The Corpse with the Silver Tongue

by Cathy Ace

  “You enjoy your food,” he observed warmly.

  I chewed greedily, swallowed reluctantly, and smiled back. “You’re not wrong” was the only reply I was prepared to take the time to make, before picking up another beautifully marked shell in my left hand, plucking out its moist contents with the shell I now held in my right, and placing it onto my eager tongue. Heaven!

  Luckily Beni surrendered himself to full involvement with his pasta and we both ate hungrily for a good few minutes. As I picked out mussels and tossed them into my mouth, Beni orchestrated the most amazing display of pasta eating I have ever seen—if you want to be truly mesmerized and entertained, watch a heart-wrenchingly good-looking Italian man eating linguine—the things he could do with a fork and his tongue! I kept thinking about the eating/seduction scene from the movie Tom Jones. Of course, Beni and I weren’t seducing each other, nor were we tearing at chicken legs as though they were bodices and breeches, but I have to admit that my senses ran at “overload” for quite some time. Maybe the wine was going straight to my head. Maybe that was it. In any case, I loved every minute of it.

  We managed to finish our bottle of wine before either of us had got as much as halfway through our respective meals. Beni motioned to the waitress for another. Should I have stopped him? Probably. Did I stop him? No. “In for a penny, in for a pound,” my mother used to say. I’m pretty sure she hadn’t had such circumstances in mind, but I felt justified in applying it to the situation.

  Despite the overwhelming desire to capitulate to my sensory indulgence and simply enjoy the moment, I thought I’d better try to keep something of a conversation going, so I asked Beni about the mystery necklace. It intrigued me.

  “Do you know anything about the ‘Celtic Collar’ that Tamsin said was missing? The police weren’t very forthcoming, and she was wailing on about a curse, or something. It all sounds very mysterious.”

  Beni’s reaction, once again, took me by surprise.

  “Quella collana!” he shouted angrily, and he slammed his hand onto the table, causing a mini-tsunami in my mussel broth. I must have looked horrified, because he immediately apologized. Profusely, and with lots of hand waving.

  “I am sorry, so sorry, Cait,” he cooed. “I must not be angry, but it is this necklace. Alistair should not have it. He has no right to ‘own’ it. I am sure he has come by it illegally. I should have it. In the museum. It is an important piece. It is a piece for the world to see. It has a value beyond being a piece of jewelry! All that Alistair cared about was its monetary value!” His body language spoke of passion and rage.

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to upset you,” I said apologetically. “How do you mean ‘it is important’?” Now I was really curious.

  Beni took a final mouthful of wine as the waitress swapped our empty bottle for a full one, and brought fresh glasses. Very proper.

  He smiled. He was regaining control and was more at ease. “Ah, I could speak about this piece for many hours, so I must try hard to not bore you. I can try to tell you the story briefly, if I may?” He raised his eyebrows and gestured with his hands by way of a query.

  “Please, tell me. I’ll enjoy every moment,” I said. With him to tell the tale, a second bottle of wine at my elbow, and my delicious mussels to savor I wasn’t lying—every moment was going to be an absolute joy.

  As he began to speak in his rich, low tones, with his delightfully formal vocabulary and fascinating accent, Beni carefully selected a strand of linguine and started to twirl it around the tines of his fork. Instead of stopping to eat it, he just kept twirling absently while he told me about the necklace that Alistair had intended to give to Tamsin for her birthday.

  “It is a piece with a long and bloody history,” he began. “Maybe, after last night, it has another chapter. The necklace is written about in letters by a Roman centurion serving with the Second Augustinian Legion stationed in Isca Augusta, that is today called Caerleon, in the late part of the first century AD.”

  I had to interrupt. “Do you mean Caerleon in Wales?” It seemed bizarre to be sitting in the south of France, with an Italian, talking about my homeland, Wales.

  Beni nodded. “Yes, the Celts were very troublesome to the Romans, and they had major fortified encampments at both Caerleon and Chester.” Oh, the way he spoke those names—his rolling Italian “r’s” seemed quite at home with the Welsh words. “Of course, the Roman defeat of Boudica allowed them to move the Second Augustinian Legion around the country, but by the end of the first century they were based in Wales. They stayed there for the next three hundred years then were moved north to build Hadrian’s Wall.”

  “Busy bunnies,” I observed, with a mouth full of bread soaked in delicious broth.

  Beni smiled and took a mouthful of pasta. He paused to chew, then took a sip of wine, and continued.

  “The centurion who was based in Wales—” when he smiled, his dimples were almost edible, “wrote to his brother, a merchant living in Rome, that he had taken a golden collar from the neck of a woman that he had killed in a skirmish. There were dozens of nameless battles like this at the time: the Celts would send out a raiding party to draw the Roman soldiers away from the security of their camp, then they would set upon them. It was a war that was fought in what we today call the ‘guerrilla’ manner. The native population was, in many cases, treated well by the occupying forces, but resentment ran deep. Pockets of resistance were many and widespread. The letter from the centurion, itself, did not survive, but we have found references to it in the archives belonging to his brother’s family, which moved here, to Cimiez. The archive is at the museum, which is why I know of it. What is interesting about this necklace is the specific way it was acquired, and what it might represent. You see, Cait—” Beni drew closer to me, and his tone became conspiratorial, “the necklace might be the only item ever found that gives the world physical evidence of the Druids.”

  He was obviously deeply knowledgeable and passionate about his subject. I was puzzled. As he said the word “Druids” I visualized a man with a long beard, wearing a white robe, leaning against an oak tree and chanting to the moon. A bit like Gandalf from The Lord of the Rings. Or Getafix from the Asterix stories. I thought I knew a lot about Druids—but I decided I’d take the chance to find out if what I thought I knew had any truth in it.

  “Um, Beni,” I hesitated: I knew I was on shaky ground, so I decided to give him a chance to fill me in. “Just because I was born and brought up in Wales doesn’t mean that I know everything there is to know about Druids, although I’ve attended a few eisteddfods in my time. Don’t we actually, I mean historically, know a lot about Druids? You know—oak trees, mistletoe, Stonehenge, full moon rituals—that sort of thing?”

  Beni sipped his wine, refilled our glasses, and began to twirl his pasta once again. Then he stopped and pushed his food away. He lit a cheroot; he was obviously trying to assess how to proceed.

  “You are an intelligent woman, Cait.” I thought that was a good opening, but suspected it meant he was about to treat me like a child.

  “I’ve belonged to Mensa for about twenty years, so I suppose that means you’re right,” I replied sharply.

  “Ah, you are a genius,” mused Beni smiling through clouds of cheroot smoke.

  “Oh come now, Beni.” I forced a smile to cover my embarrassment at trying to impress this man. “We’re not having a conversation about my intelligence. You’re telling me about the necklace that Tamsin was to be given. Are you saying that it was a Druid necklace? And, if so, what does that mean?”

  Beni smiled. “You are correct, of course, Cait. I will continue, and I will trust you to keep up with me.” His smiled widened as he grinned openly. Wickedly. It was lovely. I mopped my mouth, glugged some wine, then lit up a cigarette. I sat quietly, mesmerized by the way his mouth moved as he spoke and the way he expressively threw his hands about in the air as he enlarged on the points he was making.

  “The Romans, like Julius Caesar, and
the Greeks who wrote about the Druids and their rituals, had their own political agenda: they demonized them, so we are not sure about the real life of the Druids at all. We do know, however, that on what is now called the Island of Anglesey, yes, in Wales—” he nodded graciously and smiled again, “there was a stronghold for the Druids, and the Second Augustinian Legion was sent there to break them, early in the first century AD. It was very a difficult time for the people on that island, and the Druids never forgot the brutality of this particular legion. Thus, it is said, the Druids made it their particular mission to defeat the Second Augustinian Legion by a process of attrition: they plotted and planned many of the raids on the legion that took place over the next hundred years or so. Indeed, many of the battles with this particular legion were seen as ‘holy battles’ by those opposing the Roman occupation, their efforts being blessed by the Druids, and the Romans being cursed. For example, we believe that the Druids supported Boudica in her famous confrontations with the Romans, which the Second Augustinian Legion eventually won.”

  Ah—Boudica! Good old Boudica! I’d read a lot about Boudica, or Boadecia as she’d been called when I was at school, because I loved the idea of a strong woman fighting and sometimes defeating an overwhelming enemy. I grew up in a poor household (you never know if you’re poor or rich when you’re little, do you—however you live, it’s just ‘normal’) where library books had been about the only thing I could have as many of as I liked, because they were free. I took full advantage. And so it went for the rest of my life, which, given my apparently unusual memory and my voracious appetite for knowledge, has led to my possessing a wide, if eclectic, range of knowledge gleaned from books. Unfortunately, quite a lot of my so-called knowledge has since proved to be completely wrong, because of new discoveries or reinterpretations of existing evidence. It can be confusing, especially when you’re talking to an expert with up-to-date knowledge on the topic.

  Rather than launch into an enthusiastic conversation about my childhood heroine, I thought I’d just let Beni get on with his story and not side-track him. I might discover that Boudica wasn’t that wonderful after all; we all want our memories of our heroes to remain unsullied, don’t we?

  “The letter referred to in the archive tells the story of such a ‘holy battle,’ and it seems it was a very bloody one. Many Romans were killed as they slept in what the locals believed was a sacred grove. Somehow the wine the soldiers drank had been drugged. The Druids were believed to be masters of mixing potions. They were the members of society who possessed knowledge about plants and herbs, and how they could be used to help or harm humans and animals, and drugging enemies was a popular method used to undermine forces. So this rings true.

  “The soldiers could not fight back, their limbs were too heavy. Only those who had not drunk the wine the night before could fight back—or take flight to save themselves. This is what the letter-writer did, much to his shame. He wrote to his brother that it was this shame at having left his fellow soldiers that made him take vengeance on the first person he saw after he had fled the site of the massacre. He encountered a young woman who was bathing in a stream by moonlight, and singing. He was angered that she should be doing something so idyllic while his comrades lay dead and dying, so he attacked her, without warning or provocation. He wrote that he regretted his actions as soon as he drew his sword from her flesh. She lay dying in his arms, and, as he tried to staunch her blood, she begged him, in his own language, to cut off her head when she died and throw it into the stream—this way she would find peace and happiness in the afterlife.”

  “It doesn’t sound very peaceful or pleasant to have your head hacked off and tossed away,” I interrupted. Because it didn’t. Of course, once you’re dead, you’re dead. That’s it—as far as I’m concerned. Your corpse is still a biological wonder, no question about it, but it isn’t something you’re going to need again. (Mind you, I’ve still got the ashes of my mother and father sitting in two urns on my mantelpiece at home, so I guess I shouldn’t labor the point too much.)

  “Ah, but this is why it is an interesting story,” replied Beni sharply. His eyes were visible above the lenses of his sunglasses, and they were aglow with passion. While I might have wished it was for me, I knew it was for this story. I sighed and let him get on with it.

  “From the various writings we have, and from our studies of the continuing Celtic belief systems that grew from this Druidic base, we believe that running water, moonlight, and the reciting or singing of mystical odes, or poems, were all very important to the Druids. We also know that women often had a role within the mystical life. The head was seen as the most important part of the body—many stories about how the spirit lives in the head, as opposed to any other part of the body, abound in Irish, Scottish, and even Welsh mythologies—but I assume you know this of your own history.” Charming though his smile was, I knew he was patronizing me.

  I snapped back, “Well, I’ve read The Mabinogion, of course, and a few other pieces of medieval Welsh literature—but those are mythologies, not histories. There’s a big difference, isn’t there?” Whenever I’m feeling defensive I slip back into Welsh mode. In other words, I start asking rhetorical questions that don’t assume the need for an answer. (In Wales almost every part of a conversation is wound up with “is it?” or “isn’t it?” or “shall we?” or “didn’t I?” or the ever popular “eh?” The “eh?” thing at least allowed me to fit right in when I moved to Canada.)

  “Ah-ha!” replied Beni loudly, which made me start. “Yes, you understand our problem. What part of a mythology is based on a historical fact, and what part is pure fantasy? The word ‘myth’ did not always mean something bad or made up and untrue, it has also been used at different times in history to mean ‘news’ or ‘history’ or even ‘a search for the inner truth.’ What was viewed by a Victorian scholar as a ‘myth’ might be a historical fact, or vice versa. You see that, yes?”

  Fascinating though all this was, a full tummy, a light head, and the warmth of an early May afternoon were taking their toll, especially given the night I’d just had. I had to get Beni back on track or he’d never get to the important bits—the bits about Alistair, and how he came to have such a necklace.

  “Would you like some coffee?” I asked. I thought it might help keep me focused.

  “A, si, buono,” replied Beni, lapsing into his native tongue. He reached into the air, waggled his hand, and the waitress appeared, as if by magic. “Espresso for me, and for the lady, a cappuccino—”

  “I’ll take a double espresso, thanks,” I interjected. I knew what I wanted and it wasn’t a cup of foam—I needed caffeine and I needed it strong and black!

  As Beni waved to someone across the marketplace, I took my chance to steer the conversation back in the direction I wanted it to take.

  “Beni—listen, if the Roman soldier took the necklace off a woman’s body in Wales almost two thousand years ago, then how on earth did Alistair get his hands on it? I mean, I understand what you’re saying, but, if it’s so important, and old, and rare, why isn’t it in a museum?”

  “Oh Cait, it should be, this is what I am telling you. The soldier told his brother he did as the woman asked—he cut off her head and threw it into the stream—and he then wrote something that the brother’s record is very precise about: he said that the head spoke to him as it was carried away in the water.”

  He seemed to be waiting for some response. I obliged by raising my right eyebrow. I can raise either eyebrow, at a pinch, but I tend to let the right one do most of the work.

  Beni appeared to realize that this was all he was going to get, so he continued. “The dead woman’s head said that a curse would be upon the solider and his entire family until his bloodline had died out completely, that the necklace was magical and would kill everyone who owned it or wore it, unless they were of true Celtic blood.”

  “Ah,” I nodded, “the dreaded Curse of the Celtic Collar.” I was pretty sure I’d loaded m
y voice with as much irony as possible. Beni nodded back. Earnestly. Oh dear. “So, what happened?” I continued, “I am guessing he took the necklace in spite of the curse, then met some horrible end?” Call me cynical, but that had to be where this story was going.

  “Sadly, yes,” replied Beni seriously. “But not just him, many of his comrades died also, very soon afterward.”

  “Another battle?”

  “No, they died of what the record speaks of as a dysentery type of disease. We now believe it to have been an outbreak of a waterborne disease, maybe cholera.”

  “Ugh. Nasty. But surely a coincidence? There must have been lots of outbreaks like that in those days.” I was not going to get sucked in. There are no such things as curses—just idiots who believe in them, and then usually make them come true by their own actions . . . or inactions.

  “This is true. Though the Romans were very particular about their water, they did not understand about such diseases. They knew how to manage it, how to use it, and how to ensure its general cleanliness. In fact, water management is one of the reasons they were so successful in growing, and keeping, their Empire. But, yes, cholera was common.” He pushed on. “As was the custom, all the possessions of the dead soldiers were sent back to their families. Of course, this took some time, but eventually the necklace arrived back in Rome, where the brother decided to keep it hidden, and not allow his wife to wear it, because he was worried by the story of the curse. Then as I said, the family moved here to Cimiez to live and the necklace surfaced in the family archive again as the cause of a feud between the two nephews of the centurion, who discovered the necklace upon their father’s death and fought over who should have it.”