Dying Fall

that he would try to come up to Lytham for the second week of Ruth’s holiday. Now she wonders if she had imagined the whole thing. Does Max really want her to have his baby? He doesn’t have children, maybe he is just desperate to be a father. But, if so, why not pick on some fertile twenty-something graduate student? Max is an attractive man, it shouldn’t be too difficult. Why bother with her – overweight, introverted, an expert on old bones?
    ‘Kate’s asleep,’ says Cathbad, looking over his shoulder.
    ‘Good,’ says Ruth. Kate had been grizzling quietly for about half an hour. They made an early start but traffic has been bad. It’s now midday and they are only just past Doncaster.
    ‘I’ll take over driving when we stop for lunch,’ says Cathbad.
    Ruth says nothing. She is not sure that she trusts Kate’s life – or her own – to Cathbad’s driving.
    She is not sure, even now, why she decided to embark on this long and potentially tedious journey. Partly it wasPhil’s breezily dismissive attitude to the Ribchester bones. And she still remembers his crack about ‘original research’. If Dan really had made a momentous discovery, then she could be the one to bring it to light, thus fulfilling her debt to her friend and making her reputation in the process. Phil’s comment had underlined the feeling that her career is going nowhere; she has published nothing in the last few years, not even an article or a review. She really needs something big, and if Dan had found the grave of King Arthur, that could be the biggest archaeological find of the decade.
    There is, of course, the mysterious person who wants to stop her coming to Pendle. Ruth had thought hard about the fact that she could be placing herself, and, more importantly, Kate, in danger. But, deep down, she can’t imagine that Dan really was murdered because of his discovery. Things like that just don’t happen to archaeologists. Besides, she’ll never let Kate near the university. Cathbad has said that he’ll look after her while Ruth does her investigations. He can take her to the beach, for rides on donkeys and carousels. It’ll all be perfectly safe.
    *
    When they stop at the Welcome Break in Preston, Kate is awake and in tearing spirits. She eats most of a McDonald’s Happy Meal and wants endless goes on a Thomas the Tank Engine ride. Cathbad and Ruth watch her, listening to the maddeningly repetitive theme tune and drinking giant frothy cups of coffee. Ruth looks at her watch. She has told Clayton Henry’s colleague, awoman called Andrea Vickers, that they will be at the cottage some time after three. Even with Cathbad’s eccentric driving, they will be at Lytham before two. What can they do while they wait?
    Unsurprisingly, Cathbad has an idea. ‘Why don’t we pop in to see Pendragon? It’s not far from here, just along the A59.’
    Ruth quite likes the idea. She could do with some fresh air and doesn’t feel like turning up on Andrea Vickers’ doorstep on the dot of three. If she’s anything like Ruth, she’ll still be changing the sheets.
    ‘Can we ring him first?’ she asks. ‘I don’t want to turn up out of the blue.’
    ‘He doesn’t have a phone.’
    Of course he doesn’t.
    *
    As they turn off the A59 the world changes. They pass through a stunningly pretty village with a stream running down the middle. The pub is called The Swan With Two Necks. Ruth, looking round, sees a goat standing in the middle of the road – there’s not a single other living soul to be seen. The road snakes slowly upwards, past crumbling dry-stone walls and the occasional ruined farm building. In the distance is a vast hill, its summit wreathed in cloud. It’s a curious shape, like a long flat table. Ruth thinks of the Stone Table in the Narnia books. As far as she remembers, something very nasty happened on that table.
    ‘Is that Pendle Hill?’ she asks.
    ‘Yes,’ says Cathbad. ‘There are lots of legends about it. George Fox had a vision of God’s love on top of Pendle Hill. That’s where Quakerism started.’
    Ruth quite likes Quakers – compared to other religions anyway – but the high bare hill doesn’t suggest divine love to her. Quite the opposite. It’s a sinister, lowering presence, black against the sky. The clouds leave shadows on the grass and in the distance Ruth sees a gleam of dark water. The foreground, too, is full of white cloud-like shapes.
    ‘Sheep!’ shouts Kate. ‘Sheep!