“She’s easy to read, is she?”
“I think she was telling the truth, if that’s what you’re asking.”
“So then, why expose her husband?”
“We’ve been wondering all along why Della would protect him when he treats her with such contempt. And she told us tonight that he’s even spent a lot of her money,” Matilda replied. “Well, we were wrong. Remember what she said to you about Boudicca? How she has the travelers in behind Adrian’s back? She hates him. It’s payback time. You saw how cool she was as she turned him in—except for her hands knotted in her lap.”
“She wasn’t telling us everything she knows,” Gareth said.
“She has another motive, yes. We were getting too close to it when we stopped talking about the murder and started talking about the travelers. She didn’t deny she’d been hiring them and lending them books. But there’s something else about them she doesn’t want us to know.” Matilda set her hand on Gareth’s arm. “The woman you saw in Nick’s caravan. Was it Della?”
In the shadows Gareth’s face was a mask, eyes opened wide, brows arched. “I don’t—I wasn’t. . . . It could have been, couldn’t it? She could have seen the yob cut Caesar, and knew I’d bring him round straightaway. So she rushed back here by car to meet me. I thought she seemed feverish that day, and Reynolds said she was ill.”
“It’s faster to go from Corcester to Durslow across country,” said Matilda, visualizing a map, “but you can get to the traveler’s camp faster by car. And you were nursing Caesar along. She had time.”
“She wants to get shut of Adrian so she can have Nick,” Gareth stated.
“This is looking more and more like a French bedroom farce, isn’t it? Now I’m even more interested in meeting Nick. His androgen levels must be off the scale.”
“Androgens?”
“Sex appeal, basically.”
“I’ve never understood why women fancy berks like him.”
Matilda shook her head. “The thrill of the forbidden, I think, along with a female genetic attraction toward the self-confident, and, one assumes, strong man. Remember the old ballad, ‘Blackjack Davy’? ‘Late one night the squire came home, inquiring for his lady. Some denied and some replied, she’s gone with Blackjack Davy’.”
“Oh, that one. He catches up with her and she ticks him off.”
“‘What care I for your goose-feather bed, the sheets turned down so bravely, when I could sleep on the cold, hard ground along with Blackjack Davy.’” Matilda smiled impishly. “And then there’s the male genetic attraction toward the bimbo, something I’ve never understood.”
“No brains, no backtalk,” Gareth told her with a grin. Sobering, he went on, “It’s no farce. Della might not be jealous of Adrian, with Linda or with Celia Dunning, for that matter. I reckon she’s right jealous of Nick, though. And if she’s not telling us everything she knows, he’s not telling us anything, is he?”
Several human shapes loomed out of the dusk, cat-calling to the couple in the parked car. Matilda turned around so that the light fell on her face. “Sorry,” said Bryan. “We thought we had an X-rated movie here. Didn’t realize it was just a study hall.” Jennifer and Manfred grimaced in embarrassment, Ashley winked conspiratorially, and the students strolled on by.
Matilda turned back to Gareth. She heard her own voice saying, “I think I’ve been insulted.”
For a long moment he looked at her, expression impenetrable. Then his lips parted and softened into a wry smile. “And me, as well.” His fingertips stroked the angle of her jaw, his touch as light and curious as a butterfly’s kiss.
Shivering with delight, she leaned toward him. For a long moment his warm breath bathed her face. Then, just as his parted lips were closing in on hers, she caught herself and turned aside. “No. Not now.”
“No.” His mouth closed and tightened. He glanced toward the hotel door, which was just swinging shut behind Ashley. “We have several things that need doing.”
“Like phoning Emma,” said Matilda.
“Right. I’ll make the call from my room, less chance of anyone overhearing.” With a strobe-like flash of the ceiling light, they climbed out of the car. “Are you coming?” Gareth asked.
“In a few minutes.”
“Stay nearby.” He headed toward the hotel, his stride measured and purposeful, his body straight but far from stiff.
It’s not, Matilda thought, as though she were robbing any cradles. Gareth was an adult, even if the inner child still wriggled through his defenses from time to time. Fewer years separated her from him than separated Marcus from Branwen. . . . That was another time, if not another place.
Matilda crossed the street in front of the hotel and stood on the sidewalk that ran beside the cottages and the bowling green. She put her hand in her pocket and closed her fingers around the spindle.
She saw the fort, its walls almost complete behind their scaffolding. In the setting sun of her vision, their shadow stretched far across the green turf. Beyond the shadow stood two tall men. Their long blond hair was stiffened by lime, so that it resembled the tail of the horse whose halter one of them held. Their cloaks fluttered in the breeze. Atop the walls several guards leaned on their spears and watched.
The gates of the fort opened a crack. Branwen stepped outside. She was pushing a small handcart, an ancestor of a wheelbarrow. Upon it sat a wicker basket apparently filled with soiled linen. But if the basket held laundry or cast-off garments, the cloth was oddly heavy. Branwen had to throw her entire weight against the handles of the cart to move it down the muddy path.
Without a backward look at the fort she joined the men. One of them relieved her of the cart. The other boosted her onto the horse’s back. They led her away from the eye of the sun, toward the night. . . .
The countryside plunged into a darkness cut only by torchlight within the fort and starlight overhead. Voices came to Matilda’s ears, at first faintly, then more strongly, until she felt as though the speakers stood next to her, invisible in the night.
“The sentries saw her leave,” Marcus was saying.
“You told them to let her come and go as she pleased,” said Claudia. “She left of her own will. She’s returned to her people.”
“The lock on the temple treasury was broken open by a chisel. The torcs have been stolen.”
“They’ve returned to their people, too.”
Silence, strumming with tension. Then Marcus said in a strangled voice, “The Brigantian envoy tells me that tomorrow is a Celtic holy day. That tomorrow there will be a great sacrifice. That it is not for us to interfere.”
“It isn’t. The gold doesn’t belong to Rome, any more than Branwen belongs to you. Let this savage land claim its own, Marcus.”
“As you claim me?”
“If God wills it. If He will forgive us both.”
Marcus sighed, the breath as long and agonized as the last breath of a dying man. Or as the first breath of one re-born.
The breath dwindled into time past. The night thinned into dusk. Matilda was standing on the sidewalk. The momentum of a passing truck tugged at her skirt and its roar deafened her. Watkins walked by and said, “Good evening, Dr. Gray.”
Her throat was too clogged to speak. Her shoulders were bowed beneath the burden of sacrifice. A white horse, she thought, picking its path from Durslow Edge to Shadow Moss. A pale horse, with its pale rider named Death.
Stooping, she buried the spindle in the mud beside the gate. Even as she turned toward the welcoming lights of the Green Dragon, Matilda wondered if there would be space on Durslow tomorrow for not only the warm bodies of the living but for the wraiths of the immortal dead as well.
Chapter Sixteen
The telephone went several times. Gareth was about to give it up when Emma’s breathless voice answered. “Yeh?”
“Gareth March here. Good evening.”
“Hello, luv!”
“My appointment in London tomorrow’s been canceled.
Is the ceremony still on?”
“Oh yes, that it is. Where shall I meet you—at the Green Dragon?”
Let’s not set Emma down in Clapper’s vicinity, Gareth told himself. “I need to photograph the church. I’ll meet you there at half past four. Can you leave work early?”
“The Dunning’s closing the shop at noon. I might even be able to hitch a ride with her, if she’ll let me sit in that posh car of hers. Says she always goes to the festival, it’s good for antique-hunting.”
Better and better. Gareth softened his voice until it was the texture of Della’s clotted cream. “Emma, I need your help. I’m afraid I wasn’t quite honest with you Wednesday.”
“You’re married.”
“No, no, no. It’s when I told you about the article I’ve been assigned. I’m writing on ‘Our Roman Heritage’ for the Times, yes. I’m also writing an article for the Sunburn about the murder of Linda Burkett.”
“Oooh! Dead thrilling!”
Gareth rolled his eyes heavenward, realized what he was doing, and quickly lowered them. “You gave me a lead when you told me about Dunning’s boyfriend. He might be involved. My editors need to know who he is. There could be a packet of quid involved. If you could search Dunning’s files for letters. . . .”
“No need, luv. I got curious, like, after we talked, so I hung about after closing tonight and actually saw the bloke. I reckon they’re having it off at this very minute.”
“Super! It’s Adrian Reynolds, isn’t it?”
“Yeh—looked like him, stoop-shouldered. . . . Well, it was just a glimpse, wasn’t it, through the window. He slipped the trout a paper folder and a box. I’ll watch for them when I do the filing tomorrow, shall I?”
“Brilliant! Emma, if you can bring them to me, I’ll make sure you’re rewarded.”
“I know just the thing. There’s posh hotel in Chester, the perfect place for a dirty weekend. . . .”
“Sorry,” Gareth said. “Call waiting. See you tomorrow, Emma. And thank you again.”
“Pleasure’s mine. Ta-ta.”
Gareth switched off his phone. He sat on the edge of his bed looking round the room but not quite focusing. Whether he was prepared to prostitute himself for Scotland Yard was a question that didn’t yet need answering. With any luck, once Emma found out who he really was he’d lose his appeal.
Gently he burped cucumber and strawberry jam. A walk, that was it, he needed to have a walk. Maybe Matilda would like to go, too. She couldn’t be eating supper with the students, not after that tea. Not that she starved herself like some women he’d known—Nicole, for example, he’d almost chipped a tooth on her rib cage. Or scraggy little Emma. It wasn’t natural for a woman to have a body like a twelve-year-old boy smuggling balloons in his shirt. Matilda’s body was well-proportioned, as a woman’s should be. He wondered which posh hotel in Chester Emma had been thinking of. Matilda would prefer to see Wales. Holywell. Gwytherin. Carnarvon. Cozy little inns with canopied beds.
Gareth found Matilda in the sitting room. She’d cleared away the magazines and was spreading pieces of graph paper across the coffee table. “Did you talk to Emma?” she asked.
“Yes,” he replied. “She actually saw Reynolds with Dunning tonight. He gave Dunning a folder and a box. Emma’s going to nick them for me.”
“All right! Well done!”
“It’s still not a complete case,” Gareth warned. “I hope the box and the folder turn out to be the final bit.”
“The last straw, or the keystone—whatever. Oh yes.” Matilda distributed photos of the dig round the table. “Emma’s sure the man was Reynolds? Might it have been Nick?”
“No, she wasn’t sure. But the man fits Reynolds’s description. And she’d have smelled Nick’s androgens from forty paces. Besides, how many women can a chap handle?”
“I’ve always wondered that.” Matilda looked up at Gareth as though he were an Old Master painting and she an art critic. “As for Reynolds being the murderer—I don’t know.”
They’d already quarreled once today, Gareth told himself. There was no need to go at it again because she was still doubtful. He changed the subject. “Would you like to have a walk, see if the Maypole is up yet?”
“Thank you, I’d love to, but the students are coming in here after supper for a mini-course in plotting and stratigraphy. Give the Maypole my regards.” Her blue eyes twinkled.
“I’ll do that,” he returned, and walked out into the night tempering his concerns with Emma and Reynolds, Della and Ashley and Nick, with musings on the ancient and honorable rites of spring.
* * * * *
It was barely light when Gareth awoke abruptly from a deep sleep. He heard a scratching and shuffling. Someone was in his room. . . . No. The noise came from his window.
He slipped from the bed, his heart thudding against his rib cage. Every object in the room was outlined with a thin translucent shimmer. The curtained window was a square of silver. He was on the second story, he reminded himself, with the ground and first floors between him and any evildoers. Only a monkey could climb the drainpipe or the ivy. He leaped forward and yanked the curtains aside.
A crow, the largest he’d ever seen, stood on the sill. It ruffled its feathers and looked at him with eyes like icy beads of jet.
With a convulsive shudder, Gareth shrank back. It was a derwyn corph, a corpse-bird. His grandmother had told him tale after tale of how the uncanny bird tapped on the window of someone who was about to die. . . . Steady on, he told himself. The festival preparations had disturbed one of the crows that lived in the tower of the church. There was nothing supernatural about this one. It wasn’t even tapping on the glass.
He flung open the window. With a harsh cry the crow launched itself into the air and went winging away toward Fortuna Stud. Gareth leaned over the sill watching the bird until it disappeared, the only moving thing in the mist-shrouded silence of dawn. The chill of the air drew gooseflesh from his naked torso. He slammed the window, went back to bed, and pulled the covers to his chin. But still he felt cold.
* * * * *
The tea was hot and milky sweet. Gareth downed his first cup and poured a second before he told Matilda about the crow. “There I was,” he finished, “looking forward to a nice lie-in, and the damned bird knocks me up.”
“A bird of ill-omen,” she replied. “Did it give you nightmares?”
“No,” he lied, and ducked her knowing look. They finished their late breakfasts and wandered out onto the street to discover that the mist had cleared, leaving the morning polished by sunshine.
Whistling, Clapper was setting up a sandwich board advertising his menu. One of the cottage-owners across the street hung a banner over his wall proclaiming, “Parking, £1". The lawn bowlers, kitted out in straw hats and white jackets, were setting up a souvenir stand. From atop the fort Gareth and Matilda watched Reynolds canter toward the river, Gremlin’s coat gleaming in the sunshine.
“Hi ho Silver and away,” Matilda said.
“When he gets back,” said Gareth, “his head will be well and truly in the noose. Not literally, more’s the pity. People who play dangerous games have to pay the price when they lose.”
“Does that mean us, as well?” Matilda asked.
“We’re not going to lose.” Gareth turned to see several of the American students, along with some local youths, hiking up the side of the hill. They were carrying bits and pieces of silver-painted plastic armor and an assortment of bed sheets. “Looks to be another Roman invasion.”
“Clapper’s idea,” said Matilda. “He was asking my advice last night. The kids are going to dress up as the ancient citizens of Cornovium and show tourists around the dig—in the process making sure no one steps on the edge of a trench or makes off with bits of inscription.”
“Tell them to mind the ghosts.” Gareth left her to run through the script with the impromptu guides and strolled toward the town. Gaily-colored streamers fluttered from the top of the Maypole. T
he vicar was supervising a squad of stained-glass-window washers.
Ashley stood looking at the book shop’s display of volumes on history and folklore. “Good morning,” she said. “Cool books, huh?”
“I don’t think I’ve read a one of them,” he replied.
“I’ve seen a few. Nick has most of them in his caravan. . . .” She shot a glance at Gareth, half-defiant, half-pleading. “He’s a real scholar, you know.”
“Ah—yes.” We’ll see, he told himself, and went on, “Did Matilda give you the mobile phone?”
“Yes, she did, said she bought it for me specially. Thanks.”
“Well, take care.” It would’ve been easier to throw himself on a grenade to save Ashley’s life than to send her to do his work for him. Gritting his teeth, he went on his way.
After roaming through the town and stopping into a cafe for a coffee he returned to the hotel feeling better. Emma would bring him the last piece, wouldn’t she? Ashley would be all right, they were only harmless nutters. It would all be over soon, the crow be damned.
He found Matilda with Ashley just inside the door, their gestures indicating a serious discussion of clothing styles. “Thanks,” the girl said, and bounded up the stairs.
“She wanted to know what she should wear tonight,” Matilda told Gareth. “I hope she keeps focusing on such mundane details, then maybe she can keep her head if anything goes wrong.”
“You’re expecting something to go wrong, are you?” Gareth asked.
“Yes.” The corners of Matilda’s mouth tucked themselves in, producing a stiff upper lip.
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