Ellis Peters - George Felse 12 - City Of Gold and Shadows (11 page)

In a whisper she asked: ‘What was it?’

‘A single gold coin. An aureus of Commodus—that’s round about the end of the second century AD.’

‘But you couldn’t,’ she said just audibly. ‘You couldn’t kill somebody for one gold coin. It isn’t possible!’

‘People have been killed for less, even taking it at its face value, though its actual value is very much greater. But no, he wasn’t killed for that, or it wouldn’t have been still on him. No, whoever caught him hunting for more knew that there was more there to be found—knew it because he himself had come out as soon as he dared, to remove whatever was there to a place of greater safety. Don’t forget the landslip had taken place only that morning, Orrie Benyon was just cordoning off the dangerous area and putting up warning notices. If someone had valuables hidden in the hypocaust, he must have been waiting on thorns for the chance to get his hoard away, and baulked all day by staff and visitors wandering around. He came at dusk, as soon as he dared, when everyone was gone. So did the boy. Maybe he’d already unearthed what was left, and it was too late just to warn him off and hope for the best. X preferred a final solution.’

‘Is this a theory?’ she asked in horrified fascination. ‘Or do you know it?’

‘It’s a theory. One that fits. In the last days of Aurae Phiala the coinage was shaky in the extreme, a lot of barbarous, debased pieces were being struck everywhere. But this—I’m well briefed on the subject, this isn’t my own knowledge—is a fine, full-weight aureus from two hundred years previously, enormously enhanced in value. And the Romans were hoarders. Now supposing some family here had a store of such good gold pieces at the end, when the Welsh attack was threatening, they might very well bury it for safety, in the hope of recovering it later. They seem to have shut their eyes and hoped to the very end.’

‘But can one coin prove anything?’ she said hesitantly.

‘A very special coin. It hadn’t lain loose in the soil for centuries, or even for weeks. It’s virtually mint-new. That means it’s been kept carefully and put away securely, and certainly not alone. In a pottery jar, well sealed. During the slip falling bricks inside the flue may have broken the jar, and rolling earth carried one coin down the slope, for Gerry to find. Not a dull bit of corroded bronze, but fire-new gold. No wonder he went back to look for more.’

‘But if someone knew all about it before, this treasure, why hadn’t he removed it earlier?’

‘It was safe enough where it was, until the river took a bite out of the hypocaust. It’s possible the hoard was actually found somewhere else on the site—say the cellar of one of the houses—and put in the flue for safe-keeping, to be drained away gradually. A whole thicket of broom bushes came down in that slip, as you saw. I think there was a way into the flue all along, under cover of those bushes. Possibly the slip, while it exposed it, also partially filled it in. I think, too, that the find was not merely of coins, but also of small pieces of jewellery and other articles. The indications are that this site may have been exploited for at least a year. You can’t dispose of such pieces wholesale. You take one or two, having studied the collectors of the world, and the highly professional fences of the antique market, and place them where they’ll bring you in the best and safest return. You lie low for a while, and you disperse a handful of coins, singly, perhaps not to the best advantage, but still it’s all clear profit. And when you hit a passionate collector who takes care to ask no questions, then you venture the big deal. But it means dedicated study, exact judgement, and above all, time.’

He could sense, even in the darkness, the enormous wonder of her eyes, fixed unwaveringly upon his face though they saw him only as a bulk solid and still between her and the sky. ‘But how do you know all this?’ she said. ‘About a whole year’s robberies from here?’

‘I don’t yet—not to say know. But for about a year certain pieces of late Roman coinage and art have been cropping up in unexpected places in the international market. Obviously genuine pieces, but of very dubious provenance. Only a few, of course. Collectors are queer fish, you know, liable to banditry without any qualms. But four instances have come to light within the year, through dealers or buyers who did have qualms. And four coming to light argues forty or more in the dark, most likely for good.’

‘And there’s something to connect these cases with Aurae Phiala?’

‘Not until now, not specifically. But period and style are right. You’ve seen the ones in the museum here, the curvilinear trumpets and dragons, those un-Roman Roman antiquities? Let’s say, there was plenty to connect our cases with four or five border sites, of which Aurae Phiala is one. And one such gold coin here, and a cold-blooded killing, are fairly eloquent argument.’

She was shivering slightly but perceptibly, not from cold and not from fear, but with the vibration of some personal and secret tension about which he had, as yet, no right to ask. She might, if he waited, confide in him, but not now; there was no time, if she was to retain her immaculate position in this household. He put a hand upon her shoulder, which was firm and slender, and turned her towards the gate.

‘Keep your lips closed and your eyes open, and think about it. And if you want me, I won’t be far away.’

‘But you won’t be here,’ she said, not complaining, merely making the position clear to herself, and well aware that her utterance had its ambiguities. ‘Not all the time.’

‘You won’t be entirely unprotected here,’ he assured her, ‘even when I’m not around. Better get back now, before they come out to look for you.’ She sensed that he was smiling again. It wasn’t an amused smile, but it was one that sent her away at a brisk and confident walk towards the house, and with a gratifying sense of being respected and appreciated.

The Roman city of Aurae Phiala remained closed to the public next day, and for several days following, an apologetic notice on the gate making known the fact to a largely indifferent general public. The enclosure was never exactly crowded, even in the height of the summer. On the riverside, where the pathway could not be closed, a uniformed policeman paced imperturbably, and occasionally moved people along if they tended to congregate and linger too long. The natives, markedly, did not. They passed, apparently oblivious, intent only on their own business; but hardly a soul in the village failed to pass at some time during that day, and not one missed a detail of what was there to be seen.

Operations had begun early. Breakfast was not yet over at the curator’s house when Orrie came to announce that the police were in occupation, and beginning to stake out the ground. Paviour left his coffee without a word, and went rushing away to protect his beloved site, and the two girls followed in slightly apprehensive curiosity. Three uniformed men were there with spades and sieves, and three or four more in plain clothes, with George Felse at the head of operations. More surprising, and to Paviour more confounding and conciliating at the same time, was the presence of Gus Hambro, busy with a large clip-board, charting on squared paper the patch of ground to be taken up, and sketching a hurried but accurately proportioned elevation of the exposed vault of the flue. He had a coloured pencil behind either ear, and a couple more in his breast pocket.

‘I knew you wouldn’t mind,’ said Bill Lawrence, hurrying to account for the phenomenon, a sheaf of plastic sacks and fine brushes under his arm. ‘He came along to copy some lettering in the museum, not expecting the place to be closed, of course. When he heard why, naturally he was interested. It was my idea, asking him if he’d like to lend a hand on doing what recording
can
be done on a job like this. He knows his stuff, you know. He jumped at the chance. We shan’t be able to do a thorough coverage, I know, but it’s a relatively small area, and we may as well keep it under what control we can manage between us. There might be some useful finds.’

‘Naturally,’ said Gus diplomatically, ‘I regard myself as under your orders, sir. If there’s any possibility of anything to be gained from this operation—and in the absence of the kind of labour you’d prefer to have on a job like this—I thought an extra pair of hands might be welcome.’

A faint look of baffled pleasure crossed Paviour’s harried face and vanished again instantly. However carefully and reverently the job was going to be handled, obviously he expected nothing but disaster. He hovered about the site restlessly, like one barefoot on thorns, all the while they were removing the debris of sagging, uprooted broom bushes, which Orrie phlegmatically loaded into a handcart and wheeled away along the riverside path to be unloaded and burned as far as possible from the sacred precincts. The care with which they examined and photographed those bushes before allowing them to be removed brought Paviour quivering to the spot. With straining eyes he watched small fragments, meaningless to the lay eye, delicately extricated from the tangle of earth about the roots and the soft turf beneath them, cased in plastic, and labelled.

‘Not your relics, I’m afraid,’ said George, meeting the baffled and frantic gaze. ‘Ours.’

He dared not ask, and was not told more. But he could not tear himself away. The operation proceeded methodically once the bushes had been cleared, though the spots where the mysterious fragments had been found were carefully tagged and covered with plastic. The broken fringes of grass were lifted off and stacked well out of the way, the spades began to clear the ground downwards from the arc of russet brickwork, warily because of sinister little trickles of loose earth that drifted down the slope at every movement. Layer by layer the narrow strata of brick and rubble were laid bare. Bill Lawrence, his eyes gleaming with the hunting passion, pounced on the fragments of encrusted ceramic and bone that were left behind in the police sieves, and Gus industriously entered their location in his graph, and sketched in each layer of masonry as it emerged.

Detective-Constable Barnes, large, rustic, intelligent and benign, put down his spade and went to work lovingly with a soft brush on the exposed uprights of the flue, whisking away loose, moist soil that abandoned its hold with revealing readiness. ‘Look at that, now! That stuff’s only been dropped here a few days. Watch that brickwork dry off in the sun, it’ll be as pale as the arch, here, in ten minutes. I reckon there was eighteen inches or so of this passage open till the bank gave way.’

They had just passed that level now, and the darkness that yawned within the flue was black and inviting. Barnes reached a long arm over the ridge of fallen soil that remained in the mouth of the hole, and groped experimentally around within.

‘Drops a foot, inside there. The bushes covered it. Nobody walks on a slope like this for choice, only sheep, and they don’t let sheep graze this lot. Reasonable folks walk on the level—either up top, or down below.’

‘What’s it feel like, as far as you can reach?’ George asked. ‘Still silted over, or any traces of flooring? Tiles? Stone-work?’

‘No, rubble. But still dropping. I’d say you’d get clear flooring a yard or two inside there.’

Lesley, watching in fascination from the sidelines, said with conviction: ‘You’ve done this before! I know the signs.’

‘Only once, miss.’ Detective-Constable Barnes turned his benevolent gaze upon her with pleasure. He liked a pretty girl. ‘I went on a dig with a bunch from Birmingham University. They had me brushing out post-holes on some rubbish dump they said was a castle. Not my idea of a castle. We never turned up nothing like this. My dad was a mason —I reckon he’d have been right interested in these bricks. There’s a colour for you! Spot-on what you mean when you say “brick”.’

‘What’s it like above? Never mind further in, how about the first couple of feet?’

‘Feels sound as rock. Arched—shallow, like.’ His stretched knuckles tapped as far as they could reach. ‘Barrel-vaulted, but low. Could be brick, could be stone. But I’d say brick. I can feel the courses.’ He withdrew a hand like a shovel, and spread fingers black with the fine dust of centuries and a mere veiling of cobweb. ‘Not much for seventeen hundred years, is it?’

The opening loomed before them, sliced into the bank, brushed relatively clean, a narrow, erect oblong of darkness with a rounded roof and pale, red and amber jambs rooted in deep green turf. And within was empty darkness, fenced off by no more than a ridge of soil. George looked round his team, and they were all massive countrymen, well in advance of the minimum police requirements. The slightest person present, leaving out the girls, was Gus Hambro, busy pricking in on his diagram the latest minor find.

‘Care to take a look inside for us? You’re the ratling.’

‘Loan me a torch, and I’ll have a go,’ said Gus. ‘What am I looking for?’

‘Whatever you see. Structure, condition—and anything that looks out of place.’

‘Right! Hang on to this,’ he said to Bill Lawrence, and thrust the clip-board and its records at him. He shed his array of colour pencils, dropping them haphazard into the grass, hesitated whether to shed his tweed jacket, too, and then, considering its worn condition, buttoned it closely for protection instead. The dank darkness had a chill and jagged look.

‘Don’t go beyond where we can reach you,’ George warned him. ‘Six feet inside is enough. Just look it over, and memorise whatever there is to be memorised.’

‘I’ll do my endeavour. Right, give us that floodlight of yours.’

He dropped to his knees in the turf, now trampled into glistening, half dried mud, and plunged head and shoulders under the ochre tinted lintel. Torso, slim flanks and thighs, thrusting legs, vanished by silent heaves into the hollow under the slope. He was now nothing more than the neatly tapered ends of corduroy slacks, and a pair of well-worn Canadian hide moccasins. And these hung still, though alertly braced, for more than a minute, while the torch he carried ranged round the interior of the passage, and leaked little sparks of muted light into the outer day. He heaved himself six inches forward, and George laid an arresting hand on the remaining available ankle, and held fast.