by F. G. Cottam
But he had worked at some of the mass grave sites; the hasty trenches into which victims of the Black Death had been cast, the infant dead crammed into pockets of space between the cadavers of the fully grown. And in so doing he felt he had come to appreciate the scale and the relentlessness of the pestilence and of the appalling grief and hopelessness it provoked.
Scientists no longer agreed on the nature of the bacterium that caused bubonic plague, though it was generally thought to have originated in Central Asia. By 1346 it had spread to the Crimea. Trade encouraged infection because the bacterium was carried by the fleas infesting ships’ rats. Between 1348 and 1350 it was believed to have killed sixty per cent of the population of Europe. It took 150 years for the world’s population to recover from the Black Death. And it triggered crises in religious faith and social and political thinking that changed the world forever.
This catastrophe was not given the name by which the world now remembered it until Scandinavian chroniclers first used the term ‘Black Death’ in the sixteenth century. Before that it was the ‘Great Pestilence’ or the ‘Great Mortality.’
‘Black’ was the adjective chosen to describe the deadly pandemic because of the dreadful mood of fear and pessimism it inflicted upon mankind. It fostered a fatalism that caused people to live recklessly, for the moment, incautious of the consequences of the things they did.
It seemed to contaminate the spirit and the soul. It led to the lynching and burning and extermination of foreigners, lepers and religious minorities. It did not just kill its victims; it debased the natures of those who survived.
Grayling pondered on cause and effect. He thought about the mood of decadence that had followed the Great War. Black magic had flourished among Europe’s wealthy and blue-blooded elite. Fashionable society created a vogue for narcotic drugs. The Jazz Age prevailed in America, with its bootleg gangsters and brittle excess.
He wondered whether the mood in Cologne in the high summer of 1349, when the Jewish community there was exterminated, was any different from emotions when the Warsaw Ghetto occupants were rounded up by the Gestapo. Humanity had come through these cataclysmic events, but by how narrow a margin? And was it by luck or prayer or fortitude? He wondered.
He shut down his laptop and stood, stretching to lengthen the muscles and tendons that had grown stiff through the course of a sedentary day. At that moment there was a knock at his door.
‘Come in.’
It was Jane Dobb. She was very pale. She was pale anyway, he thought, with a natural redhead’s ivory complexion. But now her eyes looked drained of their usual vitality and her facial skin seemed almost translucent. She habitually used clips to constrain her gorgeous mane but they were not present now, and her hair flared in wild abundance about her head.
‘I need to talk to you,’ she said.
‘I think you should do so sitting down.’
She nodded. Her eyes searched for somewhere to sit.
‘Not here,’ he said.
She smiled without mirth. ‘You won’t be compromised by me, Professor.’
‘The thought hadn’t even occurred to me, Jane. You need hot broth and a warm fire, and the Black Horse offers both not five minutes from here. I’m buying you your dinner. And I am all ears.’
‘I want answers, Professor Grayling. Adam found something yesterday, didn’t he? I want you to tell me what it was and where he’s gone and what it signifies.’
‘What a lot of questions,’ Grayling said.
She managed a smile, a proper one. ‘You always said that curiosity was an essential attribute in a good archaeologist.’
Grayling did not think the young woman in front of him at all short of attributes. Nor was the tense she had just used lost on him. Matters had taken a turn. Nothing would ever be the same again as it was before the find in the forest.
THREE
Adam was followed off the pier. He first noticed them as he picked up his rucksack from the souvenir stall student and handed over the fiver promised for looking after the bag.
He didn’t turn to look at them directly because he didn’t want to provoke trouble. But in the sly glances he was able to sneak, he thought that they looked like a couple of the smackheads who polluted English seaside resorts now that most people went abroad for their holidays, leaving lots of cheap accommodation for benefits agencies to rent.
They had definitely singled him out. One of them walked slightly behind and so partially concealed by the other. And he thought the smackhead to the rear was probably doing this to obscure the fact that his right hand was hidden behind his back.
That was an unusual posture for a stroll along a seaside pier, unless the hand was gripping the hilt of a knife hidden under a jacket hem. Adam thought it probably was. He’d seen a lot of street crime as a young lad, growing up in Bootle. He was familiar with its twitchy choreography. He felt slightly indignant that it was now afflicting a seaside resort that, in his mind at least, had always enjoyed a glamorous reputation.
He tackled them as they fanned to right and left in a flanking move, intent on taking him, shortly after he stepped off the pier, at the darkest spot between two streetlamps on a quiet stretch of promenade.
He swivelled on the sole of his left boot and sank a short left hook under the ribcage of the one to his right. Hearing the knife clatter on the flagstones, he reached and grabbed the second attacker by the hair on the back of his head and brought the head down to meet the driven piston of his knee. He heard the nose bone break wetly and dropped the bloke next to his pal on the pavement. Broken-nose was out cold. His mate was gasping, the floating rib shoved into his lung by the force of Adam’s single punch hindering his breathing.
He looked around. No one had witnessed what had just taken place. Traffic was sporadic and there were no pedestrians to fuss over what had occurred. The fight had been over in a few seconds. He crossed the road, as a precaution, to put distance between himself and the incident his would-be attackers would now represent if the boys in blue turned up.
His principle objective had been making them safe without using his fists on their faces. If you hit a druggie in the face you risked cutting your knuckles on their teeth. Contracting something like Hepatitis C or HIV wasn’t worth the contents of his wallet. But they would have taken the rucksack, too, at knifepoint, and he could not have allowed that, what with his curiosity, and the rarity of the object, and having come all this way.
He supposed he could have handled the incident in a more diplomatic and less heavy-handed manner – but what was the point of having heavy hands if you didn’t use them from time to time? Adam did not consider himself a bully, but he was the product of a fatherless upbringing, and that had been tough.
He’d read that people classically reacted to trouble with what was called the fight or flight response. He always stood his ground. That was his instinct, and the polish of his education hadn’t rubbed away at his instinct in the slightest.
The stall vendor he’d had down as a student from somewhere in South Lancashire had definitely been in on it. He’d poked around in the rucksack, seen the artefact and concluded it was a valuable antique.
I should go back and give him a slap, Adam thought. Retrieve my five-pound note. But there were too many people at the end of the pier and anyway, if he went back to do that now, he would be late for his appointment with the old scholar he was here to see. Elderly people tended to set great store by good manners and it would be discourteous to be late.
He paused, there on the promenade, in front of Doctor McGuire’s handsome Deco apartment block: he had reached his destination.
McGuire lived on the top floor. Adam stepped into a mirrored lift. The rucksack felt warmer than it should have done in the spot between his shoulder blades. It was almost as if the metal beast within now radiated a snuggly sort of heat.
He had a sudden suspicion that it had approved of what he had done outside, the way he had dealt with the danger, and was showing that n
ow in a gesture of affection for him. He shuddered. It was not a very comfortable thought. He could see his reflection, multiplied into infinity in the polished, reflective glass of the four walls confining him.
He closed his eyes and thought of scented candles and Jane’s velvety skin, the burnished cascade of her hair in the candlelight, Stevie Nicks plangent on her little radio. And the intimacy of that imagined moment seemed to him far away and improbable.
The doctor had a kind face. That was Adam’s first impression. Only the grizzle of his bushy eyebrows hinted at his true age. His eyes were hazel and clear under a full head of unruly white hair and when he smiled his teeth were his own and healthy and straight.
There was no one else around. Taking in the bachelor clutter of the place, the piles of books and papers and the trophies from a lifetime of fieldwork heaped and dotted on shelves, Adam thought this the home of a man who had always lived the single life.
‘Stuart speaks very highly of you, Adam,’ McGuire said. ‘May I take your jacket? Sit down, please. I shall prepare us both a drink.’ He left the room and Adam sat in an armchair with the rucksack on his lap.
He was in what he supposed was the doctor’s sitting room. It could have been a study, being full of books, but it was a very spacious room with veined marble walls and a stone floor, and there was a hostess trolley beside a table set for two people under the wide window dominating the exterior wall.
He further supposed the Stuart to whom McGuire referred must be Professor Grayling. He had not been aware of the professor’s Christian name. The doctor spoke with a strong Scottish accent. Grayling too spoke with a Scots accent but his was much milder.
There were many remarkable objects in the room: framed photographs that Adam would have been studying, had he not been instructed to sit, and paintings on the walls that looked familiar to him from books. He thought them probably originals.
In a way the most remarkable artefact was that hostess trolley, rippling the air above it slightly with the electric heat of whatever food it kept warm. It was beige and satin steel and immaculate, and Adam thought the doctor must have been wheeling it out whenever he entertained company since its original purchase sometime in the 1970s.
McGuire returned. He held a silver tray bearing a schooner of sherry and a bottle of Becks with a beer glass next to it. The bottle was cold, already beaded with condensation. McGuire moved fluently and the tray was steady between his hands. Without knowing, Adam would have guessed his age at around sixty-five. He reckoned he must have taken very good care of himself.
Adam stood. He put the rucksack on his chair and took the proffered beer. Doctor McGuire waited while Adam poured it and replaced the empty bottle on the tray; he then put the tray down on an occasional table. Straightening up, he raised his sherry schooner in a salute, and Adam was aware of how rock steady the glass was between his fingers. He looked Adam in the eye. He had not yet looked at the rucksack at all. Yet he could not, surely, be indifferent to its contents.
‘To what shall we raise our toast, young man?’
Adam thought for a moment. ‘Shall we drink to mysteries solved?’
McGuire smiled. ‘That is a noble aspiration. To mysteries solved,’ he said.
They drank and then sat down, McGuire in an armchair opposite the one Adam had chosen. He put his drink down on the low table between them, sat back and looked at Adam over the steeple of his fingers. ‘I confess I thought I’d made a terrible mistake for a moment when I first opened the door to you just now.’
‘You thought I was an intruder? Do I look so thuggish?’
‘On the contrary, Adam, you look very comely. It is an archaic word but it suits your appearance perfectly. You are pleasing to the eye.’
‘What, then?’
‘You had the smell of violence about you. You still have it, though it is dissipating now.’
Adam felt his cheeks reddening. He wondered if there was blood on his trousers or shoes from the bloke whose nose he had smashed on the promenade. Surely he would have noticed it in the mirrored lift that had brought him up from the block’s vestibule? He looked at his hands and feet but could see no visible residue of the fight.
‘I said the smell, Adam, not forensic evidence. Please describe your assailant.’
‘There were two of them, junkies, I think. One of them had a knife.’
‘Was there nothing unconventional about them? I am thinking of attire and perhaps also height.’
Adam shook his head. ‘They were wearing smackhead clothes. Track tops, trainers. They were both about the same size as me. How can you smell violence?’
McGuire sipped his sherry. ‘Over a long life, I have lived and worked in some hostile places. You develop a set of skills, senses, coping mechanisms. You seem unscathed.’
‘I inflicted the violence, Doctor. I wasn’t its victim. I beat them to it.’
McGuire smiled at him. The strengthening wail of a police siren came from the promenade outside. For the first time, he looked at the rucksack. ‘You had better show me what you brought here to have me examine,’ he said.
Grayling sat watching Jane spooning hot broth and wondered how they would appear to a third party, what conclusions a reasonably observant witness would make about the two of them, seated on opposite sides of their table close to the large saloon bar hearth in the Black Horse, both of them highlighted in the gloom by dabs of orange and umber light from the logs burning fiercely in the grate.
Vanity provoked the question, he supposed. The truth was that he wondered whether anyone could mistake them for a couple. He was vain enough to think they might. It wasn’t lust for Jane provoking this wishful thinking. It was a sort of mourning for his lost and deeply lamented youth. He sometimes wondered where that youth had gone. The loss of his innocence had taken some of it. Too much responsibility taken on too young had deprived him of what had been left.
But they did not look a very likely couple, did they? Jane Dobb was nineteen and carelessly beautiful. He was toned and fit and carefully maintained. She was a feat of nature. He was well preserved. He grimaced and sipped his beer. Well preserved was not a happy phrase. He could smell Jane’s perfume and recognized the scent and felt a sudden, savage pang of envy for the magnetic quality of attraction Adam Parker possessed; for his strength and youth and handsomeness.
‘He was as fresh as is the month of May,’ Grayling quoted, out loud.
Jane looked up from her now empty bowl. ‘Chaucer,’ she said.
‘I’m impressed,’ said Grayling.
‘It’s from The Canterbury Tales. It is the first line of Chaucer’s description of the Squire. Were you thinking of Adam, when it came into your mind?’
‘You’re very perceptive, Jane. He smelled of your perfume, by the way, when I drove him to the station this morning. I do hope he isn’t stealing it.’
‘I remember the knight that squire served in Chaucer’s story. He was old and knackered and living on past glories on borrowed time. Is that how you see yourself, Professor Grayling?’
Grayling did not answer the question. He shrugged and smiled.
‘Where have you sent him?’
‘Did he tell you? About the find, I mean?’
‘Martin Prior pretty much worked it out this morning. I expect you swore Adam to secrecy. He’s honourable and he respects you and I think he’s the sort of person who would keep his word. He wouldn’t steal perfume or anything else. And he doesn’t tell lies.’
‘I was joking about the perfume.’
‘You were making a point.’
‘You’re right, of course. He did find something. I sent him to establish the significance of the find. He’s gone to see a man who knows more than I ever will about pretty much every sphere of human knowledge. He’s taken the artefact with him and he’ll return tomorrow. I can’t really tell you much more until he does. I must ask you to accept that, for now.’
‘I do accept it. And I don’t think you’re remotely like Chauc
er’s knight. I can see no rust on your armour, Professor. Not yet.’
‘Well, that’s a relief. Would you tell me about your experience in the forest earlier, Jane? I’d very much like to know what happened to you there. Something shook you rather badly and I need to know what it was.’
‘I suppose you do. He might still be there, after all,’ she said. ‘And even if he isn’t, he might come back.’
She related her tale. Grayling listened, impressed by how much detail Jane had observed. She was bright and aware and a fluent speaker, and the experience had clearly terrified her.
As he listened, he realized that he would never be able to convince her that what she had seen had been cooked up by an over-active imagination in the twilit isolation of an atmospheric place. She was reciting from real life, however unlikely some of her story seemed in the warmth and matter-of-factness of the pub. It would never seem unreal to her. It had happened and she would never forget its strange and unnerving particulars.
‘He really looked like Adam?’
‘Like Adam’s evil twin.’
‘Except taller and with shoulder-length hair.’ Grayling remembered vaguely that someone had told him Jane was a twin, unless he had come across that detail in a piece about one of her illustrious parents. He was fairly sure it was the case. But whether it was or not, it would be tactless to bring it up now.
‘Adam has a scar on his face, Jane.’
‘I know he does. He would be too perfect without his scar. It humanizes him.’
‘Do you know how he came by it?’
‘I asked him shortly after we met,’ she said, ‘at the beginning of the academic year.’
‘I’ll bet that went down well.’
‘Because he’s self-conscious about it, you mean?’
Grayling nodded.
‘He didn’t seem to mind. He said he was cut by an épée blade in a fencing competition. The blade broke and his opponent could not check his thrust. The broken point speared through the mesh grille of Adam’s mask and sliced the skin open from his eye socket to his temple, leaving that pale, jagged line. I told him I thought it looked dashing, which is only the truth.’
