The Janus Stone

‘It’ll need all the family it can get,’ says Ruth. ‘My parents have more or less disowned me.’

‘Really? Does that still happen? Everyone has babies now without being married. Even my mother wouldn’t mind. And she’s a mad Irish Catholic.’

‘My parents are… old-fashioned.’

‘They must be.’ Shona fiddles with her wine glass for a second before asking, ‘Does Phil know?’

‘No, not yet. I’ll have to tell him soon, before it becomes too obvious. I saw Cathbad today and he guessed immediately.’

‘Cathbad, really?’ Shona knows Cathbad of old. They met on the henge dig all those years ago. Ruth remembers that Shona initially sided with the Druids who wanted to keep the henge in place rather than with the archaeologists who wanted to move it to a museum. She wonders what Phil, an establishment man to the core, thinks about Shona’s newage leanings

‘Perhaps the spirits told him?’ suggests Shona.

‘Perhaps.’ Ruth remembers Cathbad saying that Max respected ‘the spirits’. She has a sudden vision of a shadowy army hovering around, questioning, commenting and passing judgement. Funnily enough, they all look a bit like her mother.

‘He’s having a party on Friday,’ she says.

‘A party?’

‘Well, a celebration. In honour of Imbolc, some Celtic thing about the coming of spring. He’s organising a party on the beach. Do you want to come?’

Shona brightens up at the prospect of a party. ‘Why not? A spot of satanic ritual’s just what I need to cheer me up.’

CHAPTER 12

As it turns out, nothing could be less satanic than the Imbolc celebration on Saltmarsh beach. Some of Cathbad’s colleagues have even brought their children who play happily on the sand, daring each other to jump over waves. Even the vast bonfire, constructed out of driftwood and old packing cases, seems more like something made by the PTA to raise funds for playground equipment than an offering to the pagan gods of fire.

Ruth and Max walk over the Saltmarsh, carrying offerings of wine and crisps. Though Max does not know it, they are following the path taken by Ruth and Lucy, that wild night in February, when the wind howled from the sea and the marsh shifted treacherously in the darkness. Sometimes it seems to Ruth as if that night was something that happened to someone else; she can think about it quite calmly, as if she is reading about it in a book. At other times, the memory is as sharp as if it happened yesterday: the flight across the marshes in the night, the moment when she knew that she was going to die, the dark wave coming from nowhere.

Now, though, the sky is palest blue and only a light, companionable breeze blows through the coarse grass. Ruth and Max take the path through the dunes and see the beach spread out before them; the silver line of the sea, the deep pools reflecting the evening sky, the miles upon miles of rippling sand.

‘It’s beautiful,’ says Max. ‘I’d forgotten how open it is in Norfolk. Nothing but sand, sea and sky.’

‘Yes, it is beautiful,’ says Ruth, pleased that Max appreciates her beloved Saltmarsh. ‘It can be desolate in the winter but on evenings like this I think it’s the loveliest place on earth.’

‘I like the desolation too,’ says Max, looking out towards the retreating tide. The seagulls are swooping low over the waves and the shouts of the children seem thin on the evening air.

Ruth looks at him curiously. She knows what he means. Sometimes the Saltmarsh’s sheer loneliness and splendour gives her a thrill of almost sexual pleasure. But she hadn’t expected Max to feel the same. Doesn’t he come from Brighton, where the beach is more about kiss-me-quick hats than desolate beauty? But he was brought up in Norfolk, she reminds herself.

They walk towards the bonfire, very black against the white sand. Cathbad, wearing Druid’s robes and the purple cloak is supervising the stacking of wood but when he sees Ruth he breaks away with arms outstretched.

‘Ruth!’ They hug and Ruth feels Cathbad’s beard tickling her cheek.

‘Cathbad, this is my friend Max.’

‘Welcome!’ Cathbad gives Max a two-handed ‘vicar’s’ handshake. Indeed, in his white robes, he looks not unlike a priest greeting parishioners at the door of his church. Of course, Cathbad would say that this is just what the Saltmarsh is – a church, sacred ground. After all, man has worshipped here for hundreds, thousands, of years; first the Bronze Age people building their henge and then the Iron Agers who buried bodies and treasure at the point where the sea meets the land. It was one of these bodies that Ruth discovered last year.

‘Good to meet you,’ says Max. ‘This is a wonderful spot.’

‘Yes,’ says Cathbad, looking closely at Max. ‘This is a liminal zone, the bridge between life and death.’

‘Erik Anderssen 1998,’ says Max immediately. ‘I love that book. Anderssen was one of my heroes when I was a student.’

Ruth can’t stop herself exclaiming. ‘Did you know Erik?’

‘I never met him but I’ve read almost everything he ever wrote. No one has ever understood prehistory better.’

‘He was a wonderful man,’ says Cathbad. ‘Ruth here was very close to him.’

‘Were you?’ Max turns to Ruth.

‘Well, I was his student,’ Ruth says guardedly. She still finds it hard to talk about Erik.

‘His favourite student,’ says Cathbad rather aggressively.

‘I wouldn’t go that far.’

‘I wish I’d met him,’ says Max lightly.

‘We’ve brought booze,’ says Ruth, wishing to turn the subject away from life and death.

‘Great,’ says Cathbad, ‘the gods need their libation. Freya over there is in charge of drinks.’

Freya, a wispy blonde in blue robes, takes their bottles and stows them away carefully. She then offers them punch from a copper cauldron. Ruth sniffs suspiciously at her plastic cup as they walk away.

‘What’s in this?’ she asks. ‘Battery acid?’

‘Well, you did say that he works in the chemistry department.’

‘He used to be an archaeologist, you know.’

‘Is that how he knew Erik?’

‘Yes. Erik was his tutor at university. Then they met again on the henge dig. You know, the one I told you about? Cathbad was one of the Druids protesting about us moving the timbers.’

‘You can see their point,’ says Max slowly, looking out across the expanse of sand, perhaps imagining the henge in place, the circle of wooden posts stark against the sky. As for Ruth, the image is so clear that she is surprised it hasn’t materialised in front of her, complete with Erik kneeling in the centre, rhapsodising about the preservation of the wood.

‘Erik sympathised,’ she says, ‘but the sea was getting closer all the time. It would have destroyed the henge in the end.’

Max smiles. ‘Destroyed or changed?’

For a second, Ruth thinks about the Latin motto on the archway at Woolmarket Street: Omnia Mutantur, Nihil Interit, everything changes, nothing perishes, and she feels a sudden chill, as if a cold hand has touched her shoulder.

‘You are a fan of Erik’s,’ is all she says. Erik believed in the cycle of change, decay and rebirth. Has he been reborn? Sometimes it seems impossible that Erik’s vibrant spirit can really have died alongside his body. Surely there’s some blue-eyed baby somewhere that is Erik having a second go at life. Or some water spirit maybe, some animal – a seal or a sleek arctic fox.

The bonfire is apparently completed. As the light fades Cathbad and the other Druids join hands and encircle it, chanting and singing. The children join in too, running in and out of the adults, laughing and excited. Max, Ruth and the other non-Druids stand nearby, torn between self-consciousness and interest. There is something magnificent