“Yes, well, we shall see, won’t we?” Sweeney returned.
Gareth, Ashley saw, was taking everything in with his usual quiet efficiency. Beyond him, Jason was leaning on his shovel and frowning, watching Caterina chatter away to Sweeney as the two of them knelt cozily side by side. Yeah, she’d expect Jason to be jealous.
Matilda followed Ashley’s look, then leaned closer to her. “I bet Jason’s more jealous of Caterina’s competence than he is of Howard. He doesn’t want her to look smarter than he is.”
“He sure doesn’t,” Ashley agreed.
With a wry smile Matilda sent Jennifer to record the new find.
This wasn’t a good time to talk to Sweeney about digging deeper along the wall, Ashley told herself. No matter how closely she looked, she couldn’t find any inscriptions to offer him. So she puttered away cleaning out the crevices between the stones while shadows raced overhead and horses meandered across the fields below. A red MG turned out of the farm and zoomed away toward Manchester. A slightly-built figure astride the brown horse trotted away along the same northeasterly path Matilda and Gareth had taken.
Sweeney showed the students how to take two long metal poles, cross them, and then lean a ladder against them to form a tall tripod. Jason volunteered to climb up the swaying ladder and take photos of the dig from above. “Look, no hands!” he called. Caterina kept on troweling.
Manfred fussed at Gareth for not keeping the side of the trench perpendicular. Gareth presented him with the shovel and went to poke around in the Miller expedition gully. He must’ve liked working solo better. After a while Ashley heard him singing under his breath. The song was “Men of Harlech,” maybe. He had a very nice speaking voice, but he couldn’t carry a tune in a bucket. Ashley hid her smile.
Just as Sweeney called “Quitting time!” Gareth resurfaced with a bit of harness, which he showed Matilda on the way back to the hotel.
Several of the other students headed into town for dinner. Ashley hesitated in the lobby, then told herself to forget it. Even if Gareth showed up in the next couple of minutes he wouldn’t want to come with them. Shrugging, she hurried after the others, up the street and through the shadowed alley beside the church. When she popped out into the pedestrian polygon she saw them going into a fish and chips shop on the far side.
A hand seized her forearm and spun her around. She was face to face with the dark-haired traveler. “I’ve heard that Americans are always in a hurry,” he said.
“Hey!” Ashley wrenched her arm away.
“Sorry.” His grin cut dashing creases in his clean-shaven cheeks. The wind ruffled his mane of hair. He stepped back, holding his hands open and empty. “We’ve not been formally introduced. Nick Veliotes, at your service.”
“Ashley Walraven. Not that I need any service.” She glanced over her shoulder, but the other students had disappeared. They probably never noticed her following them. Plenty of other people were walking back and forth, though, and Nick didn’t seem particularly threatening.
“You’re working at the old Roman fort, are you?” he asked.
“Yes. The dig is part of a history course I’m taking at the University of Manchester.”
“You must be very clever, to have been accepted at university.”
There wasn’t the least trace of sarcasm in his voice. His golden-brown eyes were fixed on her face—only her face—as though he’d never encountered anyone so interesting. He had no preconceptions about her. She could be anything to him. Maybe he could be something to her.
“American universities are easier to get into than British ones,” she said. “I’ve really had to study since I’ve been here, believe me.”
“I do believe you. You’re not studying now that you’re digging?”
“The digging is kind of like the final exam.”
“So you’re sitting your exams, are you? I can be of service, then, as a tutor in history and legend.”
“You know history?” Ashley asked.
He laughed. “Oh yes, that I do.”
Nick didn’t fit what Gareth had said about the travelers—he was as well-spoken as the reporter himself. And he didn’t smell bad, either. His slender body clad in nondescript army-surplus pants and sweater was boyish, but his manner was self-assured. Several necklaces dangled on his chest, an even-armed cross, a horn, a crescent moon. Ashley quelled the little voice in the back of her mind that told her in so many words why he was paying attention to her, and smiled her best sophisticated smile. “Okay, tell me about history.”
“Right.” Nick gestured at the church. “St. Michael’s. Fourteenth century, built on the foundations of an old Saxon church, built in turn on the foundations of a Celtic temple.”
“I thought the Celtic temple was beneath the fort,” Ashley said.
“There was more than one here. This entire area is knit together with dragon lines, lines of power running in straight tracks across the country. We’ve lost a good bit of that old knowledge, mind you, though it can be found if you know where to look.”
“Really? Matilda was saying something the other night about St. Michael and the dragon.”
“Matilda?”
“Dr. Sweeney’s second-in-command at the dig. She’s American, too, but she knows an awful lot about British stuff.”
“Ah,” said Nick, with a thoughtful nod. “There’s a green man carved into one of the pews in the south aisle of the church. I’ll show you.”
Ashley found herself escorted through the churchyard with its ranks of weathered gravestones and into the musty interior of the building. Nick guided her from nave to transept to chancel, their steps ringing on the floor, pointing out paintings and carvings that, he said, had pagan subtexts. He spoke of the old spirits of wood and stone and water. He drew parallels between the mysteries of Greek Eleusis and Welsh Annwn. He spoke movingly on the meanings of the bull, the buck, and the horns of an altar until Ashley grew dizzy, with information overload and physical attraction both.
“The white horse,” he concluded as they turned from yet another shadowed recess, “is the goddess Rhiannon. Rhiannon, Keridwen, and Brighid are the three aspects of the Celtic mother goddess, expressed in fire and water. More recently the white horse has been the symbol of the Saxons, and of the House of Hanover. If you’ve read your Homer you remember that the horse was sacred to Poseidon. Who was Neptune to the Romans.”
He might be pulling her leg, thought Ashley. She preferred to think he was an amiable eccentric overdosed on Robert Graves, James Frazer, and Joseph Campbell. A scholar, even, like Matilda and Sweeney. “The Trojan Horse,” she suggested, “and the emperor Caligula’s horse that he made a senator. . . .”
“Very good! I knew you were a clever girl.” Nick seized her hand and brushed it with his lips. A shock wave of sensation ran up her arm, exploding in the pit of her stomach. She retrieved her hand and ducked her head to hide her glowing face. He was piling it on pretty heavily. But how exciting to have a handsome, intelligent man pile on anything at all.
The stained-glass windows lightened and darkened as clouds skimmed by outside. Nick led Ashley around a complete circuit of the church and returned to the porch, where he pointed to a wickerwork contraption hung high on the wall next to several impressive sets of antlers. “There’s the May Day Hobby Horse, and the horns for the dance. You’ll be here for May Day, won’t you?”
“Oh yes. I saw a poster about the celebration somewhere—in the hotel, probably.”
“Clapper turns a few bob from the tourists. He lays in extra beer and five kinds of film. Like most ceremonies, the May Day rites have lost their original meaning and become an excuse to make money.”
He pushed open the doors. Ashley blinked at the rush of sunlight and fresh air and almost tripped over the hollowed stone of the step. Two crows perched on the churchyard fence. Ashley waited for Nick to rhapsodize over them, too. All he said was, “I told you I knew my history.”
“I’m impressed. What college did yo
u go to?”
“University’s for posh toffs with brass. I didn’t even pass my O-levels. Doesn’t mean I couldn’t keep on reading, though.”
“Reading’s free,” Ashley agreed. “Is there a good library here?”
Nick chuckled at some private joke. “Yes, but it’s not the public one.” He ushered her through the gate, took her hand and bowed over it. He didn’t offer to read her palm. Instead he kissed it again, lightly. She felt as though she were holding a handful of his warm breath. Her fingertips tingled even after he released her.
“Thank you for the—er— mythology lesson,” she managed to say.
“Would you like another one? This Sunday, perhaps? I’ll meet you here, four o’clock.”
“Oh, er, well. . . .” Why not? She shouldn’t miss a valuable learning experience just because the New Age travelers weren’t on the official curriculum. A learning experience of more than one kind. “Sure. I’ll meet you here on Sunday.”
“Super.” Nick’s grin was an in-your-face dare that defied both authority and convention. Ashley couldn’t help but grin back.
With a backwards wave he strolled away. Beside the ancient magpie house he passed the police constable, who shot him a suspicious glare. Nick turned with a quick, controlled dance step and made an elaborate bow. The officer huffed and walked on by.
Ashley started back toward the Green Dragon. Image and sensation cascaded through her mind. She felt as though she were going over Niagara Falls without so much as a barrel to protect her. Her mother had always insisted that her main goal in life was to protect her daughter, as though Ashley couldn’t be trusted with the truth. Her mother would have huffed just like the policeman and slammed the door in Nick’s face. He was too brash, too vital. Even Chris, of late, lamentable memory, was blandly self-absorbed compared to Nick.
Compared to Gareth, for that matter, Ashley thought as she rounded the corner of the hotel and almost fell over him.
The reporter was standing by the curb, talking to the slight figure on the brown horse. The horse turned its large, liquid eyes toward Ashley and shifted its weight with a clack of hoof on pavement. The colorless woman on its back stopped abruptly in mid-phrase. Gareth looked around.
“Hello,” he said. “Della Reynolds, this is Ashley Walraven, one of the students. Ashley, Mrs. Reynolds.”
“How do you do,” said Della.
“Hello,” Ashley returned breathlessly.
“I’m off,” said Della to Gareth. “Call in if you’d like to see them.”
“Thank you. I’ll do that.” With a pat on the horse’s flank Gareth stood back. Della and mount trotted away toward Fortuna Stud.
Matilda walked out of the hotel. “Hello there. Was that Mrs. R.?”
“Yes.” Gareth told her. “She was offering to show me Adrian’s antiquities collection.”
“You do want to cover private collecting in your article,” replied Matilda. To Ashley she said, “You look like the cat that swallowed the canary. What have you been up to?”
“I—er—I. . . .” She didn’t want to admit she’d been hanging out with one of the travelers, since Gareth so obviously disapproved of them. He just didn’t understand, no reflection on him, but. . . .
Matilda smiled. “I’m prying. Never mind.”
“That’s all right,” Ashley replied gratefully. “Have you eaten? I’m going to get a sandwich or something in the bar.”
“Yes, thank you,” said Gareth. “Matilda, I need you to look over my notes, make sure I have the dates correct.”
“Certainly.”
All three of them walked together into the hotel. There was the poster by the reception desk, just as Ashley remembered it. “Corcester May Day Fair,” it read. “Traditional Festivities. Song, Dance, and Real Ale.” Below the words were sketches of costumed figures that were either dancing or fleeing for their lives.
Re-enactments for the tourists, Ashley thought. Nick thought the old traditions were still viable in spite of such debasement. And why shouldn’t they be? Too many time-honored customs had been swept away by the pace of the modern world. Or so her mother often said, griping about the now ubiquitous “Ms.” or the way no one bothered to answer an R.S.V.P. any more. As much as Ashley liked Dr. Sweeney, she couldn’t bring herself to agree with his sophisticated cynicism any more than she could agree with her mother’s blind belief. Just where Nick fell between those two poles she couldn’t say.
Ashley waited in the lobby until Gareth and Matilda disappeared upstairs. Matilda was considerate, intelligent, and assertive without being aggressive, she thought. A good role model, even though she probably didn’t have a sex life any more.
Then there was Gareth. In spite of his red hair, he was cooler than Nick—in terms of temperature, that is. His personality, like his body, was more compact. More adult. He didn’t have to try to be sexy, did he? He just was, with that hint of hidden depths. So far, though, he’d looked at Ashley like a kid sister, if that much.
Nick was trying to be sexy. He might even be a version of Jason, more surface gloss than depth. But he wasn’t Jason. He was polite, he was certainly exotic, and he was definitely making a play for her. A date with him wouldn’t hurt anything.
Smoothing her hair, Ashley turned toward the bar. Her hand smelled sweet and smoky, like incense. Her hand smelled like Nick. A thrill tightened the back of her neck. She didn’t analyze just what kind of thrill it was.
Chapter Eight
Gareth unlocked the door and ushered Matilda inside. She noted without surprise that his tiny single room was neat as the proverbial pin—although why a pin should be neat, she didn’t know. On the back corner of the dresser sat a CD player and a stack of plastic CD boxes. She titled her head to read the titles. “A Celtic Journey.” “Ton Gron,” “Can Gwynt Y Gorllewin,” and “Blas Y Pridd.” Mozart and Puccini.
Matilda sat down in a chair and closed her eyes. Her deep breaths detected the odors of soap, starched laundry, and horse. She told herself that it didn’t matter that Gareth had interesting tastes in music. It didn’t matter which boy had been flirting with Ashley, or that Ashley was developing a crush on Gareth. Ashley wasn’t the reason Matilda was in Corcester. She was here because of antiquities looting, and because of murder.
When she opened her eyes Gareth was looking at her doubtfully. “Telepathy?”
“Just trying to sift through all the impressions I’ve been getting. That’s what they hired me to do.”
Keeping a very straight face, Gareth pulled a briefcase from beneath the bed. “How are you getting on, then? Can you prove that the statuary was stolen from here?”
“No. The looters must have cleaned out the entire cache. If they’d left an artifact, or even a broken bit of an artifact, I could compare it with the ones in Canada.”
“Surely there are a lot of artifacts still at the fort.”
“Oh yes. Some very interesting ones, too. But that particular set of artifacts, the statuary, had not only been made at approximately the same time and place, it had been buried together for almost two millennia, so it would all feel the same. . . .”
The corner of Gareth’s mouth tucked itself in skeptically.
“If I blindfolded you,” Matilda tried to explain, “and handed you two handmade wool Aran sweaters and two factory-made acrylic sweaters, you’d be able to classify them by touch, wouldn’t you?”
“I suppose so. Is that what it’s like, then?”
“It’s about as much like that as water is like Guinness Stout.”
Laughing, Gareth opened the briefcase.
“As for catching the looters who took the statuary, and keeping any more looters from taking anything,” Matilda went on, “I hope I’ll be able to keep one jump ahead of them. I wouldn’t be surprised if Reynolds is involved.”
“Clapper implied as much. Perhaps Reynolds and Linda were working together to begin with, and she double-crossed him. Now Reynolds can’t admit he knows for certain the statuary came fr
om Cornovium, because he’d be admitting he took it himself.”
“Many of our leads come from one looter turning in another.”
Gareth spread several file folders across the bed, spilling papers and photos. “I told you what Clapper said about the travelers.”
“Devil-worshipping druggies feeding at the public trough? Or was that Reynolds’s line?”
“They agree, I expect. Here are the police reports and transcripts of the interviews, if you’re sure you want to see them. A murder case is hardly an art fraud case.” Gareth sat back against the headboard.
“It is when the victim is apparently involved in the illegal antiquities trade.” Matilda fished her reading glasses out of her shoulder bag, moved to the bed, and began to sift through the pile.
The pictures made in the morgue at Manchester were well-lighted and clearly focused. On the stainless steel tray Linda’s body seemed like a cool and clinical anatomical display, nothing human. It was the photos taken at Durslow that captured the horror of her murder. Her body had lain crumpled on the leaf-strewn stone, one hand outstretched, her head twisted back at an unthinkable angle, her face turned to the indifferent sky. Dead faces had no expression, but still Matilda thought that Linda had died surprised.
She glanced through the forensic reports. The right parietal of Linda’s skull had been fractured in a blunt force trauma. Her esophagus, trachea, and associated tissue had been cut with several strokes of a small but very sharp knife. Only her cervical vertebrae still connected her head to her body. Blood had soaked the back of her clothing and pooled on the stone itself. A faint stain on the basin of the spring meant that the murderer had washed his hands there. He must have gotten blood on his clothing as well. His shoes had left no prints.
“No murder weapon,” Matilda said.
“The murderer took it away with him,” replied Gareth. “We can say ‘him’, if you like.”
“Just to simplify the discussion, yes, let’s.”
“She was bashed from behind with a rock. There were certainly enough to hand, although the investigators couldn’t find any that matched the injury. He had to bash her head in first, mind you. His knife was too small to have done much damage with the first thrust. She would have been able to fight back. But there were no parry cuts to her hands and arms. There were no bruises other than the natural lividity of the body.”
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