by Jason Foss
He knew what her motive had been.
‘And, as it turned out, it was also incredibly stupid. If that creep Angelos had been a killer…’
‘He wasn’t, and we came through it,’ Flint said. ‘Look back and laugh.’
‘Laugh? We should be having a wake for all those poor sods who died.’
‘No, that’s history, Lisa. Read the book, see the film. Brave men die, villains die, but fifty years on, we’re all just archaeology.’
‘And you say you have a romantic side!’
‘I always thought I did.’
Her look mellowed. ‘Of course you have, I’m only teasing. I do that too much, don’t I?’
‘A little.’
‘Sorry.’
Flint looked directly into her nut-brown eyes. ‘So, we’re back in Blighty.’
‘Back to Vikki,’ she said.
Flint had become oddly reassured, once it was clear what shape the future was adopting. He had tried to resurrect something from his past and found that memories were best left undisturbed.
‘And you?’
‘See my parents, borrow some money, then go back to Nauplion and try again.’
Battersea Power Station, Chelsea Bridge and the distant spike of Founder’s Tower, Central College caught his eye, then the train trundled slowly into Victoria. He helped her out with her trio of travel bags, then hoisted his fluorescent rucksack onto his back. A crush of humanity carried them along the platform and through the ticket barrier, until the current eased and they found themselves in space. Something was expected of the moment.
Lisa exhaled, then tightened her chin as she looked up at him. He leaned forward and their lips met. After a few moments, the kiss was at an end and she smiled and tweaked his cheek. ‘Bye.’
‘Have a nice life.’
Lisa picked up her bags and walked away towards the underground. Flint watched for a few moments before crowds obscured then engulfed her.
If you enjoyed reading Byron’s Shadow, you might be interested in Darkness Rises by Jason Foss, also published by Endeavour Press.
Extract from Darkness Rises by Jason Foss
Prologue
Clouds hung still on that cold, windless night. A gibbous moon low on the horizon threw a long sharp shadow across the hillside. Other shadows moved, swayed, and circled the hallowed stone. As the moment came, one broke away. The Maiden moved forward, stripping aside the white cloak to stand naked before the moon. She shivered against the cold, trembled as she took up the knife and the onlookers took up the chant. Ethereal harmonies of another age rose into the winter air. An animal struggled away the last moments of its life, the old and wise stood back in satisfaction and The Maiden declared her need to embrace the Earth.
Soon, the Earth would embrace her.
*
English hills rolled green and pleasant under the weak February sun. The brick cottage lay screened by bare hedges, some way back from a sunken lane, with a long dirt drive running past its walls and into the seclusion of the hollow. The cottage was cheap to rent, from an owner who accepted cash in hand and swallowed loose alibis by those using names of discretion. Cramped and rather dirty, it served as a haven from the winter chill and from prying eyes.
A railwayman’s retirement clock ticked away the seconds, and in perfect time, footfalls could he heard coming down the stair. The man had been fiddling with his black goatee and unconsciously digging his fingernails into the soft oak table top. He snapped out of introspection as she opened the door into the room.
‘Rowan?’
She came into the room at a solemn pace, shaking her blonde hair slowly to answer his question.
‘Call a doctor, call the ambulance – we should have done it an hour ago! We should have done it last night, I knew it!’
‘There really is no point. It’s much too late.’ Her tone was cold, forceful, her expression drained of emotion.
Every strand of his twisted life was knotted into the man’s face. His muscles tensed, bringing multiple creases into high relief. He sniffed, drawing on a paper napkin to wipe at bloodshot eyes. ‘So we have to call the police.’
‘Tell me, Oak,’ she paused, ‘exactly what will you say to them?’
He bowed his head and looked into the grain of the oak table. Oak: strong, ancient, mystical Oak. She called him Oak, he called her Rowan. It was a game, a formula, a cornerstone of the life they had chosen.
‘Where do you begin? How do you explain what happened? What do you plead at the trial?’
Panic raised his head at the word.
‘Yes, trial. You don’t think they’ll understand, do you?’
‘We can tell them the truth.’
‘And what is the truth?’
He considered it, lips faintly modelling alibis and extenuating circumstances. Rowan stood back, arms folded across her heavily knitted pullover, with its incongruously cheerful riot of blackberries rambling about her breast.
‘Difficult, isn’t it? Even if they believe you, do you think they will understand? Do you think they will want to understand? Do ordinary people have the capacity to understand?’
The realisation came slowly and reluctantly. ‘No.’
Silence followed, broken only by the heavy rhythmic tone of the clock on the mantelpiece.
‘I don’t understand it, Rowan, I don’t understand what happened.’
‘What on earth did you put in the brew?’
‘Exactly the same as usual. This shouldn’t have happened! It must be some million-to-one accident, one of those things you read about.’ He waved a hand to conjure up a miracle explanation. ‘It could be an allergic reaction, or perhaps she had a weak heart, or,’ he clicked his fingers, ‘she took something else – pills or drugs.’
Rowan’s face was still set in its firm, purposeful expression. Her eyes of sky blue met his of soft woodland brown. ‘We shall never know.’
‘Oh yes. We’ll know.’ He had fallen back from his fit of nervous suggestions and his expression was clouding over once more. ‘At the post-mortem, at the inquest, at the trial.’
He strangled the last word and buried his head in his hands, panting and sobbing. ‘What am I going to do’?’
She advanced to put a hand on his trembling shoulder. ‘Oak, dearest Oak, don’t worry, we can help you, we can protect you, all of us. No one outside the Circle need ever know.’
His eyes widened to acknowledge her offer. ‘But can…’
‘Shh.’ She laid a finger on his lips. ‘Anything is possible, we have friends, we have the power.’
‘The power.’ A wan smile crossed his bearded lips, part in relief, part in irony. He knew where the power lay.
Rowan moved across to the window and jerked the faded pink curtain along its wire. ‘We can’t do anything now, not in daylight. We’ll come back tonight.’
The shattered man watched her planning his salvation.
‘We’ll bring my van, and some spades.’
‘Rowan, no; it isn’t decent.’
Angry, she turned. ‘Decent! What is decent? I suppose we all dress in black and troop down the church and sing a few dismal psalms.’
‘No, but... ‘
‘Oak! It is this, or face the police. It is your problem, and your choice.’
Oak was fighting blasts of fear and guilt.
‘Tonight?’ Rowan demanded.
‘We must have a ceremony,’ he blustered.
‘No ceremony; that would be far too dangerous. I don’t think the whole Circle will want to know about this.’
Of course, he knew she would say that. Always right, always, it seemed, capable of making the decisions.
‘Yes, you’re right. But it must be somewhere special, somewhere we have hallowed.’
‘No.’
‘Yes.’
He surprised himself with a sudden return of spirit. ‘It has to be decent. If we can’t have a ceremony, we have to do this at least, Rowan!’
For an hour they talk
ed over the tragedy, with quiet logic and with heated passion. Both shed tears, but Oak won his point. Rowan relented when she sensed his thoughts had turned away from despair and focused on the urgency of concealment. In retrospect, it had all been distressingly simple.
Chapter 1
A cluster of houseboats nestled within Camden Lock. Jeffrey Flint rented a small, light blue boat as an alternative to ill-furnished London flats, with their hallways cramped by bikes and black bin-bags. He was in the galley, willing the kettle to boil, and the woman took full advantage of surprise.
‘Pinch and a punch, first of the month!’ Chrissie Collings thumped him in the kidneys, causing a yelp of alarm.
‘March,’ said the tall redhead, ‘wake up, Doc, you’re miles away this morning.’
‘Sorry, I was thinking about Easter. I’m taking the first-years to Essex. Do you want to come?’
‘No, no, you’re not getting me digging. Spending the whole vacation in a muddy hole is not my idea of a good time.’
The kettle boiled and Flint made tea, with Chrissie sitting back on the bench-seat by the table, watching him. Poor Jeffrey, she wished she could be that soul-mate he seemed to need. Someone who was willing to tramp across rainy hillsides and spend vacations amongst dusty museum relics. Another archaeologist whom he could argue with about Post-processualism or Romano-Celtic iconography.
He was slight without being skinny, his muscles toned by years of swinging pickaxes and hauling buckets. She wondered about the long straw hair, the beard and the John Lennon glasses and whether modernising his appearance would destroy his character. Then she thought about the night before, when he had been so energetic yet so gentle. Poor Jeffrey was happy as he was.
‘Now it’s you who’s miles away,’ he said as he presented her with the mug with the whale-tail handle.
‘I was thinking about you,’ she said.
He grinned. ‘You were analysing me again.’
‘If you like.’
‘Do you know, Chrissie, I have a rule: I never sleep with my students...’
‘But other people’s students are fair game?’ she interrupted.
‘Thus far, but I think I’m going to add a second rule: never sleep with psychology postgrads.’
‘Aw,’ she took a cautious sip from the tea mug and feigned hurt. ‘Can we still be friends?’
‘Only fooling, we have a nice little relationship going on here.’
Chrissie’s pure-white face suddenly set into a solemn look of warning. ‘We do not have a relationship, we have a friendship. Relationships lead to rings, property and sticky children.’
He nodded. ‘Sorry, I didn’t mean to sound possessive.’
‘Poor Jeffrey,’ she said, laying a hand on his knee, ‘when are you going to find the woman who won’t keep messing you around?’
‘I’m happy,’ he said cheerfully. ‘Two slices of toast? I got some more of that wholemeal you liked last time.’
Flint served the toast and apologised for the state of the hedgerow jam he had bought at a craft fair. He diverted further analysis of his sex life by talking of his plans for the Easter training excavation. Chrissie told him of a possible last-minute holiday to Paris she might make with a friend of unstated sex. Another academic morning started slowly and it was nearly ten before the pair mounted their cycles to enjoy the ride into Central College. The air was cold and the sky clear and the day promised nothing other than quiet study and the company of fellow minds.
*
Jeffrey Flint’s office befitted his lowly rank of junior lecturer. Tunnel shaped, with a window at one end, it overlooked an internal alleyway which served as a college rat-run. Always badly lit, usually untidy, it offered room for four or five hundred books and a filing cabinet. Just enough wall space remained for a cluttered cork board and a Che Guevara poster. He knew this was passé, but kept it as a memory of former days as a student rebel.
He collected his routine mail and ran through it quickly. Having contrived to have no lectures timetabled for Wednesdays, at least one day per week could be devoted to solid research. His mind was currently battling with the complexities of third-century Roman Britain, or ‘Britain under Roman Occupation’ as he liked to term it.
Professor Grant was the figurehead, but his secretary was the real power in the archaeology department. Industrious, if a little vague at times, Sally was a useful buffer between Flint’s eccentricities and the ageing Head of Department’s more conventional sense of order. Sally rang through on the internal phone to announce that an uninvited Dr Faber had arrived to steal precious research time. Flint grumbled assent then put down the phone in ill humour. He kept up a pretence of reading a paper in The Antiquaries Journal beyond the point at which the unbidden caller was asked to enter. Whatever dull academic strode in could be certain that he had interrupted precious study.
He was a she. ‘Doctor Flint?’
She waved away his ‘Doctor Faber’ and said, ‘Call me Barbara, please.’
Blonde hair, late twenties with a strong bone structure, he found her attractive in an oddly familiar way.
‘Jeff,’ he responded, happily moving to first name terms. ‘How can I help?’
‘I’m Lucy Gray’s sister. She’s in the third year.’
His thoughts quickly ran through a notice-board full of bright faces. One undergraduate came to mind, with long blonde hair, sharp blue eyes and classic schoolgirl prettiness. Take Lucy, shorten the hair, add neat charcoal-grey suit, allow to mature for a few years and the result would be Barbara. She was clearly a more developed product of the same gene pool.
‘Lucy, yes.’
Flint made a gesture towards a soggy armchair which was squeezed in beside the filing cabinet. It was, as usual, covered with books and papers.
‘Just chuck that heap on the floor.’ Only a hint of his Yorkshire accent remained, but slipped out in Flint’s more relaxed moments.
Barbara cleared the chair, straightened her skirt then sat, tense and erect.
‘I’m sorry to interrupt your work, but I wanted to know whether you had seen Lucy lately?’
The truthful answer was that he did not know, and if pushed he might have said he didn’t care either. He walked past a thousand girls in college sweatshirts every day, whilst only giving half of them more than a glance.
‘I don’t actually teach Lucy,’ was his offered reply, ‘not this year.’
Barbara appeared disappointed.
‘Have you spoken to Samantha Hanley? I believe she is Lucy’s personal supervisor...’
‘She’s away. I tried her.’ There was a barely concealed restlessness within the visitor.
‘Ah, yes, maternity leave. So why me?’
‘Lucy mentioned you. In fact, she’s always talking about you and your ideas. I thought perhaps you were her supervisor by the impression you made.’
This was flattery from an unexpected quarter. ‘I taught her on one course in her second year, but I think she’s mainly taking prehistory units. She’s not signed on to any of my classes this year.’
Barbara nodded, out of ideas.
‘You need to contact her urgently?’
A little pain, a little anxiety was visible. ‘We just haven’t seen her for five weeks: our mother is getting worried. We had a wedding, you see, on the eleventh. Lucy should have been there.’
‘Perhaps she found it all a little dull and skipped it. Lucy never struck me as being terribly High Church.’ The department had seven overtly militant Christians and Lucy was not amongst them.
‘But it was Janet, her old school friend’s wedding. They’ve known each other for years and Lucy was to be senior bridesmaid. We were fitting the dress the last time she was home. Janet was awfully disappointed and we all felt – well – let down.’
‘She’s probably lying low. Have you tried her digs?’
‘We’ve telephoned lots of times, but there’s been no answer. She’s in Leopold Hall. I tried to get into her room earlier this mo
rning, but this awful man wouldn’t let me.’
Flint sifted through a rack of trivial information in his brain, hunting for boyfriends, society outings, major excavations, minor epidemics. Nothing came up.
‘I suppose I could accompany you to the Hall; it’s just across the square.’
‘Would you mind? I’m sure I’m just being silly.’
‘Oh, no trouble.’
Flint had a large and very soft spot for intelligent ladies, so the journal and its crucial article could be set aside without pain. Flint pulled on his tweed jacket with its reinforced elbows and they left immediately, taking the usual short-cuts through the bafflingly juxtaposed buildings of Central College. Barbara cast her eyes around at every turn, as if looking for traces of her absent sister. As she tried to break into casual conversation, her voice echoed along the empty corridor.
‘This is all new to me. Despite the fact that Lucy has been here nearly three years, I’ve never actually seen this place.’
‘You’ve not missed much. It’s rather tacky when you get to know it.’
‘Well, Lucy thinks it’s the centre of the world. She’s really changed since she came here.’
‘They all do, I did. Where did you study?’
‘Edinburgh. I wanted to get as far from home as possible.’ Just half a smile followed the confession.
Outside, it had turned into one of those premature spring days which precedes the last shock snowfall of winter. The London air held a promise of warmth, perfumed by the smell of motorcars, whilst staccato-engined taxis punctuated what calm there was.
‘So what do you do in real life?’ Flint asked, hands thrust into his jacket pockets.
‘I’m a doctor, a GP.’
‘Ah, a real doctor, as my mum always says.’
‘No, you’re the real doctor. I always feel a bit of a fraud next to you people who have done research.’
A stream of cars raced by, then the pair skipped to a traffic island.
‘They give PhDs away these days,’ he joked, ‘don’t mark ‘em, just weigh ‘em.’
Four minutes’ walk brought them to the nineteen fifties brick-and-concrete edifice where two hundred students were stored during term time. Flint made short work of the officious Indian porter and rooted out the Deputy Warden, a soft-spoken deeply Christian man with black beard of biblical proportions. The warden apologised for being of little assistance previously and accompanied them in an agonisingly slow lift to the third floor.
