rampart wall at the plain of Troy before the citadel, a flat alluvial landscape of fruit trees and vegetable plantations extending towards the distant shoreline of the Dardanelles. He sighted the compass, then looked at Dillen, grinning. ‘As Jack would say, I’ll be damned.’
‘What is it?’
‘Well, the angle of impact shows that these arrows were shot at pretty well maximum trajectory. When Jack and Costas were here fifteen years ago doing their famous excavation on the ancient beach line, they found a charred fragment of an archer’s bow. Well, Costas found it, to be exact. As he’ll never cease telling you. He showed it to me, and I made a replica. I’ve shot it using arrows with bronze heads based on those British Museum examples. The compass bearing on these arrowheads points almost exactly to the place where the heli pilot showed me the remains of their trench, about two hundred and forty degrees from here, almost a kilometre away. It’s a long shot, but plausible for a Bronze Age bow with a really strong following wind, the kind the pilot said you sometimes get from the north-west coming off the sea, a real storm wind. Maybe there was one of those on the day of the assault when these arrows were fired.’
‘What’s the dating evidence for this type of arrowhead?’
Jeremy pursed his lips. ‘Late Bronze Age, definitely, but that could mean anywhere between about 1500 BC, when bronze took over from obsidian for arrowheads, and about 1000 BC, when iron took over from bronze. But even that latter date’s contentious. Scholars used to think references to iron in the Iliad were anachronisms, showing that Homer was writing about his own world in the Iron Age, around the eighth century BC. But iron arrowheads have now been found at Troy too. It’s possible that there was corroded iron in Schliemann’s excavation that he just didn’t see when he hacked his way down. Another black mark against treasure-hunting.’
‘It sounds like Troy,’ Dillen said. ‘Just when you think you’re there, that grey shroud of uncertainty settles over the whole thing again.’
‘But it’s still fantastically exciting,’ Jeremy said. ‘It’s this room that gives those arrows a date. If it’s Troy VII, then that’s Homeric Troy. The arrows were fired together from the beach line. They’re different types, from different places. These aren’t just raiders. There’s an army out there. A big, besieging army, from many different places. A Mycenaean army. It all adds up. You just need a tiny dose of faith.’
Dillen rocked back on his haunches and smiled. ‘Sometimes, you know, when I’m up here alone at night, I think I can hear music, very distant, like the backbeat to an epic,’ he said. ‘It seems to be telling me all I need to know, as if all this scientific detail, the proof, is just confirmation.’
Jeremy grinned, then pointed to a shrouded form in the corner of the trench. ‘I was wondering when you were going to bring music up. Looks like you have a hobby of your own.’
Dillen looked over. ‘Oh, that.’ He got up, stretched, walked over, and picked the object up. ‘It’s a lyre, a hand-harp, meant to be a replica of a Bronze Age lyre. I made it myself, over the last few months. It’s based on all the literary and artistic evidence I could muster, and a few archaeological discoveries.’ He carefully removed the cover, revealing a tortoiseshell soundbox with two raised arms curving outward and forward from it, with a crossbar at the top and strings leading down from it to another bar on the shell, forming a bridge. ‘The different notes come from the thickness of the strings, which are made of animal gut. All the ancient poets, the bards, used a lyre. I realized I could never hope to understand Homer without trying it.’
‘Will you play?’
Dillen replaced the cover. ‘Maybe when the digging’s over. Rebecca’s been badgering me to put Homer to music. I’m not sure if she knows quite what I mean. Sometimes I think the music is meant just to be in my head.’
‘Oh, I think she knows. When we’re together she often refers to things you’ve said. You and she seem to be on much the same wavelength.’ Jeremy cocked an ear. ‘Speaking of Rebecca, I forgot to say. I can hear someone approaching. She wanted me to warn you so you’d know she wasn’t Hiebermeyer and wouldn’t get into a panic about tidying up. I’m sure that’s her coming up the path now.’
3
T here was a scrambling sound on the path, and Dillen and Jeremy turned to see a tall, slender girl appear, wearing hiking boots, shorts and a T-shirt with the IMU logo, her long dark hair boots, shorts and a T-shirt with the IMU logo, her long dark hair tied back under a baseball cap. She was carrying a suspended silver tray holding little glass cups filled with tea. She stepped into the trench, saying nothing, and solemnly handed one to Dillen, then another to Jeremy.
‘ Teshekkur ederin.’ Dillen smiled, holding up the glass and taking a sip, trying not to recoil from the powerful liquid. Rebecca bowed, put down the tray and took off her sunglasses. Dillen looked at her fondly. He had taught her mother as well as Jack, and Rebecca had inherited much from both of them, Jack’s long limbs and angular features, her mother’s dark beauty. A wave of sadness came over him when he thought of Elizabeth, but he put it from him and focused on the continuity he saw in Rebecca, the familiar eyes and vivacious manner. Rebecca had remarkable determination, but they all knew they had to work with her to overcome the pain of her mother’s death, to focus on the future and stave off a past that could engulf her. She squatted down, arms on her knees. ‘So, guys. How’s the bard?’ She spoke with an American accent from her upbringing and schooling before her mother had died, but with English idiom she had picked up from Jack and the IMU crew.
Jeremy looked at her, then glanced quizzically at Dillen. ‘Bard? Your lyre? I thought you didn’t play.’
Rebecca shook her head. ‘No. I don’t mean Professor Dillen. I mean the bard. Over there. Maurice gave me a lightning tour when I arrived this morning, and it was there.’ She pointed at the excavated wall of the room behind them, covered by the plastic sheet.
‘Ah, yes.’ Dillen got up. ‘I haven’t shown Jeremy yet. We’ve been talking about my arrowheads.’ He reached over and carefully rolled up the plastic sheet, placing it on top of the masonry. Jeremy gasped. The image below was extraordinary, a life-sized fresco on white plaster, reminiscent of Bronze Age paintings from other sites around the Aegean. It showed a person in a white robe sitting on a rock, holding a lyre, as if in readiness for playing. The background and the skin of the player were dark; the rock was off-white, covered with swirling tendrils of green leaves, and above it was a stylized bank of clouds.
‘ Now I see,’ Jeremy exclaimed. ‘A lyre-player. It’s wonderful.’
‘It’s astonishing corroboration for my lyre,’ Dillen said. ‘I’ve only uncovered this painting in the last two days, but I finished my lyre several months ago. I think I got it right.’
Jeremy peered closely, shading his eyes. ‘Is that a man or a woman?’
‘Impossible to say,’ Dillen replied. ‘You might expect it to be a man, but that may just be wrong. There were doubtless men and women.’
‘So you think this is a bard, a poet?’
‘There’s only one other image of a lyre-player like this, from the Mycenaean palace of Pylos in Greece,’ Dillen replied. ‘I think it’s possible.’
‘Could there be an inscription?’ Jeremy said. ‘Still concealed below, where the arrows and earth cover the plinth?’
‘If there is, it’d probably be in Luwian or Hittite, the languages of Anatolia, or perhaps in early Greek, the language of Mycenaean Linear B. I know Rebecca’s just done an essay on that for school.’
‘Linear B was the syllabic script of the Greeks before they adopted the Phoenician alphabet,’ Rebecca said. ‘The Mycenaeans borrowed it from the Minoans. Trouble was, it was basically designed for palace records: numbers of sheep, bronze-workers, and so on. It would have been an awkward script for recording anything else. And almost all the Linear B finds have been on baked clay tablets. Maybe we just haven’t found others yet, but it doesn’t seem to have been used for inscriptions on stone or walls.’
Dillen nodded. ‘Another problem is, there doesn’t seem to be a Linear B word for bard, for poet. Maybe we’re missing something, mis-translating another word, but it just doesn’t seem to be there. So even if there were an inscription here, it might be unreadable.’
Rebecca took a swig from her water bottle. ‘While I’m here, Dad mentioned this fragment of ancient text you found referring to a shipwreck during the Trojan War, a ship of Agamemnon. What he and Costas are searching for now. I really need to be got up to speed. I only came in on the flight before Jeremy. I was in school two days ago
