I personally thought it would take a great deal more than a bit of red silk to impress Dr Foster and said so.
‘It matches her eyes,’ he’d said and I’d laughed with him. He looked exactly as he always had – tall, relaxed, grinning his lazy grin. Was I the only one who remembered him, white-faced and unconscious on the pod floor, as his lifeblood soaked into the carpet? Or saw him afterwards, lost in despair as he struggled to come to terms with his injury? To all intents and purposes, his recovery had been complete. Was I the only one who sometimes wondered if he was as all right as everyone thought? Well, if he was on his way to being back on the active list, then the answer to that would seem to be yes.
‘That’s good news, Dr Bairstow.’
He agreed.
‘Is this assignment for Thirsk, sir?’
‘It is. And now that the uproar over their recently discovered Botticelli paintings is dying down, they are eager for our next discovery.’
‘They’re insatiable, aren’t they, sir. We’ve created a monster.’
‘We have, but a benevolent one. They are very kindly disposed towards us at the moment, and I wish to bask in their approval for as long as possible.’
‘I’ll give the matter some thought, sir. How does Persepolis sound?’
‘One assignment at a time, Dr Maxwell.’
‘Indeed, sir, but as I’m sure you will have noticed, I am rather on the clock at the moment.’
‘That state of affairs can easily be remedied, Dr Maxwell, should I learn from Dr Foster that you are overexerting yourself.’
In addition to Peterson, I selected Sands because of his interest in all things post-Roman, Roberts, for no better reason than he came from Herefordshire, and Markham, because, he said, someone had to keep an eye on us.
‘Dear God,’ said Leon, as we stepped into the pod. ‘Peterson with only one and a half working arms, Sands missing a foot, Markham with half an ear gone, and Roberts still with no discernible facial hair.’
Roberts bridled indignantly, touching his upper lip, presumably in case something had sprouted in the last half hour.
‘And what am I missing?’ I said, quite offended over this criticism of my team.
‘Nothing you need worry about, Scarecrow.’
I wore a soft woollen underdress, with another thicker one over the top. Both were in undistinguished shades of brown, but they’d keep me warm. I tied my hair up in a piece of linen and tucked in the ends. Quick and neat.
They’d given me a pair of soft leather boots that looked more badly worn than they actually were, designed to look unappealing to boot thieves. I’ve never actually been robbed of my footwear, but Bashford once told me that it had happened to him, and had been one of the most embarrassing experiences of his life.
‘And if that wasn’t bad enough,’ he’d continued, ‘not only had I to complete the assignment in my socks, but when I got back, Mrs Enderby stared at me reproachfully and you know what that’s like.’
I did indeed know. It’s very rare that any of us return from an assignment not liberally splattered with something. Mud, blood (ours and other people’s), random body fluids, (ours and other people’s), excrement (not usually ours, but always a possibility if the assignment becomes more exciting than normal), animal waste, bits of rotting vegetables – the list just goes on and on. And then we get Mrs Enderby’s special reproachful stare. She never actually says anything, but somehow that makes it worse.We assembled outside Number Five, one of the bigger pods. I could hear Dieter and Leon inside, carrying out last-minute checks. We stowed our packs in the lockers, along with surveying equipment, recorders and torches. I myself had only recorders and a change of clothes. I’d been warned against trying to carry anything heavy, which suited me down to the ground. I didn’t intend to lift anything heavier than a mug of tea. Sands seated himself at the console to scan the read-outs and I nabbed the other seat before Peterson could get there.
‘Aren’t I driving?’ he said, hurt.
‘No,’ said everyone within earshot. Peterson tends to land his pods like a stone skimming across a lake. If he’s really on form, you can end up a good half mile away from your landing coordinates. I don’t know how he does it. I suspect he doesn’t either.
And that was it. We were ready to go.
Not only is there a wonderful hill fort at Caer Guorthigirn, but the place itself is smothered in legends. Vortigern supposedly burned to death there – that’s the High King Vortigern, not Mrs Mack’s beloved kitchen cat, obviously. The Romans supposedly captured the famous King Caractacus nearby. There’s also a cracking cave, excavated by the Revd W. S. Symonds in 1871, which was discovered to be full of Neolithic remains – flint tools, together with the bones of mammoths, cave bears, lions, woolly rhinos, and other exciting animals. It’s known as Arthur’s Cave, although that doesn’t necessarily mean a great deal. There are Arthur’s Caves all over the place. He’s a bit like Queen Elizabeth. Legend has it she slept in nearly every stately home in England and obviously Arthur wasn’t constitutionally capable of passing a cave without nipping inside and getting his head down for eight hours either.