Midnight is a Lonely Place (8 page)

‘I had an Irish grandmother, Kate,’ Bill said after a moment’s sympathetic silence. ‘She was always full of useful aphorisms. One of her favourites was: “if it is meant to be it will be.” I think it just about fits the case.’

Kate laughed. ‘You’re right. We need a break from each other at the moment.’ She glanced up as a waitress appeared with their knives and forks, wrapped in sugar-pink napkins, a huge bowl of mango chutney and large pepper and salt sellers contrived to look like a pair of old boots. ‘But if he phones again, perhaps you might tell him where I am this time.’ She caught Bill’s eye and they both smiled comfortably.

‘Is there a woman in your life, Bill?’ She hadn’t meant it to come out quite so baldly as she sought for a change of subject, but he didn’t seem put out.

‘Only Aunty Beeb at the moment – the goddess I work for. There was one once, but she buggered off too.’ He paused reflectively, taking another deep drink from his glass. ‘You are not offering, I take it. Flattered and tempted though I would be by such a possibility, I think it would be bad for both of us.’

‘I’m not offering. But I need a friend. Someone who will walk through the woods now and then and drag me to a pub for a curry.’

‘Done. But not alas for a while after today. I’ve got a tight schedule until Christmas.’

She was astonished at how devastated she felt at his words. She had known he was going back to London and yet somehow she had counted on him being there again next weekend.

‘Want another Scotch?’ He had been watching her face closely and saw something of the loneliness which had shown in her eyes for a moment.

She nodded and held out her glass. ‘Then we can drink to Lord Byron. By the time I see you again, he will be, with a lot of luck, several chapters long.’

After dropping Bill at Colchester station she took the opportunity to drive on into the town, curious about the place which would be her nearest large centre for the next few months. Pevsner, in the edition of the book she had briefly consulted in the London Library, had waxed lyrical about it, but nineteen-sixties red-brick shopping centres now seemed to vie with nineteen-eighties glass and concrete where much of what he had described must have been. Saddened, she turned her attention at last to the castle museum.

The huge squat building was shadowed already from the late afternoon sun as she made her way across the bridge and inside the great door to buy her ticket. The place was strangely empty. In the distance she could hear the disembodied, dramatic voice of a video loop – the sound effects and urgency of the narrative strangely out of place amongst the glass cases beneath the high-beamed roof of the castle. She walked slowly around the ground floor exhibits gazing at Bronze Age and Iron Age artefacts, gradually growing closer to the sound.

For several minutes she stood watching the video – which told of the Romans in Colchester – then turning away, she began slowly to climb the stairs. At the top were Roman exhibits, life-size models, colourful, larger than life panoramic pictures on the walls, and then another video enactment, this time of Boudicca’s attack and the sack of the town.

Poor Boudicca. Kate wandered round slowly studying the exhibits, piecing together her life: the wife of Prasutagus; her children; the political background of first-century Britain; her husband’s death; the rape of her daughters and her humiliation as she was flogged by a Roman – the final insult after years of unrest and dissatisfaction in a country under foreign occupation, which caused the revolt which had nearly ended the Roman occupation of Britain. What a story her life made. Suddenly Kate found herself watching the video with heightened excitement. What a biography it would make; what a book, when George Byron was finished … The burning of Colchester, the rampage of Boudicca’s forces across Essex and Hertfordshire as they made their way towards London, and the final hours when she realised that all had failed and she took her own life. And Colchester was the centre of it all – a city where the flames had burned so hot that nearly two thousand years later a layer of blackened death was still clearly visible in the foundations of the town.

She watched the video through twice, alone in the darkened booth – seeing the huge sketched shapes of the warriors, hearing their shouts and screams, then she stood up and left, intensely aware suddenly of the vaults far beneath the castle which were all that remained apparently of the Temple of Claudius – the temple Boudicca had burned to the ground with most of the population of the town inside it.

She recognised this feeling: the tight, bone-tingling, breathless excitement as ideas jostled in her head, and under her breath she swore. She had had this feeling before, after she finished
Jane
; not until she had finished
Jane
. To get it now, while she was still at the beginning of
Lord of Darkness
meant she was going to suffer months if not years of suppressed, hidden frustration and worry in case someone else had the idea first; in case her publisher didn’t like the idea; in case the idea took root in her sleep and developed and began to encroach on the work in progress.

Shaking her head in a small gesture of irritation she moved on past the exhibits. How could a woman – any woman – however hurt and humiliated, order the slaughter of other women, of children, of babies? What kind of person was she, this remote queen who offered human sacrifice to her gods before going to war?

She stopped abruptly. She was standing in front of a statue of a Roman citizen and her eye had been caught by the name. Frowning, she read the inscription: ‘MARCUS SEVERUS SECUNDUS, one of the very few recorded survivors of the Boudiccan massacre. Instrumental in the rebuilding of Colchester after its sack in A.D. 60, he died full of years and honour and was buried next to his wife Augusta in the year A.D. 72. Their graves were excavated in 1986. See exhibit in case 14.’

So this was Redall’s former owner. She stared hard at the stone face of Marcus with his patrician nose, slightly chipped, his warrior stance, the carefully sculpted folds of his toga and she wondered what kind of a man he had been. He had been one of those who had survived the massacre and returned to pick up the threads of his life. She felt another sudden frisson of excitement. Had he seen Boudicca? Could he have described the warrior queen of the Iceni with her flowing red hair and her massy torcs, her body armour and her war chariot?

She jumped suddenly as a disembodied voice, echoing around the castle, announced that the museum would soon be closing and she gave Marcus a last regretful glance. But not too regretful. She had the feeling she would be coming back to see him again.

IX 

The youngest son of the late King, he had stood head and shoulders
above his brothers and he knew he had been the favourite. His love of
learning, his memory, his wit had marked him out as a child for study
and initiation. His priesthood gave him power. His royal blood marked
him for destiny. That was why he had been given lands and authority,
and why he was trusted as advisor at Camelodunum to the Roman
settlers, even though his brothers led revolt in the west. He wore Roman
clothes; he spoke their language; he assimilated their learning and their
ways. And he had fallen in love with one of their women. But he hated
them and he bided his time
.

He frowned when he saw the detested overlords raising their temple
in the heart of Camelodunum: a temple to Claudius; a temple to a man
who had declared himself a god. But he kept his views silent. One day
the time would come, one day the Romans would be expelled from the
land of his ancestors. When that day came, he would kill Claudia’s
husband and he would take her back to his hall. But until then, ever
the diplomat, he would smile
.

His duties as druid were light. He was royal, rich, in love. The gods
would understand. He would serve them in due time when the bluebells
had faded and the blood ran more slowly in his veins
.

The old priests disapproved. They frowned and shook their heads first
at him, then at the signs from the gods; the gods who despised the Romans
who would venerate a man and make him one of them.

He did not know that the gods, too, were growing angry
.

It was almost dark as Kate drove down the track and into the barn and parked her car next to Diana’s Volvo once more. The farmhouse, she had noticed at once and with a strange sense of loss, was in complete darkness. She had not realised until that moment how much she had been counting on being asked in to sit by their cosy fire and have a cup of tea before she set out on the walk through the wood to her cottage.

On the drive back she had found a farm shop open where she had managed to buy some bread and milk, crumbly local cheese and Essex honey and, to her great delight, some firelighters and matches.

Hefting her plastic carrier over her shoulder she was already on the track when she stopped. The torch was still in the car. Turning back she pulled open the barn door once more and, unlocking the Peugeot she rummaged in the glove compartment. The torch was there, and – experimentally she flashed it up into the high rafters – it worked. Comforted, she locked up again and set off at a determined pace into the woods.

The track ran straight for a few hundred yards and then curved eastwards, narrowing until there was only room for the rutted marks of the Land Rover’s wheels. Her feet slipped and she found she needed the torch to see where to put them in the mud. The evening was very still. There was no wind and the trees were silent. In the distance she heard the warbling call of a curlew from the marshes. The sound echoed in the falling darkness and was answered by the shriek of an owl. She clutched her bag more tightly, her eyes riveted to the track.

May the gods of all eternity curse you, Marcus Severus Secundus, and
bring your putrid body and your rotten soul to judgement for what you
have done here this day
…

The woods were still silent, the trees unmoving. The words, as clear and well enunciated as those of a BBC presenter, had been inside her own head. Kate stopped dead, a sheen of sweat on her skin, her heart hammering in her ears. She stared round, her eyes straining into the darkness between the tall tree trunks, very conscious of the smell of rotting wood and damp, dark earth which surrounded her.

Stupid. The darkness and the silence after the celluloid drama of the museum and the excitement of the new idea had set her imagination working overtime, that was all. She resumed walking, a little more quickly this time, her torch clutched so tightly in her hand that her fingers grew numb.

When the cottage at last came into view she was breathless. Fumbling in her pocket for her key she let herself in and turned on the light, then she put her shopping bag down on the kitchen table, ran upstairs and grabbed one of her empty boxes from the spare bedroom. Dragging it after her she went straight outside again and made for the log shed. Before she did anything else and before she lost her nerve completely she would stock up with firewood.

Flashing the torch beam around the small shed she piled logs into her box, and then a huge heap of kindling. The shed was very neat, the ranks of logs undisturbed beneath their net of spiders’ webs save for a few that had fallen at the end of the pile, the spade still leaning where she had left it in the corner. With one last look round she turned off the torch and returned it to her pocket. She needed both hands for the box. Hefting it up with a groan she made her way out into the cold garden, conscious of the brooding woods so close to the front of the cottage. It was impossible to run with the box. As swiftly as she could she walked back indoors and then she dropped it on the hall floor. Turning she slammed the door shut and shot the bolt home.

Safe. She closed her eyes and laughed quietly to herself, embarrassed, alone as she was, by her own stupidity. Picking up the box again she hauled it into the living room and put it neatly by the stove. Then, drawing the curtains against the darkness she went back to the kitchen and put on the kettle. The phone rang as she was waiting for it to boil.

‘Kate, my dear. Just checking to see that everything is all right.’ It was Roger Lindsey. ‘I’m afraid we’ve been out most of the day so I thought I would give you a quick call to make sure you have everything you need.’

‘Thank you. I’m fine.’ She took a deep breath, astonished at how pleased she was to hear the sound of his voice. ‘I came by earlier to leave my car again so I saw you were out.’

‘We were having lunch with some friends in Woodbridge. Nice people. They had read your book.’

‘Nice people indeed.’ She smiled wryly. ‘Roger, tell me, how do I make this woodburner thing stay alight all night?’

She heard an exclamation of impatience. ‘Didn’t Greg show you? I’m sorry, my dear. Those things take a bit of getting used to, but once you’ve got the hang of it you can keep it going for months without it going out. Do you want me to come up and show you?’