Dark Ages. John Pritchard
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‘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 what if she’d upset herself, revisiting the past? What if the reunion wasn’t working out … ?
Lyn realized she was doodling, and sat up straighter. She read her rough translation through again, then looked back to the text. The Old English script seemed to creep before her eyes: clinging to the page with its hooks and downward strokes. Her attention was drawn once more by the name of the testator.
aeelgar
It was different from the wills she’d seen before. Part of it was set out like a poem.
Seek a lord
whose heart is whole
And hold to him
until his days are done
Written by the man himself, or by some later copyist? This version was two hundred years more recent. So no, she couldn’t even answer that.
We know nothing at all about Æthelgar.
She re-read her last sentence with a real sense of loss. Whoever he’d been, the flow of time had carried him away. There was just this frozen glimpse on the horizon. Like Martin’s stars – so distant that you saw them in the past. ‘See that one?’ he’d told her once. ‘It could have died a thousand years ago. Now that’s the kind of ghost I can believe in …’
Dispirited, she pushed him from her thoughts – and then felt guilty. Frustration gave the knife an extra twist. She’d better take a break, before she really got upset. Gathering her papers up, she read her glum conclusion one more time. The verdict seemed to mock her: an admission of defeat.
And yet the name was curiously familiar.
2
She was still worrying it when Fran got back; the chapter only halfway pieced together. Her neatly ordered notes were strewn all over her front room: a pile on the floor, a sheaf on the arm of the sofa. One open textbook lay upon another. But the A4 sheet in front of her stayed blank. The flow of her analysis had got itself hung up.
We know nothing at all about ÆEthelgar.
Perhaps she’d seen the name before in one of Daddy’s books. Since childhood, she’d spent hours in the treasure-house of his study. The Old and Middle English texts had lured her with their strangeness; the manuscripts enchanted her like giant picture books. Martin had come and teased her: called her bookworm. She could hear her brother’s goading voice right now …
Oh, where had she seen that bloody name before? It niggled, like an itch she couldn’t scratch.
Lyn allowed herself another chocolate biscuit, and crunched it feeling guilty; then straightened as she heard Fran’s key in the lock.
She went into the hall, trying not to look too anxious. ‘How did it go?’
‘Fine,’ Fran told her, smiling. ‘Really well.’
Lyn could see that it had. Fran had been so nervous over breakfast, just picking at her cereal; but her face looked fresher now, and more relaxed. Lyn stayed where she was, admiring. ‘That jacket really suits you …’
‘I know. So can I keep it?’
‘Don’t push your luck, Miss Bennett. Do you want coffee?’
‘Mmm, please.’ Fran followed her as far as the kitchen threshold; watched as her friend got the percolator going. Lyn glanced over her shoulder.
‘You can ask him back, you know. I do quite like the man.’