Chris lay there, stunned, hearing peals of girlish laughter. But she quickly dismounted and helped him to his feet again. 'Oh Chris, I'm sorry to laugh,' she said in her elegant British accent. 'It was all my fault, in any case. I oughtn't to have distracted you.'
'I'm all right,' he said, a little sulky. He brushed dirt from his chin and faced her, managing to smile.
As always, he was struck by her beauty, especially at this moment, her blond hair backlit in the afternoon sun so her perfect complexion seemed to glow, setting off her deep violet eyes. Sophie Rhys-Hampton was the most beautiful woman he had ever met in his life. And the most intelligent. And the most accomplished. And the most seductive.
'Oh, Chris, Chris,' she said, brushing his face with cool fingertips. 'I really do apologize. There, now. Any better?'
Sophie was a student at Cheltenham College; twenty years old, four years younger than he. Her father, Hugh Hampton, was a London barrister; he owned the farmhouse that the project rented for the summer. Sophie had come down to stay with friends in a farmhouse nearby. One day she had come round to collect something from her father's study. Chris had seen her, and promptly walked into a tree trunk.
Which seemed to have set the tone for their relationship, he thought ruefully. She looked at him now and said, 'I'm flattered I have this effect on you, Chris. But I worry for your safety.' She giggled, and kissed him lightly on the cheek. 'I called you today.'
'I know, I got tied up. We had a crisis.'
'A crisis? What constitutes an archaeological crisis?'
'Oh, you know. Funding hassles.'
'Oh yes. That ITC bunch. From New Mexico.' She made it sound like the ends of the earth. 'Do you know, they asked to buy my father's farm?'
'Did they?'
'They said they needed to rent it for so many years ahead, they might as well buy it. Of course he said no.'
'Of course.' He smiled at her. 'Dinner?'
'Oh, Chris. I can't tonight. But we can ride tomorrow. Shall we?'
'Of course.'
'In the morning? Ten o'clock?'
'All right,' he said. 'I'll see you at ten.'
'I'm not interrupting your work?'
'You know you are.'
'It's quite all right to do it another day.'
'No, no,' he said. 'Ten o'clock tomorrow.'
'Done,' she said, with a dazzling smile.
In fact, Sophie Hampton was almost too pretty, her figure too perfect, her manner too charming to be quite real. Marek, for one, was put off by her.
But Chris was entranced.
After she rode away, Marek charged by again. This time Chris got out of the way of the swinging quintain. When Marek trotted back, he said, 'You're being jerked around, my friend.'
'Maybe,' Chris said. But the truth was, he didn't care.
The next day found Marek at the monastery, helping Rick Chang with the excavations into the catacombs. They had been digging here for weeks now. And it was slow going, because they kept finding human remains. Whenever they came upon bones, they stopped digging with shovels, and switched to trowels and toothbrushes.
Rick Chang was the physical anthropologist on the team. He was trained to deal with human finds; he could look at a pea-sized piece of bone and tell you whether it came from the right wrist or the left, male or female, child or adult, ancient or contemporary.
But the human remains they were finding here were puzzling. For one thing, they were all male; and some of the long bones had evidence of battle injuries. Several of the skulls showed arrow wounds. That was how most soldiers had died in the fourteenth century, from arrows. But there was no record of any battle ever fought at the monastery. At least none that they knew of.
They had just found what looked like a bit of rusted helmet when Marek's cell phone rang. It was the Professor.
'How is it going?' Marek said.
'Fine, so far.'
'Did you meet with Doniger?'
'Yes. This afternoon.'
'And?'
'I don't know yet.'
'They still want to go forward with the reconstruction?'
'Well, I'm not sure. Things are not quite what I expected here.' The Professor seemed vague, preoccupied.
'How's that?'
'I can't discuss it over the line,' the Professor said. 'But I wanted to tell you: I won't be calling in the next twelve hours. Probably not for the next twenty-four hours.'
'Uh-huh. Okay. Everything all right?'
'Everything is fine, Andrй.'
Marek wasn't so sure. 'Do you need aspirin?' That was one of their established code phrases, a way to ask if something was wrong, in case the other person couldn't speak freely.
'No, no. Not at all.'
'You sound a little detached.'
'Surprised, I would say. But everything's fine. At least, I think it's fine.' He paused, then, 'And what about the site? What's going on with you?'
'I'm with Rick at the monastery now. We're digging in the catacombs of quadrant four. I think we'll be down later today, or tomorrow at the latest.'
'Excellent. Keep up the good work, Andrй. I'll talk to you in a day or two.'
And he rang off.
Marek clipped the phone back on his belt and frowned. What the hell did all that mean?
The helicopter thumped by overhead, its sensor boxes hanging beneath. Stern had kept it for another day, to do morning and afternoon runs; he wanted to survey the features that Kramer had mentioned, to see exactly how much showed up in an instrument run.
Marek wondered how it was going, but to talk to him, he needed a radio. The nearest one was in the storehouse.
'Elsie,' Marek said as he walked into the storehouse. 'Where's the radio to talk to David?'
Of course, Elsie Kastner didn't answer him. She just continued to stare at the document in front of her. Elsie was a pretty, heavyset woman who was capable of intense concentration. She sat in this storehouse for hours, deciphering the handwriting on parchments. Her job required her to know not only the six principal languages of medieval Europe, but also long-forgotten local dialects, slang and abbreviations. Marek felt lucky to have her, even though she stayed aloof from the rest of the team. And she could be a little strange at times. He said, 'Elsie?'
She looked up suddenly. 'What? Oh, sorry, Andrй. I'm just, uh, I mean a little…' She gestured to the parchment in front of her. 'This is a bill from the monastery to a German count. For putting up his personal retinue for the night: twenty-nine people and thirty-five horses. That's what this count was taking with him through the countryside. But it's written in a combination of Latin and Occitan, and the handwriting is impossible.'
Elsie picked up the parchment and carried it to the photography stand in the corner. A camera was mounted on a four-legged stand above the table, with strobe lights aiming from all sides. She set the parchment down, straightened it, arranged the bar code ID at the bottom, put a two-inch checkerboard ruler down for standardization, and snapped the picture.
'Elsie? Where's the radio to talk to David?'
