Читать книгу The Wolf Letters - Will Schaefer - Страница 14

“… he snaps his fierce jaws together, slams shut hell’s

doors after the slaughter.

For those who enter, there is neither return nor escape,

any more than fish swimming in the sea

can hope to escape the whale’s embrace.”

The Whale,a riddle from The Exeter Book, c. 970 AD

After breakfast, the three of us walked abreast along the paths to our offices from Hall; past the vast lawn, the stone statues and the vibrant, coloured rhododendron rows of Central Court. It was not yet eight o’clock, but it was a humid day, and the morning air clung to us, thick, buttery, and suffocating. A light rain had fallen and lay steaming on the stones and tiles of the college. At this time of year, without the term-time throng of commoner-gowned undergraduates around us, the place was almost deserted.

I have always felt slightly ill-at-ease when the college is at low ebb. The dons walk around like ghosts. Without the grounding effect of duties to the students, they lose themselves in their own minds, mulling over unwritten papers, ruminating theories, settling arguments with adversaries real and imagined. Many spend significant portions of the day oblivious to much of what is going on around them.

St Matthew’s was the largest of Allminster University’s thirty-one colleges, with about 550 students, and one of the oldest, founded in 1291. From above, St Matthew’s looked roughly like a rectangle, with the lawn of Central Court forming a green filling. This rectangle was outlined along its western aspect by stacked rows of students’ rooms. Along its southern side were the academics’ offices - our offices - and the old gate. To the north was Hall, the chapel, some lecture theatres, and more student rooms. And to the east stood the enormous Wright Library, a multi-storeyed Georgian structure big enough to serve several colleges.

There were more college buildings, of course: hostels, recently constructed lecture halls, ugly modern boxes of more student accommodation jutting out of the main rectangle; but, in the main, everything revolved around the buildings that comprised its heart.

We were at our point of separation - the arched turn-off to Archaeology - when I remembered my promise to Monsignor Hough.

“Oh, before I forget: is there a man by the name of Humphrey Miller in your department?”

Claude’s brow furrowed. “Not that I know of. Tiernan?”

Tiernan answered as though bored. “Haven’t heard of him. He might be new, but we’d have heard about him if that were the case.”

“Ask around, will you? I’ll come and get you before Hall.”

Claude set off, but Tiernan lingered, and I knew he wanted to say something.

“George, I’m sorry for having a go at her earlier. Deborah, I mean. All that Catholic stuff.”

“That’s all right. I know you’re on my side, anyway.”

Tiernan shuffled, staring at his feet. “I suppose I’m cross with her sometimes for the way she treated you towards the end.”

“She wasn’t that bad, Tiernan. Just a little moody.”

“Moody? For months you couldn’t do a thing without getting your head bitten off.”

“Look, it doesn’t matter any more. I haven’t seen her in ages and I don’t plan on it. Let’s forget about her.”

“I think she still wants to be with you.”

“Don’t be ridiculous. If I saw her on the street she’d cross it just to avoid me. What on earth makes you say that?”

“Just a suspicion of mine. If she’d really put you out of her mind there wouldn’t be all this fuss every time one of us bumps in to her.”

“That doesn’t matter to me. Frankly, I’d be quite happy if I never saw her again.”

“I could talk to her. Or get Claude to talk to Anne.”

“Thanks. But I’d rather she left me alone.”

“You were fabulous together for a while. I’ve never seen two people so happy.”

“We were - for a while. But that was a bloody long time ago.”

“I won’t push it, then. Just letting you know I’m here. Any time. All right?”

I thanked him and we shook hands before parting. I felt grateful for friends like Tiernan.

As I walked down the passage to my office, my thoughts soon wandered. Nielsen’s documents … they still captivated me. This was not simply because they’d been written in the Dark Ages, a period that I was so fascinated by. No, it was Nielsen’s strange attitude towards them that had really piqued my interest. What was it that made them so valuable to him?

The situation didn’t make much sense to me. The documents said nothing about anything universally interesting except the jet wolf, and not much about the jet wolf at that. But the detective seemed to have had some sort of idea about what was in the documents - and he definitely didn’t want them discussed - so there must be something of value to the police about them. The answer eluded me, and that greatly irritated me. I decided that to satisfy myself, I would have to look into it personally.

Fitting my private research into today’s schedule would be tough, I realised, as I reached my office. I had not completely finished my conference lecture notes. I had my heavy summer doctoral workload to consider. There was also a research article entitled “The Evolution of Kingship in Early Anglo-Saxon England” to finish by tomorrow. In all, I had at least nine hours of work to complete before I went home.

How long would the research take? Was it worth it? As I knew the period well, I knew roughly which sources would give me leads, if not directly yield information on Ohthere and Ecgwulf, and estimated the necessary commitment at two hours. My diary showed that the conference lecture was not until eleven … yes, I had time.

* * *

The Wright Library is the second biggest university library in England. Made of dark grey stone three storeys high, it resembles a cathedral with great banks of high windows on its southern and eastern sides. Inside, the ground floor is laid out in a chessboard of black-and-white tiles, the two mezzanines above it connected by spiralling staircases of brass and oak. On mornings like this one, the building’s interior was bathed in gorgeous sunshine, and people would occupy the chairs by the windows until the heat proved too much.

There was no escape from the August humidity, even in here. Sunlight poured in through the huge windows, bouncing brightly off the checkerboard tiles and polished wood of shelves and tables.

On a normal Term day at just after eight, the Wright Library would be bustling, swarming with charged columns of ant-like, black-gowned undergraduates. All of them would be busy. Some would be buried in their work, reading, scratching at their essays with their pen nibs or scuttling about with stacks of tomes as others prowled the labyrinth of endless bookshelf corridors. But this was high summer, and I had the place almost to myself.

It smelled like a library in here. It smelled like musty paper and old leather, like ink and oak. Like quiet learning. Compared with the sporting fields and boxing rings, where I would unleash my animal spirit in wars of skill and strength, libraries have always felt comforting to me. It is a strange dichotomy. Perhaps I am attracted to their peace because so much of me is restless, or possibly it is the other way around: that I have become an athlete because I spend too much time working at a desk, enjoying the quiet atmosphere of places like this. But I suppose it doesn’t matter much. I liked it here and that was that.

Apart from books, libraries had one thing in common. They inspired me. They were the homes of rows of books by great and ancient minds, minds organised onto pages that could sit there, unchanging through the years, until I took one down and rediscovered it.

Whenever I read an old book, I would wonder: who has come before me to this work? Did he marvel at its writer, at the discipline of his setting out those civilised ideas, as I did? Did he feel the same deep reverence, the unending sense of privilege that the reading of a scholar-crafted work like Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Aeschylus’ Orestia, or Caesar’s Gallic War provides? If he did, I knew him well, and respected him profoundly.

My studies here have fundamentally changed my view of the world. I think that, in the heart of every well-earned Humanities degree, beneath the layers of learning to think and express oneself clearly, of teaching oneself to independently pursue a project to its full potential, of developing a sound control of one’s mental faculties and improving the quality of one’s decisions, the diligent scholar will discover something eternally wonderful: a sense of himself at his most refined. What a gift to the world that beautiful feeling becomes. It is a wellspring of dignity and self-respect. It teaches that human beings have something fine and precious inside them; that we are capable of so much beyond the brutality and baseness that some say dominate our world.

* * *

During Term I sometimes stop my work in the library to observe the students as they go about their studies. It gives me heart to see them so industrious, so diligent, so dignified. I remember feeling exactly that way when I arrived in Allminster twelve years ago, proud of my first proper suit and my new commoner’s robes, of working through the difficult years that followed my parents’ deaths, of winning the scholarship to Allminster University and justifying the faith that Uncle Albert had placed in me. In my mind, as I walked through the famous college’s towering gates for the first time, I had nearly reached the summit of my dreams, and could not have been happier.

In those days, somewhat paradoxically, I had also felt unwelcome here, a lower-order intruder in the grooming ground of young lords and future politicians, but I made friends, and my talents for games and study steadily shone through. I was offered the chance to sit for a position at St Matthew’s immediately after graduating. My uncle Albert was overjoyed: at a time when full employment was scarce, I had earned a seat at one of England’s most respected colleges. He told me that my parents were rejoicing in heaven for me, and I succumbed to tears at that when no-one was looking.

Yes, I am proud of how I’d fought hard to get here. I have earned my self-respect. I deeply honour that feeling -fostering a sense of it in others is the very reason I teach here. And definitely, I am proud of the young men and women who search for it, quietly, perhaps not even knowing what they really seek, on the bookshelves of the Wright Library.

* * *

To search for information about the letters, though, I couldn’t afford any distractions. I chose the quietest spot I knew, my special spot, a seldom-visited table on the west of the top level, overlooking the main floor. The table was large, and could have seated twenty, but I had rarely seen more than three or four sitting there at any given time. For the moment there was no one but me up there, and I could afford to spread my things out the way I liked.

I laid them on the table in ritual order: my foolscap exercise book, the pen that had belonged to my father, one wooden ruler, a nib case and two bottles of ink - one red, one blue. My hat and briefcase I put to my right side, as usual. Brand new paper was expensive, so for informal note-taking, and the writing of daily lists, I normally used reverse sides of old student essays that I had in abundance in my office. I fished one from my briefcase, smoothed it with my hands, and began my work.

Carefully I ruled two lines three inches apart, straight down in red ink. In blue I wrote a checklist of things I remembered from the letters down the left side column.

Barking Abbey. King Sigeric of Essex. Ohthere of Barking. Eulalia of Barking. Archbishop Bregowine. Bishop Ecgwulf.

Not much to build on, but a start, I thought. Next, I spent twenty minutes searching the upstairs catalogue, noting holding numbers for as many sources as I could in the next column over. There were hardly any. I was confident that the indices of these sources would provide other references, but reminded myself I did not have long to complete the list as best I could and get back to normal duties. I set to it.

By ten, I had a bare and disappointing skeleton of notes under the red headings in my exercise book.

Barking Abbey: Eighth Century.

Founded 666 by Archbishop Bregowine. Double (but not mixed) monastery. Men lived in separate quarters. Men performed building and farm labour for

nuns. Active commercial centre. Had own port and fishing fleet, mill, glass furnace. Traded deep-water fish, eels from Thames, high-quality glassware (later). Destroyed by Danes c. 870. Little else known.

Sigeric: East Saxon King.

Son of Saelred. Preceded by Swithred. Ruled c.758-798. Looks genuinely pious: abdicated in

798 to enter a monastery in Rome. Little else known.

Ohthere: Monk-Priest, Barking. Missionary.

Nothing found.

Eulalia: Barking Abbess, niece of Sigeric.

Sources: Letter from Aldhelm to nuns of Barking mentions a “Eulalia”.

Aldhelm’s letter written late 7th century, cannot be same “Eulalia”. Nothing else found.

Bregowine: Archbishop of Canterbury

12th Archbishop of Canterbury. Also known as Bregwin.

Sources: Life of Bregowine by Eadmer; letters to Lull, archbishop of Mainz, Germany. Consecrated 27 September 761, died c. 24 August 765. Continental Saxon. Came to England to study at Canterbury school. Friend of Lull’s. Held at least one synod.

Egcwulf: Bishop of London[?].

Consecrated c. 745. Prob. died c. 772. Nothing else found.

Mulling over the results of my search, I conceded that there wasn’t much, but the information I had did tell me three things. Firstly, none of the characters was of major importance in the general scheme of things. I was therefore dealing with people around whom few sources would have accumulated, and I was unlikely to find much else, especially in a hurry. That was typical for many early Dark Ages characters.

Secondly, the information I did have completely accorded with Nielsen’s letters. For example, the known facts for Barking Abbey fitted well with the busy double monastery of the documents. It was therefore plausible - although by no means certain - that they were genuine.

Thirdly, the date estimate that I gave to Nielsen held up. Sigeric was king of Essex after 758. And the letters could not have been written before 27 September 761, or after 24 August 765, since they mention Bregowine as archbishop. That was encouraging.

But the sheer lack of useful data fuelled a thousand intensely absorbing questions in my mind. Over and over they turned: were the documents important somehow? They must be, if the police had them, but there seemed to be nothing in them! And where did the detective get them? He couldn’t read Latin, and was therefore extremely unlikely to come across them the way an interested scholar might. Nielsen must have been given them. But by whom? And why?

And why did he ask me to read them for him? I was tempted to assume that Claude was the connection. Claude was questioned by the police about the stolen wolf, the documents referred to what was probably the same wolf, and at least one policeman knew that Claude and I were good friends. That made loose sense, at a pinch. But Nielsen had explicitly said that the matter had nothing to do with Claude. So why me? If I were a detective in need of an expert Latin reader, I would not approach someone as junior as me. I would consult one of the more distinguished academics, such as Jonathon Boston-Norris, Head of Classics at St Matthew’s, or Herbert Wrasse, the well known medieval Latin specialist. I would also bring the documents to him, rather than have him visit the station, and permit him the use of every resource at his disposal to ensure as accurate a translation as possible.

And then it hit me in a flash. Nielsen had chosen me because he wanted a low profile … Nielsen wanted to keep the documents secret …

My mind raced. Nielsen had tracked me down. He had stayed with me in the interview room to ward off anyone who came in. And he had made me promise not to tell anyone about what I’d read. He didn’t want anyone else to know. That was it. But know about what? What made it worth keeping secret?

I looked at my watch. It was quarter past ten, and I was running late. This matter would have to wait. Packing my things away, I promised myself that despite the many questions, I would stick to my normal affairs for the rest of today. I hurried back to the office, conscious of having only whetted my mind’s appetite.