He looks expectantly at Ruth, who is frantically working out the Latin. She wishes Max were here to translate it.
‘King Arthur,’ she says at last. ‘King of Britain.’
‘King of the Britons,’ corrects Henry.
There is a silence. In the distance, Ruth can hear somebody hoovering. Of course, it’s the holidays; there will be no students, only cleaners.
‘Did Dan really think it was King Arthur?’ asks Ruth. ‘The King Arthur?’
‘What do we mean by the King Arthur?’ asks Henry, sounding like a typical historian. ‘There are so many legends, very few historical facts. Documentary evidence for the post-Roman period is scarce. Arthur’s not even mentioned in The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, for instance. Geoffrey of Monmouth writes about him in his Historia Regum Britanniae but that’s a very dodgy historical source, full of mythology and sheer imagination. There’s also a ninth-century Latin source, the Historia Brittonum. That depicts Arthur as a Romano-British king who unites the warring British tribes after the departure of the Romans. The Welsh Annals link Arthur to the Battle of Badon in about 516 AD. The dating of the temple would tie in with this. One interesting thing, though, neither the Historia nor the Annals uses the word “Rex” to describe Arthur. That would make our inscription unique.’
His Alan Bennett voice is as light as ever but Ruth thinks she can hear the excitement underneath. The tomb of King Arthur – or even the tomb of a man who might be King Arthur – would be the biggest thing ever to happen to Pendle University, and to Clayton Henry. In fact, Ruth is surprised that Henry has not already alerted the press. She is sure that if Phil found even a hint of a legendary British king, he’d be on Newsnight in two seconds flat. She asks the question.
For the first time, Clayton Henry looks really uncomfortable. He fiddles with his letter-opener – a rather ornate silver knife – and avoids meeting Ruth’s eyes.
‘It’s a bit sensitive,’ he says at last. ‘I wanted to make sure. Our department … well, our department isn’t that popular in the university.’
‘Why’s that?’
Clayton laughs though he still looks rather shifty. ‘Oh, probably just because I’m Yorkshire and this is Lancashire. The old Wars of the Roses stuff, you know.’ Ruth looks at him incredulously and Clayton must feel the inadequacy of this explanation because he says, still not meeting her eyes, ‘History doesn’t bring in much money. There are always people who’d like to see us replaced with something sensible like metallurgy.’
‘But if you made a really big discovery …’ says Ruth.
‘Exactly.’ Clayton Henry looks up with almost painful eagerness. ‘If this did turn out to be the real thing, we’d be made. Press, TV, conferences. It’d put Pendle on the map all right. But if I went public with it and the bones turned out to be a hoax, I’d be a laughing stock. That’s why I wanted you to look at them.’ Now he does look at Ruth. His eyes are a very clear blue, almost childlike,
‘I’d be happy to look at them,’ says Ruth. In fact, she can hardly wait. This could be the biggest find of the decade and she is right there, the first archaeologist on the spot. After Dan, of course.
‘I can take you to the site now, if you like,’ says Henry. ‘The bones aren’t still there. We’ve moved them somewhere safer.’
Ruth wants to ask if the bones have been excavated with due care but realises that this would sound insulting. All the same, she wishes that she had been able to supervise. One false move, one mistake in recording and an entire excavation can be ruined. She would have taken days over this – cataloguing, examining the context, just looking. As Erik always said, ‘First, you look. Look as long as you like. You won’t get that first sight again.’
‘Did Dan send any samples for analysis?’ asks Ruth.
‘Yes, he sent samples off for carbon 14, isotopic testing and DNA. We haven’t had the results yet.’
Again, Ruth feels a thrill of excitement. Who knows what the results might show? And she will be the first to see them.
‘The temple,’ she says. ‘Who was it dedicated to?’
‘A strange deity,’ says Henry. ‘A version of the Celtic god Bran, which means …’
But Ruth knows what it means. Bran means Raven.
The Raven King.
CHAPTER 11
Nelson, though he doesn’t know it, is only a few miles away from his youngest daughter. His mother has insisted on taking him and Michelle to Rook Hall, a nearby stately home. Nelson’s sister, Maeve, has accompanied them, along with her granddaughter, Charlie.
‘Charlie?’ Nelson had said, peering at the blonde moppet in a fairy dress. ‘I thought she was a girl.’
‘Of course she’s a girl, Harry,’ said Maeve, hoisting a nappy bag on her shoulder. ‘Don’t be stupid.’
‘Is it short for Charlotte?’ asked Michelle, crouching down to say hello to the baby.
Maeve had shrugged. ‘Not as far as I know.’
Nelson can never get used to these new androgynous names. He has a colleague with daughters called Georgie and Sidney. At least Judy had chosen a traditional name for her baby. Michael. But why does that name choice make him feel uneasy?
He also can’t get used to his sister being a grandmother. But since Maeve, at fifty-three, is ten years older than him, she’s not especially young to have grandchildren. Her daughter, Danielle, had married at twenty-three and had Charlie at twenty-five. All very respectable. It’s just that it makes Nelson feel old. He’s a great-uncle now. Jesus wept.
Maeve seems to do most of the childcare while Danielle is out at work. Nelson’s mother helps too, still fit at seventy-five. She now looks critically at Charlie’s uncovered head.
‘She needs a sun hat on her, Maeve.’
Maureen Nelson’s voice is still unashamedly Irish after five decades in England. Her daughter, on the other hand, is broad Lancashire. The first thing Maeve had said to Nelson was, ‘You’ve lost your accent.’
‘I haven’t!’ said Nelson, outraged. His colleagues in Norfolk think that he talks like a combination of Peter Kaye and Wallace from Wallace and Gromit. He’s heard them imitating him.
‘You have a bit, Harry,’ said Michelle. ‘So have I.’
And that’s always the pattern of visits to Blackpool. Michelle is continually shocked at the abuse directed at Harry by his ever-loving mother and sisters. She throws herself into the breach as a peacemaker, not realising that all four of them actually enjoy these exchanges.
Now Maeve snaps at her mother. ‘She’s fine, Mum. The sun’s not out anyway.’
‘It’s not the sun that gives you heatstroke,’ says Maureen unanswerably. Maeve rolls her eyes and wheels Charlie off in the direction of the gift shop.
Rook Hall is a perfect Georgian house, almost scarily symmetrical, set in beautiful landscaped grounds. Nelson doesn’t mind trudging round over-decorated rooms and oohing and aahing over dovecotes and lily ponds but he does wonder why, in her seventies, his mother has suddenly got into culture. When he was growing up, Maureen would have been actively suspicious of anyone whose idea of a good time was visiting National Trust properties. He still remembers what she said about their neighbour who listened to classical music. But now Maureen is actually a member of the National Trust as well as a friend of the local theatre and a frequent operagoer. Do you just get more interested in these things as you get older? Nelson, remembering a God-awful modern play Michelle made him see two years ago, doesn’t feel that the process has started with him.
In one aspect, though, Maureen hasn’t changed at all. She is determined to get her money’s worth and to see every inch of the house, even though she has visited many times before. Maeve soon gives up and takes Charlie out into the grounds but Nelson and Michelle follow Maureen’s indomitable figure through dining rooms laid for some invisible banquet, up and down ornate staircases (marvelling at the rococo ceilings), through kitchens complete with plastic meat that reminds Nelson of an autopsy, and into myriad rooms whose only function seems to be to display collections of eighteenth-century thimbles.