A Novel

by Sean Pidgeon

  Hugh gives him a long, searching look, then empties his glass, gets abruptly to his feet. ‘There is something I can show you. I suggest you drink up—you might need it.’

  Back in the entrance hall, a heavy batten door with ornate black ironwork is opened to reveal a set of brick steps falling away into the darkness. ‘The house was completed in the 1650s,’ Hugh says, ‘with three upper storeys and a basement floor for the servants and the kitchen, which we are about to see. Another forebear of mine, Sir John Mortimer, drew up the plans and was the first to live here.’

  Donald remembers the name from Caradoc Bowen’s journal article. ‘The book collector?’

  ‘That’s far too simplistic a label,’ Hugh says. There is a hint of impatience now in his voice. ‘John Mortimer was a devout Catholic who took his inspiration from his faith. He made it his mission to find and preserve what had been lost in the dissolution of the monasteries in the sixteenth century. There were manuscripts, certainly, but also many religious artefacts that he had collected on his travels.’ Hugh does not expand on this comment, instead picks up a large electric torch that has been left just inside the door. ‘I’m afraid we’ll have to make do with this,’ he says. ‘We were flooded down here recently, and we haven’t been able to get the power back up.’

  By the time they step down on to the brick floor of the cellar, they have reached a surprising depth below ground. There is a powerful smell of damp, a waft of chilly humid air. Hugh scans the torch beam back and forth, revealing heavy stone walls and a high ceiling festooned with wires and pipes. The space around them is reverberant with the sound of dripping water, the creaking of timbers above their heads, a strange metallic clicking and scratching from some distant recess.

  They walk on into the shadows, Hugh lighting the path ahead as best he can, revealing a profusion of antique domestic debris: wooden boxes full of mildewed papers, brown bottles still half-full of dark liquids, a rusted mechanical device with springs and levers that looks like an old animal trap. Donald counts ten paces to the farther wall, where they stop in front of a broad, deep recess in the crumbling brick.

  ‘This is the original kitchen fireplace,’ Hugh says. ‘When my grandfather first came here sixty years ago, he installed a modern kitchen on the ground floor, and moved everything upstairs with the intention of having this chimney blocked up. One of the workmen was laying a row of new bricks when he accidentally put his hammer through the back wall, uncovering a disused passage running down behind the chimney.’ Hugh plays the torch beam over a small square door set into the back of the fireplace. ‘As far as we can tell, the passage was sealed up during the original construction of the house. This door was added in my grandfather’s time.’

  ‘I assume you know what’s on the other side?’

  ‘Yes, only too well. When I was eight years old, I got myself shut in there overnight.’ Hugh speaks as if this might have been a deliberate accomplishment, an obscure rite of passage for younger members of the Mortimer family. ‘I had only the rats for company, and then the pitch darkness, after my batteries ran out. But I take it you’re not scared of the dark?’

  Far from being afraid, Donald is busy finding his archaeological bearings, computing the probable ground level in the seventeenth century versus the twelfth. There is a heavy bolt, rusted but easy enough to slide, and the door yields to a few sharp tugs. ‘I’ll need to borrow the torch,’ he says.

  Rather than the expected muddy tunnel, the beam illuminates a set of stone steps leading down into the darkness. Donald notes the quality of the dressing, the squareness of the edges and the snugness of the joins: the hallmarks of a master mason. He is forced to crouch low through the door, then descends a dozen steps to a flagstone floor submerged in several inches of water. Ahead of him is a long narrow chamber supported by a series of perfectly executed Romanesque arches. Matching them instinctively to the familiar architectural sequence, he decides that they must predate the early English gothic with its pointed lancet style: this stonework is at least as old as the mid-twelfth century. At the far end of the chamber, a series of long stone receptacles have been pushed up against the walls on either side.

  Donald feels the water seeping into his boots, but also a quickening of his heartbeat as he steps through the first of the arches into what can only be the crypt of the old Cistercian monastery. According to the story told by Giraldus Cambrensis, Geoffrey’s attempt to reach his new bishopric at St. Asaph ended prematurely in or around 1154, the generally accepted date of his death, at ‘a small monastery then recently established at a place called in Welsh Cumhyr’. If Giraldus’s tale is to be believed, Donald has found the burial place of Geoffrey of Monmouth.

  For now, he holds his excitement firmly in check. Crouching down next to one of the stone vessels in the confined space at the far end of the crypt, he lifts off the heavy rectangular lid and brings the torchlight to bear on the contents. The beam illuminates a tangled collection of bones in varying shades of darkened ivory. He notes the narrow and graceful radii and ulnae, the more substantial femurs and humeri, a quantity of dislocated metacarpals and metatarsals. There is a skull there, too, perfectly intact. The other coffins yield similar results.

  Donald stands up and takes a step back, troubled by an unsettling awareness that all is not right. His former mentor John Evans, describing a similar discovery made long ago, had an apt phrase that comes back to him now. The smaller bones from the hands and feet were sprinkled throughout, like the seasoning in a stew. The fact that the remains are in such disarray is a sure sign that they have previously been turned out and carelessly put back. Most tellingly of all, there are no grave goods of any kind, none of the religious artefacts that would be expected in monastic burials of the medieval period, when monks were typically sent on to the afterlife with the emblems of their religious status. There is no question at all in his mind: some time in the past eight hundred years, these coffins have been plundered by thieves.

  Hugh is waiting for him at the top of the steps leading down to the crypt, his expression impossible to read in the dim reflected light. ‘Did you find what you were looking for?’

  ‘No, unfortunately not.’ It seems audacious, to say the least, to suggest that one of the sets of human remains lying below may belong to Geoffrey of Monmouth, and to prove it will be impossible. In any case, there is no question of sharing his theory with Hugh Mortimer. ‘But the crypt is a remarkable thing. Why has it been kept so quiet?’

  ‘My grandfather always said whoever was buried in there should be left in peace, and I suppose I agree with that.’ There is a surprising earnestness now in Hugh’s voice. ‘It was presumably what our ancestor intended when he built the house.’

  Donald’s mind is racing now. ‘Do you know if he ever removed anything from the crypt?’

  Hugh gives a strange, bitter laugh. ‘Sir John was a passionate collector, certainly, but I haven’t heard that he was a grave-robber.’

  By the time they emerge into daylight in the main hallway of the house, Hugh Mortimer seems entirely sober, his cool reserve fully restored. ‘Please give my regards to Julia,’ he says, as he ushers Donald in the direction of the front door. ‘Just in case you happen to see her before I do.’

  Divitiae Grandes Homini

  ARRIVING LATER THAN usual at the riverside offices of the Oxfordshire County Archaeology Service, Donald finds a surprising tumult for a Tuesday morning, with a team just heading off to a dig on the site of a new housing estate at Didcot. Officially, he should be going with them. He tries to slip through to his desk unnoticed, but Tim Watson is waiting there to ambush him.

  ‘Sorry to disturb your peace and quiet,’ Tim says, ‘but there are two things you might want to know about. First, the revised bone-dating results have come in from King’s. They sampled skeletons at the top and the bottom of the pile, and got the same date, plus or minus. Late second to early first millennium BC, that’s what I’m hearing. Paul Healey won’t be best pleased. Secondly, t
here was a call from one Dr. Rackham at the Bodleian Library. It sounds as if she would very much like to speak to you.’

  Donald takes a moment to absorb these presumably unrelated messages. ‘Thanks, Tim. Why don’t you head down to the site with the others? I’ll try to join you later on.’

  Margaret Rackham is waiting as promised in front of the Old Bodleian, next to the bronze statue of the Earl of Pembroke. Despite her claims to the contrary, she is hardly inconspicuous, wrapped up in a bright red overcoat, her thick grey hair disarrayed by the wind gusting relentlessly around the courtyard.

  ‘I’m very pleased to meet you, Donald,’ she says. ‘I dare say you have far better things to do than slog all the way across Oxford in a howling gale, just to see me.’

  ‘The pleasure is mine.’ Donald finds himself warming straight away to the unsuspected irreverence of the distinguished Bodley’s Librarian. ‘I was supposed to go to a building site near Didcot power station today. This is better.’

  ‘Well, I am glad to hear it. And I am so very sorry about what happened in Wales. It must be very hard to take.’ What might have been a mere platitude is given greater eloquence by a quality of directness in Margaret Rackham’s speech, a deep intelligence and sincerity in her surprisingly bright blue eyes.

  ‘It has been a very strange few days,’ Donald says.

  ‘Yes, for all of us,’ the librarian says, ‘but for you more than most, I imagine. May I suggest we walk somewhere, rather than go back indoors to the Stygian gloom? And then perhaps you would tell me what happened at the waterfall. I have had only a brief sketch of it from the chaplain at Jesus College, who spoke to Hugh Mortimer after the accident.’

  They strike off down Catte Street towards Radcliffe Square, heads bowed down into the wind as Donald recounts the bare facts of the accident. Dry leaves are swirling in the gutters, greyish clouds scudding overhead.

  ‘It’s a pity you had to witness it,’ Margaret Rackham says. ‘But if he had to go, I am glad he went out in such style, like a character in a poem. He would have wanted that.’ She glances curiously at Donald. ‘How did you come to know Julia, by the way?’

  For a strange, disorientating moment, Donald is not quite sure how to answer the question. What comes first to his mind is the room at the Black Lion, the feeling of Julia’s body against his. ‘She once helped me out in a game of Scrabble,’ he says.

  ‘I imagine she would be a powerful ally in that game,’ the librarian says, smiling. ‘When she came to see me about the Siôn Cent manuscript, I did try to warn her there would be trouble, and now I cannot help feeling responsible for what has happened.’

  They walk in a slow loop around the Radcliffe Camera, then find a table in a café housed in what was once part of the church of St. Mary the Virgin. Here they find the familiar Oxford incongruities, gothic windows and medieval rib vaults overhead, the hissing of steam and the smell of coffee, the murmuring of erudite conversation, a random tinkling of teaspoons and chinking of cups. The librarian raises an imperious hand to a brooding waitress who seems to recognise her, breaks from her reverie and bustles over to take their order.

  ‘Well now,’ Margaret Rackham says, when the waitress has gone, ‘I expect you’re curious about the letter I mentioned on the telephone.’ She hands him a small white envelope addressed to her at the Bodleian Library. It is imprinted on the back with the return address of the Black Lion Inn. The badly smudged postmark shows that the letter was processed the day before at Rhayader post office. ‘When it arrived this morning, I had not yet heard the news, so as you may imagine it struck me a little strangely at first.’

  Donald opens the envelope to find a single folded sheet of writing paper covered with a small and ornate script.

  My dear Margaret,

  Though many years have passed since we last found common cause, it is without hesitation that I turn to you now for assistance. This will doubtless strike you as a moderately premature and perhaps indeed a shocking thing to speak of, but I have reached an age at which such precautions become necessary.

  I write to request that, in case of my untimely death, you will look to the proper disposition of my books held at Jesus College and especially to the preservation of a certain manuscript that is already in your care, namely, the poetry book of Siôn Cent containing a series of bardic verses collectively entitled the Song of Lailoken. I trust you will remember it well, for we have spoken of it many times in the past. Without question, it is one of the most important Welsh manuscripts ever to have crossed the threshold of the Bodleian Library. Should you wish to find someone to advise you on the interpretation of this remarkable work, there is one young scholar, the Oxfordshire county archaeologist Donald Gladstone, who has come to understand its true significance.

  In closing, may I also urge you to remember the wisdom of Lucretius in matters of life and love and death, divitiae grandes homini sunt vivere parvo aequo animo.

  Yours in friendship,

  CARADOC BOWEN

  Donald finds the librarian looking at him with an intense but kindly scrutiny. ‘He had very few friends later in his life,’ she says. ‘It seems that you became one of them.’

  ‘I’m not sure I could make such a claim. I had only met him a couple of times.’

  ‘First impressions were always important to Cranc Bowen.’ Margaret Rackham smiles sadly, sending deep wrinkles radiating across her cheeks.

  ‘Do you know how old he was?’ Donald says.

  ‘I don’t think anyone can answer that question. Cranc’s indeterminate age was part of the aura he liked to wrap around himself. I can, however, confirm that he was young once.’

  The coffee arrives, delivered by the same intense-looking waitress. Margaret Rackham takes a sip, grimaces into the cup. ‘Since you haven’t asked, I should tell you, in the interests of full disclosure, that Caradoc Bowen at one time confided in me as a close friend, almost more than that. It seems an odd thing to say now, but Lucretius was the subject of a long-running debate between us. I am a classicist by training, you see, and Cranc knew his Latin poets well enough. I was never very fond of the philosophy of Titus Lucretius Carus, being perhaps of a more stoic than an epicurean disposition, and so he would always make a point of quoting him to me, looking for something we could both agree on. One day he came up with a promising line, Quod siquis vera vitam ratione gubernet, divitiae grandes homini sunt vivere parvo aequo animo, “But if one should guide his life by true principles, man’s greatest wealth is to live frugally with a contented mind.” You might say it started out as a sort of private motto between us, but in the end we adopted it almost as a creed, as a way of saying we would never be together, romantically speaking, that instead we would each try to live a joyful life of the mind. Does it surprise you to hear all of this?’

  ‘A little, yes.’

  ‘Of course that was all very many years ago, before his obsessions got the better of him. Speaking of which, I’ve been meaning to ask you, Donald, whether Bowen ever told you about his dreams?’

  ‘I hardly knew him well enough for that.’

  ‘I’m afraid none of us knew him well in recent years. I had forgotten about the dreams until fairly recently—until Julia came to see me, in fact. Cranc once described to me how a voice would sometimes speak to him in his sleep, telling him of a violent death that was to come to him. He said there were vivid images as well, almost too life-like for an ordinary dream.’ Margaret Rackham pours milk into her coffee and stirs it with a teaspoon, stares distractedly at the tiny whorls and eddies on the surface. ‘In the old days, it seemed to be of no real consequence. There was even a time when he used to joke about it to me. He would say he had the advantage over most people, because he knew precisely how he was going to die. But later on I think it became quite distressing to him. He stopped talking about the dreams, though I don’t think they ever went away.’

  ‘Did he tell you any of the details?’

  ‘Yes, as a matter of fact he did. He said there w
as a particular kind of death in his dreams—he called it the threefold death. It was always one part of this triple death that happened to him. He saw himself living wild in the forest, crushed by falling rock. Or attacked with sharpened sticks as he tried to cross a bridge. Does this mean something to you?’

  Donald feels a small icy finger creeping up his spine. ‘The threefold death is a common motif in Celtic mythology. The prophet Lailoken is said to have predicted his own death by stone, stake, and water, and the same theme was captured in the Song of Lailoken.’

  ‘Yes, I remember those lines very well. Belak-neskato she was named, the death-wielder . . . Threefold life she promised me, and threefold death. It always seemed to me that there was something strange and fascinating in the way Siôn Cent introduced this terrifying murderous woman, as if she had crawled out of some gruesome underworld. It seems odd to say it, but that’s who Cranc thought was speaking to him in his dreams. It was the death-wielder who told him how he was going to die.’

  ‘I had no idea it had affected him quite so deeply,’ Donald says. He feels deeply saddened by the thought of what Caradoc Bowen was forced to endure, the bitter loneliness of his obsession.

  Margaret Rackham leans back in her chair, looks him steadily in the eye. ‘There’s another aspect of this that you might find interesting. Cranc told me he often heard the sound of water in the dreams, a rushing, raging torrent. He said it was water that would kill him in the end. Does that strike you as a little strange?’

  ‘I’m not quite sure what you’re suggesting,’ Donald says, though her insinuation is clear enough. He remembers something now, Bowen at the Black Lion, leaving his room in the small hours. Did he experience a dream of dying that night, then go out into the storm to post a letter he had written to Margaret Rackham?

  ‘The self-fulfilling prophecy is a well-documented phenomenon in psychology. It is a prediction that causes itself to become true by means of a positive feedback between belief and behaviour. I do have to wonder, Donald, if he killed himself. In a court of law, one might be forced to introduce his letter as prima facie evidence.’