Читать книгу The Wolf Letters - Will Schaefer - Страница 12

“The North Sea is the roughest in the world … The

disaster was proportionally terrible - indeed, it was

unprecedented. On one side were enemy coasts, on the other

a sea so huge and deep that it is held to be the utmost, with

no land beyond.”

The Roman general Germanicus loses his fleet, 15 AD

Tacitus’ Annals Of Imperial Rome , c. 115 AD

Nielsen seemed hypnotised as he scanned my transcript of Bishop Ecgwulf ‘s letter, scarcely moving except to smoke one cigarette, which he did very slowly and deliberately. Something about his appraisal of my notes suggested that he knew more than he was letting on, and I began wondering what a man like him was doing with documents like these. These were letters from the Dark Ages, and any sort of written evidence from this period was extremely rare. To have two documents - two well preserved, beautifully written personal letters - in front of me like this seemed almost a minor miracle. Where did he get them?

Nielsen spoke at last: “Are you certain about the date, Mr Haye?”

The question bothered me: he hadn’t let me get my books - how could he expect me to date the documents off the top of my head? But I played it down. “I’m confident. But I’m not an expert in that area, and I don’t have my books with me. Some of my colleagues at St Matthew’s are experts at scripts, though. If you like, I can arrange for them to have a look.”

“That will not be necessary. Please just tell me why you think these documents are from the eighth century.”

“Well, in Ohthere’s letter, St Boniface was mentioned as having died recently. Boniface was very famous in his time; any scholar with even a mild interest in the Dark Ages knows that he died in about the middle of the eighth century, so it couldn’t have been written much later than that.”

The detective made notes. “Is there anything else?”

“Yes - the script. Ohthere’s letter is written in a hand known as half-uncial, which was out of fashion in England by the early ninth century, if I remember rightly.”

“Do you think the documents could be forgeries from more recent years?”

“No, fakes usually occur when there’s something to be gained, such as land, or the honour of belonging to a royal pedigree. I can’t think of anything that one would gain from forging these letters.”

“How literally have you translated this? Could any one of these words possibly mean anything else?”

“No. They’re either literal or very close translations. The two letter writers were probably educated somewhere in England that valued the classical Roman tradition, somewhere such as the Canterbury School, as their Latin is extremely clear. That style of Latin is infinitely easier to read than that produced in some of the smaller and more independent Church schools of the time. As a result, I don’t think I needed a dictionary at all.”

Nielsen nodded. “And how big do you think the wolf ornament would be, sir?”

“Well, I’m not an archaeologist, and the wolf ‘s size is not specifically mentioned in the text, so it’s hard for me to say.”

“If you had to guess?”

“Three to five inches, maybe. Jet isn’t normally dug up in large pieces.”

“Very good. Is “Barking’ the Barking that’s east of London?”

“Yes. There are only ruins left of it now, but it used to be enormous. Had its own farm, granaries, kilns, mills and so on. They used to make high-quality clay pots, or maybe it was glass pots, and sell them. A chap from London University’s doing a paper on those now. Very busy place, lots of work: the nuns had men there, living in separate quarters - they did the heavy labouring for them.”

Nielsen stood up and started gathering the materials on the table. “You have been most helpful, sir. Thank you for your time.”

“Glad to. It was actually very interesting. It’s very close to the field I specialise in.”

“Very good. But please, I must ask you not to tell anyone about what you have read. It is a most important matter.”

“May I ask why? It all seems pretty harmless.”

Nielsen refused to comment. He walked me to the swing doors at the station entrance and thanked me again.

* * *

As I mounted my bicycle, I looked at my watch. I’d spent three and a half hours inside, and was exhausted.

I cycled slowly back down Crawford Road, thinking hard. The documents were intrinsically fascinating to me. I’d never seen any like those. But why would a detective care what was in them? Beyond the question of their authenticity, Nielsen seemed scarcely bothered by their historical significance. It had to be the wolf. Yes, it was absurdly unlikely that the seventh-century jet wolf stolen from the college could not be the same seventh-century jet wolf from the bishop’s letter. But certain as I was of that, it still didn’t completely make sense: if Nielsen couldn’t read Latin, how on earth did he know that the wolf was mentioned in the document? Did someone tell him? They must have - he did know something - but then he still needed a translator, as though he knew almost nothing.

The harsh interview room light had given me a headache, and I was soon tired of thinking. The hot sun was fading at last, washing the now woolly sky with wonderful lemons and oranges, and the streets were peaceful, grateful for the passing of the day. As I pedalled, the wind felt soothing on my face, and I looked forward to a good sleep.