“You know about him?” Benje didn’t sound put out by his heroine’s omniscience, it merely confirmed what he already believed, Benedikt guessed.
“I am not. . . most regrettably, I must admit that I am not an expert on Roman villas.” He would have to beware of Benje’s loyalty—it might be safer to cultivate Darren; but meanwhile he must head off that misapprehension. “Roman roads are more my ... my speciality.” He smiled shyly at Miss Becky, and was relieved to find the remains of her softened expression still visible. “Miss Maxwell-Smith?”
“Yes.” Without that coldness behind the eyes, and even with her hair severely pulled back into a pony-tail, she was quite a pretty girl, though she fell well short of beauty—it was a face with character bred into it, but at first sight he could not decide whether dummy1
the jaw-line betrayed self-will and obstinacy, or determination and constancy.
“I am passing by ... on holiday, as my friends here have said, before I take up my post in our embassy in London.” He paused, and blinked at her as though taking time to sort out his English. “I am going to Maiden Castle, near Dorchester . . . and to see the country of Thomas Hardy.” Another pause. “But in London I was told of your villa, Miss Maxwell-Smith, by ... by Professor Handforth-Jones, of the Society for the Advancement of Romano-British Studies.”
He had not intended producing Professor Handforth-Jones, like a rabbit out of the magician’s hat, so early in his introduction. But Audley had come up behind her as he spoke.
“Tony Handforth-Jones?” Audley rose to the name.
Rebecca Maxwell-Smith half-turned, half looked up to the big man. “You’ve heard of him?”
“I know him. He’s a good friend of mine—and a damn good archaeologist too. But he’s more into military sites in Scotland at the moment—Agricola’s line-of-march, and the location of Mons Graupius, and that sort of thing.” He nodded at her. “But he’ll have heard of your Fighting Man, for sure.” He gave Benedikt a nod.
“Hullo again.”
Rebecca Maxwell-Smith looked from one to the other of them.
“You’ve already met?”
“We’ve met.” Another nod. “But we haven’t actually been introduced. The Mercedes with the CD plates—I told you.”
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“Oh!” She caught her mistake skilfully. “How silly of me! Yes . . .
well. . . Mr Wiesehöfer—this is Dr David Audley, who is helping us with our excavations.”
“ ‘Helping’ is hardly the word.” Audley shook his head. “I’m no archaeologist—and Roman Britain isn’t my field. . . . The truth is, I’m a wheelbarrow-wheeler, and a cook-and-bottle washer, and a hewer-of-wood and drawer-of-water, is what I am, Mr Wiesehöfer.
Not a professional.”
He had the build for manual work, thought Benedikt, smiling back at the disclaimer. But he was also a professional in another field, who wasn’t prepared to compromise his cover by lying about his qualifications for being here in Duntisbury Chase, even for the benefit of an innocent foreigner.
“Dr Audley.” He nodded again. It would be interesting to probe that cover further, to find out how Audley accounted for his presence. But it wasn’t in Thomas Wiesehöfer’s own cover to show such curiosity yet.
“If you want to see the villa—here it is,” Rebecca Maxwell-Smith gestured around her. “We haven’t got very far with it, but of course you’re welcome to see what there is of it.”
“This is the end of the preliminary reconnaissance operations,”
explained Audley. “The big effort starts next spring.”
“Ah, yes.” What Audley had not added was that the reconnaissance had ended prematurely, somewhat to the archaeologists’ irritation.
At first, after the General’s death, they had been allowed to carry on, with only the loss of a single day for the funeral. But then Miss dummy1
Rebecca Maxwell-Smith had very recently indicated her wish that operations should cease for the time being, with the promise of generous financial aid the following year when she had full control of her inheritance. And with the estate trustees already obedient to her strong will, there was nothing the archaeologists had been able to do about it except to register their disappointment publicly—and their mystification at her change of heart privately. But Thomas Wiesehöfer ought not to know any of that.
He looked around. “But you have made discoveries, so I have been told.”
“Oh yes.” The girl nodded. “They have a fair idea of the extent of the buildings, as far as the trees.”
“They’ve uncovered the edge of a pavement over there—” Audley pointed “—and it just may be an Orpheus one, too.” He watched Benedikt covertly as he spoke.
“An Orpheus pavement?” Benedikt obliged him quickly. “I have seen fragments of such a pavement not far from my home, near Münster-Sarmsheim, also discovered recently—not as large as your great pavement at Woodchester, of course . . .But there are many villas in the territories of the Treveri, so there is always hope.” He smiled at Audley. “I may see this find, perhaps?”
“I’m sorry—it’s been covered up again,” the girl apologised. “To protect it from the frost during the winter.”
“Ah yes!” He transferred the smile to her. “And I’m afraid our Fighting Man isn’t on view, either.” She shook her head sadly.
“They’ve taken him away for detailed study—they didn’t want to dummy1
risk leaving him, once they’d found him. Did your friend in London tell you about him?”
“Professor Handforth-Jones? Yes . . . that is, he spoke of a warrior.
I did not quite understand . . . but a warrior, yes.”
“We call him our Fighting Man.” She pointed to a larger area of excavation. “He was found there, in what may have been a barn.
They think he was a Saxon, judging by his equipment.”
“A burial?” He nodded. “It was the custom sometimes, was it not. . . of the Saxon invaders ... to bury dead persons in such ruins?” That was what Handforth-Jones had said, anyway.
“No.” She frowned for an instant. “I mean, it may have been their custom—I’m not a historian. But, what I mean is, they don’t think he was buried—deliberately buried.”
“It was pure luck, really,” said Audley. “They were digging one of their trial trenches, and they hit the remains of this chap straight away, under the fallen debris of the roof—and just the way he’d fallen, too—sword in hand— literally sword in hand.” He paused for a moment, staring not at Benedikt, but across the field towards the area of excavation which the girl had indicated. “Or . . . what remained of the sword and the hand, anyway . . . and everything else he died with, so they think— helmet of some sort, and a belt with a dagger, and maybe some sort of crude cuirass even . . .
Right, Becky?”
The girl nodded. “They’re not sure about that. They said it was much too early to be certain. But they did get very excited about him, and they were tremendously careful about lifting him out—in dummy1
the end they undercut him, and raised him in one piece . . . What they think—well, they don’t go as far as saying that they think it, but it’s one theory—is that the barn caught fire, and fell on him . . .
when the villa was sacked. Because they found evidence of fire, both there and in another trench, over on the other side.” She pointed. “And the way they thought it might have happened is that he was killed in the barn here, but in all the confusion no one saw that—or no one lived to tell the tale, anyway . . . And the barn caught fire, and fell down, but maybe it was empty, so no one picked over the ruins, like they would have done with the main buildings—or, it could have been at night that the villa was sacked . . . But they didn’t see what happened to him, one way or another, anyway. He just disappeared.”