The Orpheus Trail (3 page)

‘Not hair. The noise was solid.’

‘But I would have expected bone to have dissolved, given that we don’t have any trace of a body.’

‘Except the tooth enamel. Perhaps the buckle protected it,
whatever
it is.’

‘But the dust got in.’

‘Yes, the dust got in.’

‘Should I come down and have a look?’

‘Please, if you can spare the time.’

‘For this, of course. It could be something really exciting, proving he was a Christian.’

‘Then it would have to be Saebert. Bede is quite clear as you told me.’

‘I’ll come down this afternoon. Then we can have a look when the public have left. Don’t let anyone else touch it.’

‘It’s safely locked away.’

There had been a steady stream of visitors all day, including two school parties. The exhibition didn’t mean much to most of the
children
as far as I could see. Just a welcome break from the routine of school. But several of the adults, when I looked in from time to time, showed something of the suppressed excitement I had felt myself, even a little of the shock of last night.

Hilary arrived at four thirty and we went along to what we were calling ‘The Royal Room’. The last visitors were drifting away. The museum closed at five and it was almost dark outside. ‘You’ve laid it out very well,’ she said.

‘That’s our Lisa. She’s really much too good for us. I’m afraid we’ll soon lose her. I’ve told the staff I’ll lock up tonight; that we’ve got some work to do here. So we shouldn’t be disturbed.’

‘Good. Let’s open the case.’

Once again I unlocked it. We both put on gloves. Hilary lifted out the buckle. She shook it gently against her ear. ‘There is something in there. I heard a distinct knock.’

‘Would it be sacrilege to try and open it?’

‘It might be professional suicide.’

But I felt that whatever was in there wanted to be seen, let out, almost like the genie from the bottle.

‘Aladdin’s lamp,’ I said.

‘You mean try rubbing it. Who knows what we might find. A pity it wasn’t opened during the cleaning process.’

As she spoke her gloved hand was stroking the buckle.

‘Can you move the rim where the belt goes through?’

She pushed at it gently with her forefinger. ‘I don’t know if it’s meant to move.’

Suddenly the hasp holding the tongue and rim in place slid
backward
. ‘It’s the weld,’ Hilary said. ‘It’s come apart. I nearly dropped the whole thing.’ The fore piece had fallen away, leaving the buckle in two parts with a long slit open between the riveted plates.

I took the hasped tongue and rim in my gloved hand. ‘Whatever is in there must have been inserted before the other part was welded on.’

With a delicate thumb and forefinger she upended the rest of the buckle over her palm. There was a little flurry of dust. Then gravity did its usual trick and not one but two small objects, very small indeed, fell into her hand, one round, one square.

‘I’ll get a cleaning brush. Hang on.’

Carefully we worked at the surfaces of the two little enclosures.

‘Perhaps the round one is a coin.’ There had been coins among the finds from the grave, two gold tremisses of the Merovingian kingdom in France, dated to the early 600s.

‘I don’t think so,’ Hilary said. ‘Look, isn’t it some sort of amulet? Surely that’s the Chi-Rho in the middle. You know, the symbol of Christianity the Emperor Constantine saw in the sky before the battle he had to win on his way to Rome.’

‘In this sign conquer.’

‘That’s it. But the words round the outside look like Greek to me and I don’t know any, do you?’

‘Not even a letter, apart from Pythagoras in maths, you know, ∏r
²
. Or was it that thing about the square on the hypotenuse? I always got them mixed up.’

Hilary turned the piece over and brushed at the other surface. A
picture began to appear. There seemed to be some sort of musical instrument in the middle, like the harp we’d found in the dig but I couldn’t make out the rest of the figures.

‘What about the square thing?’

She brushed at it carefully. ‘It’s gold, very thin, a little folded sheet like a piece of paper and what looks to be more Greek letters. A prayer perhaps or charm. What do we do now?’

‘We put the two pieces of buckle together as if they’re still joined and lay them on the display stand. And we wrap the two inserts in cotton wool and lock them in the safe. Then we go and have a drink at the Pier while we decide what to do next.’

‘I think I should photograph our finds,’ I said to Hilary when I rang her the next morning. ‘Then we can get a preliminary reaction to what we’ve got before letting others loose on them.’ I knew that the Museum of London would want to take them into custody and I wasn’t prepared to give them up yet. I reasoned that, at the moment, they were alright where they were. Only the two of us knew of their existence, no one else had access to the safe without my permission and no one could remove anything without signing for it. ‘I’ll email them through to you today, but I’d rather you didn’t let anyone know where they came from at this stage if you can.’

‘I think I can manage that. I’ll have to let someone see the pictures or they won’t be able to help but I can probably keep the provenance quiet – though not for long.’

The safe was in the basement. I let it be known that I wanted to photograph the little gold crosses, removed one from the case and shut myself in with our digital camera. As a precaution I
photographed
the cross first. Then I took the two objects from the safe, set them up and shot as many close-ups of the surfaces as I could, sorry that I didn’t dare open up the folded gold sheet to see if there was more writing on the inside.

Selecting the best images, I loaded them onto my personal laptop and sent them off. It was a risk that had to be taken. Ordinary post was too slow. But the longer it took to identify the texts the more I
endangered
both Hilary’s job and my own. It was our duty to own up to the finds which were part of a discovery of national interest, although as grave goods, they couldn’t be declared treasure trove. Indeed the
question
of ownership was technically rather complicated since they had been found on council land but the Bateses had been the discoverers. Jean and Harry had generously renounced any claim to the objects but would that stand up in court if they changed their minds?

I didn’t really care about my career. I was sure I could always do something else but I was concerned for Hilary who was much higher up the scale in a job she obviously liked and that would be hard to replace.

‘Could we meet?’ she asked when she got back to me next day. ‘There’s someone I’d like you to talk to who can explain things better than I could. I realised when I saw the pictures that I had to let someone else in on it if we were to make any sense of what we’ve found. But he’s tremendously reliable and rather tickled to be involved.’

Leaving work early I took the train to Liverpool Street and waited for her in the handsome new glass and chrome café above the station concourse.

‘This is Professor Linden,’ she said. ‘We call on him when we’ve got a problem. He usually comes up with an answer.’

‘You flatter me, Hilary,’ he said extending a hand whose back was a delta of blue-corded veins. ‘Call me Jack. It makes me feel not quite so ancient.’

‘Alex Kish,’ I said. His handshake was surprisingly firm. The voice, I thought, showed a faint trace of an American accent. ‘The coffee’s not too bad. Shall I get you some?’

I found them laughing together when I got back to the table with two frothing cups. The professor at once began to spoon milky foam into his mouth.

‘Hilary’s told me a bit about your find,’ he said. He put down his spoon and took out an envelope with prints of my photos which he spread on the table. ‘What do you want to know?’

‘First, is it Greek, as we thought? Then what does it say?’

‘It’s Greek, alright. As to what it says, this one,’ he tapped the picture of the round disc with its inscription. ‘That in the middle as I think you already know is the Christian symbol of the Chi-Rho. The letters round the outside make up two words: Mithras and Ormuz.’

‘Mithras I can do. The Roman god of soldiers, wasn’t he? But the other… What was that again?’

‘Ormuz. A later version of Ahura Mazda: the old Persian supreme god of Zoroastrianism, the equivalent of Jehovah or Zeus. Or just God.’

‘And the other side?’

‘That’s very interesting and quite complex. In the middle is a lyre, as you’ve already identified I think. On either side are two dolphins and the figure lying across the top of the lyre is a sleeping hound.’

‘Does it mean anything or is it just decorative?’

‘They’re all symbols of Orpheus. That’s his lyre. The hound
signifies
his descent into the underworld; the dolphins his journey to the Blessed Isles.’

‘So what does it add up to? Why are all these gods or heroes or whatever they are put together on this amulet, if that’s what it is?’

‘They are all expressions of a belief in resurrection. All of them, Christ, Orpheus and Mithras, return from the underworld, Hades, the bull’s cave, and Mithras and Christ both promise an eternal life in heaven to their followers.’

‘And Orpheus? Ormuz? How do they fit in?’

‘Orpheus was thought of as a prophet, as poet and musician he explained the mysteries, the beliefs and the initiation rites of
Dionysus
, another resurrection god.’

‘So he isn’t a god himself?’

‘No. He’s just connected with Dionysus, aka Bacchus, his prophet if you like.’

‘And the other? Orm… something?’

‘Ormuz is supreme over Mithras, rather like the relationship of the first two persons of the Christian trinity, except that Mithras isn’t an official son. Although Ormuz creates the cosmic egg and Mithras according to some versions is born from that.’

‘And the gold leaf with its inscription?’ Hilary asked.

‘That’s Greek. A few lines of poetry but I haven’t had time to track them down.’

‘From what you’ve said we’re not looking at something Anglo Saxon or even very Christian.’

‘I think, in fact I’m pretty sure, that these are things that were left behind when the Roman army pulled out. Or else they were gifts from somewhere.’

I thought of the coins from France, the flagon and bowl from
Ethiopia
found in the prince’s grave.

‘Trade? Presents,’ Hilary said, ‘or something found in a grave or ruined temple and used as a sort of good luck charm?’

‘If Christianity didn’t get the king into heaven maybe Mithras or Orpheus would.’

Professor Linden drained the last of his coffee, ran his spoon round the inside of his cup for its final coating of froth and stood up. ‘I must go. Keep me in the picture and I’ll let you know if I find out any more.’

His thin figure, like one of Lowry’s stick men, vanished down the escalator. ‘It’s such a lot to take in,’ I said. ‘But it doesn’t help with what we do now.’

‘I’m afraid we have to own up to what we’ve found, with a few adjustments to our story. I imagine neither of us wants to be carpeted. I’ll tell the Department. Who should you tell?’

‘My chairman, I suppose. And he’ll tell the local press. It’ll be all over the media in no time.’