"Back to Father Giovanni," Gray said. "You said the bodies drew him here."
"Aye." Wallace returned to his seat and straddled his chair. "Marco heard about our discovery. In a place where Christianity and the pagan ways were still in conflict."
"Still, that conflict didn't truly draw him," Gray said and stared down at the first photo of the woman with the child. There was no mistaking that tableau. Like a Madonna and child. And not just any Madonna. The tannins from the peat had dyed the woman's skin a deep brownish-black.
"I sent him a photo of the mummies. He came the next day. He was interested in any manifestation or reference to his Black Madonna. To find such a set of bodies in a sacred pagan burial site, in a land where Christianity and ancient ways still mixed, he had to discover for himself if there was any connection to the mythology of his dark goddess."
"And was there?" Rachel asked.
"That's what Marco spent the past years investigating. It had him shuffling all over the British Isles. In the last month, though, I could tell that something had him especially agitated. He would never say what it was."
"And what's your take on the mummies?" Gray asked.
"Like I said, we didn't find any mistletoe. I think the bodies were dead when they were buried in the bog. But who buried them and why? And why did Martin Borr mark his book with this pagan symbol? That's what I wanted to know."
"And?" Gray pressed the man. He was annoyingly oblique with his answers, teasing them out for greater effect.
"I have my own hypothesis," Wallace admitted. "It goes back to where I started my investigation. The Domesday Book. Something laid waste to the nearby village or town. Something horrible enough to raze the place to the ground, to wipe all records off the maps. All records, that is, except for the cryptic reference in the great book and the mention in Martin Borr's diary. So what happened to warrant such a reaction? I would wager it was some sort of plague or disease. Not wanting it to spread, to keep it secret, the place was destroyed."
"But what about the bodies here?" Rachel nodded down to the photos.
"Just close your eyes and put yourself back in that town. A place isolated and under siege by some great illness. A town mixed between devout Christians and those who practiced the ancient ways in secret, who certainly must have known about this stone ring near their town, who perhaps still worshiped here. Once doom fell upon this valley, each side most likely beseeched their gods for salvation. And some probably hedged their bets, mixing the two faiths. They took a mother and a baby boy, representative of the Madonna and her child, and buried them in this ancient pagan site. I believe these two are the only bodies that escaped the fiery purge, the only two left from that old plague."
Wallace touched the dissection photo with a finger. "Whatever struck that village was strange indeed. I don't know of anything like this that has ever been reported in the annals of medicine or forensics. The bodies are still under investigation, and that's being kept a guarded secret. They won't even tell me what they found."
"But shouldn't you be kept informed?" Gray asked. "Aren't you a tenured professor at the University of Edinburgh?"
Wallace's brow crinkled in confusion, then relaxed. "Oh, no, you misunderstood me. When I said the university took the bodies, I didn't mean Edinburgh. My grant came from abroad. It's not an uncommon practice. For field studies, you take funds wherever you can find them."
"So who took the bodies?"
"They were sent to the University of Oslo for initial examination."
Gray felt kicked in the gut. It took him an extra moment to respond. Oslo. Here was the first solid connection between events here and what Painter Crowe was investigating in Norway.
While Gray grappled with the implications, Wallace continued. "I guess ultimately it all goes back to extremophiles."
The oddity of the non sequitur snapped Gray's focus back. "What are you talking about?"
"My funding," Wallace said in a tone that made it sound as if it should be obvious. "Like I said. In this business, you get money where you can."
"And how do extremophiles fit in with all that?"
Gray was well aware of the term. Extremophiles were organisms that lived under extreme conditions, ones that were considered too harsh to support life. They were mostly bacteria, found living in toxic environments like boiling deep-sea rifts or volcanic craters. Such unique organisms offered potential new compounds to the world.
And the world's industries had certainly taken note, generating a new business called bioprospecting. But instead of prospecting for gold, they were after something just as valuable: new patents. And it turned out to be a booming business. Already extremophiles were being used to patent new industrial-strength detergents, cleansers, medicines, even an enzyme used widely by crime labs for DNA fingerprinting.
But what did all that have to do with bog mummies in England?
Wallace tried to explain. "It goes back to my initial hypothesis, one I pitched to my potential sponsors. A hypothesis about the Doomsday Book."
Gray noted that he called it Doomsday, rather than Domesday, this time. He imagined that the professor, with his usual flair for the dramatic, had sought funding using the book's more colorful name.
"As I mentioned, those few places in the book marked in Latin as 'wasted,' seemed to have been wiped off the map-literally and figuratively. What would make those old census takers do that unless something dangerous had struck these towns?"
"Like a disease or plague," Gray said.
Wallace nodded. "And potentially it was something never seen before. These were isolated places. Who knew what might have risen out of the bogs? Peat bogs are soups of strange organisms. Bacteria, fungi, slime molds."
"So they hired you as both an archaeologist and a bioprospector."
Wallace shrugged. "I'm not the only one. Major industries are turning to field archaeologists. We're delving into ancient places, sites long closed up. Just this past year, a major U.S. chemical company discovered an extremophile in a newly opened Egyptian tomb. It's all the rage, you see."
"And for this dig, the University of Oslo funded you."
"No. Oslo is just as strapped as any university. Nowadays most grants are generated from corporate sponsors."
"And which corporation hired you?"
"A biotech company, one working with genetically modified organisms. Crops and whatnot."
Gray gripped the table's edge. Of course. Biotechnology companies were major players in the hunt for extremophiles. Bioprospecting was their life's blood. They cast feelers out in all directions, across all fields of study. Including, it seemed, archaeology.
Gray had no doubt who sponsored Wallace's research.
He spoke that name aloud. "Viatus."
Wallace's eyes grew larger. "How did you know?"
11:44 P.M.
Seichan stood outside her cabin. She held a cigarette in her hand, unlit and forgotten. The stars were as crisp as cut glass in the night sky. Streams of icy fog crept through the trees. She inhaled a deep breath, smelling the peat smoke, both from their camp stoves and from the smoldering fires underground.
The ring of stones, rimed in ice, looked like chunks of silver.
She pictured the two bodies buried in the center. For some reason, she thought back to the curator she had slain in Venice-or rather, to his wife and child. She pictured the two of them buried here instead. Knowing it was born out of guilt, she shook her head against such foolish sentimentality. She had a mission to complete.
But tonight her guilt had sharpened to an uncomfortable edge.
She stared down at her other hand. She held a steel thermos. It had kept her tea warm. The warmth also kept her biotoxin incubated. The group had talked at length about extremophiles after the revelation about the source of Dr. Boyle's funding. The source of the toxin supplied to her was a bacteria discovered in a volcanic vent in Chile. Frost sensitive, it had to be kept warm.