Sorry mine aren’t big enough for you, Ashley told him silently. Not that she wanted to get anything going with Jason. If she’d ever met a use-her-and-lose-her sort of guy, it was him.
The heavy glass and brass doors of the hotel groaned open, emitting Howard Sweeney, his cell phone pressed to his ear. “Later,” he said into it, turned it off, and tucked it into his pocket. “Very good then, shall we be off?” Without waiting for a reply, he led the group of twenty or so students across the street almost under the grille of a delivery van.
They passed a recreation center where shirt-sleeved men were lawn-bowling, and skirted a couple of houses whose gardens were sprinkled with daffodils and early tulips. Once across another road and through a gate in a stone fence, Sweeney stopped and gesticulated. “Behold, ancient Cornovium. Mind your step. Cows.”
To Ashley, ancient Cornovium looked like a lumpy pasture that sloped down to the trees edging the river Thane. She squinted, trying to see the settlement she’d studied.
The thick grass of the pasture lay like a quilt over the banks and ditches defining the military fort. The four gateways, north, south, east, west, were gaps in the embankment. The occasional masonry angle jutting from the sod looked promising, but the rubbish dump beside the road didn’t. And yet the civilian settlement outside the fort had extended beyond the road, toward the hillside where an amphitheater had once nestled and that was now crowned by the church.
Ashley turned to look back at the town, imagining the ancient equivalent of fish and chips shops thronged with legionaries. . . . Jason was feeling up Caterina. She was simpering up at him.
Sweeney marched off through the knee-high grass. Rolling her eyes—really, she’d thought Caterina had better taste—Ashley hurried after him. She liked Dr. Sweeney. He was in his fifties, probably, with gray crisp-crinkled hair, horn-rimmed glasses, and the hunched shoulders of the scholar. An impudent grin revealed a gap between his front teeth. He wore ascot ties tucked in the necks of his shirts and sweaters. She’d never known anyone who actually wore ascot ties. Her father, when he’d been around, had worn giveaway T-shirts and watched “Hogan’s Heroes” reruns.
“Supposedly this was once the site of a Celtic temple, Eponemeton,” Sweeney proclaimed. “Epona being the goddess of horses. T.J. Miller found a tessellated pavement, a double row of post holes, and some stone heads back in the 1930s, beneath the Roman layers. That, however, was only a quick and dirty test dig.” He indicated a ditch clogged with weeds and mud that cut across one quadrant of the fort.
“This area, Cheshire and points south and east, was the home of the Cornovii tribe. Their capital was at Viroconium, modern Wroxeter. Corn means horn in Latin—hence ‘unicorn.’ Probably the tribe owed allegiance to the stag god Cernunnos, although the Celts also had bull gods. Miller found a subterranean chamber he thought might be a Roman Mithraeum. The sun-god Mithras was originally from Persia. His influence spread because he was adopted by the legionaries. They liked the bit about slaying the bull, I daresay. Shocking what people will believe. True believers can be easily manipulated, can’t they?”
Since that was a rhetorical question, no one answered. The group clambered up the crest of the eastern embankment. Several black and white cows regarded them incuriously. A chilly breeze rippled the grass, and the Thane glinted beyond its curtain of trees. A subtle scent of diesel and cooking grease was all that remained of modern Corcester.
Sweeney waved at a cluster of buildings and fences at the far end of the pasture, where a brown horse and rider paced sedately back and forth. “The land the fort is on belongs to the farm there. A horse farm, appropriately enough. Fortuna Stud. A lovely continuation of tradition, wouldn’t you say? And when you consider that the Romans stationed here included a troop of Syrian cavalry, well then!” He spread his hands like a stage magician who’d just produced two doves and a rabbit. Ashley nodded appreciatively.
“Cornovium was an auxiliary fort. The primary fortress in this area was Deva, which is now the tourist haven of Chester. It was originally headquarters of the Legio II Adiutrix of which this was a cohort. Later Legio II Valeria Victrix moved north from Viroconium to Chester, and, we assume, here.”
Two casually-dressed people came climbing up the northern bank behind Sweeney’s back. The woman stooped, burrowed into a pothole at the base of a wall, and produced something that she showed to her male companion. He shrugged. She put the object in her pocket.
“Cornovium was established in 70 Anno Domini,” Sweeney went on, “only ten years after Boudicca’s rebellion, and was a going concern by 80. Whether Boudicca was a traitor or a freedom fighter rather depends on your perception of the situation. Suffice it to say, our Romans here kept quite the weather eye upon the local Celts. In 83 Agricola led Legio II Adiutrix north. He duly conquered the Brigantes and then carried on into Scotland. At what point Cornovium ceased being a Roman fortress and commenced being a Romano-British town we’re not sure. Perhaps about 300 or so. That’s one of the questions we’re after answering here.” Sweeney paced toward the center of the camp.
The students moved in a gaggle behind him, Ashley at point, Jason and Caterina self-absorbed at the rear. Manfred, one of the Germans, turned a cold blue gaze on the slackers. Two American girls, Jennifer and Courtney, nudged each other and giggled. “Throw a bucket of water on them,” muttered Bryan, his all-American freckles flaring indignantly. Ashley shot him a grateful glance.
“The headquarters building would have been about here,” said Sweeney, “at the intersections of the via principalis and the via praetoria, with the commander’s house just opposite. The early houses were only wood and wattle and daub, mind you, but were quite substantial even so, with all mod cons. The first commander of the garrison might even have brought his wife out from Rome. What she thought of being summoned to a howling wilderness such as Britain, is, perhaps fortunately, unrecorded!” He laughed.
Ashley smiled. The imaginary Roman woman and her “mod cons”—modern conveniences—would’ve found Britain a green paradise. Of course, the neighbors had been rowdy types given to head-hunting.
“Right. Here’s our datum point, this masonry corner. We’ll plot a grid and dig test areas there, there and there—hope you’ve swotted a bit on your maths, this must be surveyed properly before we begin. Manfred, you’re in charge of the first team, Bryan the second, Jason the third.”
Jason looked up. “Huh?”
Ashley looked down at her boots. She had the highest average in the class, but Sweeney didn’t think she was leader material.
“So then . . .” Sweeney made a sweeping gesture that took in the two newcomers. “Well, well, well, what have we here? Matilda Gray, is it?”
“Hello, Howard,” said the woman.
“Gareth March,” the man said, and exchanged a brisk handshake with Sweeney.
“Ah!” Sweeney’s brows coasted up his forehead. “You’re our reporter. Going to write up the dig, eh?”
“The Times Sunday magazine. Our Roman Heritage.”
“And Mrs.—er—Ms. Gray. . . .” Sweeney began.
“Dr. Gray,” she corrected.
“Dr. Gray will be my second-in-command,” he announced to the class, “being a scholar of some note on the opposite side of the Atlantic.”
Gray smiled indulgently at Sweeney, and in greeting at the students. “Hi.”
The students murmured hellos warily, as though trying to decide whether Gray gave pop quizzes. She seemed like a nice lady, Ashley thought, about her mother’s age. But Laura Walraven looked as though she’d spent the last twenty years having electroshock treatments. Gray might have spent the same time sitting in the lotus position.
With a hand in the small of her back, Sweeney turned Gray toward the masonry corner. “I was just telling the students, my dear. . . .”
“My name is Matilda, Howard.”
“Matilda,” he enunciated. “I was telling the students about the excavation plans. If you’d care to back me up. .
. .”
“That’s why I’m here, to back you up.” She stepped away from his controlling hand. “Please go on.”
He did, launching into a dissertation on the trench and grid method of excavation versus the open field method, and adding footnotes on stratigraphy, soil sampling, and the importance of record-keeping.
Like a moon whose orbit is disturbed by a passing asteroid, Ashley found her attention wandering from Sweeney’s plummy accent—he wasn’t telling her anything she hadn’t already studied, after all—toward Gareth March.
He was very handsome, more mature than her fellow students, not as shady-looking—if not as exciting—as the man at the Job Centre. He stood aloof and poised, inspecting the site and its surroundings. His mouth might have been generous if it hadn’t been set in such a stern line. His eyes were a dark opaque brown. When they spotted the horse and rider at Fortuna Stud Ashley was obscurely surprised they didn’t snap like camera lenses. He came across like an android, except an android wouldn’t have such springy red hair, cut short as though to curb its enthusiasm.
He was watching two men walk along the fence—the same two men, Ashley realized, she’d seen at the Job Centre. One of them stopped and scraped the mud from his boots on the bottom rung. The rider pulled the horse’s head around and trotted up to them. Ashley sidled closer to March, curiosity overcoming shyness. “Excuse me, are those men gypsies?”
He glanced around. “Gypsies?”
“I saw them in town a little while ago. A policeman told them to go away, and said something about caravans.”
“I expect they’re travelers,” March replied. “New Age travelers, leftover hippies of a sort, unemployed young people living on the dole. They roam the countryside in clapped-out caravans—what you’d call travel trailers. There’s a traveler encampment in a layby toward Macclesfield.”
“Are they criminals or something?”
“Supposedly they harbor petty criminals such as thieves, drug peddlers, and tax dodgers. They fight mostly amongst themselves, though. The local people don’t like them, don’t trust them, and most certainly don’t want them. They settle in large numbers and leave the land very untidy. Real gypsies, the original travelers, say the New Age travelers give them a bad reputation. Those two are probably offering to muck out the stables. Better than begging, at the least.”
The horse trotted away, at this distance the sound of its hoofbeats not corresponding with the fall of its hooves. The men climbed over the fence and trudged toward the white-painted buildings.
So they were looking for jobs, Ashley told herself. The policeman shouldn’t have been so rude to them. “Are they the people who used to have festivals at Stonehenge at the summer solstice?”
“Some of them. Proper rave-ups, they had. They left the grounds well and truly mucked about. The authorities can chase them away from Stonehenge, it’s a protected ancient monument, but they can do sod-all about the camps in the country. No demonstrated reason to move them on.”
Ashley imagined a rude, dirty mob trashing out her back yard. She imagined not being able to find a job or a place to live, having only fellowship and attitude between herself and despair. She imagined being a smart, sophisticated reporter pestered by a foreign girl’s dumb questions. “Well, thank you for the report,” she said.
“You’re welcome,” March returned, with a polite nod and a half-smile.
“. . . Romano-British statuary,” Sweeney was saying. Ashley jerked around. Oh no, she’d missed something. “From a first or second century Roman temple, Miller thought. He didn’t have the resources to dig further. You can see them in the British Museum. Some new ones have appeared since then, and are the objects of great controversy. The University have a few small Celtic gold votives on display as well. Miller also uncovered the usual detritus of a military camp—tent pegs, straps, bootlaces, bits of armor, dice, combs, spoons, and potsherds, including some lovely Samian ware. There might be some very nice things beneath the ground still, although I’m not hoping for treasure.” Sweeney grinned cheerfully.
Gray tilted her head and gave Sweeney the once-over. March edged along the outside of the group, his hands clasped behind his back. Jason murmured to Caterina, “You know, there was a girl murdered out here. We’ll have to stick close together. Buddy system.”
“What is a buddy?” Caterina asked, her eyes wide, her cheeks pink.
“I’ll show you.” Jason insinuated his arm around her waist. He was far from pale himself.
March regarded them both with what Ashley interpreted as a jaundiced eye. Men did eventually grow out of testosterone dependence. Or so she’d heard.
“All right then,” said Sweeney. “We’ll prepare our equipment tonight. I want to see the team leaders after dinner, which will be at slap seven-thirty, attendance required. I’ll speak to Mr. Clapper about hot dogs and nachos, shall I?”
The Americans laughed. The Germans and the Swede looked puzzled. Caterina was busy.
Sweeney made shooing motions. “Cut along, then.”
The students strolled in clumps back down the embankments. High clouds thinned the afternoon light, dulling the luster of the damp grass. Ashley started down a particularly steep spot and slipped. For a second she flailed backward, then was caught from behind by two sets of hands. Embarrassed, she looked around. “Whoa, am I ever clumsy, thanks. . . .”
“No problem.” Bryan released her and ambled after the others.
Her other rescuer was Matilda Gray. “I never slip when I’m alone,” she said with a warm smile. “I always do it when I have an audience.”
“Oh yeah,” Ashley agreed, and decided Gray was very nice indeed. They fell into step side by side.
“Are you enjoying your studies?” Gray asked.
“Yes. It’s good to be away from home . . .” She caught herself.
But all Gray said was, “Everyone needs to try her wings.”
Ashley held the gate in the fence open for her and for March, who was strolling silently behind her. “You’ve come here together?”
March quirked an eyebrow. Gray laughed. “We have a mutual friend.”
At the hotel door Sweeney grabbed her arm. “Come along, Matilda, the computers need setting up. Mr. Clapper has generously set aside a cloakroom for us. Ta-ta,” he added to Ashley, and headed down one of the corridors that opened off the lobby. March glanced at his watch and hurried up the staircase, taking the steps two at a time.
Ashley looked through a nearby doorway—oh, the bar. Down a short hallway two other doors opened onto a sitting room and the dining room. Another corridor led past the cloak and computer room to a closed door labeled, “Private.” The lobby itself was only an open space holding a couple of chairs, a potted palm, and the students’ suitcases and backpacks piled in front of the reception desk. Mr. Clapper, who seemed like a friendly sort of guy, was handing out their keys. “Five? Right. Twenty? Righty-ho.”
Ashley was sharing number forty-two with Jennifer and Courtney. The three girls lugged their bags up the stairs and with some casting around among the convoluted corridors found their room. It was small and tidy, with three twin beds and a sink in the corner. They distributed their stuff among a wardrobe, a dresser, and a single glass shelf above the sink.
Jennifer slammed her suitcase and shook her head. “Wait until I write home about this place. Nothing wrong with a nice Holiday Inn, but no, they put us in ye olde quainte inne where you need a ball of string to find your way back from the bathroom.”
“I think it’s great,” Ashley said. “Much more character than a Holiday Inn. All the blocked-off doorways, funny little flights of steps, unexpected niches in the halls, like hiccups—it’s like walking around inside an archaeological mound.”
“It’s not like home,” said Courtney.
Ashley was about to tell her, “That’s the point,” when a soft rhythmic thumping emanated from the wall. The faded prints of nineteenth-century shepherds slid askew. “Ghosts?” Jennifer asked skept
ically.
“That’s Jason’s room next door,” said Courtney. “Guess he and Caterina couldn’t wait until tonight.”
“He was really itching to get Caterina out of that dorm.” Jennifer imitated a bloodhound on the scent, tongue lolling, breath panting.
Courtney giggled. “Wonder what he did with Bryan? Locked him in the closet?”
From beyond the wall came a banshee-like moaning. Courtney and Jennifer responded with whoops of laughter and catcalls.
“Get a life,” Ashley told them. She slammed out of the room, down the corridor, and past the door marked W.C., to what might once have been a staircase landing but that now contained a red fire bucket. Through a bay window she saw Bryan leaning on the fence beside the bowling green. His baseball cap hid his face. From his body language Ashley figured he was as disgusted as she was. Jason and Caterina could do whatever they wanted to, they just didn’t have to get in everyone’s face with it, like sex was something special. . . .
Ashley had uttered a few banshee moans of her own, back when she and Chris were going at it. Since then she had wondered whether she’d really felt that good, or whether she’d been so desperate for him to like her she’d put on an act that had fooled even herself. It was because she’d been so needy, he said, that he’d left her. He’d told her to “get over it.”
“Sour grapes?” she asked Bryan’s slouching back. “Yeah, me too.”
Turning away from the window she took a deep breath, tasting the uninspiring flavors of mildew and bathroom cleanser. In the distance dishes clashed. The sitting room downstairs was stocked with books and a television set, wasn’t it? Ashley set off toward the main staircase.
She was just about to push through a second set of fire doors when she saw a movement through the safety glass window. The police constable she’d seen earlier emerged from a room. “Well then, Sir, that’s the lot. Enough to be going on with, I reckon.”
Gareth March stepped out into the hallway and shook the bobby’s hand. “Thank you, Watkins.”
The constable walked off down the hall, his helmet tucked beneath his arm, and disappeared around a corner. March ducked back into his room and shut the door. Ashley waited a moment, then shoved the fire door open and tiptoed through.
Time Enough to Die Page 3