Four Thousand Days, page 11
‘The left, Dr Murray.’ The girl was sure.
Andrew Rose snorted. Veronica had, after all, a fifty-fifty chance of being correct.
‘Now,’ Margaret said. ‘We are sitting in more or less a circle. I want you all to close your eyes.’
They all did, except for Janet, Veronica and Piers Gibbs, whose first tutorial this was.
‘It’s all right,’ Margaret assured them. ‘All will become clear.’
They closed their eyes. ‘Now,’ she said, ‘Anthea, pass the pommel to your left – that’s Mr Swinscombe, who will take it … that’s right. Hold it, Mr Swinscombe, feel the weight in your hand, the smoothness of it. Now, let your mind wander, back, back through time. You are standing on a shingle beach. It’s cold. Colder than the weather you’re used to. The sea is to your right. You’ve crossed that sea recently. And you’re quite relieved because the land you’re standing on isn’t actually at the end of the world after all, despite the rumours. But then, it’s not very welcoming, either. Take it, Miss Friend.’
Angela did so.
‘All around you is the camp. It’s an outpost. Smaller than most. Ahead is a trackway – there are no roads yet, unlike the Gaul that you probably know well. To your left, forest, dark, tangled, impenetrable. There aren’t even any trackways there. But you know you have to go forward, because that’s the Roman way. Mr Baxter, take the pommel. Your officers have told you this was the way the divine Julius came, making for a fording place on the river he called Thamesis. You know the fleet is to your right, Mr Baxter – floating on what we call the Medway – so what have you to fear? Pass the pommel.’
Still, all eyes were shut tight, the only sound in the room the hypnotic roll of Margaret Murray’s voice. ‘Mr Sheringham, you have everything to fear. There are madmen here and wild, shrieking women who worship the tree and the mistletoe and the stone. They crouch in sacred groves and they bury heads in holy water. Be afraid, Mr Sheringham, as you pass the pommel, because there are things that lie ahead that you cannot know, cannot understand. The wicker men, for example, and your comrades burning. No one here … take the pommel, Mr Rose … no one here speaks your language. No one cares whether you live or die. You are the enemy. There are the painted men to the far north; the Attacotti who eat the bodies of the men they have killed. Listen … listen, Miss Halifax, as you take the pommel, feel it bouncing on your left hip as you march … you can hear the moaning of the sea and the creak of leather; the tramp of the caligae and the shouts of the optio at your back. “Keep those lines straight. Where do you think you are, man? Fasten that strap, soldier. Or Teutates will get you!”’
Veronica couldn’t help herself. Her eyes flickered open and she expected to see a gruff centurion in front of her, grim-faced, the weak British sun glinting off the falerae on his chest, the cruel wind ruffling the horsehair of his helmet. Instead, all she saw was a little lecturer in archaeology, smiling at her.
‘And …’ Margaret paused as the pommel came full circle, ‘We’re back.’
All eyes opened and everybody fidgeted, slightly embarrassed at the places that their lecturer’s voice had taken them to. Some of the old hands remembered other days like this; how, indeed, could you forget the time that Archie Mulholland had abandoned all decency and stripped off, running out into Gower Street before he could be prevented? Telling the policeman on point duty that he was a Viking berserker had cut no ice at all.
‘Now, I think,’ Margaret said, ‘we’re ready for Rome. Essential to get into the mood, don’t you think?’ She was passing out slips of paper in all directions. ‘I wouldn’t presume to put anyone on the spot,’ she said, and Rose and Crouch exchanged glances with a simultaneous roll of the eyes. ‘So I’d like you to work in pairs and do some translations for me. I’ll give you … ooh, ten minutes.’
She bustled away along the corridor to coax that wretched kettle, the one with the mind of its own, into action. She hated not being able to offer tea to her class, but that was hospitality taken too far and the university in general frowned on such things. She heard the silence in Petrie’s study rise to whispered mutterings, then audible discussion and finally, Anthea Crossley at her best.
‘Don’t talk utter bilge, Crouch. That’s the subjunctive there or General Baden-Powell wears women’s frocks!’
‘Come off it, Anthea,’ Crouch came back. ‘You’re supposed to have gone to a good school …’
The arrival of Margaret Murray put an end to the usual verbal brawl but no sooner had she come back into the room than an older, altogether more male, figure followed.
‘Oh, Margaret … er … Miss … er, Dr Murray, I’m sorry. I’d forgotten you were holding court today. I can’t find my copy of Westropp anywhere and I know Flinders has one. Morning, gentlemen.’
There were murmurs of reply from the men in the room. The women sat there open-mouthed. Margaret Murray knew the spine of every book in Flinders Petrie’s inner sanctum by heart and she reached instinctively for the tome in question. ‘Here we are, Norman … er … Mr … Professor Minton.’ Then she held it just out of his reach. ‘But, now you’re here,’ she said, ‘as our resident Roman expert; sit yourself down and help us with our Latin, will you?’
‘Oh, now, Dr Murray …’ Minton blustered.
‘Oh, please, Professor,’ Andrew Rose said. ‘We’d so value your expertise.’
For a moment, Minton looked unsure. Then he folded. ‘Oh, very well,’ he said. ‘But I usually like a little more notice than this. What do we have?’
‘Well’ – Margaret resumed her seat – ‘as I said to these people when we started this morning, this tutorial will not be the usual fare. The pieces of paper you have before you, ladies and gentlemen, are copies of those taken from a box belonging to another student, not of this college. I regret to have to inform you all that that student’s body was recently found on a beach in Kent.’
There was a stunned silence. Angela Friend found her voice first. ‘May I ask how it came into your possession, Dr Murray?’
‘You may.’ Margaret smiled at her and moved on. ‘I have, of course, already perused these papers myself and I must confess to being, on the whole, baffled by them.’
There were mutterings of dissent all round. Em-em might have her shortcomings – she could not, for example, see over the rail at Goodwood – but bafflement? Never.
‘Which is why Professor Minton’s arrival is so timely.’ She turned to him, hands in her lap, waiting for the great man to explain the origins of the universe.
‘So,’ Minton said, ‘let me see if I’ve got this straight. These papers, whatever they are, are a sort of last will and testimony to this poor girl?’
‘In a way,’ Margaret said.
‘She was, I assume, an archaeologist?’ Minton probed, fumbling in an inside pocket for his spectacles.
‘She was; from King’s.’
Minton looked aghast and crossed himself.
‘Quite,’ Margaret said solemnly.
‘Was she working on a project? I know we have that system, but do they?’
‘They do,’ Margaret told him. ‘The dead girl was based at Hampton-on-Sea, Herne Bay. She was working on what may have been an outpost of Reculver.’
‘Ah, Regulbium’ – Minton gave it its Roman name – ‘the most northerly of the Saxon Shore forts. Anything about the Baetasians here?’ He looked around him and met blank stares, even from Margaret, whose field, it must be said in all fairness, this was not.
‘Chaps from Denmark,’ Minton explained. ‘Auxiliary cohorts, following the eagle.’
Piers Gibbs and Janet Bairnsfather at least had no idea what the eminence before them was talking about; and the sheer immensity of arcane archaeology rose up before them like a brick wall.
‘Let me see.’ Minton helped himself to the nearest piece of paper. There were doodles all over it. He’d seen such hieroglyphs before, mostly signs of boredom from the pens of students attending his lectures – especially, had he ever cared to look closely enough, the pen of Andrew Rose. ‘Ah, yes, here we are. Oh, this is interesting; “II Aug …”, “Vesp …”, “alae auxiliae”. Yes, yes, all good stuff. Are these fragments the originals, Dr Murray? From the … erm … horse’s mouth, so to speak?’
‘No,’ Margaret said. ‘Copies, but good ones, I venture to say, with all due modesty! Could you translate, Professor? We have some freshmen here.’
‘Oh, certainly, certainly. Well, this is actually quite rare. Ground-breaking, in fact. “II Aug” is the Second Augusta Legion, one of four who invaded under Aulus Plautius in 43. Regulbium would have been a base for them before they moved west. “Vesp” is of course Vespasianus. I suppose you’d call him a colonel today; commanded the II Augusta.’
‘Was he the one who became emperor later, Professor?’ Veronica asked.
‘That’s right, my dear,’ Minton beamed, glad that somebody was paying attention. ‘He was also the first man in recorded history to invent the penny a pee machine for public toilets …’
Janet Bairnsfather blushed to her Presbyterian roots.
‘… Oh, not literally, of course, but he did place a tax on urine. The Romans were nothing if not earthy. And pretty good at making money, too. “Alae auxiliae” – Mr Crouch, you’re a graduate, for God’s sake. Have a stab, man.’
‘Er … auxiliary cavalry, Professor,’ Crouch came back at him.
‘Good. Good. Now, what have we here?’ Minton took up another of the scattered sheets and read aloud. “Me salutatium …” No, that can’t be right.’ He was frowning now. ‘And what’s this? “Non saxus in me …” Margaret, this is gibberish. You must have copied it wrongly.’
‘Indeed I did not do any such thing.’ Margaret didn’t say what she really felt, for fear of distressing the gentlemen present. ‘But that is more or less what I thought,’ she said. ‘I was hoping wiser eyes could see what I could not.’
‘“Me salutatium” is “my bow down”. My bow down? Doesn’t make sense.’ He took up another sheet. ‘Ah, now, here we go. “Regulbium …” Yes. Messengers have been sent to Reculver. Urgent. Oh.’ And he stopped dead.
‘What is it, Norman?’ Margaret asked.
‘Oh, it’s nothing,’ the professor said. ‘I must … This’ – he switched back to the earlier sheet – ‘this is a poem of sorts. Look, caesura, pes. It’s supposed to be declaimed, recited, sung, even.’
‘Is it a soldier’s song?’ Sheringham asked.
‘Well, it might be,’ Minton nodded, ‘but this is very definitely reference to the first century – and soon after the conquest. Is there anything else, Margaret? Inscriptions? Tablets? Anything of that sort?’
‘King’s didn’t seem to have anything else,’ she told him, ‘and I’ve been to the site itself, the one the poor girl was working on. Nothing.’
‘There’s erosion, though, isn’t there?’ Rose asked, ‘along that part of the coast?’
‘There is indeed,’ Minton said. ‘Who knows what’s been lost over time?’
‘Ah, the archaeologist’s dilemma,’ Margaret said.
‘This, though …’ Minton had gone back to the third sheet. ‘“Turbator Josephus …”’ and his voice trailed away. ‘I shall need more time, Margaret,’ he said stiffly, standing up. ‘Look, could I take these papers away? They’re probably the inconsequential ramblings of an undergraduate … oh, no offence to anyone.’
There were uneasy grins all round and someone muttered, ‘None taken.’
‘Feel free, Professor Minton,’ Margaret said. ‘We know, after all, where to find you. Here.’ She opened her bag, which was tucked under her chair, and took out a large, thick envelope. ‘Take the originals. I copied everything as I thought it should look, but perhaps something in the background I took to be dirt may have a bearing.’
‘Thank you,’ he said, taking the envelope and waiting by her chair.
‘Yes?’ She looked up.
‘Westropp?’
‘Oh, I am so sorry.’ She handed the book over and he tucked the envelope inside. ‘As you say, you know where to find me, so pop in at any time, see how I’m getting on.’ He looked round the room and tried not to see any women. ‘Yes, yes, indeed.’ And he left, humming to himself.
‘Next week,’ Margaret said, when the door had closed behind Minton, ‘we’ll be looking at the Iliad, Mr Crouch, so we’ll be back in your beloved Greece at last.’
‘Thank you, Dr Murray.’ Crouch half bowed and they stashed away their notebooks and made for the door.
‘Boss wants a word with you, Crawford.’ Sergeant Sadler, on the desk that morning, was a difficult man to read. That could mean ‘You’ve been promoted, son, and you’re probably in line for Commissioner’ or it could mean ‘Pack your waders, mate; it’s the horse troughs for you’. In the event, it was neither of the above … quite.
‘I’m afraid you’ve been over-zealous, lad.’ Athelgar Blunt was wreathed in pipe smoke, in his office on the first floor.
‘In what way, sir?’ Crawford felt obliged to ask.
‘In the way of getting right up the nose of a member of the public.’
‘Anybody in particular?’ It had to be said that Adam Crawford didn’t like Athelgar Blunt. Technically, he wasn’t even his boss, despite what Sergeant Sadler had said.
Blunt slammed his spare hand down on his desk so that the pens jumped and the inkwells rattled. ‘I wouldn’t be so flippant if I were you,’ he snarled. ‘For your information, the complainant is a Mr John Daventry, of …’
‘… Firtree Road, Isleworth. Yes, sir; I thought it might be.’
‘Mr Daventry is a property owner of some standing in this city,’ Blunt told him. He narrowed his eyes at the constable. ‘You’re not one of those Socialists, are you?’
‘No, I …’
‘One of the lumpenproletariat trying to lose their chains?’
‘No, I …’
‘Sneering at men like Mr Daventry because he has money and a bit of class?’
Crawford had had enough. ‘Mr Daventry,’ he told the detective levelly, ‘is an extortionist who charges obscene rents for slum properties. He is also – although I haven’t got hard evidence yet – a pimp, renting out his premises to prostitutes.’
‘Well, that’s it!’ Blunt screamed. ‘I was going to be generous, Crawford, and let this go. Now, I’m not. Let me remind you, once and for all, that you are uniform. You do not detect, in any shape or form. Leave that to the big boys. From now on, until hell freezes over, you are on traffic duty in Bloomsbury. I want you as far away from the Yard as I can put you without embarrassing the Force. And you step out of line there – if you so much as help an old lady across the road – your feet won’t touch, son. Do I make myself clear?’
‘Abundantly, Detective Inspector.’
Norman Minton was not an imaginative man, and that was a shame. He worked, and lived, and had his being amongst perhaps the most romantic men the world had ever seen; even the humblest of pedes two thousand years ago had a story to tell to freeze the blood, but Norman never heard them. Rome and its empire was facts, figures, rules, regulations to Norman Minton. It was stone. It was sometimes wood. It was, even more rarely than wood, fabric or parchment. But it had no voice.
Even so, his Latin was immaculate. He had gone to the sort of school where every declension was beaten into his head with a swipe of the ruler or the master’s palm. Amo. Smack! Amas. Thwack. Amat. Slap. Amamus, Amatis, Amant, gabbled quickly to cut down on blows. At first, it was just by rote. Then, one morning – he remembered it as if it were yesterday – the lines on the page had stopped being a code and begun to be words, a language he could hide in when the world got a bit much, when the chant of ‘Minty, Minty, Minty, Slow and Fat and Squinty’ had made him want to cry. It was good to be able to shout, ‘Es porcos et adipem totum olfacies.’ Calling them fat smelly pigs wasn’t high wit, but they didn’t know what he had said. That it got him beaten up more than once scarcely mattered. It was just good to know that he knew more than them. And while they were giggling over the silly translation for eleven-year-olds – ‘Caesar had some jam for tea; Pompey had a rat’ – Norman Minton overtook them all.
And yet again – he took a slurp of tea long gone cold and hardly noticed – he knew more than the others here at the college too. Margaret Murray was clever enough – for a woman, at any rate. The students. Well, perhaps one or two had a brain in their heads. But they had to ask him what it was all about. For years he had been a professor, and yet he was still Minty, slow and fat and squinty, even if he exercised religiously and the eye had been sorted out years ago, by the simple expedient of sticking plaster over his glasses.
He laid out the papers in any order, then looked at them, narrowing his eyes in thought, not because he was squinting. He hummed a little to himself and moved two papers, swapping them over. Then two more. And then two more. He smiled again and rubbed his hands. He was just too clever, sometimes.
He didn’t hear it coming. He certainly didn’t see it coming. But from behind, wingèd Mercury, messenger of the gods, swept through the air and struck him around the side of the head. In an involuntary movement, his arms swung up, then out and down, scattering the papers across the desk, spattering them with his blood. His head fell forward on to the desk and he looked at the small arc of his study that he could see from there. His books. His statuary. All his lovely things. He drew air into his lungs with an effort almost too much for his dying brain and breathed it out softly.
Only his murderer heard his dying words. And he didn’t understand them.
‘Vale,’ Norman Minton said. ‘Vale in sempiternum.’
Annie Scroggins had been a sweeper all her adult life. And for much of her childhood, come to that. She was nearing fifty now and, truth be told, the years of handling polished wood and lifting buckets had taken their toll. Her back clicked most mornings when she got up and there was an occasional numbness in her left leg. By evening, as it was now, her shoulders ached and she had to force her rheumatic fingers to pick up the screwed-up papers the students left behind.
