Whispers of the Dead

Fidelma.

Deacon Lepidus sat back with a sigh. After his moment of excitement, he suddenly appeared depressed. He thought for a while and then raised his arms in a hopeless gesture before letting them fall again.

“Then all we have to do is find the location of the house of this man, Cingetorix. After five hundred years, that is impossible.”

Fidelma shook her head with a sudden smile.

“The vellum gives us a little clue, doesn’t it?”

The deacon stared at her.

“A clue? What clue could it give to be able to trace this house? The Romans have gone, departing with the Britons, and the Jutes have come and settled. The town of burg of the Canteware has changed immeasurably. Much of the original buildings are old and decaying. When the Jutes broke out of the island of Tanatos and rose up against the Britons it took a generation to drive them out and for Aesc to make himself king of Jutish Kent. In that time much of this city was destroyed.”

“You appear to have learnt much history in the short time you have been here, Deacon Lepidus,” she murmured. Fidelma rose with a whimsical expression crossing her features. She turned to a shelf behind her. “It is by good fortune that the librarian here has some old charts of the town. I was examining them only this morning.”

“But they do not date from the time of my ancestor. Of what use are they to us?”

Fidelma was spreading one before her on the table.

“The writing mentions that his house stands near a tower; Tower Eight. Also that the house is situated at the northeast corner of a building which some Christians had erected in honor of one of their leaders, Martin of Gaul.”

Deacon Lepidus was perplexed.

“Does that help us? It is so many years ago.”

“The ten towers built by the Romans along the ancient walls of the town can still be recognized, although they are crumbling away. The Jutes do not like occupying the old buildings of the Britons or Romans and prefer to build their own. However, there is still the chapel dedicated to Martin of Gaul, who is more popularly known as Martin of Tours. The chapel is still standing. People still go there to worship.”

A warm smile spread across the deacon’s face.

“By all that is a miracle! What the Venerable Gelasius said about you was an underestimate, Sister Fidelma. You have, in a few moments, cleared away the misty paths and pointed to. .”

Fidelma held up a hand to silence him.

“Are you truly convinced that if we can locate the precise spot that you will find this eagle?”

“You have demonstrated that the writer of the vellum has provided clues enough that lead us not only to the town but the location of where his house might have stood.”

The corners of Fidelma’s mouth turned down momentarily. Then she exhaled slowly.

“Let us observe, then, where else the writer of the vellum will lead us.”

Deacon Lepidus rose to his feet with a smile that was almost a grin of triumph, and clapped his hands together.

“Just so! Just so! Where shall we go?”

Fidelma tapped the map with a slim forefinger.

“First, let us see what these charts of the town tell us. To the east of the township we have the River Stur. Since you are interested in these old names, Deacon Lepidus, you might like to know that it is a name given by the Britons, which means a strong or powerful river. Now these buildings here are the main part of the old town. As you observe they stand beyond the west bank of the river and beyond the alder swamp. The walls were built by the Romans and then later fortified by the Britons, after the Roman withdrawal, to keep out the Angles, Saxons and Jutish raiders.”

Deacon Lepidus peered down and his excitement returned.

“I see. Around the walls are ten towers. Each tower is numbered on the chart.”

It was true that each tower had a Roman numeral-I, II, III, IV, V-and among them was VIII, upon which Fidelma tapped lightly with her forefinger.

“And to the west, we have the church of Martin and buildings around it. What buildings would be at the northwest corner?”

“Northeast,” corrected the deacon hurriedly.

“Exactly so,” agreed Fidelma, unperturbed. “That’s what I meant.”

“Why,” cried the deacon, jabbing at the chart, “this building here is on the northeast corner of the church. It is marked as some sort of villa.”

“So it is. But is it still standing after all those centuries?”

“Perhaps a building is standing there,” Deacon Lepidus replied enthusiastically. “Maybe the original foundations are still intact.”

“And would that help us?” queried Fidelma. Her voice was gently probing, like a teacher trying to help a pupil with a lesson.

“Surely,” the deacon said confidently. “Cingetorix wrote that he would hide the eagle in the hypocaust. If so, if the building was destroyed, whatever was hidden in the foundations, where the hypocaust is, might have survived. You see, a hypocaust is. .”

“It is a system for heating rooms with warm air,” intervened Fidelma. “I am afraid that you Romans did not exactly invent the idea, although you claim as much. However, I have seen other ancient examples of the basic system. The floors are raised on pillars and the air underneath is heated by a furnace and piped through the flues.”

Deacon Lepidus’s face struggled to control a patriotic irritation at Fidelma’s words. He finally produced a strained smile.

“I will not argue with you on who or what invented the hypocaustrum, which is a Latin word.”

“Hypokauston is a Greek word,” pointed out Fidelma calmly. “Clearly, we all borrow from one another and perhaps that is as it should be? Let us return to the problem in hand. We will have to walk to this spot and see what remains of any building. Only once we have surveyed this area will we see what our next step can be.”

Fidelma had only been in the town a week but it was so small that she had already explored the location around the abbey. It was sad that during the two centuries since the Britons had been driven from the city by Hengist and his son Aesc, the Jutes and their Angle and Saxon comrades had let much of it fall into disuse and disrepair, preferring to build their own crude constructions of timber outside the old city walls. A few buildings had been erected in spaces where the older buildings had decayed. Only recently, since the coming of Augustine from Rome and his successors, had a new dynamism seized the city, and buildings were being renovated and repaired. Even so, it was a haphazard process.

Fidelma led the way with confidence to the crumbling towers that had once guarded the partially destroyed city walls.

“That is Tower Eight,” she said, pointing to what had once been a square tower now standing no more than a single story high.

“How do you know? Just from the map?” demanded the deacon.

She shook her head irritably.

“It bears the number on the lintel above the door.”

She pointed to where “VIII” could clearly be seen before turning to survey the piles of stone and brickwork that lay about. Her eyes widened suddenly.

“That wooden granary and its outbuilding appear to stand in the position that is indicated. See, there is the church dedicated to the Blessed Martin of Tours. Curious. They are the only buildings near here, as well.”

Deacon Lepidus followed her gaze and nodded.

“God is smiling on us.”

Fidelma was already making her way toward the buildings.

“There are two possibilities,” she mused. “The granary has been built over the villa so that the hypocaust is