The Avalon Chanter (5 page)

Maggie knelt at the edge of the hole as
though in prayer. Her light illuminated a bright blue plastic
tarpaulin about eight inches down. Grasping one corner, she jerked
it up and back.

The body was almost a skeleton, but not
quite.

In the slightly shaky beam of light—Maggie’s
hand must be trembling—bone, cloth, skin, strands of hair, all were
a dismal brackish brown. The corpse looked more like a child’s
effort at modeling a human body in clay than the real thing.

Alasdair emitted a long sigh. Jean didn’t
breathe at all. The chill that oozed down her back had nothing to
do with temperature. Mortal clay, she thought. Feet of clay.
Although the miasma emanating from the hole wasn’t that of clay.
Mildew, mold, muck . . .

That’s why Maggie had cancelled the press
conference at the last minute. That’s why she’d waited until the
tide ebbed and sealed off the island before presenting the genuine,
non-stage-managed reveal.

The arch of the skull resembled an obscene
egg. The eye sockets, filled with mud, stared sightlessly upward.
The jaw gaped open, revealing brown teeth and two gold fillings
that glinted in the light.

Not medieval, then.

The arms were folded across the waist, the
arm bones sinking into the body cavity, a few finger bones
scattered alongside the arches of the hips. Worms. Rats, maybe. Or
no more than gravity.

The feet were still encased in rubber
Wellington boots, one turned upright, the other slumping to the
side.

Mid to late twentieth century.

Somewhere water dripped. A sheep bawled. The
accumulated steam of four breaths formed wraiths in the air. The
body did not breathe, the eyes did not blink, the jaw did not move.
No invisible tongue gave voice to—what? Fear? Surprise? Had the
vacant eyes seen death coming, or had they been closed suddenly,
without warning?

Had they closed at all, Jean wondered, or had
he—she—been dumped into the tomb with eyes still open, watching as
the stone slab closed off the ceiling, the light from the window,
the birds flying freely beyond?

Someone had to say it. She obliged, her voice
seeming shrill in the deadened air. “Do you have any idea who it
is?”

The light-beam steadied. Maggie slumped back
on her haunches. When she spoke her words were directed to the
ravaged face in the tomb. “I think it may be my father.”

Chapter Five

Jean glanced so quickly back through the
door, toward the cemetery and Wat Lauder’s grave, her neck cricked.
“Say what?”

“
It’s a long story. One I’ve always
thought was nothing but . . .” Maggie’s voice ran down and
dissipated into the gathering darkness.

Gossip? Hearsay? Myth?

Tara’s crossed arms tightened. Her
boots were now turned pigeon-toed.
It’s not
my fault
.

Crawford leaned forward, his hatchet nose
pointed downward.

Alasdair stared at him, blue eyes gleaming in
the light. Jean knew only too well the strength of that stare, like
a laser burning a hole not in your retina but in your awareness.
Sure enough, the constable looked around, cleared his throat, and
said, “Time I was ringing Berwick and asking for back-up.”

“
I’m thinking that’s the best plan,
aye,” Alasdair told him.

Crawford pulled a phone from his pocket and
headed for the door. By the time he disappeared into the main
sanctuary, he was speaking, his voice oddly deep for one coming
from such a stork-like neck. “. . . Farnaby Island . . .
unexplained death . . . no, no, not recent . . . coroner, inquest .
. .”

Alasdair took the flashlight from Maggie’s
hand and gave it to Jean, then pulled the woman to her feet. She
didn’t seem to notice but kept staring into the grave.

“
Did you break the slab covering the
tomb?” Jean asked. Not that the condition of the slab mattered now,
but Maggie’s face was ashen, glistening with cold sweat—she looked
as though she was about to faint and topple into the grave
alongside its inhabitant. Inhabitants, plural.

“
It was cracked. It’s been cracked long
as I can remember. My mum tried to mend it with a dab of concrete,
but that had broken away. When I pried up the one end, it broke. I
took photos, measurements beforehand. I don’t have the resources of
a well-funded expedition—no laser scans, no fiber-optic cameras for
the grave itself.”

“
Is there an inscription on the
stone?”

Now Alasdair went down on one knee, shining
the flashlight into the tomb. The sepulcher. Maggie craned over his
shoulder.

“
An inscription?” repeated Tara. “Not
really, no. A few carvings Granny, Elaine, interpreted as horsemen.
Mags tried computer-enhancing a rubbing, but there’s not much of
anything to enhance.”

Horsemen? Evidence for Maggie’s theory about
some Dark Age cavalry bloke? Jean remembered only too well another
grave inscription, one that had been enhanced by human imagination.
Alasdair had to be thinking of that, too.

He said, “Professor Lauder, you’re telling us
this is a man’s body.”

Okay, then, he wasn’t having flashbacks to
that particular inscription. He’d always been better at
single-tasking. Jean stepped closer and peered over his other
shoulder. Tara made no move to join them—if anything, she shrank
farther back. Was she helping with the excavation because of her
relationship with Maggie, not because she had any particular
interest in archaeology? So far as Jean knew, the girl could be
anything from a fashion model to a business administrator.

“
Heavy brow ridges,” said Maggie.
“Narrow pelvis. A man—in my professional opinion, at the
least.”

Maggie had a professional opinion. Jean
couldn’t tell what was bone, what was shadow, what was mud or decay
or some ghastly, slimy mixture of both. The moving light created
optical illusions and then dispelled them.

“
Berwick’s on the way,” Crawford’s
voice said behind them.

“
Very good,” Alasdair
replied.

“
They’re sending a boat. Not worth a
helicopter, D.C.I. Webber reckons, but still, D.I. Grinsell’s
coming himself, not just sending a sergeant.”

“
Detective Inspector Grinsell?”
Alasdair passed the flashlight off to Jean so quickly she had to
grab its weight with both hands before it thudded down onto the,
ah, evidence. He rose to his feet and turned around. “George
Grinsell? Was he with the Cumbria Constabulary some years
ago?”

“
I’m thinking he was, aye.”

Great.
Alasdair’s tone wasn’t exactly filled with delight at meeting
an old colleague. It shouldn’t matter—he wouldn’t have jurisdiction
over an unexplained death back home, never mind here, but if he had
previous track with this particular detective . . . Jean peered up
into his shadowed face and saw nothing. As usual, he played his
cards so close to his chest they snagged on his buttons.

A cold hand fell on hers and she jerked.

“
Sorry.” Maggie directed the beam of
light away from the body, around the sides of the grave.

Jean swallowed her heart back into her chest,
took a deep breath—and was sorry she had, the burial smelled like
the worst case of bad breath ever—and followed the track of the
little searchlight.

The body sprawled atop a layer of mud and
rubble clods. Below them she glimpsed a more-or-less horizontal,
deep gray surface, decorated by small punch marks. “A lead coffin?
Wow, those are rare.”

“
Meaning the original burial is that of
someone of high rank of the Romano-British period. The lid of the
coffin’s a bit crushed—it’s right thin lead, considering.” Maggie
knelt back down, Jean at her side. The stone beneath her shins
radiated damp and cold.

The rectangular cavity of the tomb was lined
with flat stones turned on edge rather than by a mortared wall.
Jean was reminded of an ancient cist burial or the chamber in a
prehistoric passage tomb. “Which saint does the chapel
commemorate?”

“
Saint Genevieve,” Maggie
replied.

“
Saint Genevieve? She’s French. The
chapel must date only to the Norman rebuilding after
all.”

“
Or earlier. Chantry chapels were quite
the thing in France in the ninth century, and King Athelstan
established more than a few in England in the tenth.”

“
Considering the number of people who
died in his wars with the Celts and the Vikings, I’m not
surprised.”

“
Perhaps this one was rededicated, then
or by the Normans,” suggested Maggie. “Given a new name as well as
a new building.”

“
It’s possible.”

“
Out with the old, in with the new.
Genevieve’s feast day is January third.”

“
Is it now?” asked Alasdair.

Jean didn’t add that January third was their
wedding anniversary. They had yet to have an anniversary. “So who
do you think was buried here, anyway?”

“
That’s another long story.”

“
Yeah. That’s the one I came to hear.
Professor Lauder . . .”

“
For heaven’s sakes, call me
Maggie.”

“
Maggie.” Yes, there was something very
intimate about this moment, the two of them kneeling side by side
over a dead body. A lost soul. Perhaps the mouth gaped open in
prayer for release from purgatory. Perhaps it claimed its own
identity. Perhaps it was caught in a nightmare, screaming and
screaming and making no sound.

Alasdair sank down on Jean’s other
side, his wry glance saying as clearly as words,
once an academic, always an academic
.
“What’s that?”

“
What’s what?”

He retrieved the flashlight and focused it
steadily on the body’s left side. “Either he’s got a third arm, one
laid straight by his side, or that’s some sort of stick.”

A presence at Jean’s shoulder was either Tara
or Crawford leaning in for a better look.

Ignoring them, she squinted, trying to
resolve the shape. A baton. A wand. A long, thin, black, pitted and
scabby tubular shape with a flat flared end.

“
It’s a chanter,” said Maggie. “Made of
wood, likely African blackwood. I saw it earlier. That’s why . .
.”

“
You’re thinking the body is your
father?” Alasdair asked when she didn’t finish her sentence.
“You’ve got a name for him, then?”

Maggie didn’t reply. There could be no short
reply to that non sequitur. And Alasdair wasn’t in a position to
interrogate her.

For I’m a piper to my
trade
,
Jean thought, managing at the last
second not to vocalize the words.
My name
is Rob the Ranter: The lasses loup as they were daft, When I blaw
up my chanter.

If Maggie thought the man was her father,
that implied her mother had done some out-of-wedlock louping. And
raised more questions than it answered, number one of which was,
why the hell had the man, any man, ended up in this old tomb?

Someone cleared his throat. Oh,
Crawford. He’d perfected the butler’s discreet
ahem
. “I’ll mind the scene till Berwick arrives.
Best you be taking Maggie home, Tara. A nice cuppa, that’ll turn
the trick.”

“
Like a cup of tea is going to fix
anything?” Tara seized her mother’s shoulders and pulled her
upward. “Come on, Mags. It’s past supper time. Granny’ll be
wondering where we are. If she remembers we exist.”

Maggie’s eyes released the sight of the grave
with an almost audible pop. They gazed from face to half-obscured
face, toward the roof and the far wall with its row of narrow
windows, through the larger window overhead, its broken ribs fading
as the light failed. “Your Granny,” she said. “Mum. Elaine Lauder
that was.” And she began to laugh, a quiet chuckle building toward
hysteria.

“
Mags!” Tara gave her a little
shake.

With a hiccup, Maggie caught herself. “Off we
go, then.” Side by side the two women walked away.

Jean stood up, and only then realized how
cold her legs had become, the chill oozing up from the ancient
stone. Sometimes, she thought, pilgrims desperate for redemption
crawled on their knees toward a sacred site.

She tottered off after Tara and Maggie, then
paused while Alasdair passed the flashlight over to Crawford.
Passed the torch, both literally and figuratively.

When he joined her all he said was, “Mind
those trenches.”

Even with dark-adapted eyes, falling into one
of those trenches was an ever-present risk—you wouldn’t break your
neck, but you’d damage more than your dignity. Minding the
trenches, they left the chapel and the ruined church. Outside a
cold sea breeze was scented delectably with peat smoke and cooking
food. Back there at the edge of the grave Jean would have thought
she’d never eat again, but no. Her appetite couldn’t be defeated
for long. She indulged in a quick fantasy of scones or chips or
something else fattening and comforting. Her pace steadied.

The sun had dipped below the horizon, but its
light lingered on the clouds that were rising up the sky from the
west, coloring them pink and gold and peach. In the east the
evening star rose in turn. J. R. R. Tolkien’s Sam Gamgee had seen a
star above the mirk of Mordor and realized beauty and peace still
existed beyond the shadows of Middle-earth. Or of the real
Earth.

“
You’ve got to admire Maggie for
holding it together long enough to talk to the reporters,” Jean
told Alasdair. “That couldn’t have been long after she discovered
the body.”