My Lady of the Bog

by Peter Hayes

  The coroner shrugged and approached my Lady. I removed the sheet. He examined the stick forking her right knee. “Hello! There’s some sort of writing on it.” He squinted at the characters carved in the wood. “Well, it’s not English.”

  “And how do you know that?”

  “Just look at it, man!”

  “I am. And, offhand, I don’t see how you can tell it’s not English.”

  He was getting bothered. “Because there are no bloody English letters, are there?”

  I looked at him. “There are no such things as bloody ‘English letters.’ What you mean, I suppose, is they’re not Roman—a, b, c, d . . . . But a language can be written in any alphabet. Look at om. Or shalom. You could write Churchill’s speeches using Arabic characters. I don’t mean translating them into Arabic—I mean writing Arabic in such a way that when it’s pronounced it sounds like Churchillian English!”

  He looked confounded.

  “Now this,” I continued, eyeing the markings, “could be futhark.”

  “What . . . ?”

  “Runes. However, the language of the runes might be Middle English or Gothic, Norse or Norwegian. Who knows?”

  “Who does?”

  “Someone who can translate them. Not me. Ready?” We gripped the first stake. It came out with a sigh as the wet peat released. In a similar fashion, we removed the three others. I tagged each, indicating its position on the limb it had pinned. Then we tried to remove the blind. But I couldn’t undo the knot (it was cruelly tight) and I didn’t want to force it, fearing I would damage her face in the process, so I made do with moving it an inch above her eyes.

  Unexpectedly, they were open; undeniably, they were blue; unbelievably, they were lifelike in the extreme—full of hurt and terror and some far-reaching ruined hope.

  “My God,” the coroner said, stepping back a pace. For with her blue eyes open and the stakes removed, it almost seemed at any moment she might revive and speak to us.

  Her face was broad; her nose had a certain hawk-like flare. Her body was at once long-limbed, slender and broad-shouldered. Her ears (and her right nostril) were pierced—details that, for some reason, moved me.

  We turned to her effects. A small feathered purse found with her clothing contained a horn comb, a double oyster shell serving as tweezers (several short hairs still adhered to an edge), and three round lidded boxes, no larger than silver dollars, containing what smelled like traces of unguents. There were no coins that might have dated her death.

  “Why does it feel so creepy,” he asked, “going through the dead’s effects? You almost expect her to sit up, bat at your hand and say, ‘Leave my bloody purse alone.’ What are those?” he wondered, indicating the wooden dishes. “Medicine?”

  “Makeup. Some sort of lip gloss, probably. And kohl for the eyes.”

  “They had makeup? Back then?”

  “Where there were women . . .” I said, “. . . there was makeup.”

  We went downstairs. The morning was warm, the elevator overheated. No sooner had it reached the bottom and its doors reopened than I saw a ring lying on the floor. This was not a happy sign—and stepping out I saw at once the wire cage had been broken into and the treasure taken.

  The coroner stopped, as though straight-armed by an invisible hand. “Pinched!” he screamed. “Bastards!”

  I stared at the hill of moldering peat from which the hoard had been removed. “What bastards?”

  He looked at me, almost suspiciously. “How the hell should I know?”

  I won’t dwell upon the sea of dreariness into which the morning descended: the police interviews, the coroner’s alternately defensive and apologetic mien, or the appearance of the national press, for the discovery and theft of such a priceless treasure trove was news of the first order. The coroner was roundly criticized for his having left it in such a spot—though in his defense, the hoard was delivered on a Saturday evening when no museum or bank vault was open to receive it, and was partially embedded in a quarter ton of peat, from which he’d been cautioned it could not be removed. This had left him few options. He couldn’t have kept it in his office—it wouldn’t have fit—and the cage in the hospital basement had not seemed like a bad idea at the time.

  In retrospect, it was ludicrous. You don’t leave a treasure worth millions of pounds sterling overnight in a public building in a cage secured with a bicycle lock!

  The police speculated that sometime after midnight, the thief had overridden the key that disabled the elevator’s descent to the cellar, clipped the lock, and carried the treasure out through the loading bay to a waiting vehicle. The theft’s childish ease moved one bobby to remark, “Whoever did this had to know three things: one, how to use a lift; two, how to clip a wire; and three, how to drive a lorry.” He grinned. “Cunning.”

  Most worrisome was that the treasure wasn’t inventoried, and our fear was that the hoard would be dispersed, for there’s a booming market in looted antiquities.

  Which was when I remembered the photos I’d taken. Though documenting only the topmost level, they would identify at least some of the pieces. I downloaded the pictures to Strugnell’s computer, then copied them to a thumb drive which I gave the CID.

  There wasn’t anything more to do. Having squandered one archeological wonder, the police had concluded they must safeguard the body at all costs and were trying to devise some means. They were milling about; there was no way I could do any work or, more importantly, return the codex without answering a lot of difficult questions.

  A couple of the younger officers were ogling my Lady. This annoyed me. “Excuse me,” I said, and pulled the sheet up over her head. “Plague,” I whispered, nodding sagely. They looked alarmed and backed off fast.

  That afternoon I wrapped the ancient book in foam, insured it for a quarter of a million pounds sterling, and addressed it to my friend and mentor, Dr. Jai Prasad, Visiting Professor of Anthropology at Oxford University. I included a note asking Jai to examine it, posted the package, and drove back home.

  Chapter 5

  The Reader may have noticed a curious bit of avoidance here. For though eager to hear the coroner’s nightmare, I wasn’t as anxious to examine my own—for like us all, I would much rather face someone else’s demons.

  Mine had first surfaced at the age of fifteen when a girl I was dating broke up with me. It had been a totally childish affair. We’d roller-skate and, walking home, kiss beneath the violet night shadows of the trees. Once, she’d let me touch her breasts, bare beneath her Fair Isle sweater; this was the full extent of our intimacy. And yet, to lose her felt like being guillotined. I wasn’t hurt so much as dead.

  Unfortunately, in Asbury Park, New Jersey, in the year of our Lord nineteen hundred and ninety-seven, no one had diagnosed depression; no one even seemed to notice. Life went on, only now there were pins and shivs in things, and the most innocent memories hid eviscerating knives.

  And so I dealt with it as best I could, though for several months after I felt like I was underwater, and it was a year before I was myself again.

  For many years since, I had done quite nicely, until a prima ballerina with whom I was having a white-hot affair, ended it abruptly after just three months when she’d left me, New York and the City Ballet to be the next étoile in Paris. I found her sudden exit nearly unendurable. And though I’d left for England shortly thereafter, not a night had passed that some part of me hadn’t ached for her. And to come across her name unexpectedly can, to this day, derail me—still.

  Thus all attempts to match me up with one of the local lovelies had failed. It was as though my heart’s RAM was full and no new name could be written there—no room. Couldn’t, that is, until this evening. For the day was all but over with and I hadn’t, I realized, thought of her once!

  Now, I took a closer look at my dream. Clearly, it had to do with my Lady. Her veil, therefore, made perfect sense, as it kept me from knowing who she was. Ah, I thought, another unavailable woman,
just the kind you love to love. The apparition’s talons made me think of the Old European bird-footed death goddess with her V-shaped prints scratched in clay or stone. Given my Lady’s probable murder, this mortal note made sense, as well . . . . Though I must say I fell asleep that evening dreaming of my Lady’s wild, blue eyes . . .

  Before I went to work in the morning, I spent some time on the telephone, checking and patching my political fences. It was agreed by my department chair and several other influential persons that, given the circumstances, I had handled matters well. The video and pics I had taken, now that the find had been “removed,” were invaluable, and only underlined again the value of what we anthropologists do—when allowed to do it.

  Thus, stopping at the hospital on my way to work, I was taken by surprise when Strugnell informed me that Sir August Rumple had been put in charge of my Lady. Strugnell seemed subdued: his face in the morning light was as gray and bleak as the Zuider Zee.

  “What do you mean, ‘put in charge’?”

  “Sir August has been appointed head of a commission to investigate the find—by the Crown. There’s a terrible row being made about the treasure.” He looked baleful.

  “I don’t see why,” I said, upset by this sudden turn. “It can’t be worth more than several million pounds.”

  Sir A. E. Rumple, MPhil., PhD, Keeper-Elect of World Pre- History at the Cambridge Museum and author of The Mystery of English Runes, hadn’t shaved. Or rather, let me amend that observation: he had shaved his cheeks and chin, but for some odd reason had failed to shave those other parts that required it as much or more, such as his nose, temples, eyebrows, neck, chest, and ears—all of which sprouted such a superabundance of grayish hairs that he looked like a spider plant in need of pruning.

  I was surprised by my pettiness. Obviously, I was feeling insecure.

  I introduced myself and outlined for him my role in the body’s discovery and initial examination. I apologized for the lack of proper scientific protocol, but explained how I’d been overruled. I told him of the hundreds of pictures I’d taken and said I hoped to continue on as part of the royal investigative team.

  “Sorry, old boy,” he said, hardly bothering to look up, “can’t use you, I’m afraid.”

  “Oh?” I asked. “And why is that?”

  “You’re . . . uh . . . underqualified.”

  I felt myself flush. “I’m a Pitt Rivers fellow at Exeter. And I worked on a similar cadaver last year. I have a master’s from Columbia in physical anthropology. My tutor was Jai Prasad.”

  Jai’s name brought Rumple’s head up. “I’ve done fieldwork in Pakistan, at Dorchester and at Woodhenge. I’m published. And I have a paper coming out in Antiquity next month—on Lincoln Man.” (All right, it had been submitted to Antiquity and I’d been favored with several editors’ queries, though whether it would actually be published next month remained to be seen. Still, such posturing is an essential part of the profession.)

  Rumple pretended to consider this, then made a gruff, dismissive noise.

  “Sorry, Donne. But as I said, you really don’t have the bona fides. No doctorate, I see. A bit of fieldwork. Some graduate studies, albeit with a famous scholar. I read Antiquity from cover to cover. I don’t recall ever coming across your name.”

  I wanted to reply, “Of course you haven’t! How could you read an article that won’t be published until next month?” Instead, I said, “I helped to recover the body. I’ve already put in more than forty-six hours of study, collection, fieldwork and observation. I have 200 pics of the corpse in situ and another half dozen or so of the trove.”

  “And the commission will be indebted to you for sharing with it your notes and photos.”

  “I have no intention of turning over anything.” I was, I’m afraid, beginning to panic. The prospect of losing my Lady unhinged me. “I practically found the damn body. I dug it up. And I did everything I could to keep it unspoiled. I think you owe it to me to keep me on the team.”

  “And I think not.”

  “All right then. I’ll give you a good reason. If you won’t, I’ll go to Fleet Street with color photos of the mummy and the treasure and make a gigantic bloody stink and howl about the politics and incompetence that allowed the body to be removed in an improper manner and the hoard to be pinched in the first place, and how I, the one who uncovered the body, have been thrust aside by stampeding dons like August Rumple, bent upon quenching their thirst for publicity and the furtherance of their academic careers . . .”

  He looked up at me, seriously appalled. “You wouldn’t.”

  “You wouldn’t. I would—in a New York second.”

  He looked seriously concerned. “What do you want?”

  I made a reasonable gesture. “Just to be part of the investigative team. Also, I should tell you now,” I said, dangling a carrot in place of the stick, “I have in my possession an extraordinary document that was part of the trove.”

  “What, what, what document?” He looked professionally excited, personally dismayed. “Nobody said . . .”

  “A book,” I said. “It was with the treasure. I rescued it the night the hoard was stolen.”

  “What? What book?”

  “I’m afraid I can’t tell you its title, sir.”

  “Book?”

  “Yes. I found a book with the body.”

  “What book?”

  “As I’ve said, I couldn’t read it, sir, as I believe it is written in some form of Indic.”

  “Indic? Wot?” His eyes bugged out. “And where is this . . . this Indic . . . book?”

  If he said “book” one more time . . . “I took the liberty of sending it to Dr. Prasad. I thought that he, if anyone, might be able to translate it.”

  “You did what?”

  “Sent it off to Dr. Jai Prasad . . .”

  “But that . . .” he was growing apoplectic . . . “is property of . . . !”

  I knew what he was going to say and cut him off. “No, it isn’t. The law of Treasure Trove clearly states the Crown is entitled to all forfeited treasure made of precious metals. The book is covered in leather and written in ink on some sort of parchment. In the meantime, I am continuing to assist the CID in a murder investigation. It seems likely the book could shed some light upon the crime. Once it is perused and studied, we will, of course, return it to its rightful owner, whoever that is determined to be—though I do hope, sir, before we do, that you may get a glimpse of it.”

  Rumple’s face was a red balloon. It was the word glimpse that did it, I think.

  “Right,” I said. “I’ll await your call.” And I turned and left him sitting speechless. I stepped out into the hall.

  “See the good doctor?” the coroner asked.

  “Yes, indeed.”

  “Right. I was wondering if we could have a word.”

  “Wait half an hour and we’ll have it over lunch.”

  “Uh, no,” he said. “Privately. Some evening, perhaps.” A crown of sweat marred his brow.

  I opened my daybook, pretending to be looking for a free evening, when all my evenings were free as a bird from now until Armageddon. “Tonight all right?”

  He nodded.

  “Around eight?”

  The confrontation with Rumple had left me shaken. This was not the way I normally do business. Sir August was a Knight of the Realm and my threat, I knew, would either win the day or plunge me into such hot water I’d never work in English anthropology again. Still, I’d had to do something. And it wasn’t just to further my ambitions. For I’d panicked at the thought of losing my Lady! Some deep, unstated bond between us felt threatened in a way I didn’t understand. There was nothing for it now but to hope that Rumple would react like the scandal-phobic don I believed he was—and to cool my heels.

  Strugnell arrived a little after eight. As I’ve said, I knew him as a colleague only and not well enough to even tell you his wife’s name.

  So I was caught off guard when the first thing h
e said was that he had once killed a man, a maniac on the Brixton tram. The man he’d killed had stabbed two passengers, then slashed the driver before coming at Strugnell with death in his eyes. Everything, Strugnell said, had gone into slow motion as he deflected the lunge, wrested the blade and plunged it back into his assailant’s chest. The hot snake of blood that leapt from the wound had announced he had hit the targeted heart.

  By the time the police arrived, the passengers were dead. The driver had died in the hospital soon after. The maniac, a garish rose blooming on his shirt, was dead, as well. Only Strugnell—no action hero—was alive. And, as if I might doubt him, he drew from his coat a newspaper clipping, limp with age, that repeated the heroic story he’d told me with a photograph of Strugnell looking half his current age and size.

  I must say, I wondered why he was telling me this. It was more than I really wished to know. In an awkward attempt to change the subject, I asked him how he liked his job, which seemed to me a difficult one, and he said he found the hospital morgue “agreeable” compared to his home and marriage.

  For his wife was acutely unhappy, it seemed, and broadcast her unhappiness in palpable waves. Last night, he confessed, they’d had a terrible row. After a day of questioning by the police, bureaucratic reprimands, the disdain of the Palace, and the hostile inquiries of the press, he found he’d had to answer to her. She was belittling—sneering at his “stew-pidity”—until, afraid he might strike out and hit her, he’d left the house, walking to the village pub.

  No sooner had he entered it than a young man approached . . .

  “Wooland Strugnell, Esquire, innit?”

  When he didn’t respond, the boy went on, “Woo-land Strug-nell: bit difficult to pronounce. Doesn’t roll trippingly off the tongue, now does it? Woo-land. Strug-nell. Sounds like I used to feel as a kid when I got me arm entangled in me sweater.”