The Janus Stone

‘How come he ended up running a building firm?’ she asks.

‘It’s the family business. He always said his dad would insist on it.’

‘Are you still in touch with him?’

Max looks slightly sheepish. ‘Just Friends Reunited, that sort of thing.’

Ruth loathes Friends Reunited. She has kept in touch with the few people she liked at school and university. As far as she is concerned, the less the rest know about her the better.

‘Come on,’ she says, ‘I’ll show you round.’

The foreman is obviously irritated to find archaeologists under his feet again but he agrees to let Ruth show Max over the site ‘as long as they keep out of the way’. But, when Ruth goes to find the grave under the door, it has disappeared. The black and white tiles have been broken up and the ground is a seething mass of mud. No walls or divisions can be seen, just a level stretch of ploughed-up earth.

The well is still intact. The diggers haven’t got this far but they are looming. Ruth can see their mechanical claws churning up the garden, the vegetable patch, the tree with the swing, the cucumber frame. Soil and rubble pour into the skips. Who knows how many artefacts are there – medieval, Roman, Victorian? All destroyed to make room for seventy-five luxury apartments, each with en-suite bathroom.

Max kneels and looks into the well. ‘Design looks Roman.’

‘That’s what I thought.’

‘Heads have been found in Roman wells haven’t they?’ asks Ruth.

‘Sometimes,’ Max replies cautiously. ‘At Odell in Bedfordshire they found a Roman skull deliberately inserted into the lining of a well. Head cults are more Celtic though. And holy wells were common in medieval times. St Thomas’s well at Windleshaw was said to have sprung up where a priest was beheaded.’

The noise of the diggers is making it hard to speak. Ruth is about to suggest they leave the site when she sees Nelson coming towards them, frowning as he strides through the rubble. She had forgotten about Nelson.

‘Does he follow you everywhere?’ mutters Max.

Nelson, too, seems less than pleased to find that Ruth has company. ‘Long time no see,’ he says drily to Max.

Ruth can’t stand much more of this. ‘Come on,’ she says, ‘let’s get out of here.’

They stop, as if by mutual consent, by the stone archway, still standing although the rest of the front wall has disappeared. Towers, archways, crenellations – all crumbled into dust.

‘Are they leaving the arch?’ asks Max.

‘Yes,’ says Ruth, ‘it’s classy apparently.’

They stand for a minute looking up at the words inscribed in the stone and Ruth sees another figure approaching. A man dressed in clerical black, walking slowly along the boards laid down over the churned-up earth. Father Hennessey. The foreman will have a fit, thinks Ruth.

Father Hennessey approaches and, suddenly, his face is filled with such recognition and delight that Ruth is stunned.

Why on earth is he so pleased to see her? Or is it Nelson he is looking at?

But the priest looks straight past Ruth and Nelson. His blue eyes are full of tears.

‘Martin,’ he says, ‘how good to see you again.’

25 June Ludi Taurii begin

An opportunity presented itself today. The mother had gone out, leaving the child asleep in its bed. It no longer sleeps in a cot but in a bed with bars at the side to stop it falling out. She was worried about leaving the child alone in the house with me but she was in pain from an infected tooth and needed to see the dentist urgently. I assured her smoothly that the child was safe with me, as indeed she will be. As soon as the mother had gone I got my knife and went straight into the room.

She was asleep, her mouth slightly open. She is not an attractive child, whatever the mother says. I turned her over so the neck was exposed. I could see a little pulse there. The perfect place.