Time Enough To Die (6 page)

Ashley made a face, maybe agreeing with Matilda that a horse was a very big creature.

But Gareth smiled. “Thank you. I like to ride, used to do a bit of steeplechasing in my younger days."

"Super!” Reynolds launched into a discussion with Gareth in which various equine terms figured prominently.

With an expression indicating he wouldn't notice a horse if it fell dead at his feet, Sweeney began to talk to Matilda about Romano-British artwork in general and the missing items from Corcester in particular.

Reynolds rounded on them. “Those statues are mine. I saw the photos in the Sotheby's catalog—there's a leopard inlaid with silver spots, and the heads of a man and a woman, and some little—votive figurines, that's what they're called. Disgraceful, when a man's property is stolen and even the police can't retrieve it!"

"Steady on,” said Sweeney. “You can't prove it's yours, can you? Or even that it came from Cornovium."

"They're spitting images of objects Miller found in the thirties!” Reynolds sputtered.

"And what would you do with the statues if you had them back?” asked Matilda. “Donate them to a museum?"

"Not a bit of it,” Reynolds replied. “There are collectors who'd pay a packet for that sort of artifact."

"I see,” Matilda continued, unsurprised. “So looting is all right, then, just as long as the loot isn't stolen from you."

"What?” Reynolds demanded.

"It's poetic justice, I suppose, that the market for forgeries is booming right alongside that for antiquities. Half a collector's collection might be fakes. But he wouldn't know, would he, because he bought the items out of context."

"I know the laws of treasure trove,” Reynolds huffed. “If temple offerings are discovered on my land then I'm either due fair compensation from the Crown, or they're mine to do with as I please. Good luck getting fair compensation through the British Museum. I can make a lot more selling my artifacts on the open market."

"Through dealers such as Celia Dunning in Manchester?” Gareth asked.

"She's one dealer I use, yes. Quite honest and aboveboard. Anyone who buys from her gets a certificate."

Sweeney's usual smile tightened into a toothy grimace. Had it taken him this long to realize, Matilda thought, that Reynolds was using him to find more art objects? The stable-owner wanted to have his cake and eat it too—legal antiquities as well as cash.

She offered him a crisp smile of her own. “It's like prostitution, isn't it? If men didn't want cheap, mindless sex, there wouldn't be any prostitutes. If collectors didn't stroke their egos by buying artifacts, there wouldn't be any looters and forgers supplying them. In each case, it's the customer, not the supplier, who's ultimately responsible for the trade."

Both Reynolds and Sweeney looked at Matilda with varying degrees of annoyance. “Go for it,” Ashley muttered beneath her breath. Gareth smothered either a laugh or a coughing fit.

It was Reynolds who abandoned the field first. He gulped down the rest of his drink, flushed crimson, and stood up. “I'll try to remember that I'm a gentleman, Dr. Gray. Good night to you, Sweeney. I'll be doing what I can to assist with the excavation. Miss Walraven, another time...."

He walked off with a deliberate saunter that was meant as a slap in the face. Matilda remembered she was a lady and didn't laugh out loud.

Sweeney's expression struggled between approval and censure, and finally divided the sides academically rather than sexually. “Good show, Matilda. That'll teach the man to keep a civil tongue in his head."

I doubt it,
Matilda told herself. She stood up. “I'm going to go outside for a quick breath of air and then turn in. Tomorrow's going to be busy."

Sweeney didn't bother to rise. “Good night."

"I'd better go to bed,” said Ashley, standing up. “Are you sure you want to go out in the dark, Dr. Gray? There was a murder here a couple of months ago."

Matilda didn't point out that the body had been found two miles away. “I'll get Gareth to come with me, if that'll make you feel any better."

"It's not a matter of
me
feeling better.” Ashley yawned. “Thank you for taking me in. See you tomorrow."

"Good night,” Matilda told her.

"Good night.” Gareth looked around the room. A student or two glanced incuriously back. The undercurrents of emotion had calmed somewhat, Matilda noted, to a steady purr of anticipation with an occasional spike of casual lust. Jason and Caterina had vanished. So had a few of the others, but Matilda wasn't going to make any assumptions without evidence. No one was projecting irritation at Ashley—Matilda hadn't inadvertently made her into a teacher's pet.

"Good show,” Matilda said under her breath as she and Gareth walked into the lobby, “to get some answers out of Reynolds without him knowing he was being questioned."

"I try to earn my pay,” Gareth returned.

They followed Reynolds out into the night. All they saw of him were taillights disappearing around the corner.

"I don't suppose you could read his mind,” Gareth asked.

"I don't read minds,” replied Matilda patiently. “I can tell that he thinks he's putting something over on us, but he's already betrayed that hand."

"And Sweeney?"

"The usual. Looking forward to the dig, not only for its own sake but as a chance to strut his stuff. I keep hoping the man will choke on his ego, but he never does."

The windows of the cottages glowed with the icy blue light of television screens. The bowling green looked like dark velvet. A car whizzed past, its headlights flaring and then winking out. Beneath the smeared indigo sky the fort was a study in shape and shadow. Gareth opened the gate and Matilda stepped through. The night was so quiet that she could hear the babble of the river and the wind rustling the trees. From the top of the turf-covered walls the lights of Fortuna Stud seemed suspended in nothingness.

"Like will-'o-the wisps,” said Matilda.

"Canhywallan cyrth,"
Gareth said. “Corpse candles."

"Like you see in bogs?"

He didn't answer.

Matilda took a few steps away from him. From her pocket she pulled the spindle she'd found in the disturbed ground this afternoon. It had called to her, and she wanted to know why.

When she heard the footsteps she thought at first they were Gareth's. Then her perceptions went hollow, and in the cavity that held a sense beyond the first five senses she heard a woman's low, cultured voice: “Marcus, I don't know. Do you think you should accept her?"

"I would insult the local chief if I didn't,” answered the quiet, authoritative voice of a man. “My orders are to keep the peace, Claudia."

Matilda turned slowly around. Gareth was a dark shape several paces away. He was gazing toward Corcester, showing no sign he'd heard anything.

Behind his back stood three shapes illuminated dimly from some unseen source, like actors picked out by a filtered spotlight. The man was in his thirties, with a chiseled face that expected, but did not coerce, obedience. He wore the armor and insignia of a legion commander. The woman who stood beside him was dressed in a gown of saffron-colored linen that complemented her dark hair. Her brows were drawn in a frown of concern.

Together they looked at a second woman, a younger one, whose red hair hung in long plaits over her rough-woven gown. She didn't stand in a servile pose, but with her shoulders back, inspecting the Roman couple as closely as they inspected her. Although for a Celt she was slender and delicately-built, she was almost as tall as Marcus. Around the trio, caught with them in a bubble of time and pale light, Matilda could see the painted walls and low furniture of a first-century Roman home.

Sweeney had spoken today of the first commander of the fort, who might have brought his wife out from Rome. Matilda was standing on the site of their quarters. She was looking at them now. She was hearing their voices. They were facing some dilemma of protocol, it seemed, as they had apparently faced many dilemmas together.

"What is your name?” Claudia asked the younger woman.

"Branwen."

"Of the Cornovii? Were you captured in battle?"

Branwen's lips smiled, even though her eyes remained cool and distant. “I am of the Iceni. And you might say I was captured in battle, if it pleases you."

"It would please the king of the Brigantes if I were to make you a servant in my household,” said Marcus. He shifted his stance, as though he was tired. His armor clanked.

"I can cook,” said Branwen. “I can spin and weave. I can mind your children."

"We have no children.” Claudia spoke just a little too quickly.

Marcus made a gesture of dismissal. “I shall tell the envoy we accept the king's gift, with gratitude. Claudia, find something for her to do."

"Certainly.” But Claudia didn't turn toward Branwen. She gazed evenly at her husband, watching as his eyes moved from the smooth crown of the slave-servant's hair over the lines of her body.

Somewhere, several miles away, a familiar voice said, “Matilda?"

The lighted room, the three people, thinned and dissipated. Matilda blinked, momentarily blinded by the night.

"Matilda?” asked Gareth's voice. “What were you looking at?"

"You would call it a vision, I suppose. An echo of the past. A psychological sound-and-light show. A replaying of a scene that's already happened."

His face and form materialized from the darkness. “Ghosts?"

"Yes, depending on your definition of ghosts."

"Of the old Romans?"

"Yes."

"Ah, so you speak colloquial Latin, then, and can understand them."

She smiled. “That's a valid point. It's not like eavesdropping on the neighbors, though. I sense what they're saying is all."

"I hope they're saying something about the artifacts,” he muttered, his skepticism overshadowed by annoyance.

"That I don't know. Yet.” The night air was cool. In the distance an owl hooted. Shivering, Matilda turned back toward the lighted windows of the hotel. “Let's go in. Tomorrow will be here before we know it."

Silently Gareth walked beside her back to the land of the living.

Gareth paused outside the door of Clapper's office to put on his reporter's face. Now that he thought about it, that face wasn't all that different from his police inspector's face, not when it came to questioning a witness.

The hotelkeeper was seated at his desk. Tidy piles of receipts and lists were ranged in front of him, and an open file cabinet gaped at his right. To his left a window overlooked the street and the mound of Cornovium. The windcheaters and billed caps of the students made a colorful accent in the drab morning light.

"I hope everything is all right?” Clapper asked Gareth.

"Oh yes, lovely. I just wanted to ask you a few questions, get some background material for my story."

"Well then.... “Clapper waved Gareth toward a chair and leaned back in his own, which creaked beneath his weight. His face was as soft and guileless as a baby's bare bottom.

Gareth sat down, set aside his camera, and produced his notebook. “I expect you entertain quite a few people who come to see the Roman fort."

"Some, yes. But there's not much to see, is there? Just lumps in the ground and a few stones. I'll be right pleased when the Doc digs up some buildings. Town council hopes to build a visitor's center, with a grant from English Heritage or some such group."

"Any plans for a museum? I believe any artifacts found in the fort now go to Manchester...."

"Well now, that's what they say, isn't it?” Clapper tapped his nose and winked.

"Eh?” Gareth returned innocently.

"What's a Roman coin or two to the university? They won't miss the odd denarius turned up in the ruins by the local lads, will they?"

"So the local lads like poking about in the ruins?"

"I was born and raised here in Corcester. Many's the garden wall built of the old stone, and many's the drainage ditch lined with the old tile. There's no harm in a bit of recycling. The legions are gone. We live here now."

So he called it recycling. “There's a ruined chapel on Anglesey that dates back to the Age of Saints,” suggested Gareth. “When archaeologists excavated it in the nineteenth century, the local people thought they were looking for treasure. After the scientists left they kept on looking and demolished the chapel."

"Yes, well, that's the Welsh for you,” Clapper said.

Through his teeth, Gareth asked, “The fort's on Reynolds's land, isn't it? I suppose he doesn't miss the odd coin any more than the University would do."

"Him?” Clapper guffawed. “He makes you scrape the horse shit off your shoes before you leave his yard—it's his, mind you, every last bit of it."

"No wonder he's going on about the missing statuary, then."

Clapper leaned forward and lowered his voice. “If you ask me, he's narked he didn't find them statues first, so he could do a deal himself."

"And not report them?"

The hotelkeeper looked at the papers on his desk, picked up a pen, and signed a form of some kind.

Gareth told himself he was straying into forbidden territory. Clapper could probably see his friendly gossip printed as fact on the front page of the
Times.
It wasn't on to offend any local landowners armed with stable muck. “I suppose antiquities dealers come here frequently, just to see what turns up."

"Yes,” Clapper replied. He put the pen down.

"The girl found dead out at Durslow Edge was a dealer in antiquities, was she?"

"She said she wanted to buy, right enough. Never showed us any brass, though."

"So you knew her."

"She came round the bar for a drink."

"Alone?"

"She met Reynolds here. Seemed to me she already knew he owned the fort and was waiting for him to call in. They left together to look at his ‘collection'.” Clapper's sarcastic tone put quotation marks round the word, implying more than an academic discussion of Romano-British artifacts.

Gareth stifled his “aha!” response. Watkins had no doubt had all this from Clapper long ago. “I thought Reynolds was married."