The Boudicca Parchments (Daniel Klein adventures) Read online

  The Boudicca Parchments

  by Adam Palmer

  Copyright © 2012 Adam Palmer

  The right of Adam Palmer to be identified as Author of this Work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the author.

  This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead is entirely coincidental.

  To my late cousin Avi,

  who was always there for me

  with strong words of encouragement

  Prologue

  “Give me the dagger and I will spare you from the gravest of sins.”

  A handful of cubits from where they stood, she could hear the heavy thud of the Roman battering ram pounding on the solid wooden inner wall, its destructive force aided by the all-consuming power of the fire. It was only a matter of time before the wood gave way to the invader. No fortress is impregnable and she knew that this one too would fall to the might of Rome, just as her mother’s kingdom had fallen a decade earlier.

  Eleazer Ben Yair, proud in his warrior bearing, stood tall over this woman, who was almost young enough to be his daughter. There was strength in his stature and posture, the look in his eyes was one of hurt, as if she were in some way responsible for this debacle that had befallen his people. He had warned Simon to divorce the daughter of the stranger. But Simon had disregarded his counsel, as he disregarded the counsel of others on all matters, be they affairs of state or affairs of the heart.

  The young woman herself had not gloated at her victory. Rather, she had been conciliatory, pledging allegiance to their God. And Simon himself had been the descendent of proselytes. But standing before Ben Yair now, sharing this final moment of vulnerability, she knew that he felt at best ambivalent towards her. He had kept his promise to Simon and protected her when the mob of Sicarii had wanted to lynch her. But on the other hand, he had stood idly by when they cut off her long flaming red braids in an act of defilement, branding her not just a foreign woman, but a prisoner.

  Simon would not have stood idly by while they did that. Simon would have drawn his sword and fallen upon them, cutting them to shreds – or died trying. On one occasion, when his rivals for power had kidnapped her, he had threatened to kill every man, woman and child in Jerusalem unless she was released unharmed. And those were his own brothers and sisters.

  Simon had been a zealot for love. But Ben Yair was a zealot for his faith. So when she stood before him now, she knew that there was an element of hostility between them, despite all that she had done for them. She suspected that he even blamed her for the change in the direction of the wind that was now blowing the fire towards the wooden walls of the fortress.

  For all that they had been through together, she was still an outsider, the proselyte, the stranger who was within their gate. And she was also a woman – a woman who had stood up to men and fought against them on behalf of her husband’s people – a people who marginalized women every bit as much as the Romans did, despite their pious protestations to the contrary. But she had no regrets about standing up for herself. She had learned from her mother that even a woman – especially a woman – must stand up for herself.

  She was leaner than their local women, though not thin. Indeed some of the men – the younger ones especially – mocked her for her physique, comparing her musculature to that of a man or at least a male youth. But she had always answered their mockery by pointing out that their own women could carry heavy loads too.

  When their taunting aroused her ire and pride beyond her powers of self-restraint, she retaliated by challenging them to unarmed combat, a challenge to which none had risen but which humiliated them by its mere utterance. However, that merely made them change the form of their goading. In the face of these humiliations, that they had brought on themselves, they accused her of sorcery. They said that witchcraft was the source of her strength.

  At one point it had nearly cost her life, had Ben Yair not interfered. He had saved her from the mob but also chided her for her recklessness and immodesty.

  “You cannot fight your enemies if your time is consumed by fighting your friends.”

  How ironic that it had taken his own people so long to learn that lesson. But she realized that he was right. So she bowed her head and apologized. But she would not bend her knee. Just as her mother – or indeed these people so akin to her mother in their proud, stiff-necked spirit – would not bend the knee before might of Rome.

  But now the battle was over and they were the last ones here in this mountain fortress. She could have escaped through the sewers with the others, but she elected to stay with Ben Yair, reciprocating Simon’s loyalty and courage. And now there was no possibility of escape. Now all they could do was wait for slavery… or elect for death.

  As the sound of the battering ram grew more intense and the flaming heavy wooden walls began to give way, Ben Yair made his decision.

  He elected for death.

  Chapter 1

  Perhaps if Martin Ignatius Costa had been afraid of the dark, he would have been a little more cautious. But he wasn’t afraid of the dark and consequently didn’t know that he was being followed.

  The darkness was just something he had to contend with. It wouldn’t even have made any difference if the dig had taken place in spring or autumn instead of summer. The problem would have been the same. They stop digging towards sunset, but he had to wait till well after dark to avoid detection.

  There were no guards around the dig site and no houses by the surrounding corn fields with a clear line of sight. But to get here, he had to walk through the heavily overhung bramble, path past several houses. And that might have aroused the suspicion of the locals. It was bad enough that a dog had barked loudly and aggressively as he walked stealthily, across an open stretch of pathway, towards the last sheltered stretch of the path before the right turn to the open field. Fortunately the dog was secured behind a high fence and closed gate. Even if the owner had peered out to determine what was agitating his canine friend, all he would have seen was a man of average height and build, with seventies style long hair, walking along with what looked like a workman’s piece of equipment.

  Now, at eleven o’clock at night, he was inside the perimeter fence, on the grassy dig site, armed with an Grad601 Single Axis Magnetic Field Gradiometer System. This was essentially a one-metre square, white-painted metal frame in the shape of a rugby goal, with small box packed with electronic gadgetry attached to the cross bar. He “wore” the apparatus in front of him, using a strap slung over his neck, the vertical bar in front of his waste and the horizontal bars – the gradiometry sensors – pointing down towards the ground surveying the site as he walked and stepped across it by the moonlight.

  Amateur archaeologists and casual treasure hunters almost invariably use metal detectors, which rely on electrical conductivity, to detect many different types of metal beneath the surface, but not to any great depth. Magnetometers, gradiometers and magnetic susceptibility systems, in contrast, measure magnetic flux. They can only detect iron or its alloys, but are highly sensitive and can detect large concentrations to much greater depth, or alternatively find minute quantities nearer the surface.

  This did not mean that such methods were only good for detecting swords and spears however. Because iron is to b
e found in soil, and because the equipment is so sensitive, it can be used to discover and locate disturbed soil, compact soil, ditches, bricks and stones and even traces of fire. It can even be used to detect and identify different types of soil, liquids and powder. That was why both magnetic susceptibility systems and gradiometers were used for archaeological surveys.

  Such a survey had already been done here at Arbury Banks, originally a late bronze age English site that was now being considered as the possible location of a major iron age battle – with the Romans. The archaeologists had also gone over it with metal detectors, hoping to find another horde of gold and silver, and also with ground penetrating radar, in search of large bones that might indicate a burial site. They had found neither. But as they were operating on the premise that this was the site of a great Roman military victory, any treasure would have been carted away as war booty, whilst bodies would have been put to the torch. Mass burial was not practical and cremation was an expedient alternative for the victors.

  Martin Costa wasn’t officially working on the dig. A man with his reputation wouldn’t have been allowed anywhere near a site like this. However, word of the dig and the preliminary survey had got back to him. And it had aroused his venal interest. He knew that he wasn’t going to find any gold or silver here. But gold and silver were for amateurs. The real money was to be made from historic artefacts that didn’t qualify as treasure trove and belong to the “Crown” under silly archaic laws. Artefacts of bronze, wood and leather wouldn’t attract as much attention from law enforcement as precious metal and he knew plenty of private collectors who would pay good money for them. Indeed non-metallic artefacts of wood and leather were a lot more interesting to collectors. The fact that they were biodegradable meant that they were unlikely – a priori – to survive the ravages of time and therefore all the more rare and valuable when they did survive.

  So now, an hour before midnight, Costa proceeded up and down the site, with this strange looking contraption, in the hope of finding something – anything – of value that might add to his fleeting fortunes. Fleeting, because Martin Costa was the kind of man who couldn’t hold onto money for long.

  His job was all the harder, because the site had already been partitioned into one metre squares by a grid of string, held in place by long iron nails. These nails disrupted the readings from the gradiometer. However, he persevered and when he found something interesting he took out his shovel and attacked the topsoil ruthlessly, regardless of the risk of his activities being found out later. He had no intention of returning the topsoil or indeed the clay or peat underneath. If he found something of value, he would be long gone by then.

  And now he had found something. It was buried quite deep – nearly two metres – but he had been determined to get at it. The reading showed that it was small, but not all that small. About a foot or so in length. He dug more carefully now, with a small spade, and when the spade finally hit something hard and he heard that feint quasi-metallic “clink,” his heart leapt. But it fell again when he dug away the last of the dirt with his bare hands to discover a clay jar sealed with a large cork. The cork had been pushed in hard and was wedged deep. When he tried to pull it out, it held firm and he feared that if he pulled any harder, the jar would shatter.

  But the find looked tantalizingly interesting. One might often find ostraca, shards of pottery, sometimes with writing on them. These were believed to have been used in ancient times for ballots or the allocation of food. Others were just broken pieces of vases, jugs and jars. But in this case it was an entire large jar, in one unbroken piece, and that was an extraordinary find. Completely unbroken pottery vessels were rare: there was nearly always some small piece broken off. And the ones that survived substantially intact were usually the large ones because they were also thicker and thus less likely to break.

  This one was quite tall – slightly less than the twelve inches he had estimated from the readings. And not only was it in one piece, but it was actually sealed by that cork lid – about three inches across – that was wedged in so tight, he was finding it hard to open. In a moment of childish fantasy, he idly wondered if there was a genie inside. It was an amusing thought, but one that the hard-headed Martin Costa quickly dismissed. Still, it was funny – and humour was always a good relief from stress. Here he was in the moonlight, struggling to prise a cork out of a clay jar, wondering what, if anything, was inside.

  If there was anything inside it wasn’t very heavy. The jar weighed pretty much what Costa expected it to weigh if empty. And the chances were that it probably was. When he shook it gently, he heard nothing. He did wonder why an empty jar would be sealed at all, let alone as tightly as this. But he doubted that he would ever find out. Probably, the lid had simply been placed there lightly and had become wedged tighter over the course of time through pressure and movement of the ground. This was a late bronze age site after all. And even if it had also been the site of Romano-Britain’s most famous battle – as some of the archaeologists on the team from Cambridge believed – that still allowed almost two thousand years for the ravages of time to take its toll on the vase, the cork lid and indeed the contents – if there were any.

  But still he wanted it open. He had to know.

  Prizing it out was not an option, because he didn’t have long nails. Then he remembered reading somewhere that sustained force operates cumulatively. If you try to open a tightly-closed jar by starting and stopping, you get nowhere. But if you apply constant pressure it eventually gives, even if nothing appears to be happening. However, that applied chiefly to a modern type jar with a thread.

  In this case, the problem was that it was very hard to get any proper grip on the cork because it was not just wide and shallow, but also damp. He wondered just how damp. He knew that Great Britain was slowly tilting – the north and west rising, the south east sinking. So when this jar was buried – if it was buried rather than merely discarded – it was above the water table. Even when he found it, there had been no groundwater present at that depth. But the water table varies with the spring and neap tides and that – combined with the geological sinking – might have put this jar beneath the water table, at least part of the time. Even if not, the descent of rain might account for the dampness. If this jar had been an iron object it would surely have rusted badly. As it was, he wondered if water had permeated the cork or the clay itself.

  Unable to get any sort of sustained manual purchase on the cork lid, he resorted to the expedient of twisting it in short bursts, first one way and then the other. It didn’t appear to be moving, but he reasoned that firm pressure, applied repeatedly, might eventually take its toll.

  And finally it did.

  With growing excitement, he felt the cork giving way and loosening slightly and finally turning. Then, with a final effort, he turned it, prised carefully and lifted. The cork came off in his hand to reveal the open jar. But with little more than moonlight to guide him, he could barely see the contents. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a small “flashlight” as he sometimes called it.

  Torch, his mind corrected. I’ve been hanging out with Americans too long!

  And then he saw something that amazed him. Inside the jar was what looked like some sort of jute fabric. Realizing that he needed a solid surface to work on, he sprinted with the jar to the hut that served as the office or the dig. It was locked with a heavy padlock, but the metal plates screwed to the wooden wall and door were so flimsy that the door yielded to his foot.

  Inside the hut, he carefully removed the jute fabric, by pulling it very gently. It became clear to him that this was a bag, or at least the disintegrating remnants of one. But what was of more interest was what was inside that. It appeared to be some more fabric, but this time leather. And this was somewhat better preserved. He placed it on the desk and switched on the desk lamp. Then he carefully and gingerly unrolled the leather, using two pairs of tweezers to minimize his direct contact with it. And at that point he got a s
urprise.

  For what seemed to be rolled up with it, was a piece of old thick paper.

  Is that it? Some old rolled up pieces of paper from modern times?

  They certainly didn’t have paper in the days of Roman Britain!

  But why would something modern be at that depth? And in a clearly antiquated jar? Rolled with leather and inside a decaying jute bag?

  There was only one way to find out. Very carefully, he leaned closer to get a better look at the paper. Except that it wasn’t paper.

  Papyrus?

  It certainly didn’t look like papyrus. He tilted the angle of the torch, to shine at it from different angles. No, it definitely didn’t look like papyrus either. And then suddenly he realized what it was.

  Parchment!

  But parchment didn’t usually last this long, especially in the cold humid conditions of Britain. But then again, this was a very thick, heavy parchment, and it had been protected from humidity both by the jute and by the leather, as well as the sealed jar. He shone the torch into the jar and saw moist salt at the bottom. Had it been put there deliberately or left there by accident. Either way, the sale had also helped to absorb the humidity.

  He realized what it was now that he had on this desk. He had found an old Roman manuscript. It must have been Roman because the iron age Celts didn’t write, except the educated ones who wrote Latin. But they didn’t have a writing system of their own. They did, at some point, develop writing systems – Runes in Germany and Ogham in Ireland – but the earliest inscriptions in these languages were dated to well-after the first century. When the more educated among them did write in the first century, it was in Latin, using the Roman alphabet. Accordingly, this manuscript might have been written by a Celt, but it would still be in Latin.

  But as Costa tried to read the manuscript, what he saw shocked him. This was not Latin. It was not even the Roman alphabet. Nor, on the other hand, was it the Runic alphabet or Ogham. He starred at it for a long time trying to recall why this strange alphabet looked so familiar. And then suddenly it struck him.