Sands drove very slowly through the crowds. No one spoke. People had milled out into the road outside. Pupils from the nearby school, for whom it was also lunchtime, had stubbed out their cigarettes and come to see what was happening. Council staff, streaming down the High Street had become embroiled in the confusion. If we had planned it, we could not have done better.
We drove slowly towards the roundabout just as a couple of police cars flashed past, lights on, and sirens blaring.
‘Just keep going,’ said Markham. ‘If we’re stopped, I’ll throw the sword out of the window and we’ll come back for it later.’
‘No, we bloody won’t,’ I said, outraged. ‘That thing’s priceless and I’m not having you flinging it willy-nilly into ditches.’
We turned left at the roundabout and set off out of Northallerton. I twisted around and looked back over my shoulder. I very much doubted I would ever see the place again.
‘Right,’ said Peterson, unfolding his map. ‘Head south if you please, Mr Sands.’
Now to the problem we hadn’t really discussed because, quite honestly, we never thought we’d get this far.
‘I’ve been thinking,’ said Sands, as we skirted Leeds. ‘It shouldn’t be a problem. They’ll never think to look in the cave. Why would they? They’ll just assume some collector’s stolen it and it’s in a private collection somewhere.’
‘Not as soon as they see it was us, they won’t. They’ll go straight to the cave.’
‘No,’ I said, heavily. ‘We tell them we sold it on.’
‘What?’
For an historian to steal a priceless artefact is bad enough. There are no words to describe one who would do it for money.
I took a deep breath. ‘We tell them we were approached by someone whose identity we can’t possibly divulge, and they offered us a huge sum of money to steal the sword, and it’s already out of the country by now, and there’s nothing they can do about it.’
The car was full of a stunned silence.
‘What’s the problem?’ I said.
‘Actually,’ said Peterson, ‘it’s a very good idea. But what happened to the money?’
‘They’ll never know and we’re not saying.’
‘Bloody hell,’ said Sands.
‘Bloody brilliant,’ said Markham.
I fell asleep in the car, which given my habitual insomnia was surprising, but the warmth, the silence, the hum of the tyres – I was out like a light.
I woke up as we slowed to exit the motorway and turn right for Herefordshire.
‘Not long now,’ said Roberts, passing me some water.
No one replied.
‘Has anyone tried to contact us?’ I said.
‘We’ve switched our phones off.’
So far, the weather had been with us, dry and clear, but as we neared our destination, I could see wisps of something sitting in low-lying areas and occasionally trailing across the road.
‘Bugger,’ said Roberts. ‘Fog.’
‘All to the good, said Peterson. No one will see us.’
‘True, but it’s going to slow us down.’
The fog thickened. Sands switched on the fog lights. We slowed down.
‘Told you,’ said Roberts. ‘We wouldn’t have had this problem with a pod.’
‘Turn left here,’ said Markham, flapping the map around and nearly taking my eye out.
‘I thought men were supposed to be able to fold those things. It’s the universe’s compensation for not being able to do anything else properly.’
I was instructed to do it my bloody self.
‘This,’ said Sands, ‘is as close as I care to get. We’re just outside the quarantine zone. There’s a B&B over the road so with luck, everyone will think the car belongs to their guests.’
Markham flourished the map again. ‘We cut across country here. Emerging …’ He stabbed the map with his finger, ‘… Here.’
No one moved.
‘It’s still not too late to turn back,’ said Sands.
‘Yes, it is,’ I said, opening the car door. ‘The moment we decided to do this, it was too late.’
‘We need to stick together,’ said Peterson, as we unpacked our boots, sprayed them yet again with our antibacterial stuff, and then gave them a good squirt of strong disinfectant just to be on the safe side. Sands sprayed the car tyres as well.
I looked around us.
The world was white.
I’d forgotten the smell. Wet leaves and earth. The distant smell of smoke. The muggy warmth. I looked again at the beads of moisture on my sleeve and for a second I was back in the 6th century as the Red Dragon snapped in the wind. I wondered if it was always like this in this area. As if, somehow, it had never escaped its own history and stood always, one foot in the here and now and one in the past. If I closed my eyes and listened, I could hear the movement of people all those long centuries ago. Hear their panting breath, the creak of the handcart. Or possibly it was just the wind in the trees.