for the press.’
Cathbad pulls another face, not entirely for Kate’s benefit. ‘Typical. He’s a publicity junkie, that man. Poor Shona. I don’t know how she puts up with him.’
Cathbad’s affection for Shona and antipathy towards Phil go back a long way but Ruth isn’t about to let him get away with this. ‘She puts up with him because he does everything she tells him. She’s not exactly downtrodden.’
‘I know. She’s a warrior maiden at heart. But what about the bishop? How are you going to solve the mystery?’
‘I’m going to go to the cathedral, look at the archives. And there’s a local historian who’s meant to be an expert on Bishop Augustine.’
Cathbad nods. ‘Janet Meadows. Yes, I know her, she’d be the perfect person to ask. I bet the bishop
‘The crosier? Yes. And she had the bishop’s ring on her finger. There was a single shoe in the coffin too. I don’t know what that was meant to signify.’
‘That she was a left-footer?’ suggests Cathbad, grinning.
‘They were all Catholics then,’ says Ruth dismissively. ‘I’d better go and get the pasta on.’
But just as Ruth has wrestled Kate into her high chair and put the pasta on the table, there is a knock at the door.
‘I’ll go,’ says Cathbad, jumping up.
He seems very keen to greet the visitor and Ruth isn’t altogether surprised to see Bob Woonunga’s smile coming through the front door.
‘I hope I’m not intruding, but I heard Cathbad’s voice.’
‘I’m not surprised,’ says Ruth, ‘the noise he and Kate were making.’
‘I’ve brought some fireworks.’ Bob holds up a small, brightly coloured box. ‘That’s traditional here, right? I thought Kate might enjoy them.’ It is firework night. Ruth’s drive home was punctuated by explosions and random flashes of red and green light. She is rather frightened of fireworks and intends to keep Kate as far away from bonfires as possible. Still, it’s a nice thought.
‘Thank you,’ she says. ‘That’s very kind. Would you like to stay for some supper?’
‘If you’ve got enough.’ Bob sits at the table and waves at Kate, who screws up her face and blows an impressive raspberry.
‘Kate!’ Ruth doesn’t know where to look.
‘She’s playing the didge,’ says Bob. ‘She remembers. That’s one bright kid you’ve got here.’
‘She’s very clever,’ says Cathbad, pouring more wine (Ruth has produced a second bottle). ‘She’s an old soul.’
‘You said that about my cat once.’
‘Flint? Well, he’s an old soul too.’
‘Yeah,’ agrees Bob. ‘He’s a wise one, all right.’
At last, reflects Ruth, collecting garlic bread from the kitchen, Cathbad’s found someone who speaks his language. The last person who had seemed entirely on Cathbad’s wavelength was Erik. Come to think of it, there’s something about Bob that reminds her of Erik in his gentler moments.
‘How did you two meet?’ she asks, sitting down beside Kate.
‘At a conference to discuss cultural repatriation,’ says Bob. ‘Cathbad was interested in some bones found near Stonehenge, I was just beginning to find out how many of our ancestors were in private hands. That’s when we decided to form the Elginists.’
‘I saw Lord Smith’s collection the other day,’ says Ruth, thinking that ‘collection’ is entirely the wrong word. What is the right one? Ossuary? Mausoleum?
Bob seems instantly to become more alert. He flicks a glance at Cathbad. He has dark eyes with very long eyelashes which give the impression of great innocence. Ruth isn’t sure though. She thinks Bob, like Flint, is a wise one.
‘Did you see the skulls?’ asks Cathbad. ‘Is it true that one’s been turned into a water carrier?’
‘Yes,’ says Ruth. ‘It’s a horrible thing.’
Bob leans forward. ‘Were you able to tell how these people died? I know you’re an expert.’
Ruth is aware of the flattery but it has its effect all the same. ‘I couldn’t tell the cause of death. The skulls were all male. One showed signs of disease, probably syphilis. One…’ She stops. Should she tell Bob about her other, even more gruesome, discovery? She doesn’t owe Smith or his ancestors any discretion after all, and it might help the case for repatriation.
‘Yes?’ says Bob.
Ruth sighs. ‘There were cut marks on one of the skulls. It looked to me as if the head had been skinned shortly after death. Scalped.’
Bob and Cathbad look at each other. Bob makes an odd gesture, holding his hand, palm outwards, against his forehead. He looks genuinely shaken. For the first time since she’s met him, the smile has disappeared altogether.
‘Scalped,’ says Cathbad. ‘Why would anyone do that?’
‘It was a trophy,’ growls Bob. His face has darkened, his brows drawn together. He looks quite frightening. ‘This wasn’t a fellow human to him, it was a hunting trophy. Like a stag’s head on a wall.’
Ruth thinks of the fake Victorian study at the museum, the waxwork figure at the desk, the stag’s head on the wall. She wonders if Danforth Smith’s ancestral mansion is full of such objects. She feels compelled to say, ‘Well, this wasn’t Smith himself. It was his great-grandfather. It was a long time ago. Attitudes then-’
‘Were exactly the same as now,’ Bob bursts out. ‘To a man like Danforth Smith black people aren’t human. He venerates his own ancestors but ours are nothing to him. We’re animals. Less than animals. I hear he worships his horses. We’re less important to him than his horses.’
‘I did try to reason with him’ says Ruth, feeling rather ashamed at having provoked such an outburst. ‘I said that your ancestors were as valuable as his. Bishop Augustine, for example, you know, the medieval bishop whose coffin we were due to open that day.’ She looks at Cathbad, warning him not to say anything more.
Cathbad smiles and contents himself with muttering something about ‘mother church’. He seems far less shocked than Bob by the scalping revelation. Ruth, watching him, can’t imagine that Cathbad would be so incensed about the museum keeping the skulls that he would write and threaten Neil Topham’s life. But someone did.
‘It’s to do with ownership,’ says Ruth. ‘Smith thinks the bones are his because they were taken by his great- grandfather. It’s a really fixed mindset.’
‘Typical British upper classes,’ says Cathbad, still smiling. ‘You should point the bone at him, Bob.’
‘Point the bone?’ says Ruth. ‘What does that mean?’
‘It’s an Aborigine curse,’ says Bob, shooting a glance at Cathbad. ‘It brings about certain death.’
‘You don’t believe that though?’
Bob shrugs. ‘Plenty of people do. You know, there are tourists who take rocks from Australian national parks. Weeks, months, later they send the rocks back saying that they’ve had nothing but bad luck since they took them. When the rocks are back on native soil, the curse is lifted. Think how much worse it is to take the very bones of our ancestors and keep them on the other side of the world. That’s a lot of bad juju.’
‘Well, perhaps Danforth Smith will change his mind,’ says Ruth. ‘He can’t display the relics after all. What’s to be gained from keeping them shut up in a storeroom?’
‘You’d be surprised, Ruth,’ says Bob. ‘You must come to the meeting at the weekend. We’ll tell you stories about whole tribes being wiped out. About Victorian adventurers who hunted the Aborigine like animals. Fine gentlemen like Lord Danforth Smith.’
‘It’s incredible,’ says Ruth. ‘I had no idea.’
‘I once knew a whitefella who kept an Aborigine skull on his mantelpiece. Boasted about it. Used to put a Santa hat on it at Christmas. Funny old Abo head to amuse the children.’
‘What happened to him?’ asks Cathbad.
‘He’s dead now,’ says Bob. ‘The ancestors are powerful.’
Ruth feels a real shiver running down her spine. For a moment she is sorry that she ever saw the cellar room at the Smith Museum, with its boxes of bones. Did she handle them with enough reverence? Will ancestors be after
