‘Elite.’
Annie Howe thought for moment.
‘Would you mind coming to meet him, if he’s available?’
‘Well, I… ’
‘Give me half an hour,’ Howe said. ‘Get yourself a cup of tea and a sandwich.’
Merrily wound up crossing the street to the pizza place, grabbing a salad with hummus and couscous and a coffee. Sitting in the window with her phone, on which Neil Cooper had left a message with his home number.
‘Sorry, Neil, I was going to call you back, wasn’t I?’
‘If you remember, we got as far as Mithras. Magnis is very much my ongoing project, but I’ve been wondering all day if it’s conceivable that you know something I don’t.’
‘You can relax, I don’t really know anything. I would have asked you if there were any Mithraic remains in this area.’
‘Not… as far as we know. The fact is, although signs of Mithraic worship are common enough in Germany and Italy, evidence in the UK is rather sparser. You’re looking at four suggested centres of worship – London, York, Chester and Caerleon. Now, as it happens, the principal Roman road linking Caerleon, in South Wales, and Chester, on the northern border, passes through Credenhill.’
‘So it would’ve been used by soldiers travelling between two significant Mithraic centres. Through some fairly hostile country, I would have thought.’
‘And as they built a base here which became – as we’re gradually finding out – quite a substantial community, surviving into the fifth century… well, I’ve often wondered.’
‘Why did they build a base here?’
‘All to do with the Wye,’ Neil said. ‘They were probably using the ford at Hereford to get across. You see the reason I wondered if you might have heard something is that there’s a rumour been going round for a while about something of this nature being found in Herefordshire.’
‘Rumour?’
‘Within archaeological circles. Stories of aerial photographs showing interesting linear patterns. I’ve never met anyone who’s seen one, but we’ve been monitoring aerial surveys. Nothing found, so I was thinking it might be apocryphal. Unless you – or someone – know otherwise?’
‘You checked, erm, the Brinsop area.’
‘Actually, we have. Nothing obvious there that we didn’t already know about.’
‘I suppose if somebody wanted to keep quiet about it, they could just cover it up. With a temporary building or something.’
‘It is a thought,’ Neil Cooper said.
Part Six
Throughout the vision, I thought I was being obliged to recognise that we are sinners who commit many evil things that ought not to be done and who omit many good deeds that ought to be done. We deserve to suffer pain…
Julian of Norwich
Revelations of Divine Love
66
The evening sky was blotched with small clouds, like a field of late mushrooms, brown and rotting. Jane stood on the grass bank, watching Cornel taking the leather bag from the back of the van.
A mile or so out of Credenhill, he’d swung the van between some overhanging bushes, branches ripping at the side windows. When he’d hit the brakes, Jane had been thrown forward, the rotting seat belt snapping, her head bumping painfully into the windscreen as the mobile started vibrating in her hip pocket.
She slid it out now and checked it while Cornel was messing with his tool bag. All she could see were small fields keeping wedges of woodland apart and, ahead of them, a conifer screen at the top of a rise. The eastern horizon was formed by the great wooded bank of Credenhill itself, like a crouching bear.
A new text from Eirion – J… whr t L r u?
What she wouldn’t give to be able to return the call. To be with Irene with his reticent smile and his solid body, just slightly overweight.
Other people would surely be missing her by now. OK, Mum would think she was with Eirion, but if Eirion rang Mum…
‘Cornel,’ Jane said, ‘if you’re worried about going to this place, maybe we could do it some other time?’
He’d become morose, his mood turning like the sky. It was getting cold, too, and the van’s heater didn’t work. This whole thing with the van… it showed a calculating side of Cornel, a secretive side.
A jangle of tools. What did he need tools for?
‘I’m sorry,’ he said, ‘but wasn’t it you that wanted to go?’
‘Not in the dark.’
Jane glared up into the fungal sky, wondering now if she really had persuaded him, if it wasn’t the other way round. He’d been all too ready for this, with the van and whatever was in the rucksack and the leather bag.
‘It’s always in the dark,’ Cornel said.
And Jane imagined some squalid gathering in an underground chamber. It was going to be horrible, gruelling – she wasn’t sure she could even watch.
‘How far do we have to go?’
‘Mile or so?’
‘A mile? But it’s all muddy!’ She felt it was important to retain something of girlie. ‘This is my best jacket. We’re not all loaded like you.’
It seemed to disarm him.
‘If you get messed up I’ll buy you a new outfit.’
‘What’ve you got in the bag?’
‘Wire-cutters. Stuff like that.’
‘You mean we’re going in like… undercover or something?’
‘It might help if you didn’t ask too many questions.’
‘Help who? Where are we going? Is it a farm?’
‘Give me a minute.’
Cornel went crunching off into the woods. Gone to relieve himself. Jane gave him time to, like, get started and then pulled out her phone to send Eirion a text.
But Cornel was back before she could get more than a few words down. She stashed the phone. He seemed happier, a big, wide, sloppy grin across his face. He was breathing hard and fast.
‘OK, let’s do it.’
Jane followed him, his long legs spidering across the darkening grass and the nettles, until they came to a barbed-wire fence. Cornel unslung the bag, and then the wire-cutters were in his hands. They didn’t look that big, but they went through the barbed wire like it was bailer twine, the ends springing away from the fence, Cornel still grinning like, for him, this was what the countryside was about.
What happens is anything you want…
Barry said, ‘Got a job interview next week, Lol, did I say?’
Business in the Black Swan was slow. Barry had brought some drinks, pulled out a chair and sat down with Lol who’d been trying, not too successfully, to lay down some lyrics between pacing the square, waiting for Merrily to call, Danny to come in, anything.
‘Where?’
‘Wiltshire.’
‘Oh.’
