Reynolds strolled across the working area and inspected each trench. “How are you getting on, Doctor? Find anything of interest? Other than the coin, of course.”
“Just this memorial stele, so far.” Sweeney replied.
“What’s it worth?”
Matilda and Gareth went through the gate in the fence and crossed the road. Beside the bowling green, Gareth asked, “What was all that in aid of?”
“Someone planted a coin to test my skills. It was Reynolds, probably, although he managed to project proper surprise when I turned it up. If I’d been paying attention I’d have let it lie. An occupational hazard—I distract easily. I’m sorry to throw a spanner into the works.”
Gareth didn’t see any spanners flying about. “He isn’t supposed to know you have any skills. So how could he test you?”
“Howard Sweeney would confide in a fence post, if he thought it would be impressed with his knowledge.”
“Sweeney didn’t put the coin there. He wasn’t out of my sight during lunch, not even in the loo.”
Matilda shook her head. “No, Howard didn’t know that coin was there. Reynolds took him by surprise. And Howard doesn’t like being taken by surprise. We’ll have to be sure we’re not caught between the Scylla and Charybdis of their egos.”
Gareth tightened his jaw. Until he and Matilda started speaking the same language, he’d reserve judgment on the entire episode. He held the door of the hotel open for her, and they went inside.
Chapter Six
Matilda exchanged pleasantries with Clapper while Gareth ran upstairs. “Fresh film,” he announced on his return, and flourished a well-worn nylon camera bag. He probably had picked up some fresh film, Matilda told herself as they went out the door. The camera bag was also the right size for a folder of crime scene reports.
Gareth threw the bag over his shoulder and they headed toward Fortuna Stud, where horses moved slowly about pastures that glowed green despite the gray skies. Gareth paused by the stone fence that lined the road. “Do you see that big chestnut with the white blaze?”
“The brownish-red one with the streak of white on his nose?”
“That’s Great Caesar’s Ghost, ran at the Grand National last year.”
Matilda looked at the sleek, long-limbed horse. He stood masticating a mouthful of grass, eyes glazed, like an elder statesman enjoying his gin and tonic in the library of the Reform Club. “So Reynolds is well-known on the racing circuit?”
“In an insignificant sort of way. Caesar is a one-off, probably worth more than all the other horses put together.”
“How’d he do in the race?”
“He came in dead last. But there was a snap in Country Life, the Queen with Reynolds several paces behind her, looking like he’d been invited specially to share a Pimm’s Cup with the royals.”
“He entered the Grand National for the social contacts,” said Matilda, “not for the race itself.”
“Spot on.”
The gate was adorned with several horseshoes. “To keep the boggarts away,” Gareth explained. “A local superstition.”
“Can’t have any boggarts,” Matilda agreed with a smile. She was glad Sweeney wasn’t along to sneer at yet another testimony of faith, misdirected or otherwise.
They strolled down a long drive, passed a posh-looking brick house, and approached the stable buildings. The place appeared very tidy, whitewashed, mortared, and swept. A faint musky odor was the only evidence that large animals inhabited the premises. Across the cobbled yard came an old man with the apple cheeks and bulbous nose of a connoisseur of the local ales. Gareth called to him. “Excuse me, we’re looking for Jimmy.”
“You’ve found him, lad.”
Gareth introduced himself and Matilda, and passed on Reynolds’s directions, adding, “If it’s no trouble. I suppose you’re still putting away Reynolds’s tack and rubbing down his horse. . . .”
“No, no horses been out today.” Jimmy considered them, then turned and looked at the mound of the fort. “Well, it’s trouble, right enough, but I can organize something.” He ambled through the wide stable door, which, Matilda saw with some surprise, was festooned with cobwebs.
She glanced at Gareth. He was gazing into the middle distance, expression unreadable. He might be checking up on whether Reynolds had been riding this morning. He was also checking up on her theory of the hidden coin. Working with him would be valuable experience, but she’d have to keep on her toes a little better than she had so far.
The door of the house opened. A woman dressed in a beige skirt and sweater stepped out and stopped dead. For a moment Matilda thought she was going to pop back inside like a cuckoo into its clock, but no, she squared her shoulders and came forward. “How do you do,” she said in a thin, breathless voice. “I’m Della Reynolds. Have you come about the note?”
A promissory note? Matilda asked herself, sensing a wave of anxiety from the woman. She and Gareth hardly looked like accountants in their pants and windbreakers. Hurriedly Matilda introduced herself and her colleague and explained about the horses.
Della’s pale, almost colorless, blue eyes flicked to the fort and back again. Anxiety wilted into dull resignation. “Oh, well, yes. . . . Jimmy?”
The old man glanced out the door. “I’m working fast as I can, Missus.”
“Oh, well, yes. . . .” Della looked down at her beige leather pumps. Even her hair was beige, held back by little-girl barrettes. Her features seemed to be only tentative sketches on her pale face. Cosmetics wouldn’t help, Matilda told herself. The living woman was less substantial than the ghost of long-dead Claudia.
The silence stretched longer and longer. Finally Gareth shifted the camera bag from one shoulder to the other and asked, “Do you hire lads from the town to muck out the stables, Mrs. Reynolds?”
“Sometimes lads” she told her feet. “Sometimes girls.”
“I suppose it’s convenient to have the traveler’s camp just up the way. They’re always willing to do the odd job.”
Della didn’t look up. Her flash of terror was so quick Matilda barely caught it. Still it left an after-image in her mind, like the blank spot on her retina after a flashbulb went off in her face. “Oh no,” Della said, “Adrian won’t allow them about the place, not at all, no.”
Jimmy emerged from the stable door leading two horses, a medium-sized brown one and a tall one of light gray. “This ’ere’s Gremlin,” he announced, nodding at the gray. “And this ‘ere’s Bodie.” He extended the reins of the smaller one toward Matilda.
Both animals were huge moving masses of muscle and bone. Not that either was making any aggressive moves. Bodie exhaled through rubbery nostrils, somewhat bored, while Gremlin eyed Gareth up and down and shrugged away a fly. Matilda took the proffered reins, let Bodie snuffle at her hand, and then hauled herself into the saddle. At least she knew which side to mount from, she told herself, sensing a critical dart from Jimmy and Gareth both.
“You’ll look after her, won’t you?” Della asked.
“Bodie’s yours, isn’t she?” returned Matilda. “I’ll take very good care of her—I’ll check her air and water and change her oil. . . .” Della stared upward, her hands clasped. “Thank you very much for letting me ride her,” Matilda finished.
“You’re welcome, I’m sure.” Della turned and scuffed toward the house, but not without one more glance toward the fort.
Gareth levitated effortlessly onto Gremlin’s broad back. The horse pranced sideways for a moment. Gareth didn’t even blink, let alone grab for the saddle. “Thank you,” he called toward Della’s retreating figure. “Much obliged,” he said to Jimmy, who tilted his cap back on his head and spat thoughtfully onto the cobbles.
Matilda decided she could live with the hornless English saddle, even though it gave her less to hold onto in an emergency. She and Bodie had to make a couple of experimental circles before they reached a compromise about the use of the reins. “It’s like steering a buggy,” Matilda gri
ped good-naturedly as she turned the horse’s head to follow Gareth out of the yard.
He glanced back. “You’re accustomed to Western-style?”
“Understandably so,” she retorted. He grinned, but said nothing.
Let him feel superior when appropriate, Matilda told herself. It would make working together easier. Although she wasn’t going to play dumb just to butter him up. She tapped Bodie’s flank with her toes and the horse picked up her pace, drawing even with Gremlin. Side by side they turned down a lane that ran behind the farm.
Human figures bobbed up and down along the skyline of the fort. Beyond it the rooftops of Corcester gathered like skirts around the steeple of the church. St. Michael’s was more impressive from a distance than when it was hemmed in by the other buildings. In its time the Roman fort of Cornovium would have been equally impressive, masonry and tile squares stamped indelibly on the green Celtic interlace of Britain.
Ahead the rolling Cheshire farmland faded into a mistily indistinct distance. Even so Matilda could detect a darker line where earth and sky met. On a clear day Durslow Edge would look like storm clouds massing on the horizon.
“I bet,” Matilda said, “Reynolds was eager to lend us the horses so he could play Lord Bountiful.”
“He’s right chuffed about his possessions,” answered Gareth. “Probably started out poor.”
“Did you catch what Della said about a note?”
“Oh yes. They’re not half in debt, I reckon. Perhaps for improvements to the farm—that’s a tidy bit of property and no mistake.”
“Except for the cobwebs hanging in the stable.”
Gareth grinned again. “Spiders eat the flies that torment the horses.”
“Oh.” Matilda liked Gareth’s grin. It slipped the tempered personality an inch or so from its police inspector’s scabbard. If they’d been out riding for pleasure he might have eventually mellowed out. But they were on a mission. “Fortuna Stud,” she went on. “Fortuna was the Roman goddess of Fate. Reynolds seems to think it means ‘luck’.”
“I wouldn’t be surprised if he gambles on his own horses. He might owe a fair amount to his turf accountant.”
“He’s certainly eager to turn a pound.”
The lane meandered across a couple of fields and then turned to follow the river. Willows lined the banks, their branches studded with green buds. Water gurgled around the stone piers of a ruined Roman bridge. Matilda’s saddle creaked, chafing gently between her thighs. She felt the spikes of her mind flatten into slow undulations. “What part of Wales are you from?” she asked Gareth.
His chin went up. “Anglesey.”
“How interesting! I bet you have red-headed Druids in your ancestry.”
“My father’s grandparents came from Anglesey, but beyond them I don’t know. My mother’s from London.”
“Quite a culture shock for her, I suppose.”
“I suppose,” he said, much too casually.
That conflict was never resolved, Matilda told herself, and did him the courtesy of diverting the subject. “I’ve always enjoyed Tacitus’s account of the battle between the Romans and the Druids on Anglesey. Suetonius thought he had pacified Britain. Then the messengers came galloping with news of Boudicca’s rebellion. He had his greatest battle still before him.”
“My grandmother used to say that when the RAF built an air base at Llyn Cerrig Bach during the War, they dug up huge chains, so well-made they used them to haul heavy equipment. Until an archaeologist realized it was pre-Roman work, two thousand years old. But they had no time to do a proper excavation.”
“And the Celtic port disappeared beneath the air base, sacrificed to a troubled time.” Matilda ducked an overhanging branch. “You must enjoy history.”
Gareth shrugged. “They made some attempt to teach it me in school. I was never keen on it.”
“What a shame,” Matilda murmured. He didn’t react. “My son is always interested enough when we do the old sites, even though he’s majoring in computer science. I’d like to see him writing archaeological programs someday, but he’s more likely to be one of the first settlers on Mars.”
“You have a son?”
“One about the same age as the kids back at Corcester, and about as flighty, given half the chance. Patrick Kiloran Gray. Patrick after his father, and Kiloran for me, that’s my maiden name.” She sensed Gareth’s puzzled query. He wasn’t about to ask out loud, though. “I’m a widow.”
“I’m sorry,” Gareth said.
Matilda replied, “So am I.”
The horses’ hooves plopped along the muddy path, Bodie stepping solidly, Gremlin showing a tendency to shy at the odd blowing leaf. But Gareth remained firmly in control. Reynolds had probably given him Gremlin to test his claims of horsemanship.
The river looped away to the left. The path sloped upward among rocks that pierced the grass of the fields. The red sandstone escarpment of Durslow Edge loomed ahead, veiled with the black and pale green of trees. The higher they went, the fresher grew the breeze.
“I interviewed Clapper this morning,” said Gareth. “Linda left the bar with Reynolds at least once, to see his artifact collection. According to both his and Della’s statements, though, he was at home the night she was killed.”
Matilda nodded. “Linda told the police she knew the whereabouts of illegal artifacts. Maybe she and Reynolds were up to something together. I wonder if he really was at home that night, or whether he intimidated Della into saying so.”
“I wonder if Della has enough sense even to be intimidated.”
“Dullness is often a defense—if you don’t let yourself feel anything, then you won’t get hurt.” Gareth glanced over at her. Matilda met his look blandly. If he wanted to put that boot on himself and shout that it fitted, let him.
A sprawl of travel trailers and old trucks filled an angle of road below them, crowded on the third side by the dark, dense bristles of a mature fir plantation. Smoke shredded down the wind. A motorcycle roared away toward Macclesfield and a dog barked furiously.
“The New Age travelers?” Matilda asked.
“Yes. They were camped on the other side of the river when Linda was killed, beyond Corcester, but about the same distance from Durslow. That’s where she was last seen, in their camp.”
“Was she killed for her money?”
“No. She was found with twenty quid in her handbag.” Gareth urged Gremlin on up the hillside, and Bodie dutifully followed.
“Della was frightened when you mentioned the travelers.”
“Was she then? Someone riding a brown horse welcomed two traveler lads to the farm yesterday. She said herself Bodie is her horse, didn’t she?”
“Inviting them in behind her husband’s back would frighten her, I imagine. That’s pretty bold. Maybe it’s an attempt at rebellion. Unfortunately, that kind of desperate rebellion is so undirected it can turn dangerous.”
“You’re thinking she’s in danger from Reynolds? He looks the sort to knock his wife about,” Gareth said indignantly. “I’ll call round the traveler’s camp and talk to Nick, the leader, see if he knows anything. Or if he’ll tell me anything.”
“It might be better if you waited a few days to do that. You’re supposed to be here writing about the dig.”
“It’s early days yet.” Gareth’s tone carried little conviction.
The horses scuffed up a trail between russet sandstone boulders. Aged oak trees clung to the top of the embankment. Interspersed among them were sweet chestnut trees just starting to bloom with pink and white flowers. “Those are Mediterranean trees,” Matilda offered. “Brought here by the Romans. The oaks, of course, are the Druid trees.”
Gareth didn’t reply. Crows spun overhead, calling harshly, and somewhere pigeons cooed. A heave and a scramble and the horses stood snorting atop Durslow Edge.
Gareth pulled a map from his bag, consulted it, and led the way across the rough and tumbled top of the Edge. The scarred mouths of old mine wo
rkings gaped in barren patches of ground. On a low promontory a few cut stones among the trees showed where a fortress had once risen. One or two vestigial roads ended in car parks littered with aluminum cans, cardboard, and plastic.
At last they came to a rocky ledge in a cliff, wide enough the horses could walk along it comfortably, and so high that Matilda felt she had only to reach out and touch the writhing limbs of the oaks below.
Beyond the trees lay the countryside. Black and white houses and black and white cows dotted the fields. Corcester was a distant jumble of squares and angles. The Jodrell Bank satellite dish made a metallic accent on the far horizon. A smudge to the northeast hinted at Manchester’s factories and traffic jams. The wind whipped Matilda’s hair back from her face. She thought, there is no black and white, only shades of gray.
Gareth dismounted gracefully and held Bodie’s bridle. Matilda levered herself out of the saddle. Nerve endings in her seat and thighs woke from their stupor and protested. She walked gingerly back and forth while Gareth secured the horses to a nearby log.
A few steps along the ledge a fissure opened in the face of the cliff. From it water poured into a rough-hewn basin. Cold water, Matilda discovered when she washed her hands in it. The stone before her face was marked with myriad scratches—old writings and drawings. She could almost make out faces looking at her, noses and eyes defined from bumps in the rock. Sacrificial heads? Bride’s well. Brighid’s well, whether it was technically a spring or not. Coins glittered at the bottom of the basin, and the neighboring tree branches were tied with bits of cloth. Someone still believed.
Gareth knelt, cupped his hands, and drank. If he was willing to brave any microbes, so was she. Matilda drank, too. The water filled her mouth with implications of stone and dirt and green. It wasn’t its chill that made her shoulders pucker. She turned around.
Ghostly leaves swayed among the branches of the oaks, thick bunches of leaves casting dense shadows that fled before the guttering light of torches. . . . The torchlight thinned and dissipated into the dim sunlight. Matilda blinked. This was a ceremonial place. The rock beneath her feet hummed with an ancient power that if not malicious, was not particularly friendly.
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