I had delayed our meeting for a number of reasons, some obvious but others hidden in the depths of my psyche: fear, of course, was dominant I didn’t want to confront Cauldwell with my findings for fear of what I might learn.
I was forty-five, happily married with a ten-year-old daughter, and I held a secure post as a senior lecturer in medieval archaeology at Oxford. I had reached the stage in my life at which I was confident that the future would hold no surprises. Perhaps I was complacent.
Fiona guessed that something was amiss. One evening in April she appeared at the door of my study. She must have been watching me for a while before I looked up and noticed her.
I smiled, tired.
“It’s that skull, isn’t it?”
I massaged my eyes. “What is?” I said, not for the first time amazed at my wife’s perspicacity.
“Dan, ever since you found the thing, you’ve been different. Morose withdrawn. If I believed in that kind of thing, I’d say it was cursed “
I managed to smile. “It’s not cursed,” I said. “Just misplaced. The skeleton was found with artefacts that date from a hundred years later. “
She pushed herself from the jamb of the door and kissed the top of my head.
I said, “The paper I’m writing, trying to explain the anomaly, just isn’t working.…”
“I’m sorry, Dan. Dinner in ten minutes, okay?” She kissed me again and left the room.
Whenever I lied to Fiona, which wasn’t often, I always wondered if she’d seen through me.
Misplaced artefacts, indeed.…
The truth was far more perplexing, and worrying, than that.
A few days later I e-mailed Cauldwell, telling him that I’d had second thoughts about his offer.
He phoned later that afternoon. “Dan, so persistence pays off! You’ve seen sense at last. Good man. Look, when’s convenient for you?”
“I’m free all this week.”
“Excellent. Come over to the research station and I’ll show you around the place. It’s all hush-hush, of course. Top secret and all that.”
“I understand,” I said.
“Tomorrow at one suit? Excellent, see you then.”
I replaced the phone, very aware of my thudding heartbeat. There was no turning back, now.
The headquarters of Sigma Research Inc. was buried away in the Oxfordshire countryside, miles away from the prying eyes of bustling Oxford.
I drove slowly through the tortuous, leafy lanes, considering my imminent meeting with Cauldwell and, despite myself, reviewing my dealings with the man. Despite the tone of bonhomie he had affected on the phone the day before, we had always been sworn rivals. Not to put too fine a point on if I detested him.
He had been one of those old-fashioned academics ensconced in a sinecure at Oxford’s richest and most conservative college. His resistance to theory, his inability to see the worth of research ideologically opposed to his own narrow views, had won him many enemies. Much to the surprise and envy of his colleagues, last year he had been headhunted by Sigma Research, a big American outfit with a lot of dollars and a market-led excavation theory.
A few months after Cauldwell left Oxford, I discovered the eleventh-century skull at a dig near the village of Sheppey, Herefordshire.
And a couple of days after that, Cauldwell himself phoned to invite me to join his team at Sigma Research. More than a little suspicious, I had told him I was quite happy at Oxford, thanks all the same.
Now I was following up his invitation — purely in the interests of research, of course.
Cauldwell met me in a plush reception area resplendent with thick crimson carpet and a jungle of potted-palms. It looked more like the foyer of a multi-national bank than the reception area of a private archaeological company.
He came smiling towards me, hand outstretched. “Dan, so pleased.…”
Everything about him was big. He had a big, square head on big, wide shoulders. Even at college his dress had been eccentric: now he wore a loud shirt with a pattern a la Pollock, a pair of those ridiculous knee-length khaki shorts, and sandals from which his big, bare toes protruded obscenely.
He passed me a small plastic identity card. Next to an entwined SR was my name, and above it a small photograph he’d obviously downloaded from the college website.
“Follow me. I’ll give you the tour. You’re privileged, of course. Not every Tom, Dick or Harry gets this. Just prospective employees.”
I followed, not a little disgruntled at his assumption that I would be impressed.
He showed me into his office, a spacious area with few books but the latest computer technology.
What took my attention, however, was the plate glass window at the back of the room. It looked out over a big sunken chamber in which a dozen white-coated scientists were working at terminals.
He was saying, “I didn’t know what research was till I began working for Sigma, Dan. I take it you read my last paper in Historical Review?”
I nodded, I had been impressed, despite myself.
Cauldwell smiled. “Ground-breaking, even if I do say so myself. Less to do with me than with the work of my team.” He gestured through the glass at his ‘team’.
I glanced at him. Such modesty was not usually his forte.
“Come, I’ll show you the working end of the business.”
He led me through a door and down a flight of steps into the sunken chamber.
Even at this stage, of course, I had my suspicions.
The chamber looked like the futuristic set of some sci-fi blockbuster: ranked computer terminals and banks of silver devices like lasers. At the far end of the room, however, and seeming out of place, was a tall, arched aperture that resembled nothing so much as a stained glass window.
I stared, surprised, for that was what I had assumed it to be: a stained glass window, however inappropriate that might be in this secular setting.
Closer inspection revealed a rectangle of polychromatic tesserae, constantly shifting.
A woman in a white lab-coat came up to Cauldwell and passed him a small com-screen.
She smiled at me.
“Sally,” I said. Would the surprises never end?
“Dan, fancy meeting you here.£
“I was about to say the same!”
Sally Reichs had been one of the finest post-grad students to come out of Oxford in years. By her mid-thirties, she’d written a couple of far-sighted books on her subject, the metallurgy of Anglo-Saxon Britain — and then disappeared from the scene.
Now I knew why. Headhunted.
The odd thing was, she had professed an intense dislike of Simon Cauldwell while they were both working in the archaeology department at Oxford. More than once she had confided to me that she found his views, both professional and personal, detestable.
She must have seen my confusion. She gave me a look — a lop-sided, almost resigned smile — which signalled that she would tell me all at some point.
“Sal’s quite brilliant,” Cauldwell said as she returned to her terminal. “But of course you know that.”
I ignored him, and gestured at the multi-coloured screen at the far end of the chamber. A low hum, almost on the threshold of audibility, filled the air — along with what felt like a static charge.
I guessed, of course, but even then never really believed that my guess was correct.
Cauldwell gestured, and we walked along an aisle between ranked terminals.
We paused beneath the aperture — it was perhaps three metres high — like supplicants.
Cauldwell said, “Did you wonder how I came to write such a revolutionary paper?”
I looked at him. “It wasn’t quite what I’ve come to expect from you,” I said.
He smiled at that. “Ah, I’ll take that as a compliment.”
A question caught in my throat. i was suddenly aware that I was sweating. “Tell me what’s going on here,” I almost pleaded.