Dark Ages. John Pritchard
Читать онлайн книгу.
Baptized: One Thousand Years.’
He raised an eyebrow. ‘You been over there?’
‘’Fraid not. I got it at the Orthodox church in Oxford.’
‘Oxford, huh? That where you come from?’
‘It’s where I’m studying.’
‘Always wanted to visit Oxford …’ he said lightly, and would have said more, but a patrol truck was approaching: chugging up along the perimeter road. It came to a halt behind him, and the driver climbed out. Fran saw it was a woman, not much older than herself. Dressed in camouflage like Flaherty, but with a black beret – and a holstered pistol at her belt. MATTHEWS said the name-strip on her blouse.
‘Any problem, Sergeant?’
‘No problem.’ He held Fran’s gaze for a moment longer; then turned away. Fran stared at his retreating back, then looked across at Matthews. The other woman was eyeing her levelly. Her fresh-complexioned face was set and grim.
Fran tipped her head back: took it on the chin. Resentment twinged inside her, mixed with something more unsettling. She’d thought there’d be some fellow-feeling somewhere – one woman to another. But there wasn’t the slightest spark of it between them.
She’d shoot me, if she had to. Shoot me dead. The knowledge took the wind out of her sails.
Flaherty was back at his truck. He gave her a final, sidelong glance; no more. Matthews was still watching her. Dispirited, Fran turned and walked away.
But now she was here again, and reaching out to touch the fence. Curling her fingers round the cold green strands, and holding tight.
‘Looks different,’ Craig said softly; ‘from the wrong side of the wire.’
She glanced over her shoulder. He looked different: standing there behind her.
They’d driven up the road from the A339, Craig silent at the wheel of his rented car. The tunnel of trees had closed around them, channelling them through gloom until they were almost at the fence. They’d parked there and got out; Fran pausing with her hand on the open door. It had rained that afternoon, and the wood smelled damp and green, still dripping. The song of a blackbird came from somewhere close.
Greenham Common airbase lay in silence.
They were close to the silos here. The last time she’d ventured up this way, the MoD police had chased her off. A winter’s night, dark early – but the those sinister mounds had been brightly lit. They’d made her think of spiders’ lairs – nestled deep in their funnels of gleaming razor wire.
A ripple of cold went through her flesh. She shivered, and hunched her shoulders.
The webs were empty now, though; their spider-holes as derelict as Heyford’s silent hangars. Life had gone on while she’d lingered in the dark. The world had changed so much.
‘I heard they’re gonna turn it into a theme park,’ Craig said, with wry amusement. ‘Or something like that.’
She shook her head, bemused. The place had been an inspiration through her teens; had drawn her down from Oxford again and again. Now here it lay, forgotten. What was it they’d sung around the campfire? And we shall build Jerusalem in England’s Greenhorn pleasant land. Well the missiles were gone – but no sense of peace had come to take their place. The silos had a haunted feel; like burial mounds, robbed out.
The evening sky was overcast and low. Crimson light seeped through it here and there, staining the clouds like blackberry juice.
‘I didn’t like it here,’ Craig murmured.
Fran turned her head.
‘Don’t get me wrong,’ he went on drily. ‘I think we were right; I think we did some good. But we never fitted in. Just stuck in our own little world behind the wire. And so much hostility outside …’
‘Was that the only reason?’
He was silent for a minute. ‘I’d be lying if I said that sharing a base with ninety-six Cruise missiles didn’t give me the creeps sometimes.’
‘It wasn’t the nukes that scared me,’ Fran said slowly, looking back towards the row of gutted silos. ‘It was the fact that people were actually ready to use the bloody things.’
‘It wouldn’t have happened. That was the whole point.’
‘Maybe not. No, really … maybe not. But the readiness was there.’
A pause. Then he slid his arms around her waist. Fran stood there for a moment, not reacting; then let herself relax against his body. He squeezed her gently; touched his cheek to hers.
‘You know what it reminds me of ?’ he said after a while. ‘Cape Canaveral. You go there now, there’s just these burned-out shells of concrete, where the rockets blasted off. Dead silence. When the clouds are like this, and there’s a wind off the desert, it’s so damn’ eerie. It feels like the end of the world.’
1
Lyn tapped her pen against her teeth – and wondered if she’d found her man at last.
The library was hushed, as if expectant. The lamp above her recess cast a cosy golden glow. The cloudy afternoon had brought a premature dusk, like grey fog seeping inward through the windows. The lamps were beacons, keeping it at bay. Back down the unlit aisles and stacks, the gloom was growing thicker.
The manuscript before her was the fragment of a will. Ninth century West Saxon; the testator’s name was written aeelgar. She felt uncertain, rather than excited. Was it him? Perhaps – but she was never going to know. He didn’t even have a face, to match the name against.
She’d been looking for him since childhood – whether consciously or not. It went back to that holiday in Norfolk. The thesis she was writing now had been conceived that summer. Not that she had known it then: she’d just been ten or twelve. They’d visited an ancient church, for Daddy to take pictures. Martin had moped around outside, as little brothers would, but she had walked on in to look around. The place still had its medieval rood screen, with painted figures dimly visible. Pictures of saints, according to the leaflet – some of them not known outside the district.
One disfigured shape had caught her eye. It had been worn to a shadow, with the face completely gone. The presence of a raven suggests Paul of Thebes or possibly Elijah. But maybe he was just another nameless local saint.
It seemed there were traditions of some link with nearby Ely. She’d heard how Hereward the Wake had fought the Normans there. Was this one of his warriors? Or a hermit of the fens who’d prayed for him?
She’d walked out of the church – and like a shadow, he had followed. Ever since that day, he’d been an element in her imagination. How had local glory turned to centuries of silence? What could be inferred about the medieval mind? The thought had slowly gelled into her topic for research: this interface of history and myth.
The study would be a social one; but still there was this itchy fascination. The twelve-year-old inside her kept on wondering. She couldn’t help but follow up the vaguest reference; the thesis grew in tandem with her search. Here, an ancient grant of land; there, a manuscript that spoke of scincræft. Cryptic mentions; fleeting clues. They’d led her to this brittle testament.
She glanced at her watch – it had just gone six – and wondered how Fran and Craig were getting on. The rain had stopped some hours ago, but the sky outside was dim. They knew that she was working late tonight. They’d be eating out, Fran said – somewhere in Oxford. She was aiming to be back by nine.
But