It was some two miles to the wooded slopes of the Forest. I wandered about looking for a sheltered dell and found still better cover in the tumbled entrance to a private coal mine. Vegetation had grown up around it and over the path, so that I knew it was abandoned. With dead twigs and broken pit props I soon had a fire going in the entrance which could not be seen from anywhere but the immediate front.
There I warmed up and, after luxuriously dozing in the comfort, for a while returned to a shaken but more or less normal self. Imagination began to play over all those conversations with Marrin which I have recorded. Jealousy I could leave out as a motive. Elsa was really his niece, and anyway he knew nothing of our too impulsive affair.
Three clues to what had disturbed him stood out: the exploration for traces of palaeolithic man; the Severn cliffs; the turtle. One or all of these could reveal his carefully guarded secret of the financing of Broom Lodge. Had he found gold in some recess below the present level of the Severn? Quite impossible. Stone-age man did not, know how to smelt gold or any other metal. Then could he actually be a traditional alchemist who had recovered the ritual formula for transmuting lead and mercury into gold? Nonsense! The alchemy was a smoke screen. Could he be panning some stream or sandbank in which was gold carried down from the Welsh mountains? Unlikely. It would have been discovered thousands of years before Mr Simeon Marrin got at it. The turtle? Well, he had been evasive about the turtle, even alarmed when I talked of bringing down a zoologist to identify it. There was a connection of some sort, but not essential.
I slept at first light, woken by the baa-ing of sheep when the sun was up. Stream water for breakfast. Hunger would have to wait. After scattering the ashes of my fire I set off, carrying the bundle of suit and aqualung, and strode furiously through the Forest towards Cinderford which I assumed was big enough to possess a police station. I had no solid evidence except the weight belt – provided an expert could prove by marks that the buckle had been deliberately jammed. All the facts I could probe were that the suit was his, that he had allowed me to go to the bottom of a deep which he knew was lethal and then had deserted me and kept quiet about it.
Deliberately I passed close to Broom Lodge and hid beneath the stems of a clump of foxgloves. I can only explain that by the mixture of motives which accompanies a foul temper. I wanted to see if routine was proceeding normally. I hoped to catch a glimpse of Elsa. I needed to know if Marrin had returned safely and to see his face. There was no chance of being caught unless somebody stepped on me.
Several of the druidical drop-outs went off into the forest. Useless as witnesses to anything so I let them go. The workshops were innocently busy. The only view of Elsa was her backside as she leaned over a garbage can. So I slid back into the cover of the trees, stormed on my way without caution and ran slap into the major who was peering along a straight ash sapling which he had just cut down.
‘Hi! Where are you off to, Piers? I thought you had gone.’
‘I am off to the police station, Major, and I shall be obliged if you will come with me.’
‘Not going to run me in, are you?’
I didn’t reply to that. My intention was to prevent him trotting back to Broom Lodge and saying he had met me.
‘Had a spot of trouble with the locals?’
I was so angry that I spat out the truth. ‘Your Simeon Marrin tried to kill me last night.’
‘What had you found out, Piers?’
‘Nothing – except that he’s a fraud.’
‘Oh, I know that! But a prophet, possibly a prophet! So I must forgive him so long as he doesn’t land himself in gaol or commit unpardonable blasphemy. Don’t blame you for thinking us all crackers! Simeon and the Stone Age. Me and stirrups.’
‘Stirrups?’
‘Roman cavalry didn’t have ’em in Arthur’s time. Heavily armoured they were. That’s why folk memory called them knights when the legends started seven hundred years later. Hovered around throwing things or poking at the enemy. If you charged, either you fell off or the lance broke. Then you carried on with the spike at the other end.’
Evidently the major was something of a historian. The surprise of finding that there was such a professional side to him made me forget self-pity for a moment and listen.
‘Arthur’s tactics – that’s what I want to improve. Stirrups all they needed to be able to withdraw the lance. Then charge at the trot knee to knee and go through the Saxon infantry like a dose of salts.’
‘Are you proposing to alter the course of history?’ I asked, for he seemed to be considering transmigration backwards in time as well as forwards.
‘Yes. Why not? Aren’t pleased with the present, are you, if you’re on your way to the police station?’
He caressed his ash sapling.
‘That’ll be the right weight when it’s seasoned,’ he said, ‘and it will bend not break. Now why set the cops on Simeon? After all, he only tried to kill you. Much more important things than that! You should find out what he’s up to before he can make a fool of himself again. A pity for Elsa that would be. Nice girl. Young chap like you should make a pass at her. Get your face slapped, I expect, but it won’t hurt.’
‘Don’t you know what he’s up to?’ I asked.
‘Whatever will do the most good to the colony. Ever heard of St Januarius?’
‘The martyr whose blood liquefies?’
‘That’s the chap. Dried blood kept in a holy bottle of some kind. Faithful come in their thousands to see it liquefy. Priests make sure that it damn well does when it should. A lie to the senses of course, but all to the good. It makes thousands believe truths which the senses have nothing to do with. Why are you carrying that kit? Been diving with Simeon?’
‘Yes. At night this time. And over a quicksand where he knew I must drown.’
‘Must or could?’
‘Must. But when the bore arrived it pulled up the whole bottom and me with it.’
‘So he doesn’t know you escaped?’
‘He soon will.’
‘Why not stay dead, old boy?’
‘What for?’
‘Want to know where he gets his gold from, don’t you?’
‘Not for myself.’
‘I know that. Heard you talk about a lot of antique economies on the first night. You’d rather be famous than rich every time. Stay dead and you’ll have a chance. Come marching into Broom Lodge with a warrant and you won’t.’
I asked him what his interest was. As he had once said to me, a monk ought to live in poverty but there was no reason why the monastery should. However Marrin came by his money, it kept the commune going.
‘Simple, Piers, simple! I’ve been worried. Old soldier, sane sometimes. Assume Simeon made the bowl. Where did he get the gold from? Alchemy, my arse! Imagine the scandal if he’s pinching it somewhere! Bloody newspaper headlines! Worse blasphemy than ever. That’s what I want to avoid. Assume he scooped his bowl out of the bed of the Severn. “Then Did Those Feet in Ancient Time?” We have to know what he has been up to. His father was a dear friend of mine. Didn’t tell you that, did I? You stay dead, boy! Much more alive that way. Tuck down in the Forest somewhere near! Needn’t tell me where. Two of us can check up on him when one can’t.’
With his visionary lunacies of Arthur, enhanced by trotting down the Mall in shining armour, his militant Christianity to match and his clipped speech, he puzzled me. He must have been close on fifty, though his straight back and flat belly were those of a fit man ten years younger. But the age difference hardly counted; I realised that he was treating me as if I had been one of his trusted subalterns in trouble. There had been a wholly charming smile when he described himself as sane, sometimes.