While the Saxon king Sæberht and his court spoke in that strange stilted non-contracted English that indicates the writer is trying to take his period seriously, Aedan, our intrepid Irish hero, and Cyrus, his black sidekick, spoke modern vernacular, cracked wise and were generally hip and groovy.
Straight to Netflix, I thought, if it ever got made at all.
And the three people listed on the front cover were all suspiciously brown bread.
In the script itself, something was killing locals that strayed within the London walls after dark. King Sæberht believes it to be an evil spirit, Oswyn his advisor says dangerous wild animal, while Mellitus, the papal emissary, agrees with the king but might just be saying that to get him into the baptismal font. Aedan and Cyrus, with the aid of the phenomenally strong yet stupid Henric and the major babe Hilda – it actually said that in the scene directions, MAJOR BABE – track down the mysterious killer.
It went all the places I expected it to go, although the set piece in the trap-infested maze inside the abandoned Temple of Mithras probably would have been exciting with the right director. The revelation that it was, in fact, an evil spirit rather than a creature, came at page seventy-six, shortly after Cyrus, to nobody’s surprise, copped it in a suitably heroic way. They trace the spirit to its lair atop the highest hill in ancient Londinium amid the ruins of the old Roman amphitheatre. There it turns out to have been created by the last of the Romans through mass human sacrifice in an attempt to repel the invading Saxons.
The revenant animates the zombified remains of both the sacrifice victims and the Roman legionaries buried conveniently nearby. There is a major boss battle at the end of which Aedan plunges a sword, sanctified by Mellitus or something like that, into the heart of the spirit after he takes over the body of Henric, thus making himself inexplicably vulnerable. He is aided by a glowing light thingy that is either the power of God (Mellitus’ explanation), the spirit of Cyrus (Aedan’s explanation) or Cyrus having been transformed into an angelic manifestation of God’s will – Hilda’s explanation.
Mellitus declares that he will build a cathedral over the cursed amphitheatre to ensure the evil spirit can never return and baptises King Sæberht on that very spot. There’s a brief flash forward to the present day where it’s made clear that this is, in fact, St Paul’s Cathedral. The credits roll, we dance, we kiss, we schmooze, we carry on, we go home happy.
Except that John Chapman, Gabriel Tate and Richard Williams didn’t – did they?
Martin Chorley was a Dark Ages enthusiast. It was possible that this script so offended him that he offed two of the writers out of sheer critical outrage. This seemed unlikely – even for a dangerously unstable psychopath like him.
More likely there was something contained in the script that he really didn’t want anyone to know about. I wrote up an email for the inside inquiry team and attached the script, with the caveat that I’d refine the correlation keywords once I had the report by Postmartin.
That report arrived during practice the next morning and I read it in the Tech Cave so I could put any notes on the system direct.
‘There is sign of some scholarship,’ wrote Postmartin. ‘Aedan is a perfectly feasible name for a 6th Century Irishman and likewise naming his companion Cyrus shows an understanding of the Hellenic character of Egypt, particularly Alexandria, at that time – the rise of Islam and the Arab conquests of the region having not yet begun. Henric, Oswyn and Hilda are all identifiably Anglo-Saxon names and, indeed, all can be found in Bede’s A History of the English Church and People. But also, I note, by typing ‘Anglo-saxon name’ into Google. Still other details in the script indicate that at least one of the authors paid more attention to historical veracity than is usual in the film industry. King Sæberht of Essex is also in Bede and is considered to be a real historical figure, as is Mellitus, who is indeed credited with the founding of St Paul’s.
‘The Mithraeum on the Walbrook really existed, although its excitingly labyrinthine interior is a complete invention. There isn’t and has never been any evidence to suggest that a Roman amphitheatre occupied the site of St Paul’s and given that a verified amphitheatre has been located under the Guildhall Museum some 600 yards to the north-east I think it unlikely there were two such even in Londinium at its most glorious.
‘Why the Anglo-Saxons didn’t occupy the interior of Roman London, with its defensive walls and plentiful supply of building materials, is one of the great historical mysteries. The idea of a terrible cursed revenant preventing them is as good a theory as any other. Incidentally a sword of distinctive Saxon manufacture was reportedly recovered by the famous 18th C. antiquarian Winston William Galt from a cellar in Paternoster Row so that would explain where the blessed sword went, wouldn’t it?
‘On an interesting side note, the Anglo-Saxons used the same metal-folding technique as the medieval Japanese and would often create beautiful weapons that would be ‘sacrificed’ by throwing them into sacred streams and lakes. Some think that the legend of the Lady of the Lake could derive from this custom since any aspiring British warrior might see such deposits as a handy source of high quality weaponry.’
I thanked Postmartin by email and asked if he knew the present whereabouts of the Paternoster Sword. What with the Lady of the Lake bollocks, it sounded like the sort of thing Martin Chorley might be interested in. Then I added Excalibur, St Paul’s Cathedral and the Temple of Mithras to the list of HOLMES keywords. This got me an irritable note from Sergeant Wainscrow, who pointed out that overuse of key words can be counterproductive. I said we could discuss this at the briefing on Monday morning, but of course by that time my choices had been vindicated – well, sort of.
12
The Old Man’s Regatta
That year the Old Man of the River was holding his summer court at Mill End, where the Thames skirts the eastern edge of the Chilterns before dropping south to Henley and Reading. Nightingale decided that, since he had to stay in London, I’d have to represent the Folly. So I threw two mystery hampers from Molly, Beverley’s overnight party bag, and Abigail into the back of the Hyundai and set off on an unseasonably grey Saturday morning.
Bev was going to travel up the Thames and meet us there.
‘Got to stop off and say hello to a few people on the way,’ she said.
The day was humid and overcast and the Hyundai’s aircon was labouring. I tried to get clever and go up the M40 and then south at High Wycombe, but that just meant me and Abigail were sweaty and irritable on a motorway instead of an A-road.
As we started the drop into the Thames Valley proper, we could see darker clouds piling up beyond the Thames to the south. Now, I don’t have Bev’s intimate acquaintance with the hydrological cycle, but I thought I knew a summer thunderstorm when it’s lowering at me.
‘Cumulonimbus,’ said Abigail, who of course knew the technical name. ‘“Cumulus” means a mass and “nimbus” means cloud.’
I didn’t deign to answer and instead concentrated on my driving.
We whooshed through Marlow, which appeared to be composed of strange mutant detached bungalows with hipped roofs in the Dutch style, and sprawling post-war villas in the no-style-whatsoever style. Then along the course of the Thames on the A4155, which rose and fell amongst woods, villages and boutique hotels ideal for the stressed executive.