Getting a torch from her car, she climbs the slope to the site. Clearly the students have been working hard. Three new trenches have been dug and small piles of stones indicate that new buildings have been discovered. It looks as if there really was a small settlement here or, at the very least, a villa and surrounding buildings. Intrigued, Ruth moves closer.
She realises that she is in the very trench that Max first showed her but now it has been extended to expose a corner of a wall, plus what look like the remains of under-floor heating. This must mean that this was an important house. She also sees a corner of mosaic. She spares a thought for the people who settled here, on this exposed hillside, two thousand years ago. Were they Romano-British or Romans in exile? No wonder they had wanted heating, thinks Ruth, shivering in the evening air.
She is about to leave when, out of habit, she runs her torch along the foundation level of bricks, looking for anything strange or unusual. And then she sees it. Tiny reddish brown writing, less than an inch high. At first she can’t make it out, though the letters look very familiar. Then she realises that the words are written upside down. Craning her head round, she reads: ‘Ruth Galloway’.
Afterwards she is not sure quite why this spooked her so much. In a funny way it was the very size of the words, as if some tiny, evil creature has crept in amongst the stone and rubble and written her name. Why? She has only the most tenuous link to this site. Why would anyone go to the trouble of writing her name, upside down, in letters so small they can hardly be seen, on the wall of some obscure archaeological site? She doesn’t know but she knows she isn’t about to hang around and meet the poison dwarf in person. She stands up, heart hammering.
As she does so, she has the strongest sensation that someone is watching her. She swings round, the torch making a wide, panicked arc around her. ‘Who’s there?’
No answer but footsteps, definite footsteps, coming towards her, walking over the gravel in one of the trenches. Ruth scrambles out of her trench and shines her torch out into the darkness. Now she hears another noise. A slow, steady panting. Someone is breathing, very near her.
Ruth gives up all pretence at courage. Holding the torch out in front of her, she runs headlong down the hill. No longer the careful vehicle for her baby, she is now a terrified woman running for cover. The baby will just have to put up with it. She stumbles and almost falls. Oh God, where’s her car? But then she sees the comforting lights of the Phoenix and knows she is heading in the right direction. Panting hard, she covers the rest of the distance at a canter. Her car is there. Her lovely trusty, rusty car. Then she stops; her blood freezing.
A dark shape is beside by her car. A man.
Ruth screams.
‘Ruth? It’s OK. It’s me.’ It is Max Grey.
Ruth hears someone still screaming and realises, to her embarrassment, that it is her. ‘Max,’ she gasps. He is by her side, putting an arm round her. He smells of wood-smoke and soap. ‘Ruth? What is it?’
‘Someone… someone up at the site… my name… on a wall…’
‘What?’
Ruth takes a deep breath, holding on to Max’s arm to steady herself. ‘I was up at the site… having a look. I saw someone had written… written my name on a wall. Then I thought someone was there, watching me. I heard them breathing. Silly, I know.’
She can’t see Max’s face in the darkness but she feels his arm stiffen. His voice when it comes, though, is calm and reassuring. ‘Why don’t I go up and have a look? You stay here. Sit in your car, put the heater on. You’re shivering. Hang on.’
He turns away and Ruth sees now that the Range Rover is parked beside her Renault. He comes back with a thick jumper and a flask. ‘Here, put this on.’ She puts on the jumper, it smells comfortingly of musty wool. She opens her car door and climbs inside. Max hands the flask in after her. ‘Have a swig. I’ll be right back.’
Ruth takes a tentative sip. Black coffee. All drinks taste odd at the moment but this is something different. After a second, she realises it has whisky in it.
Max is back after a few minutes. He leans in through the window.
‘Are you OK to drive home? I’ll follow you.’
For the first time Ruth is relieved to see the security light come on as she opens her gate. Right now, she wants as much light as she can get. She opens the front door, hoping her sitting room is not too untidy.
Max Grey, though, does not seem to notice the papers all over the floor or even the dirty washing on the sofa. He strokes Flint, admires her books and her collection of arrowheads and accepts the offer of tea with every appearance of pleasure. It is only when they’re sitting down with their tea (the washing hastily stowed away in the kitchen) that they talk about the events on the site.
‘Was anyone there when you first arrived?’ asks Max.
‘No. It was completely deserted. Phil wanted me to get some soil samples, and I just thought I’d have a look at the trenches – you’ve done loads of work – and then I saw those… those words.’
‘You said you thought you heard someone…’
‘Yes, I heard noises very near me… someone breathing. I don’t know. I could have imagined it. Did you see anyone?’
Max is silent for a second and then he says, ‘I saw a shape, maybe a dog or even a large fox. Nothing else.’
‘A dog.’ Ruth is so relieved that she laughs. ‘That explains the panting then.’
‘Yes.’ But Max doesn’t smile back. He frowns down into his cup.
‘Have you any idea who could have done this?’ asks Ruth. ‘I mean none of your students knows me from Adam. And to go to the trouble of sneaking up to the site with a pot of red paint-’
Max looks up. ‘I don’t think it was paint.’
‘What-’ It takes a few seconds for Ruth to realise what he means and then a few more for her to be able to frame the word. ‘Blood?’
Max nods, ‘I think so, yes. We can check tomorrow.’
‘But why…’ Ruth’s voice is rising, ‘why would anyone write my name on a wall
‘I don’t know,’ Max says again. Then, ‘Ruth, have you ever read
Surprised Ruth says, ‘Yes, I think so. A long time ago. It’s by Robert Graves, isn’t it?’
‘Yes. You’re too young to remember but there was a terrific TV series years ago. Derek Jacobi and Sian Phillips.’
In fact Ruth does remember though she is flattered that Max thinks she is too young. The programme was past her bedtime but she remembers the opening credits: a snake gliding slowly over a Roman mosaic. Her parents used to say that it was disgusting (‘a waste of our licence fee. I’m going to write to Mary Whitehouse’) but Ruth had a strong suspicion that they used to watch it after she had gone to bed.
‘What about it?’ she asks.
Max sighs. ‘In the book, the child Caligula kills his father, Claudius’s brother Germanicus. He does it by, quite literally, scaring him to death.’
Ruth is silent, thinking of the snake moving across the floor. This whole thing has suddenly taken on a surreal tinge, as if she is acting in her own TV drama, quite unreal, the disturbing images existing only to shock the more sensitive viewers.
‘He did it,’ says Max, ‘by exploiting Germanicus’s superstitions. He stole his lucky talisman, a green jade figure of Hecate. He left animal corpses around the house, cocks’ feathers smeared in blood, unlucky signs and numbers written on the walls, sometimes high up, sometimes,’ he looks at Ruth, ‘sometimes very low down, as if a dwarf had written them. Then Germanicus’s name appeared on the wall, upside down. Each day, one of the letters disappeared. On the day that only a single G remained, Germanicus died.’
There is a silence. Flint jumps on the sofa, purring loudly. Ruth buries her hand in his soft amber fur.
‘Do you really think,’ she says at last, ‘that someone is trying to scare me, by using an idea they found in
Max shrugs. ‘I don’t know but it was the first thing that came to my head. And when you think about the dead
