Dying Fall

the water park. It had been great to get away from everything for a few hours, and if Ruth had been afraid to let Kate out of her sight even for a minute that will surely pass. Will Ruth keep in touch with Caz? She’s not sure. It’s been great spending time with her but she’s not sure how much they have in common, apart from the past. Caz is married with three teenage children, she lives in a designer house and drives a four-by-four. Ruth is a single parent who drives a clapped-out Renault. They’re not equals any more.
    Cathbad, who is almost certainly her friend for life, sounded wide awake and certifiably insane.
    ‘I’ve found him,’ he was saying.
    ‘What are you talking about?’
    ‘King Arthur. I’ve found him.’
    When Ruth arrived at the cottage the next morning, Cathbad had led her out into the garden. ‘I always knew there was something about this garden,’ he said. ‘There was always a raven in that tree. I knew he was trying to tell me something. And then there was the poem.’
    ‘What poem?’ said Ruth, feeling bemused.
    ‘There was a poem in an old book by Pendragon’s bed. A ballad. It said something about ‘in cold grave she was lain’. Pen had changed the ‘she’ to ‘he’. I thought he was talking about his own grave but I think he was pointing us to King Arthur.’
    ‘Telling us that he was buried in the back garden?’
    ‘Yes,’ says Cathbad seriously. ‘Then, when I let Thing out for his run last night he wouldn’t come back in, just kept running round and round barking at the moon.’
    ‘Maybe he was turning into a werewolf.’
    ‘So I went out and the moon was shining really brightly, right on the herb garden. And I heard Dame Alice’s voice. She said, “He’s here. The Raven King is here.”’
    ‘In the herb garden?’
    ‘I think so, don’t you? I always wondered why that was the only place where Pendragon had dug. It all makes sense, doesn’t it?’
    The weird thing was, it did make sense. Sam had brought Dan’s computer to Pendragon for safekeeping: it stood to reason that he would have brought Arthur’s bones to the same place for sanctuary. Ruth looked at Cathbad, who was smiling.
    ‘Have you brought your excavating kit, Ruthie?’
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘Well, there’s a spade in the shed. Let’s go for it.’
    And that was how Ruth came to supervise the excavation after all. Of course, strictly speaking it wasn’t an excavation, just uncovering recently buried bones, but that’s what it felt like. And when, after only a few feet of digging, she saw her first glimpse of the skeleton, she experienced the self-same thrill described by Dan in his diaries:
Oh my God, my first sight of the exposed skeleton! He looked so kingly and peaceful, lying on his back, hands crossed over his chest.
And Arthur was still lying supine andpeaceful; he had clearly been buried with great reverence. Slowly, almost as if she was sleepwalking, Ruth photographed and then removed the bones, cleaning and numbering each one and placing them in individual bags (Pendragon had a surprising amount of freezer bags in his cupboard). Cathbad was the perfect assistant, double-checking the numbers and marking each one on Ruth’s bone chart. They worked in silence while a bird sang high above them and Thing and Kate played happily in the long grass. When they had finished, Ruth rang Guy, almost the sole survivor of Pendle’s history department.
    ‘I can’t believe it,’ he said. ‘I thought the bones must have been burnt.’
    ‘I’m taking the skeletal matter back to Norfolk with me,’ said Ruth. ‘Is that OK?’
    As Cathbad remarked, in some amusement, Guy wasn’t really in a position to argue. So Dan’s great discovery came into Ruth’s possession, as perhaps he would have wanted. Even so, Ruth is pretty sure that Guy will get a book out of it. And so, with any luck, will she.
    *
    Tim walks back down the hill, keeping a respectful distance from the druids. He is representing Blackpool CID, Sandy having flatly refused to attend the funeral (‘Lot of bloody weirdos capering about on a hill? No thanks’). Tim was quite willing, though. He likes new experiences and he enjoyed the dawn start (something else Sandy viewed with extreme suspicion). Tim gets up at six every day, anyway, to go to the gym but he has to admit thereis something about actually being outside, feeling the cold air on your face and hearing the birds singing high above you. Perhaps he should go jogging