The early excitement dwindles out into the hard grind of slow, detailed work.
It’s six in the evening.
McGinn says goodbye to us, as we stand by Jones’s car in a slant of evening sun. We all say the right things. Things with a general motif of ‘We’ll get the bastard yet.’
And maybe. Maybe we will.
Jones and I drive home, gathering back those long unspooled miles. Five hours in Jones’s blackly glossy nutshell of a car.
We don’t talk much.
Somewhere near Nottingham, we eat a hamburger. Dead food under a dead light.
Back in Durham, Jones had fired up the sound system with country music and said, ‘Do you mind?’. I didn’t answer and didn’t mind, but by the time we pass Birmingham, I reckon I’d sooner push drawing pins into my eye sockets than listen to another damn singer telling me about whiskey and dirt roads and that l’il ol’ sweetheart waiting home for me.
As we swing, finally, on to the M4, Jones says, ‘Almost there now.’
I say, ‘His phone data, sir. Would you mind if I had a crack at that?’
He turns to stare.
The car, inevitably, has black leather seats and Jones creaks a little as he turns. I keep my eyes on the road, because someone ought to.
‘You want to take charge of the phone data?’ he says.
He asks not because he misunderstood my, relatively simple, question but because ploughing through phone data is notoriously the most boring job of the many oceanically boring jobs it is our pleasure and duty to perform.
‘Yes, please.’
He creaks back round in his seat. Eyes front once again.
‘Yes, of course.’
It’s touching midnight when he drops me at my door. Says good night.
‘And, look, I thought your behaviour up there was very professional. I’ll make a note of that for the record too.’
I’m just temporarily speechless. I suppose this is him trying to compensate me for that written warning. Recompense paid in the same coin. But, Himmeldonnerwetter, the man is patronising.
I stand there, by the open car door, gaping. Finally manage a, ‘Thank you, sir. Good night.’
Then Jones’s mutt – collared, leashed and muzzled – wags her tail, licks her chops and trots obediently in to bed.
25
Gheerbrant doesn’t crack. Doesn’t talk.
McGinn put pressure on him all right. Went straight to the university authorities. Explained that Gheerbrant was withholding information from a murder enquiry. The authorities asked Gheerbrant if that was true. Found that it was. And suspended him.
Jones is now of the view – which isn’t an idiotic one, just a wrong one – that Gheerbrant is somehow the mastermind of the two killings. So he Joneses around. Tries to connect Wormold with Gheerbrant. Visits Wormold in custody. Does things with vehicle registrations, CCTV, and Lord knows what else.
When he talks to me, which is still delightfully rare, he is mostly anxious to know if I can find anything that links Gheerbrant’s damn phone with Antony Wormold. He thinks that’s what I’m up to.
I say, ‘Not yet, sir, but I’m on it.’
He pats my head and gives me a dog biscuit.
I work hard, but my best work is done outside the office, with Katie for the most part.
We know what we have to make now.
We’ve already found a jeweller. A blacksmith. Have started to source materials.
Those things aren’t easy and Katie’s expertise is essential at every stage. To take just one example: the blacksmithery needs to be done by someone working with the exact right tools and techniques of Dark Age Britain. Not just that, but we need to work with actual Dark Age iron that hasn’t been corrupted by any later, foreign material. What’s more, because soot from the fire may affect the chemical composition of the metal, the furnace has to be fired with logs sourced from south Wales, using only trees that were native in the fifth century. Katie even gets the blacksmith to dress as she wants.
‘No cotton. No modern fibres. Wool, leather, or nothing, I’m afraid. You get one bit of polyester in the metal and some trace of it could show up if you looked hard enough.’
Our blacksmith, owning no woollen underpants, tells us he works dressed in leather boots, a leather apron and nothing else.
He sends us a sample of his furnace ash and Katie tests it against the ash found in Dinas Powys. When the first set of results comes back with some anomalies, she tweaks the venting arrangements of the blacksmith’s fire to get a better carbon balance. I don’t even understand the detail, but she does and that’s all that matters.
We get a design too.
A drawing of what the final piece will look like.
It looks good to me, but I know nothing.
I ask Katie for her opinion.
She says, ‘Yes. Good. I think good . . .’
‘But?’
‘We need to ask George. This isn’t just about history, is it? Not just about archaeological precision. We need this to be right in terms of the oral tradition. The myth.’
I laugh at her. Tell here that she’s backtracking on all that early hostility to the idea of a historical Arthur. Tell her she’s going to lose her professional reputation completely over this.
She laughs. Shrugs. Doesn’t deny it.
And, ten days after that second Gheerbrant interview, we drive north.
Brecon.
Builth.
Llanidloes.
Camlan.
A din of swords, a clatter of shields.
Up the Abercywarch valley to Bowen’s farm.
It’s a proper Welsh spring day. Blue sky alternating with sparkling silver showers.
I sort of expected Bowen to be in farmer-mode, but today it’s his wife, Janice, who’s out in the fields and her husband – dark suit, clerical collar, and shoes that, but for a crusted tidemark of mud, are almost smart – meets us at the door.
Because the sky is blue and the sunshine brilliant and the fields aflare with buttercups and dancing lambs, we don’t go inside straight away. Just stand outside and gaze.
Katie has given up the ski stick for a crutch now. Bowen looks at it, wondering if he should ask.
I say, ‘Katie is in the early stages of motor neurone disease, but she doesn’t like talking about it. Best thing to do is say, “That’s really tough, Katie. That’s awful,” then leave it there.’
He does say that. Uses those exact words, but he hugs her too. Gives her ever-thinner frame a big, squashy, lifting-the-feet-off-the-ground hug. When he’s done, he has to settle her carefully back again, because her balance isn’t good.
She grimaces a smile, but is touched, not upset.
We go in. The hurly-burly of Bowen’s study. Books and papers and old sermons and a sheep’s skull and a green baize writing table.
Bowen looks at us. Says, ‘Well?’
So.
So.
I clear my throat and tell them what I’m thinking.
Who killed Gaynor Charteris and why.
Who killed John Oakeshott and why.
What I think Alden Gheerbrant is up to.
I say, ‘It was reasonably clear what all this had to be about, but I didn’t know what the actual thing was, the object. Now I do and, to be honest, it was blindingly obvious. But of course, my job is to find the actual killers. I don’t really see a way to do that, so I think we need to go at it in reverse. Get them to find us.’
Katie, who knows most of this, sits there with her hand over her mouth, a shine in her eyes.
Bowen says, ‘Get the killers to find you? A police officer?’
‘Yes. I mean, I probably won’t shout about the whole police officer thing.’
‘So – what? – you’re going to put an ad up somewhere?’
Katie laughs.
‘George, you have to understand that this woman is batshit crazy. I mean, think of the craziest person you’ve ever met. The craziest person and the craziest ide
a. Then double them both, cube the result and what you’ve got is sitting in front of you.’
George stares at Katie. Stares at me. And back again.
‘Do you mean what I think you mean?’
Katie nods. ‘Exactly. Yes. She wants to make—’
I interrupt. Say, ‘Caledfwlch.’
Katie: ‘What?’
‘Caledfwlch. The damn thing is Welsh, not some fake Latin, medieval French knock-off.’
Katie says, ‘Crazy: I told you. The High Princess of Planet Nuts.’
That’s more accurate than Katie knows, so I just accept the orb and sceptre of my new realm.
Bowen: ‘Katie’s right, is she? You want to make Caledfwlch?’
‘Yes.’
‘And Katie’s going to help you?’
‘She has helped and is helping. But you’re the Arthurian. We need you too.’
‘That’s why you’re here?’
‘Yes.’
‘Well, bloody hell. I’m in. I’m bloody in.’
We turn to detail.
The make or break.
The art and science of top-end fakery.
Katie tells us about the massive industry now dedicated to churning out fake Chinese antiquities.
‘The big auction houses routinely test pottery using thermoluminescence, a method of dating items with a high degree of accuracy. Trouble is, the fakers have taken to re-using old-clay – basically material discarded by the Ming dynasty potters, or whoever. So when that stuff is tested, it shows up as old, because it is old, yes, just completely fake. And if they can’t get enough old clay, they irradiate the clay they do have, until it performs the same way under a thermoluminescence test. Same thing with the minerals used for the paints. The fakers go to the exact same spots that the original craftsmen once used. Mix their paints in the exact same way. You can get the best expert in the world to examine those pieces and they’ll most likely be fooled. The result is that items are being sold for a hundred thousand dollars and more that might have been created just a few months previously. There are way more fake Ming vases being sold than actual real ones – and no one can tell the two apart. There’s no difference.’
Bowen asks about metal. ‘Is it the same there?’
Katie: ‘Pretty much. We’re being really careful to use ancient source materials, and ancient manufacturing techniques, and all that. People will be able to do all the spectography they want. What they’ll see will look Dark Age through and through, and that’s not surprising. It is Dark Age.’
We talk design.
Katie, working with her blacksmith and her jeweller, already has a design drawn up like an architect’s blueprint. Life-size, so we have to unroll the paper on the floor. Weight it down with books and, on one corner, Bowen’s blessed sheep skull.
Laid out like this, and even in outline, the thing looks beautiful.
Jet and glass and horn and patterning.
A dark and dangerous beauty.
We talk details. Adjust the draft.
And Katie’s right. Bowen’s knowledge is essential. Every suggestion he has, every tweak, enriches the design. And I realise: this isn’t just about history. It’s about Bowen’s side of things too. The myth. The tradition. The beliefs.
We begin to shape our Caledfwlch until it starts to feel absolutely right.
Right for the age. For Arthur.
Then Bowen says, ‘And gold. There has to be gold.’
‘Katie?’
She nods. ‘I suppose so, yes. I mean, really, this is a utilitarian item and one that’s quite likely to get broken in use. So normally, sure, you’d expect some decoration, but only involving relatively cheap materials. Maybe some type of copper alloy. But—’, sighing, ‘on the other hand . . .’
Bowen nods and completes her thought. ‘Exactly. This is Caledfwlch. This is Arthur.’
‘Yes, yes, it is. So, we should probably have gold in there. Unfortunately.’
I say, ‘OK. And sourcing gold? How do we do that? Where would the gold even have come from?’
‘Really, slave! Your man would have got it from Wales, of course. The old Roman gold mines at Dolaucothi.’
‘And that’s still going, is it? The gold mine?’
‘Hardly. The mine was abandoned shortly after the Romans left. Gold was mined in north Wales until quite recently, but that’s the wrong part of Wales and, anyway, modern methods of extracting gold are way too sophisticated. You need proper fifth century Dolaucothi gold. Sorry.’
‘So we can buy some?’
Katie grimaces. ‘I doubt it. Even from north Wales, where the gold was more abundant, prices are ridiculous. For Dolaucothi gold?’ She puffs out. ‘Don’t know. It’s extremely rare. Like, crazily rare. The Queen probably has some. The British Museum. I wouldn’t even know who else.’
We talk about that for a bit. Get nowhere.
I remember that email of Charteris’s.
Medraut’s obsession with getting the ‘right gold’ is taking us into dangerous areas. I mean, if he wants gold, why not just get some gold?
I didn’t understand that at the time. I understand it now.
And Medraut/Mordred was right. We don’t just need gold. We need the right gold.
Damn.
Bowen goes away. Makes some phone calls. Parish stuff. He starts fiddling with tomorrow’s sermon.
When he returns, he brings bread, butter, cheese and a dish of soft new asparagus. ‘From one of my parishioners,’ he explains. ‘Bribing his way to the Kingdom of Heaven.’
We eat the asparagus with our fingers. Butter, pepper, nothing else.
Bowen, I think, believes we’re done. He wants to turn to his sermon. But we’re not done. We’re not even halfway.
I say, ‘George, it’s all very well to make it, but where do we find it?’
‘What?’
‘We need to “find” the damn thing, remember. We can’t just dig it up in someone’s back garden.’
‘Oh, now there’s a point,’ Bowen says, his eyes agleam, his sermon forgotten.
I say, ‘Camlan? Arthur’s last battle?’
Bowen thinks about that, but a first gleam of excitement fades into a heavy shake.
No: the site has never been excavated.
No: there’s never been solid evidence of a battle there.
No: there are no digs scheduled there, so any ‘find’ would need to be truffled up by a local farmer, which is hardly the kind of thing we’re going for.
We rule out Camlan.
I say, ‘Well, what about, I don’t know, Camelot? Where’s that?’
Bowen says: ‘No, no good. That place is a myth, nothing more.’
‘What about his burial site? Avalon?’
Katie snorts. ‘No way. You’ll find the Tooth Fairy sooner than you find Avalon.’
‘George?’
‘Sorry, Fiona. The Saxon’s right. The name “Avalon” derives from the Old Welsh for the Isle of Apples, but it’s probably just invented. The Glastonbury associations are all piffle.’
So Camlan is a bust.
Ditto Camelot.
Ditto Avalon.
That leaves just one site. Perhaps the best one. The site that, for perhaps two or three short decades, seemed to have changed the course of history.
Badon Hill. Mount Badon. Mons Badonicus.
The battle in which Arthur, reputedly, slaughtered the Saxon host. Halted the English advance by a generation or more.
I say, ‘So Badon Hill. Where is it?’
Katie says, ‘No idea. None. No archaeological evidence for the battle has ever been found.’
I look at Bowen. Push the same question at him.
‘Yes, look, Katie’s right in a way. There’s nothing solid, but . . .’
He starts to talk. His version of history, not Katie’s. Intelligent conjecture based on the scraps and fragments available.
‘Look, very roughly, the Anglo–Saxon invasions started in the south-east and spread outwards from
there. So if you want a decisive battle, it’s most likely somewhere on the curve of that outward spread. That rules out anywhere in the north or west and of course, the battle is often referred to as a siege, an actual siege. So: who would besiege a mountain? Answer, no one, unless there was a fort on it. And given the era, that’s going to mean a traditional hill fort, something like Dinas Powys, in fact. And then you have to remember, this was a big battle. Big enough that it destroyed the Saxons for a generation. So this isn’t some minor hill fort we’re talking about. It’s got to be a big one. Important.’
Katie sighs. ‘God. Yes. OK. I agree with that. That’s all sound logic.’
Bowen grins. Gets a map. And they start to work. Pencilling in possible locations. Crouching over the map adjusting the lines.
Because the Celtic–British – my ancestors – were Christian, they had different burial rituals from the pagan Anglo–Saxons. As a result, the spread of pagan graveyards across the country gives one of the best clues as to the spread of the invaders themselves. The curve of invasion mapped out with corpses.
Bowen and Katie bicker gently, but start to build a list of possible locations. It takes time but, already, a few names start tumbling into our lap.
Maiden Castle.
Cadbury Castle.
Poundbury Hill.
Bathampton Down.
Forts. Battles. Sieges.
And – somewhere here, on this much-pencilled map – lies the fabled Mount Badon.
Where the Saxons were slaughtered. Where Arthur reigned supreme.
Where this case will meet its climax.
26
I’m good with corpses, but don’t offer much when it comes to ancient battlegrounds.
I listen to Katie and Bowen for a while, but end up wandering outside. I spy Janice mending a hedge in a field up the valley, so pull my boots on and walk over.
Janice greets me in a friendly way. The collie, Tidy, sniffs, then disregards me.
To his aristocratic sense of hierarchy, I rate a little lower than dachshund.
I help out.
A lot of leggy taller trees have been sawn back to chest height and, to fill any gaps, Janice is planting saplings of hawthorn and field maple. She plants them, stakes them, winds those odd plastic protector things around them.
The Deepest Grave: Fiona Griffiths Crime Thriller Series Book 6 (Fiona Griffiths 6) Page 17