Elegy for a Queen

by Margaret James

  These days, even Janet seemed resigned to having her Saxon church – or cowshed, or whatever it was – obliterated by a shopping mall. She’d made remarks about the filthy vandals who had destroyed her work, but then gone meekly back to cataloguing Roman pottery at Marbury museum. She was working out the remainder of her notice sorting Verulamium ware, and applying for jobs abroad.

  ‘I’ll see what I can do,’ said Julius, kindly. ‘I’ll speak to Alec Fletcher, shall I?’

  ‘You know Sir Alec personally, then?’

  ‘Indeed I do. I’ll telephone him at his home this evening. I’ll tell him about your great discoveries. Then, I shall ask if you and your friends may dig for a while longer, in order to establish exactly what you’ve found.’

  * * * *

  ‘He told me he’s going to ring Sir Alec Fletcher,’ Susannah said to David, as they opened that day’s post, ‘to ask if we can start the dig again.’

  ‘I wonder why he’s doing that?’

  ‘I got the impression it was to humour me.’ Susannah shrugged. ‘It’s nice of Julius to try to help. But I’m sure Sir Alec will tell him to get stuffed.’

  ‘Maybe.’ David slit another envelope. ‘I see they’ve got a crane to lift that oak tree. You had a lucky escape last night!’

  ‘I did.’ Susannah grinned. ‘I’ve wanted to paint that dingy little room since I moved in. Now, they’re going to have to let me do it.’

  On Monday morning, with paint in her hair and a crick in her neck, Susannah went to work to find David and Julius there already, sitting at her desk.

  They were looking at the document in the Henry Codex. ‘I tell you again, I know this fellow,’ Julius insisted. ‘Ah, dear child, good morning.’

  ‘Hello, Julius.’ Susannah hung up her coat. ‘Who’s this fellow you think you know?’

  ‘The gentleman who copied out our text. He and I have met before, I know it! But when, or even where, I cannot for the life of me recall.’

  ‘The writing is distinctive,’ agreed Susannah, as she pulled up a stool.

  ‘So now, I rack my brains.’ Leaning on one elbow, Julius slumped sideways in his chair. ‘When?’ he muttered. ‘Where? In England, or in Italy? Or perhaps in Germany, and long before the war? Ach, I’m getting so old, I have no memory any more!’

  Julius went back to Oxford later that same morning. The following day, he rang the library.

  ‘In principle,’ he told Susannah, ‘Sir Alec is happy for the excavation to continue. I think there might have been a little persuasion from his wife. Lady Fletcher, you must know, is an antiquarian herself.’

  ‘So you spoke to Lady Fletcher first?’

  ‘I did indeed,’ said Julius. ‘Of course, Sir Alec hopes with just a little of his mind that you and your friends will find him something splendid, like the hoard at Sutton Hoo. But I tell him, my dear fellow, don’t get your hopes up high. The girls and boys have seen no dragons yet.’

  ‘Dragons?’ said Susannah.

  ‘Yes, dear child. Do you not know of dragons? They are treasure-loving beasts. Young dragons are brought up to covet gold. When a fledgling dragon finally leaves his mother’s nest, he seeks a hoard. He finds one, then he guards it.’

  ‘Oh, I see.’ At this piece of whimsicality, Susannah shook her head. ‘Julius, have they laid the car park yet?’

  ‘My dear child, I think not. But I fear they will wish to do so very soon.’ Julius sighed. ‘As I tell you, Sir Alec is a reasonable man. But as for Mr Clark, the site developer – there’s a very different kettle of fish.’

  ‘Did you speak to him?’

  ‘I telephoned his office. He said he would discuss it with Sir Alec, but I could tell he was against it. Of course, he thinks of profit, nothing else. My dear Susannah, you must pray.’

  * * * *

  After lunch, Susannah walked through the cloisters and into the cathedral. Men were erecting scaffolding, and huge orange dust sheets were lying everywhere. Only one small area in a transept was open to the public.

  The minster was High Anglican, so rows of votive candles burned before an altar near the crypt. There were even gilded saints, who gazed benignly down from pedestals by the organ loft. Perhaps, Susannah thought, the Puritans hadn’t noticed them up there.

  She hadn’t been in a church since the funeral, and she hadn’t prayed since she was ten. But today she gazed up at the carved and painted vaulting, not exactly praying, but hoping Gordon Clark would let the team resume the dig.

  She walked into the library to find some workmen busy servicing the central heating, a delicate operation in a place where warmth and humidity had to be just right

  ‘There’s something fallen behind this one,’ said a man with a bag of spanners, who was checking the radiator near Susannah’s desk. He handed her a yellow folder, in which she found her work on the Henry Codex, together with all her notes.

  ‘How ever did it get down there?’ she frowned, brushing off dust and cobwebs.

  ‘I reckon you’ve got a ghost,’ the man replied. ‘Lots of these old buildings round about the Close have ghosts. Some of them like chucking stuff about, or hiding things.’

  Susannah smiled at him and shook her head.

  She spent the afternoon translating various wills, charters and charms from the original West Saxon, for the millennium project. If the Abbot’s Library was haunted, she decided, it was by friendly ghosts. They rustled and whispered on the winding stairs, and loitered in the galleries above. They breathed old leather bindings, ancient parchments, gall-nut ink.

  ‘Do you believe in ghosts?’ she asked, as she and Dora took a break later that afternoon. David had gone to visit Francis Parker, and would not be back that day. ‘Do we have any here?’

  ‘Yes, of course we do.’ Dora dunked a biscuit in her coffee. ‘I often hear them scurrying around. I even know their names.’

  ‘You do?’ Susannah smiled. ‘What are they, then?’

  So Dora told her, then she tidied up her desk and finished for the day. ‘Lock up properly,’ she told Susannah.

  Left alone, Susannah went up the narrow, winding staircase to the stacks. She wondered if the ghosts resented having women here, in the long, dark chambers where they’d had their pillow-fights and wanking contests. Where the little novices had been bullied by the bigger boys, then jeered at when they wet their beds.

  She knew these novices from a thousand years ago would not have been grown men, vocations confirmed by fasting, penance and prayer. They’d have been mere children – boys whose parents could not care for them, or boys who were sickly and unable to work in the fields or follow any trade, so were a drain on the family income.

  They would have been given to God, or rather into the care of the novice master, who might have been as cruel and sadistic as any warden of a modern orphanage.

  Susannah took down the Henry Codex. By now, the wind had dropped, the air was still, and she imagined she could hear the boys, their homespun garments brushing against the stacks, their bare feet slapping on the wooden floor.

  Thanks to Dora, she felt she knew them now, these long dead novice monks. There was foolish Ceola, the idiot whose parents had left him on the minster steps one freezing Candlemas. Ceola could not speak or understand a single word of English, let alone of Latin – but he’d still learned plain chant, and sang like a lark ascending.

  There was Beorn, who’d carved a tiny portrait of himself on the wooden panel by the door. Aescwin the novice scribe had drawn a naked woman inside a parchment scroll-case, and been soundly thrashed. Aelfric, a minstrel’s youngest son, loved practical jokes and was forever hiding things.

  ‘I know you’re here, Aelfric,’ said Susannah, as a monk’s habit swished against her chair. ‘In future, leave my books and all my documents alone. Do you understand?’

  * * * *

  The following Wednesday morning, she went in early to find Janet drinking coffee from Dora’s mug, and with her feet on Dora’s desk. ‘You didn’t lock up
,’ said Janet severely, handing her the key to the library door.

  ‘I did!’ exclaimed Susannah. ‘Hang on a minute, that key was in my bag – ‘

  ‘It’s not there now though, is it?’ Janet grinned. ‘The door was open, and the key was lying in the porch.’

  ‘Aelfric,’ Susannah muttered.

  ‘Who?’ frowned Janet. ‘Well, anyway – get your coat back on.’

  David walked in then. ‘You’ll have to let her go,’ said Janet, briskly.

  ‘But,’ began Susannah, still furious with Aelfric – and with herself, for provoking him.

  ‘We can get on with it!’ Janet was all smiles. ‘In fact, we can go over to Little Wellesley right away.’

  ‘Really?’ Susannah stared. ‘But how did you – ‘

  ‘They’ve run out of money!’ Janet crowed. ‘Didn’t you see the news last night? On Monday, America had some sort of crisis, and yesterday the UK markets crashed! The whole thing’s hit Trent Weston where it hurts.

  ‘When I rang Gordon Clark this morning, to ask if we could go back to the dig, he sounded blown away.’

  ‘What did he say?’

  ‘We could go anywhere we pleased, do what the fuck we liked.’ Janet pulled a face. ‘He’s such a common little man.’

  David gave Susannah his copy of the Times. ‘They’re calling it Black Monday,’ he began. ‘It seems America is to blame.’

  ‘I see.’ Susannah scanned the headlines, then looked back at Janet. ‘Why aren’t you in Little Wellesley now, then? Why aren’t you digging holes?’

  ‘I need you to dig with me.’ Janet drained her coffee. ‘Mike and Anna are still around, but everyone else has buggered off back to college, or whatever. So, I thought I’d ask old David if he can spare you for the next three weeks.’

  ‘Of course I’ll come and help in my spare time,’ Susannah said. ‘But, as you’ve pointed out before, I’m no archaeologist. I haven’t had any training, so I’m just – ‘

  ‘A scholar and an archivist, working here and doing some impressively original research.’ David met Janet’s fierce, determined gaze. ‘Susannah’s an obliging girl,’ he added. ‘Last month, she spent all her free time working for nothing at your excavation, getting wet through, cold and filthy.

  ‘She fetched and carried for you all, and I don’t suppose she heard a single word of thanks. I’m sure she’s had enough. Of course, she’s too polite to say so – ‘

  ‘Dave, you do talk garbage.’ Janet grinned at Susannah. ‘You loved it, didn’t you?’

  ‘It was interesting,’ agreed Susannah, nodding. ‘Yes, I enjoyed myself.’

  ‘There, you see?’ cried Janet. ‘Come on, Dave, own up. You’d never dream of getting involved in anything as dirty and mucky as an excavation, and you can’t imagine why anyone else would, either. You effeminate pansies, you’re all the bloody same – ‘

  ‘Do shut up, you boring little pest.’ David turned to Susannah. ‘Do you want to go to Little Wellesley?’ he asked.

  ‘For God’s sake!’ Janet glared at him. ‘You can see she’s dying to come! Listen, Suke, it’s going to be very muddy. So go and get – ‘

  ‘Jan, will you be quiet for a minute? Let me speak to David?’ Susannah met David’s milder gaze. ‘I know we’re getting behind with the millennium stuff,’ she said. ‘ But if I spend – ‘

  ‘You can’t work all day at Little Wellesley, then come back here and work all night.’ David scowled at Janet. ‘In spite of what this hoyden here has led you to believe, I have done excavations. I know that all you want at the end of a long, hard day on site is a bath, a meal and bed.

  ‘I’ll mention it to Francis,’ he continued, quelling Janet with a glare. ‘I’d meant to have a word with him last week, but we got side-tracked into talking about some other things. If he agrees to make the funds available, and if it’s what you want, I’d like to keep you on here permanently.’

  ‘Do you think he will agree?’ Susannah asked, delighted.

  ‘I’m almost sure of it,’ said David. ‘So, a couple of weeks spent getting some experience in the field might be worthwhile.’

  ‘Does this mean you’re going to let her come?’ demanded Janet. ‘I don’t like to rush you. But while you two are nattering like a pair of housewives at a bloody launderette, the trenches are all filling up with water. The workmen are moving markers, breaking tapes, and all the fucking contexts are being permanently destroyed.’

  David merely shrugged. ‘Why don’t you go and see what you can do about it, then?’

  ‘May I take Susannah?

  ‘If she wants to go.’

  ‘I’ll come,’ Susannah said.

  ‘David, you’re a darling.’ Janet jumped up and hugged him. ‘Marry me, and have my babies?’

  ‘Dear Janet, if you don’t watch out, you’ll turn into a horrible old dyke. You need a man, to save you from yourself. But what he’d get out of it, I simply can’t imagine.’

  ‘I adore you, too.’ Picking up Susannah’s coat, Janet pushed it at her chest. ‘Run home and fetch your stuff,’ she said. ‘You can get changed in the van.’

  ‘What van is this?’

  ‘I’ve borrowed an old Transit, from a mate. He thinks he’s going to get it back on Friday.’ Janet grinned. ‘I’m going to have to find somewhere to hide it.’

  ‘Okay,’ said Susannah. ‘Stay here and talk to David, while I go and get my things.’

  ‘No, go and sit in your van.’ David shooed them through the open door. ‘Some of us have work to do.’

  * * * *

  The site was such a mess that even Janet was dismayed. The trenches, which they’d cut with such precision and excavated with such care, were just ditches now, full of floating Coke cans, fag ends, Mars bar wrappers and slime.

  The tapes and markers had been lost, so now the site would have to be re-surveyed. A JCB had driven through the heart of it, leaving ruts and puddles everywhere.

  All work on the business park had ceased. The tractors and machinery had been corralled into a huge, locked compound. There were lots of notices, warning potential thieves that there were dogs.

  They couldn’t see any dogs. But three or four disgruntled-looking men in boots, blue jeans and donkey jackets displaying the red Trent Weston logo were mooching around a portacabin at the site’s perimeter.

  Janet eyed them for a moment. Then, she waved and shouted. ‘Well, they’ve got nothing to do,’ she whispered, ‘so they can pump this water out for us. Good morning, gentlemen! I wonder if you could do us a small favour?’

  ‘What’s that, then?’ asked one.

  ‘Only we wasn’t paid last Friday,’ growled another, kicking at a tussock with a muddy hob-nailed boot.

  ‘But that’s terrible!’ Positively radiating sympathy, Janet shook her head. ‘It’s disgusting, treating people like this.’

  ‘Too right it is, my love.’ The workman nodded towards the flooded trenches. ‘You’re two of them digger people, aren’t you? You want that lot pumped out?’

  ‘Well, if you could – ‘

  ‘No problem, darlin’.’ Now, the man was grinning, obviously seduced by Janet’s charm. ‘Tom,’ he said, ‘you got the keys still?’

  ‘Yeah, they’re in the hut.’

  ‘Then let’s get on with it.’

  Two of the men strode off across the quagmire, returning with a coil of yellow pipe. Then, one of the smaller JCBs came lumbering across the ruts and bumps.

  ‘What’s that for?’ asked Janet.

  ‘You need a drainage ditch.’ The man who seemed to be in charge was nodding towards the swamp. ‘Okay, we pump the water out – but it’s low lying here, so when it rains your holes will just fill up again. You need a sump, and that’s what Tom here’s going to make for you.’

  ‘What do we have to do for them?’ Susannah asked, as she watched the men start work.

  ‘Buy them a pint or two, I would imagine.’ Janet shrugged. ‘The Green Man does good local ales. So if w
e take them over there and buy them pie and chips, we might get the canopy put up tomorrow.’

  ‘Do we have a canopy?’

  ‘I ordered one but it never got put up. I saw it bundled up behind their hut.’

  The following morning, Janet called for Susannah before it was even light. ‘It’s much too early,’ she complained as, yawning and rubbing the sleep out of her eyes, she threw her bag and boots into the van.

  ‘You’re such a wimp,’ said Janet. ‘If you don’t watch out, you’ll turn into a proper little spinsterish librarian, complete with brogues and cardigans.’

  At the site they found Mike and Anna, chilled to the bone and looking fed up. ‘Suke’s not happy either,’ Janet told them, as they began to unload the van.

  ‘She’s in good company.’ Anna dumped the canvas bag of trowels, tapes and finds trays on the muddy ground. ‘Mike’s been going ballistic here. All the markers have been lost, you see.’

  ‘I know,’ said Janet, grimly. ‘He’ll have to mark out the site again. Hey, Mike?’

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘Get your tapes and stakes and stuff, and turn this wasteland into an excavation.’

  ‘So what are you lot going to do?’

  ‘I am going to sit in the back of the van, and have a think. Anna can help you with your measuring, and Suke can go to Little Wellesley Spar to buy some tea and coffee and stuff. I believe the original south-west co-ordinate was somewhere over there.’

  The site was re-surveyed, the sections cleaned, and a new site record started, for the original had disappeared. By one o’clock in the afternoon, the four of them were sitting in the back of the old van, eating bacon sandwiches and filling in context sheets.

  But, as the days went by, as they crouched in muddy trenches sifting spoil and finding nothing new, their spirits began to flag. As she trowelled away, Susannah grew cold and bored and wet and tired. She envied David, warm and cosy in the Abbot’s Library.

  The wall was gradually revealed in all its ruined glory. The solid Roman masonry suggested this had been a structure that must have over-awed the pagan Saxons, who’d thought these ancient buildings must be entweorc – the work of giants, not men.