The Orpheus Trail (10 page)

At Liverpool Street I took the District line going West and arrived at the Barbican, after only two stops, much too early. I would have to walk about a bit to waste some time. Surprisingly when I stepped out into Charterhouse Street, it was a fine though cold winter morning of hazy sunshine. The streets were empty and everywhere shuttered for the holiday, even the little cafés and sandwich bars I passed, the only relief in the cliff façades of office blocks, were darkly shut up.
Somewhere
to my right was the Charterhouse, once a Carthusian
monastery
. I was walking along the city boundary, on the edge of the Square Mile with the warehouses of Smithfield Market on my left. Taking a quick look at the map I had brought in my pocket, and glad there was no one around to see my tourist’s ignorance, I turned down a street between the handsome mid-Victorian brick buildings of the market halls that had once disguised their bloody trade.

The air should have been full of the cries of martyred men and animals. Dissidents had burned here; Wat Tyler had been beheaded for leading the first poll tax revolt; cattle pole-axed in their millions over the years, but it was silent. Not even a car went by. In the distance I could see a bundle huddled beside a wall that, as I passed, resolved itself into the shape of a man and his dog which looked up at me defensively as his owner slept on, daring me to interfere.

Continuing south down Little Britain I passed St Bartholomew’s and turned left along Newgate Street towards St Paul’s. Suddenly coming into view between the office skyscrapers, its dome and towers
seemed to float upwards in the opal light. A quick look at my watch showed me I had wasted enough time and was now in danger of being late. Leaving the shimmering stone of the great carbuncle on its baroque pedestal, I hurried north up Aldersgate Street.

Ahead was the dark tunnel entrance to the Barbican. Briefly I
wondered
why I’d never been to the Museum of London before that one visit to see our finds, in what seemed a lifetime ago, and perhaps, in a sense, was, when Hilary was still just the Head of Conservation. After all London were our overseers, providing research and backup our own funds wouldn’t run to, including the rescue dig that had started all this with Harry Bates falling into the prince’s grave. Sometimes I almost wished that he hadn’t, that I’d been left to vegetate in my own quiet way. Now I was aware that I was breathing heavily from a sensation of, not exactly fear but apprehension as I hurried along between the tall blocks.

All this area must have been a maze of streets flattened by the Blitz, and rebuilt as an arts and residential area in the late seventies, judging by the aspirationally ugly architecture that had been meant to signify a clean modern future where culture was for every man, a
pedestrianised
, slabbed village on stilts, with airy walkways open to the
elements
, that should have given an illusion of light and space. As I half remembered, the sign for the museum pointed me up wide shallow steps to an upper level, a cathedral-sized west face in plate glass, steel and concrete. The revolving door poured me into a vast atrium filled with rippling light from the winter sun like a huge aquarium where many-coloured posters swam instead of exotic fish. It all had that quality of a dream, an unreality that made me think I must have been in some kind of daze or semi-catatonic state on my last visit, or like the sudden apprehension of déjà vu: I have been here before. Perhaps Hilary wasn’t real either.

Last time she had met me in the atrium. Now I had to seek her out. ‘I’m afraid we’re closed until next week.’ An attendant had appeared from behind an exhibition screen showing a recent find below the crypt of St Martin-in-the-Fields, a sarcophagus that might contain the bones of the soldier martyr Martin himself and might even rewrite the accepted history of the collapse of Roman London as a capital city of the empire.

‘I’m looking for Hilary Caistor in Conservation.’

‘Do you have an appointment?’

‘Yes.’

‘I’ll ring through and see if she’s in. Could I have your name please.’

‘Alex Kish.’

‘Just one moment.’ He’s watching me carefully while he dials, just in case I suddenly run amok, produce a gun, set off a bomb, make a wild dash among the exhibits. ‘I have a Mr Kish here. That’s fine. I’ll send him along.’ He puts back the receiver. ‘We have to be so careful. Last week we had someone claiming his ethnic group was
underrepresented
and waving what turned out to be a water pistol. He wanted the Iron Age stuff labelled in Cornish or Breton on the grounds that they were Celts.’

‘I know the feeling. I’m the curator at Southend. We get our
weirdoes
even there. Where do I go?’

Hilary’s door had her nameplate on it, Dr H. Caistor, which was a little intimidating. I knocked. Suddenly the door opened. We stood for a second looking at each other and then spontaneously and simultaneously kissed.

‘Did you bring your toothbrush?’

‘I did.’

‘Then you can come in.’

327
BC
Bucephala on the Hydaspes

Here died Bucephalus, beloved of the Lord Alexander, which city was named after him, for that he had carried his master across the world in journeying and in battle since his master first tamed him. For he was brought to King Philip as an unbroken colt whom none could mount or break although many tried. Then the king commanded him to be returned to Philonicus Of Thessaly, who had sent the beast, but the young prince stepping forward said first he would try him. Then was a wager made between father and son, for the price of the horse, that the prince could not subdue him. But Alexander had observed that the horse started at his own shadow when it danced before him. Therefore, turning him about so that the sun was in his eyes he gentled him with his hands and voice until the horse would let him mount. Then the horse began to gallop and Alexander let him have his head until he had done and the prince was able to turn him at the end of his career and bring him quietly about.

And Alexander, I believe, understood the nature of the horse as his own that he could not be forced but only persuaded by gentle means and for this reason King Philip, his father, appointed the philosopher Aristotle to be his tutor who was ever known as the prince’s governor because he was of too noble birth to bear the title of schoolmaster or tutor. He schooled the prince for seven years before he returned to Athens full of honours.

Yet in the matter of the mysteries of Orpheus Aristotle who regarded them as mere superstition and charlatanry was unable to persuade the prince and some men said that it was because his mother, Olympias of the Island of Samothrace was possessed with the spirit of Orpheus and the divine madness of Dionysus such as inspires the women of Thrace and that in the dances to the god she carried many small snakes about her that twined in the ivy she wore, and around the little javelins that the dancers carried in their hands, that all the men were afraid to approach her.

So when his father was dead and Alexander became King of Macedon and the Athenians, he set out to conquer Asia, for Darius III had assembled a great army against him to protect his empire. Alexander was chosen general of all the Greeks 
and many omens of victory were shown him by the gods such as the wooden statue of Orpheus which sweat miraculously when he came to the city of Lebethres. And
wherever
he went Bucephalus went with him. Yet in the first great battle after he had crossed the Hellespont the prince did not ride him but another that was killed under him. After this great victory over the Persians he subdued all the lands round about. And hence, as all the world knows, he continued with his conquests even into Egypt where he founded Alexandria, and thus through Mesopotamia, Media and Persia even up to the Caspian Sea, and there in the land of the barbarians and monsters, called
Hyrcania
, Bucephalus was captured as he was being led along. Enraged the King sent a herald to say that he would raze all their towns and kill every man, woman and child if his horse was not returned safe and whole to him. Yet when they did so he was
overcome
with joy and sent them a ransom for his horse.

Now marching ever west he came at last to the borders of India, having conquered all in his path. And here he did battle at the River Hydaspes with King Poros, a mighty king with many elephants in his army, and even so Alexander conquered him. Yet his victory was not so sweet for here, as I have told you, Bucephalus died, not of the wounds for which he was being treated, but worn out with age and journeying. And he was about fourteen years old.

After this last great battle the Macedonian troops would go no further into India and Alexander was forced to lead them back through Asia, settling his new kingdoms as he went. In his lands that were formerly those of the Persians he adopted their dress and customs in order to be more acceptable to the people, and to their soothsayers and magi, even wearing the Phrygian cap in which they depict the young god Mithras. And on this journey he became more and more fearful and distrustful of the gods, the priest, magi and oracles. Reaching Babylon after four years, he was taken with a fever of which after twenty-seven days he died in his thirty-second year. And it is certain that after the death of Bucephalus the king declined in spirit, feasting and drinking too much and fearful of the future that some would take all from him. And so it was.

Fragment of a lost work by Eratosthenes of Alexandria c. 220
BC

When we made love that first time it was the fumbled messy affair of people thinking it was too important to be just sex but that all the same they should try to get it right. It wasn’t that I was in too much of a hurry but it had been a long time and because I was unsure of my performance it was all over too soon. The next morning after a night together with the rhythms of sleep and breathing, the warmth of two bodies familiarly beside each other we made love again.

‘Mm. That was nice,’ Hilary said. ‘I’ll make some tea.’

‘Tell me about Beth’s father,’ I said over my steaming cup. I hadn’t had tea in bed since Lucy. It isn’t much fun on your own.

‘We were married very young; met at university. When I got
pregnant
and then had Beth he was teaching. I was bored at home, and he was surrounded by adoring students. The inevitable happened. I had the choice: either call it a day and start again or try to live with a serial philanderer who didn’t really want me anymore. I think it was a relief to him when I said I thought we should give up trying to make a go of it and moved out with Beth. I’d always thought I’d be a teacher too. I’d managed to finish my doctorate. But somehow after this I didn’t fancy it. I applied for the museum service. It seemed more stable, humdrum if you like.’

‘Tell me about it. But then your job is more exciting than mine. You get all that sexy dead stuff. I get whether the toilets are clean for thirty children to visit. It can’t have been easy with a small child.’

‘You’ll have to meet her soon, that’s if we’re going on like this.’

‘Do you want to?’

‘Do you?’

‘Yes, yes I do. Very much, if you do.’ I hesitated. ‘Perhaps she won’t like me, take to me I mean.’

‘You were worried that Caesar wouldn’t like me and that turned out fine. Anyway she’s already curious. She’s probably telling her friend
Julie right now: “Mum’s got a boyfriend. Isn’t that cool,” or whatever the in-word is now.’

Hilary’s flat was at the top of a tall block in the Barbican itself: ‘so that I can walk to work.’ The huge windows looked out on a sea of sky where from time to time gulls wheeled shrieking their anguished cries of drowned sailors or were carried up on thermals, like bits of blown charred rag against the light.

‘What time do you have to go?’

‘I ought to get back this afternoon.’

‘Come and see what we’ve done with your prince. Then we can have some lunch.’

So we went back to the high atrium of the museum and then down into the dimmed light of a basement room, lined with drawers and cupboards, and glass display cases standing here and there,
interspersed
with shrouded shadowy statuary as if we had descended to a sunken city, the cursed and drowned bones of Semmerwater, where:
By king’s tower and queen’s bower // The fishes come and go.

Hilary pulled back a screen. ‘We did a reconstruction for fun and to see if it would be possible to put the whole tomb on display for the public. We haven’t quite decided yet.’

We were looking into the timber-lined tomb as if peering into a life-size maquette. There lay the king or prince with all his comforts and symbols of power about him in death. ‘Do you know any more about who he was?’

‘Not precisely but we managed to get some DNA from a tooth, the only one, and he was definitely a Saxon.’

‘Not even an Angle or a Kentish Jute?’

Hilary laughed. ‘I don’t think we can get into that sort of
granularity
yet. All they can say is he’s certainly not a Roman Briton. My money is still on Saegebert. But of course we have to show proper academic caution.’

The walls were hung with gleaming copper bowls, a flagon, a
cauldron
. Blue glass drinking cups threw back a cold sapphire gleam. His sword and shield lay at right angles to the wooden bed the king rested on, opposite a pair of crossed drinking horns. Reconstructions of the lyre and the folding stool were placed at his right hand and his head.
The gold coins lay one above and one below the waist and two small gold crosses were placed on his forehead. The body itself was so
lifelike
in that dim light that I almost thought I saw it breathe as if at any moment it might stand up and resume its princely life.

‘That bag has a set of Anglo-Saxon draughtsmen in it. The flagon is from Byzantium, so is that silver spoon. One coin is from Paris; the other we’re not sure about. We think the bowl and the flagon are from the Eastern Mediterranean, probably Coptic, and the crosses perhaps Italian. Very multicultured, your prince.’

And there too was the gold buckle on a leather belt at his waist. ‘Any more surprises?’

‘Not like we found in the buckle. But the whole thing still surprises me: that it could have lain there for over twelve hundred years
undisturbed
and unknown.’

‘Was he definitely a Christian?’

‘It’s a strange mixture: a burial that manages to be both Christian and yet pagan, as if those in charge of it couldn’t quite make up their minds so they hedged their bets. Like our reconstruction; a mixture of real and fake.’

‘It all looks amazingly real to me. I definitely think you should show it. Of course I would love to have it all back.’

‘Time for lunch, I think,’ Hilary said, ‘before you’re tempted to run off with something.’

The house seemed extra cold and empty when I got back until I switched on the fire’s fake flames and, as if he’d been waiting for me, Caesar came flip-flopping in through his door. As usual I wanted him to tell me where he’d been. Maybe one day some urban wildlife
Atten-borough
will hang a mini video camera round a cat’s neck and film that mysterious life lived beyond our grasp.

Overnight my own life had taken a seismic shift into very deep waters. We had more or less committed ourselves and each other to something that we couldn’t foresee, something I wasn’t good at and neither, I suspected, was Hilary. For different reasons we’d both had to narrow our lives to the immediately predictable, to getting up each day, knowing exactly what we had to do. I wanted to ring her as soon as I got back, to say… what? Instead I told myself I would go to the
museum in the morning and pick up the stock-taking where I’d left off. After all I wasn’t a teenager. So why did I feel like one, like the one I’d once been for a brief time before the everyday closed irrevocably around me?

By next morning I was desperate. I rang her mobile.

‘I was beginning to think you were one of the fuck-and-run brigade,’ Hilary said. ‘Anyway I couldn’t sleep so I read till quite late and I came across something that reminded me of how the second boy was set up. Apparently a Persian warlord about the first millennium
BC
called Gunbad-i-Kabus was buried, if you can call it that, suspended in a coffin of rock crystal so that a shaft of light would come through and light up the body. Do you think they knew about that?’

‘If they did we’re dealing with a very well informed set of weirdoes, someone well up in history and archaeology.’

‘Someone like Jack?’

‘I suppose so.’ And I remembered queasily how he had spoken of it himself.

‘Then there’s a chance he knows them or they know about him.’

‘We keep saying “they” but we don’t know there’s more than one person involved.’

‘Logistically, if you look at the complexity of the set-ups, I think it has to be more than one, even if there’s a directing hand.’

We were on safe ground, not talking about ourselves or the future, but holding hands and stepping carefully from tussock to tussock through the emotional quagmire, in that English way I had absorbed with my mother’s milk. Suddenly I had a picture of the Chinese cockle pickers, the illegal immigrants left to drown in the quicksand of
Morecombe
Bay as the tide rushed in. I felt myself going down, grit filling my nose and mouth and silting up my eyes. The police had said the first boy was Asiatic. Or was it the second? Either way I couldn’t go down that road, a favourite expression of Lisa’s, when she thought I was being negative about a problem she would then solve with a: ‘How about if we were to, like…?’

‘Have you heard from Jack?’

‘Not since I put him on the train.’

‘Neither have I. Maybe he’s gone away on a dig somewhere.’

‘Wouldn’t he have said something while he was with me?’

‘Perhaps. But I’ve known him disappear before, be off the map when I’ve wanted to consult him about something.’

I felt a chill of unease akin to the sensation I had had alone that night with the finds in our own little exhibition that we had
grandiosely
called ‘the king’s room’. It was as if someone was watching and we were the exhibits.

Each time the phone rang I expected to hear from Jack so at first I didn’t recognise the voice saying my name when I picked up the handset later that day. ‘Mr Alex Kish?’

‘Yes?’

‘Detective Chief Inspector Hildreth.’

‘Oh. Happy New Year,’ I said stupidly and then wondered why.

‘I believe you’re a friend of a Professor Jack Linden.’

‘Yes, yes I am. Is anything wrong?’

‘We just need to get in touch with him. Do you have an address?’

‘I can give you that certainly.’ It crossed my mind that the police might want to consult Jack as an expert as we had done. I read out his address from my personal organiser. ‘I haven’t heard from him for a few days so he might be away. If I do, should I mention that you would like to talk to him?’

‘No, no thanks. We’ll do our own legwork when we’re ready. But I’d be glad if you could drop in for a chat too. Tomorrow at three suit you?’

‘Of course. We haven’t opened yet after the holiday so I’m fairly free.’

‘Good. We’ll see you then.’

The town decorations were still up but the chains of light swinging in a cold wind from the grey edgy sea looked exhausted and forlorn. The party was over. The millennium that had begun with such
optimism
in a glittering firework of hope and energy, of relief that the bloody twentieth century was behind us, had been eclipsed almost at once by the choking fumes of despair as the juggernaut rolled out again in all its trappings of torn flesh and bloodied wounds.

‘How long have you known Professor Linden?’ Hildreth’s next question took me by surprise.

‘Not long. A few months.’

‘And where did you meet?’

‘Dr Caistor introduced us.’

‘Dr Caistor? How do you spell that?’

I spelled out Hilary’s name. ‘And where would I find him?’

‘She works at the Museum of London.’

‘And what was the purpose of your meeting?’

‘Jack’s an expert on Middle Eastern civilisations. Dr Caistor thought he might be able to help with some finds we’d made locally.’

‘And did he?’

‘He deciphered the symbols and the scripts and set them in their historical context. It’s all a bit above me, I’m afraid. Not my period.’

‘And after?’

‘After the objects were stolen he tried to track them down on the antiques black market.’

‘And when did you last speak to him?’

‘Boxing Day, when I dropped him off at the station.’

‘Which station was that?’

‘Here. He’d been staying with me over Christmas.’

‘I see. And what did you talk about?’

‘The Middle East and his time there. The American attitude to history. He feels very badly about the war. Really I don’t see where all this is leading.’

‘Bear with me a bit longer, Mr Kish. You say he was looking for your stolen property on the antiques black market. Would that be using the internet?’

‘I imagine so.’

‘You see we’ve been informed that he’s been accessing child
pornography
sites.’

I felt my gorge rise as if he had calmly kicked me in the gut, and suddenly I saw the drift of all his questions and that I might be suspect too. Jack had stayed at my house, perhaps even in my bed. How long had I known him? What had we talked about? Maybe he thought that we had sat there watching porn videos together. What had I said to Hilary about feeling as if I was in a buddy movie? How do you prove there’s nothing suspicious without beginning to stammer guiltily? If I
said, ‘the night before last I was in bed with a mature woman,’ would he or anyone else except Hilary believe me? And anyway what did it prove? There were known precedents for predatory, even
murderous
, couples: Brady and Hindley, the Wests. Ian Huntley had a live-in partner. What better cover than to appear an ordinary straight
taxpaying
citizen?

I was like the proverbial drowning man with all his life passing before him, only it was my future I saw unreeling, not my past. I could be judged unfit to be around children which would mean the end of my job.

‘As far as I know they were illegal antique dealing sites: nothing to do with children or pornography.’

‘We were contacted by colleagues in the States. They’d been doing a sweep, drawing up lists. Your Professor was on one. We’ve managed to close down any UK-based sites but they have a much bigger problem over there, and in Russia, for different reasons. They keep us informed of any UK residents that turn up. So then we go after them.’