“That is exactly what I was about to point out,” intervened Deacon Lepidus. “All this is just foolish speculation to show how clever the woman is.”
“I was interested when I said that the abbey library had some old charts of the town and turned to get them,” went on Fidelma calmly. “You immediately said that the charts did not date to the time of your ancestor. How would you know unless you had first checked out everything? You seem to know much of the history of the town as well. When I was speculating on the destruction of buildings in the town since the coming of the Jutes, you were quick to point out that while buildings might be destroyed the foundations could remain. You emphasized that the text claimed the eagle was hidden in the hypocaust and thus in the foundations. So it proved . . . as if you knew it already. The house had long since vanished and a new granary stood on the site. But a small part of the villa, one room, stood and under it was the hypocaust. Amazing.”
“It is still speculation,” observed the archbishop.
“Indeed. I have had some dealings with the people of this country. The owner of the granary did not seem perturbed at our demands to search under his property. Nor surprised by what we found there. Whereas some might have demanded either the property or some high reward, the man Wulfred was quite happy for Lepidus to take eagle and vellum away on payment of a few coins. Not typical merchant’s behavior.”
“Not typical but not proof of any wrongdoing,” Archbishop Theodore pointed out.
“I concede that. When we found the alcove in which the eagle and the second vellum were, I was surprised that the interior was really damp. Not just damp but almost running with water. My hand was covered in water as if I had immersed it.”
“What does that prove?”
“While a metal object might have survived longer in those conditions, it would be very rusty. After all, bronze is not gold and is liable to deterioration in such conditions. The other item—the vellum with writing on it—that would hardly have lasted months let alone centuries.” Fidelma turned to the deacon. “You were not that clever, Deacon Lepidus.”
The deacon was finally looking less than confident.
Brother Eadulf was smiling broadly.
“My lord Archbishop, if we could persuade Deacon Lepidus to allow us to have his precious eagle for an hour, there are smithies of quality in this town who would, I am sure, be able to estimate whether the bronze was cast over five centuries ago, or whether it was recently cast.”
“That is a good idea,” agreed the Archbishop Theodore.
Fidelma intervened with a quiet smile.
“I am sure that Deacon Lepidus would not wish to trouble us to do so. It is too time-consuming and wearisome. I am sure that on reflection that he would prefer to admit the truth. The truth of what he was attempting was plain from the very moment he presented me with the first vellum in the abbey library. The fact that it was a fake leapt from the text immediately that I saw it.”
Archbishop Theodore’s eyes had widened. Brother Eadulf smiled brightly.
“Do you mean that when you saw that the Latin was so modern, you realized that it could not have been written five centuries ago?”
Fidelma shook her head.
“When I read how Cingetorix talked about the position of his house, the forgery stood out like a sore thumb.”
Archbishop Theodore was shaking his head.
“But you found the hypocaust of an ancient Roman building exactly where he said it was. And there was the ruined defensive tower on the old city wall, which is marked number ‘eight.’ Each tower bears a Roman numeral.”
“Surely, and his house was by the northeast corner of a church being raised by Christians to Martin of Gaul, whom we call the Blessed Martin of Tours,” agreed Fidelma.
“So? What is significant about that? There had been Christians and Christian communities in Britain for about a hundred years before the time that the Ninth Legion was said to have disappeared here,” pointed out Brother Eadulf.
“Indeed. But Martin of Tours, who had such a profound effect on the Christian communities not only in Britain but in my own land of the five kingdoms of Éireann, was not born until a century and a half after the events supposedly recounted by Cingetorix. Deacon Lepidus had done some research, but not enough. I went along with him to see where he was leading me. In my own language, Archbishop, there is a saying: is fearrde a dhearcas bréug fiadhnuise—a lie looks the better of having a witness. He wanted me to be witness to his lie, to his fraud. But even a clever man cannot be wise all the time.”
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The stories contained in this volume first appeared as follows:
“Whispers of the Dead” was originally published in Murder Most Catholic, ed. Ralph McInery. Nashville, Tennessee, USA, Cumberland House, Autumn, 2002.
“Corpse on a Holy Day” was originally published in And the Dying is Easy, ed. Joseph Pittman and Annette Riffle. New York, USA, Signet Books, May, 2001.
“The Astrologer Who Predicted His Own Murder” was originally published in Death By Horoscope, ed. Anne Perry. New York, USA, Carroll & Graf, July, 2001.
“The Blemish” was originally published in The Brehon, Vol. I, No. 3, September 2002.
“Dark Moon Rising” was originally published in The Brehon, Vol. II, No. 3, September, 2003.
“Like a Dog Returning . . .” was originally published in Murder Most Medieval, ed. Martin H. Greenberg & John Helfers. Nashville, Tennessee, USA, Cumberland House, June, 2000.
“The Banshee” will be published in Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, February, 2004.
“Who Stole the Fish?” was originally published in Murder Through the Ages, ed. Maxim Jakubowski. London, UK, Headline, November, 2000.
“Scattered Thorns” was originally published in Murder Most Celtic, ed. Martin H. Greenberg. Nashville, Tennessee, USA, Cumberland House, May 2001.
“Gold at Night” was originally published in Great Irish Drinking Stories, ed. Peter Haining. London, UK, Souvenir Press, Autumn, 2002.
“Death of an Icon” was originally published in The Mammoth Book of Historical Whodunnits II, ed. Mike Ashley. London, UK, Robinson, August, 2001.
“The Lost Eagle” was originally published in The Mammoth Book of Ancient Roman Whodunnits, ed. Mike Ashley. London, UK, Robinson, Autumn, 2003.
“Cry ‘Wolf!’,” “The Fosterer” and “The Heir-Apparent” have all been written as original contributions to this volume.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Peter Tremayne is the fiction-writing pseudonym of Peter Berresford Ellis, a leading Celtic scholar. Born of an Irish father and English mother in Coventry, England, and taking his degrees in Celtic studies, he has published over a score of books in the field of Celtic studies. These include The Ancient World of the Celts (1998), The Celtic Empire (1990), Celtic Women (1995), Celt and Roman (1998), Hell or Connaught: the Cromwellian Colonisation of Ireland (1975), A Dictionary of Irish Mythology (1987), The Celtic Chronicle: Retellings of Celtic Myths and Legends (1999) among others. He has received numerous awards and honors for his work, which has been translated into more than a dozen European languages as well as Japanese.
He began writing fiction as Peter Tremayne in 1977, mainly in the field of heroic and supernatural fantasy, using Celtic myth and legend as background. His Lan-Kern sword and sorcery trilogy (1980–1983) and books such as Raven of Destiny (1984), Ravenmoon [US title: Bloodmist] (1988) and Island of Shadows (1991) secured his reputation in the genre. No less than half a dozen of his short stories have been chosen to appear in collections of Great Irish Stories, and his own collection of stories, Aisling and Other Irish Tales of Terror (1992), won high literary praise. He began to write the Sister Fidelma mysteries in 1993 primarily to illustrate the role of women as lawyers in seventh-century Ireland. The stories have attracted a wide following on both sides of the Atlantic and in translation. The Web site for the International Sister Fidelma Society may be found at www.sisterfidelma.com.
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The International Sister Fidelma Society is an organization devoted to the readers of Peter Tremayne’s Sister Fidelma Mysteries. Members receive three copies per year of its official publication, The Brehon. The magazine is primarily a forum for the fans of the series, containing articles, competitions, readers’ letters, and photographs—including special contents such as the first-ever publication of a Fidelma short story,“Dark Moon Rising,” (September 2002), among others.
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Whispers of the Dead Page 36