his.
‘Be careful,’ is all she says.
‘What do you mean?’ Shona tosses her hair, which glows as brightly as one of the torches in the darkness.
‘I’ve known Phil a long time. He says what he thinks you want to hear.’
Shona glares at her. Ruth is not sure what she would have said if Max hadn’t come over, placing a hand on Ruth’s arm. ‘Do you want to make a move?’ he says. ‘It’s getting a bit cold out here.’
Ruth agrees gratefully. With the disappearance of the sun, the night has got distinctly chilly. The wind is stronger too. Ruth pulls her jacket tightly around her but the Druids in their thin robes seem impervious to the cold. Their children too. As she and Max walk along the beach she can see them still playing in the near darkness. They have dug a deep hole and are chanting, ‘Ding Dong Dell, Pussy’s in the well.’
‘Some things never change,’ she says to Max as they make their way back to the path through the dunes. It is too dangerous to cross the Saltmarsh after dark; they must take the birdwatchers’ trail, a raised shingle path that leads back to the car park. Max has left his car there. Ruth hopes he will give her a lift home and won’t expect to come in for coffee.
‘Interesting rhyme,’ says Max in his tutorial voice. ‘It’s thought that Pussy refers to a prostitute.’
‘What are they doing, drowning her?’
‘Probably a version of a ducking stool.’
‘How does it go? “Who put her in? Little Johnny Green”.’
‘“Who pulled her out? Little Jimmy Stout”. Something like that.’
‘Who was Jimmy then? Her pimp?’
Max laughs. ‘I like you, Ruth,’ he says.
There’s no answer to that. ‘I like you too’ would sound impossibly arch. Changing the subject would sound like a snub. And she does like him. How much, she doesn’t really want to consider. It’s all so complicated, that’s the problem. She is pregnant with someone else’s baby. That someone else is married and doesn’t even know that she is pregnant. He will probably be furious when he finds out. Or will he maybe, just maybe, be pleased? Recently Ruth has been fantasising that the baby is a boy. Perhaps Nelson has always wanted a boy, will be delighted, will leave Michelle… Hang on, though, does she even want him to leave Michelle? On balance, she doesn’t. She would feel horribly guilty at breaking up the family and she is not sure if she ever wants to live with a man again. Especially a man as large as Nelson.
This is ridiculous anyway. Nelson doesn’t love her and never has done. Their night together had been the result of a unique set of circumstances. They had just found the body of a dead child, Nelson had had to break the news to the family. For that one night it seemed as if Ruth and Nelson were alone in the world. Nelson had come to Ruth wanting comfort; the passion had surprised both of them. But Nelson has never, before or since, given any sign that he thinks of Ruth as anything other than a colleague, a fellow professional, perhaps even a friend. Why, then, is she thinking of him now, as Max takes her hand to help her over a stile? Does Max remind her of Nelson? He’s a very different person; an academic, soft-spoken and courteous, but, physically, there is something. Like Nelson, Max has presence. It is not just that he is tall. It is more that, if he is in the room, you can’t really look at anyone else. Phil faded into insignificance beside him and even Cathbad seemed several shades paler.
‘Listen,’ says Max suddenly, ‘an owl.’ They are passing the first hide. These wooden huts for birdwatchers are placed at strategic points on the marsh – this one is on stilts looking out over a freshwater lake. Ruth hears the wind whispering in the reeds and thinks for the hundredth, thousandth, time of that wild night on the Saltmarsh when an owl’s call lured a man to his death. Around them lies water, dark and sullen, interspersed with marshy islands. Ruth shivers and Max makes a gesture as if he is going to put his arm round her but thinks better of it. ‘Almost there,’ is all he says.
The car park is pitch black and deserted apart from Max’s Range Rover. Inside it is blessedly warm and Ruth almost cries with happiness at the prospect of sitting down again. Is it normal for a pregnant person’s back to ache this much? Perhaps it’s because she’s overweight.
Max negotiates the turn into the narrow road that leads to the cottages. He’s a careful driver. In this respect, at least, he’s nothing like Nelson.
‘It was quite something, wasn’t it?’ he says. ‘The bonfire and the Druids and everything.’
‘Yes,’ says Ruth, ‘you can’t go wrong with a fire for spectacle. I suppose that’s why people used to worship it. Fire wards off the dark.’
‘Like the cry of the cockerel,’ says Max.
Ruth shoots him a curious look. ‘Why do you say that?’
For a second Max looks straight ahead, squinting at the dark road. Then he says, ‘Something that happened on the dig yesterday. I was just seeing off some sightseers. The Historical Society this time, I think. And I found a dead cockerel in one of the trenches.’
Ruth doesn’t know what to say. She is dimly aware that the neighbouring farms might keep hens but she can’t think how a bird can have wandered onto Max’s site, isolated as it is behind its grassy bank.
‘Was it left there deliberately?’
He gives a short laugh. ‘I’d say so, yes. Its throat had been cut.’
‘What?’
‘Slit from side to side. Very neat job.’
For one awful moment Ruth thinks she is going to be sick. She takes a deep breath.
‘Why would anyone want to do that?’
They have reached Ruth’s cottage. Max turns off the ignition. ‘Well a cockerel’s a fairly traditional sacrifice. Because they crow in the morning, they’re supposed to have power to hold back the darkness. That’s what I meant earlier.’
Ruth’s head is swimming. ‘A sacrifice? Why would anyone leave a sacrifice on an archaeological dig?’
‘I don’t know. Maybe someone who believes that we’re disturbing the dead.’
Briefly Ruth thinks of Cathbad and then shakes her head to clear it. Dead animals are not Cathbad’s style.
‘Of course,’ Max goes on, ‘cockerels have a Christian connection too. The cockerel is sometimes used to represent Jesus. It’s the whole dawn rebirth thing.’
‘Someone killed a bird as a Christian sacrifice?’
Max’s voice changes gear slightly. ‘Or an offering to Hecate.’
‘The goddess of witchcraft?’
‘She was the goddess of many things. The Greeks called her the “Queen of the Night” because she could see into the underworld. She’s the goddess of the crossroads, the three ways. That’s why images of her are often in triplicate. She is meant to haunt crossroads, crossing places, accompanied by her ghost dogs. Another name is Hekate Kourotrophos, Hecate the child-nurse. Women prayed to her in labour.’
‘Are cockerels traditionally sacrificed to her?’ Ruth tries to keep the disbelief out of her voice.
‘Well, it was black and it was traditional to sacrifice black animals to Hecate. Usually dogs or puppies because of her sacred dogs. But birds too occasionally. She’s sometimes linked to Athena and is depicted with an owl, the symbol of wisdom.’
‘We heard an owl earlier.’
Max smiles, hi
s teeth very white in the darkness. ‘Maybe that was Hecate. She appears on marshland sometimes, shining her ghost lights to help you see your way.’
‘A will-o’-the-wisp,’ says Ruth, remembering another legend of spectral lights.
‘Exactly. Marsh lights. Phosphorescence. There are lots of stories about them.’
Ruth shivers. The time on the dashboard says 22:32. ‘I’d better be getting in.’
Max does not try to detain her nor does he mention coffee but, when she starts to open the door, he says ‘Ruth’ and, leaning over, kisses her on the lips.
Ruth goes straight to bed but as she lies cosily under her duvet with Flint purring loudly on her chest she finds that she can’t sleep. Instead words and phrases chase themselves crazily around her head. She turns one way and then the other (much to Flint’s irritation) but still can’t escape them. It’s a little like the half-waking dreams that you get when you’ve drunk too much, which is very annoying considering she only had one sip of punch and drank orange juice for the rest of the evening.
She’s the goddess of the crossroads, the three ways
He’s promised to leave his wife. What do you think of that?
Does Nelson know?
… a liminal zone, the bridge between life and death
… everything changes, nothing perishes
Ding Dong Dell, Pussy’s in the well
Then, suddenly, the voices vanish and she sees a mild, crushed-looking man who is gazing sadly at a ruined garden.
This was the conservatory, and over there we had a swing and a tree house. There was a wishing well too…’
Ding Dong Dell, Pussy’s in the well
Ruth sits up, throwing Flint onto the floor. Suddenly she knows, without any shadow of a doubt, where the skulls are hidden.
CHAPTER 13
They find the well at the back of the house, near the tree with the swinging rope. It is half-buried under one of the new walls which Nelson orders to be dismantled, much to the foreman’s fury.
All that is left of the wishing well is a ring of bricks pressed into the soil. The hole has been filled with cement but Nelson thinks that this is only a cap, a few inches deep. Sure enough, it takes one of the workmen only a few minutes to break through with his pneumatic drill. Ruth peers into the void. Cold, dank air fills her nose and mouth but she can’t see anything but darkness.
‘How deep do you think it is?’ asks Ted.
‘Five or six metres,’ says Nelson, ‘possibly deeper.’
Nelson has a police diver on hand to climb down into the well. He is wearing a safety harness and is attaching a rope to a grappling hook.
‘Why a diver?’ asks Ruth. ‘There’s no water there now.’
‘We can’t be sure of that,’ says Nelson. ‘Because he’s insured and we don’t actually have a police wishing-well division.’
‘I’ll go down,’ offers Ted, ‘I’m into extreme archaeology.’
‘No, you won’t, sunshine,’ says Nelson, ‘you’ll stay where I can see you.’
The diver climbs carefully into the shaft and disappears from view. For a few minutes, there is complete silence apart from a bird singing noisily in the tree.
Then a voice comes from the depths of the well, ‘I’ve found something, sir.’
‘What?’ Nelson kneels on the edge and shouts downwards.
‘A skull.’
‘Don’t hold it by the eye sockets!’ squeaks Ruth, kneeling beside Nelson. ‘They’re very fragile.’
‘I’m coming back up.’
The diver appears a minute later, carrying a skull carefully on the flat of his hand. He looks like an actor playing Hamlet in an experimental production (Shakespeare Meets Beckett perhaps?). Ruth takes the small skull in both her hands.
‘Well?’ says Nelson.
‘It’s a child’s,’ says Ruth quietly.
‘There’s something else down there, sir.’
‘Well, don’t hang about here chatting. Back you go.’
This time the diver emerges with what is clearly an animal skull.
‘The cat?’ asks Ted, leaning over Ruth’s shoulder.
‘Could be.’ Briefly, Ruth thinks of Hecate and wonders about the colour of the cat found buried under the outer wall. The goddess of witchcraft. Hecate the child-nurse.
They all stare at the two skulls, side by side on the tarpaulin. Ruth is thinking about head cults, about St Fremund washing his severed head in a well, about children’s bodies buried under the walls of temples. Nelson is thinking about Martin and Elizabeth Black. Did they never, in fact, run away? Does this skull belong to one of the missing children, murdered within the very grounds of the children’s home?
Ted breaks the silence. ‘Will the coroner want these?’
‘The human skull will go to the post-mortem, yes. I’ll take the animal skull back to the lab.’ Nelson watches as Ruth bags and labels the two skulls. The human skull is then placed in a special container marked, rather grimly, ‘Police Pathology’. This she hands to Nelson.
‘Will you be at the post-mortem?’ she asks.
‘Wouldn’t miss it for the world.’
‘I’ll see you there then.’
‘I’ll walk you to your car.’
Watched curiously by the others, they walk back through the grounds to where Ruth’s car is parked on the drive, under the shadow of the oak tree. The Druid’s tree, St Bridget’s tree, looks green and innocuous in the midday sun. Ruth opens her car boot and carefully places the box containing the cat’s skull inside. Nelson walks around the dusty Renault, kicking a loose hubcap into place.
‘How long will it take you to do your tests?’ he asks.
‘A few hours. Samples from the post-mortem will take longer.’
He makes his characteristic horse-pawing-the-ground movement. Nelson, Ruth knows, hates waiting for anything. But, then, still looking at the ground, he says, ‘I heard from Cathbad the other day.’
Ruth is instantly alert. ‘What did he want?’
‘Oh, to invite me to a lunatic beach party to celebrate some pagan feast day.’
‘And you didn’t go?’
‘No, I didn’t think it was my sort of thing somehow. Or Michelle’s.’ He looks at her.
Ruth turns away on the pretext of closing the boot. ‘You were probably right.’
‘Did you go?’
‘Yes.’
‘On your own?’
Ruth stares. She can’t believe he has asked this. ‘No,’ she says at last, ‘with a friend. Max Grey.’
‘Have a good time?’
‘OK. There was a bonfire, lots of chanting, horrible food. You know the sort of thing.’
Nelson grins suddenly. ‘Sounds like a Masonic meeting.’
‘Are you a Mason then?’
‘No, Cloughie is though.’
For a second they look at each other in silence and then Nelson says, with what sounds like fake heartiness, ‘Well, mustn’t stand here all day gossiping. See you at the postmortem.’
With this cheery salutation he heads off at top speed, almost colliding with Ted and the diver who are clearly off to the pub.
Ruth takes the animal skull back to the lab. The science block is deserted. There is an end-of-term party going on in the grounds, complete with beer tent and live bands. Ruth can hear the bass notes, like a giant heartbeat, and the occasional roar of beery applause. But the lecture rooms and laboratories are silent. No sign of Cathbad or any of the other lab technicians. Cathbad is probably at the party – he enjoys any kind of celebration, pagan or otherwise.
Watched by a poster showing diseases of the eye and by sundry silent bones in glass cases, Ruth gets out the skull and starts to clean it with a soft brush. Going by the shape and size, she is almost certain that it is a cat. The blunt edges of the neck bones show that the head has been removed roughly, probably by an axe. Looking at the cut marks under a microscope Ruth concludes that the head was removed after death. The marks clearly point to cutti
ng from the front. If the animal was still alive this would cause massive bleeding as it would mean sawing through the jugular. It is more likely that the cat was killed first and beheaded later.
Why? She has a million theories, none of them very likely. In so-called Celtic ‘head cults’ the head was often removed for religious or magical rituals. Placing the heads in the well certainly seems like a ritual act. Are the skulls Celtic then? She doesn’t think so somehow.
It is growing darker outside and the party is getting more and more raucous. She can hear doors slamming as students run along corridors looking for deserted rooms where they can have sex or take drugs. Just as long as they don’t come in here. The blue ‘sterile conditions’ light is on outside. That should deter them. She doesn’t imagine that any of them are feeling particularly sterile.
Ruth’s back is aching so she takes off her gloves and sits down to drink a glass of water. Looking at the little skull on the examination table, she suddenly feels unaccountably sad. She knows that the dead child is more important than the cat. The cat is simply a clue, an oddity, a slightly macabre detail. But even so, as she looks down on the thin little bones, Ruth feels a surge of pity. She lost her beloved cat, Sparky, earlier in the year and she still misses her. Probably this cat too was loved by someone. She sends a message back in time. ‘I’m sorry. I’m sorry for the things that humans do to animals.’ She is aware that, in this very university, animals are experimented on every day (once or twice a year there are demonstrations from animal rights protesters and security is tightened) but, by and large, she accepts this as being necessary for the common good. But this – this is different.
Was the cat a sacrifice? Was it practice? Kill an animal first, work up to the ultimate horror of killing a child? What did Max say? ‘It was traditional to sacrifice black animals to Hecate.’
On impulse Ruth goes over to the box containing the other evidence bags from the site. Bags of soil and vegetation for analysis, fragments of brick and stone and, yes, there it is… She gets out the plastic bag containing the Roman signet ring. Carefully she tips the ring onto her hand. A handwritten label says ‘Bronze ring with intaglio, probably Roman.’ The device is hard to see, three slightly overlapping rings. ‘Looks like a shamrock,’ Irish Ted had suggested, appropriately enough. But now, looking at it under the microscope, Ruth can see that the three circles are actually three heads.
The Janus Stone Page 9
