The Secret Policeman's Ball - Part One

The Secret Policeman’s Ball by Vivienne Jay
Part One
Chapter One
Fast but silent, he fell. A lithe black shadow suspended on a lightweight nylon rope just long enough to
reach from domed roof to mosaic floor. Expertly, he unhooked the pulley from the taut length,
somersaulting the remaining few feet between him and his prize. He landed square in the middle of the
display cabinets, without touching them. Glass enclosed him, but it was the only way, the only place
where there were no pressure pads.
He took off his backpack, placed it gently on the small un-alarmed floor space and, bending
only from his knees, each movement measured, tightly controlled and precise, he unzipped it and took
something out. A sucker held fast to the glass in his deft control. A metal arm extended from it in one
neat action. A diamond-edged blade on the end of the arm cut a circular trace in the glass. A knowing
tap in the right place released a circle of glass just big enough for a small man’s upper body to pass
through. Done. There was no surprise in his countenance. He’d executed this manoeuvre many times
before.
Into a small padded, velvet-lined box he placed his prize. Moravian gold. Very old Moravian
gold. Older than the walls of the castle from which he was liberating it. Older even than the roots of
the republic it was said to herald. And certainly very much older than his thirty-some years, although
still as resplendent in some of its former lustre as he was in his boyish good looks. This gold had been
wrought for status and the display of wealth and power. He worked as hard for status, his power was
infinite, wealth a mere by-product. He slid his left hand into a pocket in the body of his tight black
suit, removed a small, white, round, scallop-edged piece of paper and placed it over the indentation one
of his stolen treasures had made in its display cushion.
He put his equipment back in his backpack and reverently placed the velvet-lined box on top
and slid the pack across his shoulders once more. Leaping with the agility of a mountain cat, he caught
the dangling rope, re-attached the pulley to it and pulled himself back up to the domed roof. As he
reached the dome through which he had entered he slid his left hand back into the pocket. As he pulled
it back out with a small piece of metal grasped deftly between the first two fingers something else
slipped out too.
Something small, white, round, scallop-edged. Something flat that fluttered gently as it
tumbled on the current of the breeze he had let in through the opening in the roof he was climbing out
of. He caught sight of it as he turned to replace the dome, to leave it as he’d found it. An instant’s
panic gave way to the calculation of necessary remedial action as he watched it fall, still tumbling on
the breeze. Which way would it fall? Any pressure would set off the alarm. Precious seconds ticked
away as time stretched itself into slow motion and the paper coffee mat fluttered nearer to the danger
zone. He watched.
The sound of the alarms was deafening. Guards came from nowhere. The whole of the
Palace Guard swarmed over the floor beneath him. Castle Police pushed them out of the way as they
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added to the swarm. He looked around the rooftop sharply, surveying the distance between him and the
gardens far away beneath the castle. He jumped.
*
“Oh, I don’t know. One of those odd little soaker-upper things you get between the tiny little cup and
its equally miniscule saucer in those pseudo-posh Italian coffee bars round the corner.”
“What did it say on this odd little soaker-upper thing, Harry?”
“It said, ‘I love you, Harry’, and it was signed Ethan.”
“And you don’t think that’s just the merest shade wishful thinking?”
“Well, why shouldn’t Tom Cruise be in love with me? It was my dream!”
“So, who are you really in love with, Harry? Tom Cruise, or Ethan Hunt? There’s an
important distinction to be made here. If it’s Cruise, that’s okay. At least he’s a real person.
Inaccessible to the likes of you, but nonetheless real. Say Hunt and you have a problem. That’s wish-
fulfillment territory. Fantasy going too far. Your subconscious taking over and expecting Mission
Impossible every time you think of having anything as menial as sex. Say Hunt and I’m seriously
going to worry about your chances of ever holding down a stable relationship.”
“Maybe we just watch too many movies, Mutley. No big psycho-drama, just visual data
replaying in my dreams.”
“No, no, it’s a science this dream interpretation thing. I really think we’re onto something
that’s embedded very deeply into your psyche. Something that lecturing in Medieval Archaeology at
the Institute just isn’t living up to.”
“Oh, blow the candle out, Mutley! You just want me to step into the realms of the uncharted.
Start being less boring and more sexually available. Well, it’s just not going to happen. Okay?”
“So, let’s just go back to work and say no more about it, shall we. I’m teaching Second Year
Magnetometry in half an hour anyway. That should take up pretty much all of the afternoon, and it’s
fiendishly hot in that bloody lab. Shall I see you for supper?”
“Yeah. Meet you in the lobby at six as usual.”
*
Harry sat in the Bloomsbury Theatre coffee bar a little longer after Mutley had darted off. Her coffee
was almost cold. It hadn’t taken her long to recount the events of her dream, but Mutley’s
interpretations always sparked a lively discussion, and she hadn’t noticed the time fly by. She’d
learned to like lukewarm coffee. It was either that or find a new companion, and Mutley was too much
a part of her life to do without. Their friendship was comfortable, like her old digging boots; she
wouldn’t miss them unless they weren’t there.
Her own teaching schedule wasn’t so heavy that afternoon. One Third Year lecture at four and
a private consultation with a first year student under her direction.
She walked back across the road somewhat distractedly, crossed the lobby and got into the lift
without noticing anything out of the ordinary. She stopped off at the Doc’s office to get some slides on
German row-grave cemeteries for her Third Year lecture on the Archaeology of the Franks, and was
surprised to see the Doc sitting behind his desk grinning at her like a Cheshire cat as she entered the
room.
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“What’re you looking so pleased about?” she asked.

“Your lucky day, Harriet. Fieldwork’s been posted for the summer vac. You’re going back to
Prague Castle after all!”
“What?” Harry sat down heavily, only just hitting the seat rather than the floor. Her mouth
retained the shape of the word.
“Would you like some coffee, my dear? You look a bit surprised.”
Always the none-too-subtle master of understatement, the Doc. Harry disliked him intensely
and always avoided being alone in a room with him wherever possible. There was something
obsequious, almost sleazy, about his manner that she had always distrusted, especially during her years
as an undergraduate when he’d been her Director of Studies, and she never left anything to chance with
him. “No, I wouldn’t. I’m fine, thanks.” She put out a hand to stop him coming round from the other
side of his desk to where she sat and set her face in a determined stare. “So, what’s the story, then?”
“Oh, no story, Harriet. I just managed to pull a few strings for you after all. Got a remit for a
crew of six students for you to take over and a whole seasons-worth of excavations they want you to
supervise. Good experience for you, my dear. Look extra good on your CV.”
“I could have pulled my own strings, you know. It’s not as if their unit’s full of archaeologists
who are complete strangers to me, is it?”
“Harriet, how many years have I been telling you, sarcasm does not become you! A simple
thank you will suffice.”
“When do I go?”
“Soon as exam papers are marked, if you like. You’ll want to be doing some background
preparations before the gang turns up I should think.”
“Yes,” she answered distractedly. She stood up to leave. “Thanks, Doc,” she said grudgingly,
the words forcing themselves out in little more than a mumble.
“Oh, and Harriet,” the Doc called after her as she was disappearing out of the door. “You
might be needing these?” She walked back to his desk and took the slides for her lecture from him,
grimly. “And don’t forget the bit about what women were for in the Foederati camps.” Her back
disappeared out of the door faster than usual.
*
“And what purpose did women serve to a garrison full of Roman federated soldiers far from anything
they knew as home, cruelly subjugated by conquest, and basically gagging for it?”
Harry had waited for Mutley in her usual place at the usual time, the leather chesterfield in the
Institute lobby at six o’clock, going over the events of the afternoon in her head. He’d turned up
tousle-haired and running late as usual, as he had nearly every night during term for the past nine years.
They’d walked to one of their usual supper haunts within a mile of Gordon Square. Harry had been
recounting the afternoon’s revelations as they walked. By the time they’d eaten their pasta, drunk their
Frascati and been served their after-supper coffee she’d just got to the bit about the Doc’s most
annoying habits.
“Don’t wind me up again Mutley! You know he does this every year. He has his favourite
windups in every one of my courses, but the Franks seem to have more than their fair share of them.
3
At the beginning of the academic year I get, ‘don’t forget the bit about Childeric’s wife being thrown
over for a younger model, then by reading week it’s Chilperic’s affairs with his many concubines, ‘til
we get to here and this foederati prostitutes crap. It’s just not funny any more. I’ll be glad to get away
from him.”
“Yeah, and how.”
“It is a bit of a miracle, isn’t it?”
“Maybe your dream will come true, after all.”
“I still can’t figure out why there were two of those stupid soaker-upper things. I mean,
what’s the symbolism in that?”
“This: you drink too much damned coffee in too many naff Italian coffee bars!”
“Oh, like this one you mean? Well, one more damned coffee in this naff Italian joint and I’m
off home to dig out my passport and rescue it from mothball wonderland where it’s been hibernating
for quite long enough.”
“Well, before you flounce off too highly and mightily, consider this. Your dream: it’s the
subconscious yearning of your good-Catholic-girl soul to find the ideal man to give your good-
Catholic-girl saved body to, only you know you’re never going to find the ideal man because he
doesn’t actually exist. Therefore, your subconscious generates images of unattainable perfection by
dredging up Tom Cruise, a.k.a. Ethan Hunt, to make you think you’ll settle for nothing less than
perfection, a.k.a. the Unattainable. The only Mission Impossible is the mission you’re on to find Mr
bloody Impossible.”
“You seem to be forgetting that I’m not looking.”
“No, Harry! Your subconscious is forgetting that!”
“Still doesn’t explain why there were two soaker-upper thingies, though. Nor does it explain
why I should dream Tom Cruise dropping through the ceiling of the Palace in Prague Castle to nick its
heritage and leave me love notes the night before I’m told I get to go back there after all.”
“Coincidence…synchronicity…we watch too many movies. I don’t know. What was written
on the other one?”
“Didn’t see it.”
*
Harry did get her passport out when she got back to her flat. She also got her comfortable old digging
boots, trowel and kit bag out and started scraping the dried mud from her last excavation off them.
Then she sat and had a good think.
Nothing in her life had ever given her cause to get really excited, so why was the prospect of
going back to Prague Castle filling her so full of excitement? The dream had to have something to do
with it, she reasoned.
But why now?
Why this feeling that she couldn’t control, that had been rising like a tide inside her all day,
this feeling of…of what?
She tried to analyse its roots. Starting in her childhood, she began to look for any times when
she’d even come close to feeling like this. But there were none. Maybe that was the root of the
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problem. She’d never lost control of anything. Her parents had never argued in anything other than an
intellectual sense. Sure, they’d sometimes brought their professional rivalry home with them from
their colleges, but it was only ever vented in a playful sense of banter over the dinner table. Intellectual
arrogance mingled with Catholic humour; very harmless. Both were professors in their fields, her
mother specialising in Old English, her father in medieval history: the same tapestry, just different
threads.
So where did her rebellious streak come from? The streak that had made her defy both of
them, made her resolutely refuse to study solely one discipline or another in their way, but to make her
medieval tapestry as many-threaded as possible by adding archaeology into their equation. Studying at
the Institute of Archaeology in London was the only rebellious thing she’d ever done. She’d had a
dream about that too. A persistent, recurring dream that had made her adamant that that was where she
was going to go. And once she’d made that move she’d given up making moves of any kind, and the
dreams had stopped. From undergraduate to junior lecturer, via doctorate and research fellowship,
she’d never left the Institute since. In all fairness, neither had Mutley, but his wasn’t the life she was
analysing.
It felt like she’d made her one rebellion respectable just by sticking with it and following it
through. Just as her parents had built their own careers and become experts in their subjects, she was
heading for…for what? How much of it had she designed because she wanted it that way? Was that
why she was so excited about Prague now? Because she was desperate to get away from her boring
life? Was it boring?
And what about Mutley? What about all the relationships she’d ever had that had stopped
dead after the first kiss because there just wasn’t any excitement in it? She had so many friends who
could have been lovers. But none of them had ever been able to reach in and touch her soul. So what
would have been the point? Mutley was different. He’d always just been her friend, that was what he
was built for, friendship, mental sparring. But he was the nearest thing to a relationship that she had.
The nearest thing that she’d ever had. And there had been that very peculiar night. A Christmas party
where they’d both got drunk and kissed each other, rather passionately. Even if there had been some
spark, some magic between them, he was too weird to contemplate as anything more than he already
was. He didn’t often talk about his origins, but when he did Harry’s eyes opened wider and wider in
amazement as he regaled her with tales that started somewhere in Eastern Europe and ended in
Southern Ireland with a few detours across most of northern Europe on the way. His full name, Miron
Ulrich-Teague, was a linguistic testimony to the tale. He had always sworn that the nickname was
actually less of an acronym and more of a descriptive term, based on the comparison of his throaty
laugh with a cartoon character of the same name, and bestowed upon him by his former school mates.
Of course, he had that shaggy dog look about him, just not the right one. A tall, thin, piercingly blue-
eyed shaggy dog in worn cords and hobnail boots. When his hair wasn’t in its ponytail he could pass
for an overgrown Afghan; even had the coat to prove it.
No. Mutley was not the man for her. But why was she even thinking this way? Not having a
man in her life, at least in the husband sense, had never bothered her before. Was the biological clock
beginning to give her wake up calls? She was only a few months away from thirty, after all.
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And then the thought of what exactly she wanted out of life was only ever a neuron away. So,
what did she want? Excitement? The perfect man? And where did that leave faith?
Faith was what underpinned everything. Faith was what silently got her through those
childhood years of life with their Professor-ships, her parents who were always at least a decade older
than all her friends’ parents. They really didn’t understand small girls, and, although they’d loved her
very dearly in their own way, had never known how to treat her as anything other than a very small
adult. Faith was what had taught her to understand the child in herself and let her flourish without
being crushed by their adult sensibilities. Their Catholic Jesus had shone His light down upon her from
the many crucifixes she’d seen in His church throughout her childhood, until in her teenage years He’d
managed to touch her heart and become her personal Jesus. He was the real reason she’d never been
more of a rebel, she felt sure of that. Maybe He was also the reason her kisses had lacked excitement
too. After all, no one could ever fill her with more passion than Him, surely? He’d given her the kind
of moral outlook that would make a saint look sinful. He’d given her His standard of perfection beside
which she measured all else. No one could hope to come close.
No matter how much she thought about it all she seemed to come no closer to figuring out
why the prospect of going back to Prague Castle filled her so full of excitement. And no closer to
fitting the dream in anywhere. Unless she added her obsession with Moravian princes and their gold in
as a subtext. So she busied herself with thoughts of the logistics of the trip, and carried on scraping the
dried mud off her digging equipment instead.
*
A peaceful night’s sleep, with no further dimensions added to the dream, helped Harry to clear her head
of all the strange thoughts she’d had the night before. Ever the pragmatist, she hated diving into the
realms of no-mans-land she often heard psychologists refer to as cognitive therapy; empirical to the
last, she preferred to immerse herself in practicalities and let the psyche take care of itself. True to
form, she began to plan interviews with her first and second year students before she’d even walked the
half mile from her apartment block on Russell Street to the Institute. She already knew who she was
planning to take - a group of her post-grads - and hoped she wouldn’t have the usual fight on her hands
to get her own way.
She switched on her computer and started to compile an explanatory e-mail. Two sentences in
the door burst open.
“Doctor Ballantyne, we heard about the Prague thing. Any chance you can fit us in?”
Two girls stood in the doorway blocking the light from the corridor. Harry was glad they
hadn’t chosen to stand in front of the window; there would have been a partial eclipse. These were big
girls.
“How did you hear?” she asked. She hoped she was maintaining at least an outer veneer of
calm that wouldn’t belie the fury welling up inside her at the thought that the Doc had been doing her
any more favours.
“Doctor Martin’s just told us at the end of our Empires lecture.”
She looked at them as if they must be mad, these two large first year girls still standing in her
office doorway. Keep calm, she said to herself before answering the question of their inclusion on her
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list. “But you’re Egyptologists, aren’t you?” She recognised them from other first year lectures she’d
taken, in which students from across the archaeological spectrum from quaternary scientists to
medievalists all had to share certain core courses. “Why would you be interested in something so high
medieval as Prague Castle?”
“Because they won’t let us dig in Egypt.”
“Ah, yes, of course. The sense of the Epyptian government not to let undergraduates loose
with their dearest treasures: their mummies. I always thought that showed amazing foresight. What
makes you think I’ll let you loose on my Moravian princes?”
“Is that a no then? Because we’re running out of options this late in the term and we’ve got to
get something sorted before the cut-off date on the grant, which is tomorrow.” The other big girl
seemed agitated.
“Well, I suppose it will save the Institute the price of a flight to Cairo?”
“She’s putting you on, Karen. Can’t you see.” The first girl dug her fleshy elbow into the
place where it might have met with the second girl’s ribs if it hadn’t bounced off quite so quickly and
the two fell into fits of giggles. She collected herself together and began to steer her friend out of
Harry’s doorway by grabbing her arm. “Does that mean we can go, Doctor Ballantyne? Only we’re
late for Hieroglyphs.”
“Let’s just say you get an informal invite to the discussion meeting. Names please.”
“Karen Grimes,” said the large girl with the brown hair.
“Ellie Burlington,” said the other large girl. “Oh, and could you put Jude Preston down too?”
“I can’t take the entire first year Egyptology group,” Harry shouted as their studded boots
clunked off back down the corridor.
“No, Doctor Ballantyne. Thank you, Doctor Ballantyne. We appreciate it.”
She could hear them as they reached the stairwell. She could hear them thanking the Doc for
all his help. Then she could hear the Doc’s creaky shoes as he came closer to the space in her doorway
now letting in considerably more light than moments earlier. His bulk standing in the same doorway
seemed diminutive in comparison to Karen Grimes and Ellie Burlington.
‘Fred. How nice to see you.”
“What have I told you about sarcasm, Harriet?”
“Well, I’d hardly even sat down with my coffee before those two accosted me. How do you
expect me to put together a good, well-chosen team when you go and tell the whole of the first year? Is
this my show, or the Doc Martin Summertime Special? Do let me know when you’ve decided on my
whole team won’t you?”
“Only trying to be of assistance, Harriet.”
“Does Harry Enfield write your material for you? I mean, first you send me female versions
of Kevin and Perry, next you’ll be telling me I didn’t wanna do that and telling me exactly how I do
want to do it.”
“Who’s Harry Enfield? Any relation?” The Doc wore a slimy grin a mile wide. “I’ve
arranged a meeting in the lecture theatre at five-thirty this evening for anyone interested in going to
Prague Castle. See who turns up, shall we. Your show from there on.” Harry could feel her blood
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pressure rising and wondered if the Doc could ever actually see the steam coming out of her ears.
“Haven’t you got second and third year Anglo-Saxons next? I’ve already got the slides out for you.”
Why did he have to be quite so infuriating? Did he do it on purpose, or was it just an
extremely annoying by-product of being himself?
*
The lecture theatre was empty.
It was empty at five-thirty. It was empty at twenty-five to six. It was still empty at quarter to.
At five to six Harry packed her Prague-Castle’s-a-great-place-to-spend-your-summer-holiday-and-gain-
invaluable-fieldwork-experience spiel back inside her over-worked head and walked towards the swing
doors at the back of the small auditorium. If her carefully chosen post-grads weren’t going to turn up,
she figured she might as well wait for Mutley in the comfort of the chesterfield as in there. As she
reached the doors they swung open, violently, and a bunch of three raggle-taggle students tumbled over
each other landing at her feet.
“Sorry, Doctor Ballantyne. I slipped,’ said the thin boy with the dark hair and the silly goatee
beard.
“Yeah, an’ you took us over with you, Nat, you prat,” said a very petite girl with dark hair and
no goatee.
The other girl, a blonde, stretched out her long slim legs in front of her as she sat at Harry’s
feet, laughed lyrically and said: “You can’t refuse us now, not after we’ve gone an’ fallen for y’in such
a big way.” She had a lilting Irish brogue that made it sound more like a song.
“If I was a heavy drinker I’d say that you three have been sat in the Union bar since, ooh let’s
see, round about all day.” Harry wasn’t sure whether to laugh or cry. So far she had two large
Egyptologists and a friend who couldn’t be bothered to turn up with them, and a bunch of drunkards
who’d rolled up so late she wasn’t even sure if they knew what they’d turned up late for. “But of
course as I’m not, and wouldn’t know the half of what students get up to these days, I’ll assume you’re
all just naturally high-spirited, not to mention accident prone?” She raised the tone of her voice at the
end of that last phrase in the hope that they might sense her tension and respond with more decorum.
“Sorry, Doctor Ballantyne, said the pretty Irish girl. “Yes, we were in the Union bar. So were
Karen and Ellie, but they didn’t tell us about Prague until a few minutes ago, and…and I left three-
quarters of a pint o’ Guinness to run all the way over here on the off-chance o’ catchin’ you.”
“So please don’t turn us away,” said the very petite girl.
“No please don’t,” said the boy, with his arm tenderly around the very petite girl’s shoulder
now that he had recovered his composure. “We really would like to go.”
“And do any of you have a friend you’d also like to nominate in their absence?”
“What?” they all three chimed with bemused expressions on their faces.
“Oh, never mind. You had to be there.” Harry sighed deeply and shrugged her shoulders.
“Well, it doesn’t look like I have that many others to choose from, does it? Names!”
“Lizzie O’Rourke,” said the pretty blonde Irish girl, finally standing up.
“Nathaniel Davies,” said the boy.
“Rebecca Stamp,” said the very petite girl.
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All three screamed and hugged each other.

A distant voice rumbled from somewhere outside the doors: “What’s all this noise about?
Who can be so completely disturbing the peace and quiet that usually reigns so supreme in this
particular seat of learning at this particular hour of the day? Nat! Lizzie! Becky!” Mutley. Who, by
the end of a corridor-length sentence had indeed reached the door at the end of the corridor. The door
to the lecture theatre where the noise was indeed coming from.
“Sorry, Doctor Ulrich-Teague, but Doctor Ballantyne has kind of saved our skins,” said Nat.
“Mmm, definitely saved our skins, and at the eleventh hour too, you might say,” said Becky.
“Yeah. Nobody else would o’ had us, ‘cause we left it too soddin’ late, an’ the grants are all
for being done tomorrow an’ all,” said Lizzie. “Thank you Doctor Ballantyne. We love you, really we
do. An’ you see if we don’ work harder for you than all the students you’ve ever had put together in a
long row like pretty maids.”
“Sounds to me like you’ve got a Guinness flow problem, Lizzie. Like you could do with
finishing the one you left to come here,” said Mutley.
Yeah, you’re absolutely spot on there, Doctor…umm…Sir,” said Lizzie as she grabbed the
other two and dragged them off in the direction of the Union bar.
“How much of that did you hear?” Harry asked Mutley once the trio had left.
“Pretty much all of it actually. Why?”
“Well, then you’ll know what a bunch of misfits I’m apparently taking to Prague with me, due
to the lack of interest of anyone remotely serious about what we’ll be doing over there, won’t you?”
“That’s not like you, Harry.”
“What’s not?”
“To judge the book quite so readily by its Guinness-drenched cover.”
“How do you know those three anyway?”
“Second year Magnetometry. And they’re good kids. All three.”
“I’ll just have to take your word for it, won’t I? I don’t suppose you happen to know two
rather large Egyptologists called Karen and Ellie do you?” Harry asked. She was laughing now, the
lighter side of her day kicking in at last. “Or their friend, Jude?”
*
Exams were the inevitable conclusion to the undergraduate academic year, the Institute only varying
from other institutions in one factor concerning them: it held them during May, which was earlier than
most. Archaeologists need good long summer breaks during which they can unearth the rest of the
year’s desk work. At least that was Harry’s theory, one which Mutley also subscribed to in as warm a
climate as he could each year. Not for any stronger reason than the prospect of lots of Mediterranean
sunshine had he chosen to study as a classical archaeologist; it was purely an added bonus that being a
gifted scientist had also put a lot of extra methodological irons in his particular furnace.
Exam time was Harry’s favourite and her least favourite time of the year. On the one hand she
knew it wouldn’t be long before she could be off on whatever travels the Doc had managed to secure
for her, and on the other she had to physically get through them. Students agonised and generally fell
apart more than at any other time of the year; invigilating was always such a drag; marking the end
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product was even worse. The conflict was bitter-sweet. This year she just couldn’t wait to get on that
bus and get bound for Prague, with her comfortable old digging boots.
She arranged one meeting with the students she began to mentally refer to as her motley crew,
to discuss operational matters. Well, that was what she had in mind when she arranged it. In reality
she knew that she’d spend more time discussing the logistics of arriving in the correct city, with bus
tickets, and passports and relevant equipment than what they’d be expected to do once they got there.
That was the problem with undergrads, none of that stuff was second nature to them yet, and there were
always dramas.
It was to be in her office on the last day of the undergraduate exams. The last Thursday in
May.
“Doctor Ballantyne,” Karen Grimes’ over familiar voice came around the corner from the
corridor. Her large body followed through the door. “Are we the first to arrive?” Ellie Burlington’s
bulk followed close on her heels.
Harry looked around her office. It wasn’t large, but there were few places anything as large as
a whole student could lodge without being instantly detectable. She pushed the irritation as far down
as she could to tame her reaction of too much sarcasm. “It looks like it. I guess that means you get the
seats.”
Karen didn’t have to be asked twice. Her large behind took up immediate residence. Ellie
exhibited a little more reticence to occupy Harry’s space as if it were her right. She even had the
decency to look slightly embarrassed at Karen’s obvious lack of formality.
“I was hoping to have a chance to speak to you before the others arrived,” Karen began once
she’d made herself comfortable. “I was hoping that I might be able to come out a couple of weeks
before the others. You know, make myself at home, look around, generally get the lie of the land. Just
so that I can really make the most of this opportunity and do the best I can.”
Harry got the distinct impression that what she really meant was more along the lines of ‘get
myself established as top-dog and toady up to Doctor Ballantyne in case she’s able to pull some
particularly good strings for me and get me the plum jobs’, but again she bit down on the urge to resort
to sarcasm. She did so by changing the focus. “And what about you, Ellie? Do you need to come out
early too?”
“Um…no, not really. Well, not unless you can swing an Institute grant for my boyfriend too,”
Ellie replied. Harry thought she looked a little more embarrassed. Toadying often produced that
response in those unfortunate enough to have to look on as others toadied. “No. I have to work right
up until the day before in any case. You know, the kind that pays.” She looked sideways at Karen and
Harry could swear that her teeth were gritted.
“Hi guys. Sorry we’re late.” It was Nathaniel.
“Yeah. Sorry.” He was followed in by Rebecca.
“I don’t actually think you are,” said Harry, smiling. “Late, that is.” She liked these two.
“Where’s Lizzie? Not with you?”
“No. I think she’s been celebrating.” Nathaniel sounded wary.
“Yeah. Celebrating.” Rebecca sounded irritated.
10
“Oh, I do hope she doesn’t turn up pissed like she usually does everywhere else,” said Karen,
with a look like she had a nasty smell under her nose. “Honestly. That girl. Just my luck to get put
with her!”
“Oh, I don’t know,” Harry surprised herself by saying. “I rather hope she does. At least it’ll
be interesting.” More interesting than listening to you drone on, she thought.
Singing came from the end of the corridor. It got louder before it came through the door, then
changed into soft laughter. “Sorry, Doctor Ballantyne. Everyone else seems to have arrived before me
as usual. It’s been a good day and it’s been a bad day.” Harry liked the way Lizzie hung onto her
words, giving them more emphasis in her lilting Irish accent. She instinctively liked Lizzie.
“Magnetometry exam was awful,” she continued. “Good thing is it’s over. Better thing is I didn’t do
as badly as I thought I might. Best thing, it was the last one. No more rotten exams till next year.”
She swung her arms in the air and for an agonising moment Harry half-expected her to throw them
around somebody’s neck. She hoped it wouldn’t be hers. She didn’t do familiarity well.
“Unless you fail them,” said Karen dourly.
“Karen, that’s an awful thing to say,” Ellie scolded.
“Yeah, keep your negatives to yourself,” Nathaniel joined in.
“Yeah. To yourself,” Rebecca joined in too.
Lizzie just laughed. “Oh, don’t mind her. She’s just a lardy old tub o’ bitterness in need of
lightening up. A lot.” Harry couldn’t help wanting to laugh but managed to suppress all but a stray
snort, which made Karen look at her very strangely indeed with her lips all pursed up and her nose very
red at the tip.
“Well, this isn’t getting us anywhere at all,” Harry said. “And where’s the elusive Jude
Preston?”
“Oh, she can’t make it,” Karen said. “I’m taking notes for her.”
“And I take it she will actually make it to Prague? Or will you also be taking notes for her
there too?” Harry was getting more and more irritated with both Karen Grimes and Jude Preston.
“Oh, she’ll be there all right.”
“Mm…she will,” said Ellie apologetically. “She’s really good fun. Great sense of humour.
You’ll really like her.”
“Glad you told me someone in Egytology’s got one,” Lizzie laughed. “I haven’t noticed much
evidence of it so far.” Harry stifled another escapee giggle.
“Okay. This is the plan. You get to Prague. Then find your way to this hostel.” Harry handed
them each a sheet of paper with a map and an address on it. “There’s three rooms booked for you, so
you’ll be sharing two to a room. How you work that out is down to you. This is how to find Prague
Castle on the following Monday morning.” She handed them another sheet of paper with another map
on it. “And I’ll see you at the castle at eight o’clock on the first Monday in July. I’ll be there from
next Monday. Any questions?” She dreaded them, but she had to ask.
“What if we have problems finding the hostel?” Nathaniel asked.
“Yeah. The hostel,” Rebecca echoed.
11
“My mobile phone number’s on the sheet with the address on it. You can ring me if you have
any problems.”
“Oh, thanks, Doctor Ballantyne.” Nathaniel.
“Yeah. Thanks.” Rebecca.
“Can I ring you if I can’t find any Guinness?” Lizzie asked.
“You can certainly ring me to invite me out for one,” Harry grinned. “Then I’ll show you
where to get a decent beer.”
“Nothin’ beats a lovely cold pint o’ gorgeous draught Guinness,” Lizzie replied.
“We’ll see.” Harry grinned again, having laid down her challenge. “Now, if there are no
more questions, I expect you’d all rather like to get out of here and continue celebrating the end of
exams.”
“I’ll hold you to that beer,” Lizzie said as she left. Harry could hear her singing her way along
the corridor once more.
“See you in Prague then, Doctor Ballantyne,” said Nathaniel, pulling Rebecca out of the door
after him.
“Yeah. See you in Prague,” said Rebecca.
“It’s going to be fun, isn’t it,” Ellie said, looking at Karen and willing her to jump down off
her high horse.”
“It would be if she wasn’t going. But I’ll make the most of it. I shan’t let her spoil it for me.
Now, Doctor Ballantyne, about that extra couple of weeks?”
Harry was hoping she’d managed to sidetrack Karen’s memory out of that one. “Well, I
suppose if you really want to come out two weeks early I can’t exactly stop you. Why don’t you ring
me on the mobile a few days before you’re going to arrive and we’ll take it from there?” She was
sincerely hoping that the absence of a firmer plan would help Karen to change her mind in the
meantime.
“Good idea,” Karen said as she and Ellie left Harry’s office too.
*
Harry spent all of Friday marking exam papers and making last minute preparations for her post grad
students, all of whom could reach her by e-mail on her laptop for continuing supervision if need be.
The Doc infuriated her further by offering to take them on for her, until she pointed out that the
wonders of the internet had neatly supplanted the need for that particular kind of professional
intervention. By the time she’d finished up in her office, it was time to meet Mutley in the lobby for
their last supper together before the Autumn term. There was a sense of foreboding in her spirit. There
always was when they parted for the summer break.
Mutley seemed distracted, distant, when he arrived. He wasn’t running. His hair wasn’t
tousled. And he wasn’t late. Harry was worried.
“You okay?” she asked.
“Why? Shouldn’t I be?”
“Well, you’re on time, for one thing. That’s always a bad sign. Usually means you’re
brooding over something. What are you brooding over?”
12
“I’ll tell you when I’m sitting comfortably, with a glass of something alcoholic in my sticky
little mit.”
They walked in silence to the nearest, and Harry’s least favourite, of their Bloomsbury supper
haunts. Harry could feel the tension hanging off Mutley like a heavy electric cloak. She began to get
tense herself just walking along beside him.
Once they were seated, and he’d drunk at least half of the bottle of Rioja they’d ordered to
accompany their steaks, she asked him again, “So, what are you brooding over?”
“Financial incompetence! That’s what.”
“Whose?”
“The bloody Greeks!”
“Don’t tell me. Withdrawn their funding?”
“Worse. They want me to provide them with a sodding business plan! Never had to do one of
those before.”
“Ever excavated a temple under a proposed Cypriot bank before?”
“No! But that’s not the point. Businessmen shouldn’t go around interfering with
archaeologists. It’s downright lunacy. In all my years as a classical archaeologist, I’ve never known
the like. Can’t wait to get us in there usually. Throw money at us to provide them with a genuine
classical provenance before they build around us and make a nice little modern day feature out of their
cherished heritage. Can’t understand why this lot’re being so pedantic.”
“I can.” Harry had a glint in her eye that wasn’t caused by the wine. “Look at it this way.
What’s the last thing a Cypriot would want to admit to? Greek supremacy. The fact that his Greek
neighbours got it right all those centuries ago positively enrages him to the point of pettiness. He
doesn’t want your temple to become a permanent reminder to him of his outsider status in his plush
new bank that’s cost him a fortune; much less does he want to throw money at you to do it. So, what
does he do? Creates a bureaucratic nightmare that neither you nor the Greek authorities are going to
find easily surmountable. Am I right? Or am I right?”
“Drink your wine and try to look pretty, Harry.”
“What’s the matter now?”
“You’re not taking me seriously, that’s what’s the matter. And you’re talking absolute crap. I
think you’re making it up as you go along.”
“Well, yes. I was.” She adopted her best hurt expression. “I was just trying to provide a little
light entertainment. Thought you could do with a bit of a laugh. Pardon me for breathing.”
“No. I’m sorry. I’ve just never encountered this kind of obstacle before, and Greece is not an
easy place to deal with it at the best of times, as you know.”
“Unfortunately, that’s the rub these days. Everything’s big business. No naïve, wide-eyed,
rich benefactors with a soft spot for Indiana Jones left now. Just shrewd, cynical businessmen wearing
Armani suits and Raybans, carrying their laptops and mobiles in their fancy handmade briefcases and
giving out more attitude than cash when people like us come along to halt the building of their latest
fantasy. I can’t tell you how fast they caught on in Prague after the end of communism. A whole
generation just got left behind in the stampede.
13
“Talking of Prague,” Harry continued, looking wistfully out of the window and up at a patch
of cloud where she felt blue sky should have been by that time of the year. “D’you remember
promising to take me out for a meal anywhere I chose if I got a certain student through Vikings with a
decent mark? Well, she did it, and I’m choosing a restaurant called the Golden Goose. It’s just behind
the castle. In Prague. You’ll love it.”
“You can’t really be serious? You seriously expect me to come all the way to Prague just to
take you out for a meal because you won a lousy bet to get the thickest ever undergrad through a course
about hairy carrot-tops with horned helmets?”
“How many times’ve I told you, they didn’t have horns! Come for a few days. I’ll show you
all the lovely churches.”
“And why would I want to look at religious architecture?”
“Because it’s Baroque and it’s pretty.”
“And I suppose all these churches would just happen to be Catholic, and you might just
happen to go on and on about what a difference Jesus has made in your life. Just because you can.”
“Not if you don’t want me to.”
“Of course I don’t want you to. I never have wanted you to. It’s never yet stopped you. I
know you, Harry. The minute you get caught up in all that beautiful church architecture, something
snaps and you go all gooey and preachy. You can’t help yourself.”
“And what’s so wrong with that? I’m just expressing what’s in my heart, deep at the centre.”
“Yes, but some of us just don’t want to hear it. What I really want to hear you say is that
you’ve renounced all that crap and you feel you’re now ready to give your body up to a totally useful
cause, like Mutley’s SAS.”
“What?”
“Sex Appreciation Society, slow coach!”
“Oh.”
“Failing that, I’d like to hear you say that you’re looking for a nice bloke to have a meaningful
relationship that included the normally accepted idea of sex as a part of it with. It’s not right all this
no-sex-before-marriage thing. Not in this day and age. I wish you’d lighten up and get laid. You’d
feel better for it --”
“Where did all of this come from? All I said was I’d show you some churches. Why are you
being so awful to me?”
“Because you’re my friend and I don’t want to see you end up a crabby old spinster,
untouched by male anatomy just because you wouldn’t settle for anything less than the knight in
shining armour carrying you chivalrously down the aisle, so bitter and twisted you wouldn’t know a
good time if it jumped up and bit you on the bum. It’s not about perfection. It’s about being natural.
Doing what comes naturally. I don’t want you to miss out on the love of a good man just because he’s
not perfect.”
“Don’t hold back now. Say what you really think.”
“I think I just did.”
14
“And you think I’d be happy if I did something that was so contrary to everything I believe
in?” Harry’s voice was quiet, her attitude calm. “You just don’t get it, do you? That is what would
make me the most unhappy. I’d rather die untouched than give myself without God’s blessing. It’s all
or nothing. No half measures. I’d rather never know what it’s like than settle for second best.”
“Well, that would be a waste. A bloody rotten, God awful waste.”
“Mutley! I’m asking you to stop before you say something irretrievable.”
“Bollocks! You’re sidestepping more like. The way you always do.”
“And you’re provoking me. The way you always do. Especially when you’re in a bad mood.
I’m leaving now.” She stood up and pushed her chair calmly and neatly under the table, ignoring the
stares they were attracting from other tables. “I’ll see you in September, as you obviously don’t have
the guts to come to Prague and keep your side of the bet. You can jolly well pay for this instead.”
15
Chapter Two
The following evening she was on the bus to Prague. As it pulled out of Victoria Coach Station she
looked out at the bits of London the bus was travelling through. She felt as if she should look on
wistfully, committing to memory all that she ought to miss, but the reality was that she couldn’t wait to
get out. She tried to imagine what she’d miss if she were going forever. Routine and security were all
that she could come up with. Custard and Marmite, which amounted to the food equivalent of the same
thing, and could easily be imported. EastEnders and The Bill, but she could get them on satellite if she
missed them so much that quality of life was impaired. Nothing in her life couldn’t be moved to
somewhere else. So, what was keeping her in London? Routine and security! Certainly not Mutley,
after the way he’d treated her in that restaurant.
Why did he do that every year? It was always the same. He’d magic up some petty storm out
of nowhere, create a stupid argument out of it, insult her something rotten, then not speak to her until
the Autumn term began. Why was that?
As the bus rolled out of the city and into the greener bits of Kent she found herself relaxing.
The further the bus went the more relaxed she became. It was a familiar pattern, even if she hadn’t
consciously recognised it with each successive trip she’d made along that route to Prague. Always the
same. By the time she arrived in Prague a whole day later the Institute was always out of her head and
a clean canvas had been prepared upon which she could paint a whole new picture. It was like two
different worlds. She wondered what kind of picture she would create this year. Same as always,
probably: one full of work, study, visiting things and getting spiritually revitalised.
Then she remembered the dream.
She dozed off just past Chatham and woke up abruptly somewhere near Dover. Someone was
shaking her.
Someone speaking English heavily accented in Czech woke her from another strange dream.
“Are you all right?”
“Um…yes…I think so…what happened?”
“You were hitting me and saying dat you self destruct in five seconds.”
“Oh. I’m terribly sorry. Are you sure it wasn’t more like ‘this message will self-destruct in
five seconds?’” The dream was still vivid in her mind. Somebody had said, ‘would you like to watch a
movie Doctor Ballantyne?’ and handed her a miniature camcorder. An air hostess? No. The bus
driver! She’d taken it from him, gone to her seat and watched it. The whole dream sequence had
played itself out again on the little screen. Tom Cruise had again let himself down through the palace
roof in Prague Castle, made a hole in the glass with his cutter thing, reached into the cabinet, taken the
Moravian gold and left his little soaker-upper thingie with the message written clearly on it. He’d
pulled himself up then dropped the second soaker-upper in the same slow motion as before, watched to
see where it landed, winced at the sound of the alarms, pulled himself out and jumped off the roof. All
exactly the same as before. Then the tape had told her it was going to self-destruct and she was
surrounded by Palace Guards and Castle Police, all fighting with each other around her.
16
“Yes,” said the heavily Czech-accented English speaker beside her, slowly. “You are right.
Dat was indeed what you say. “What means it?”
“Oh, nothing. It’s just a stupid dream.”
“Do you not want to tell it to me? We are not going anywhere for several hours, and I would
like to know what makes you hitting me.”
“I’m sure you’d find it boring.”
“Listening to pretty girl talk? This I’m not finding boring.”
Harry had never heard herself described as pretty before. As she considered what this stranger had
said, she realised she’d never really heard herself described as anything before, at least outside of
academic achievement. She took a mental picture of herself, to help her see where he was coming
from with this pretty stuff. Tall and gangly in faded black jeans, an old college T-shirt, unruly dark
brown curly hair plaited down her back. No, that wasn’t the description of a pretty woman. What was
his angle? She thought about her face. Sharp, straight, pointed nose; thick, dark, arched eyebrows;
piercing dark violet eyes; high cheek bones. Her description of herself wasn’t fooling her. Maybe it
was her lips. Voluptuous, Mutley had once said. He was drunk. She did have remarkably clear skin.
“My name is Jan,” said Jan, trying to sound relaxed as he struggled with Harry’s silence. “Jan
Zeleny. My friends are calling me Honza. You can too if you like. I am PhD student studying at
Cambridge University. Genetic engineering. People, they interest me, the way they are put together.
The things dat they do when they think no one looks on them. Like when you are sleeping.” Harry
laughed and he smiled. “You are looking lovely when you are laughing.”
“I’m sorry,” she said, the laugh still fresh on her face. “I’m being prickly, aren’t I?”
“What is meaning this prickly?”
“Oh, it means I’m being very bad-mannered.”
“No, you aren’t. You are being…English.” He smiled at her again and she let her prickly
defences fall. Why shouldn’t she enjoy his company? It was a long journey. And she’d surely never
see him again. She smiled back. “But I am getting used to English reserve, or I am not having any
friends for the time I am studying here.”
“I’m Harry,” Harry said, offering Honza her hand wholeheartedly. “Harry Ballantyne. I’m a
lecturer at London University. Medieval archaeology. People interest me too, but they normally have
to be dead first. I know virtually nothing about genetics although I do find it very fascinating;
especially when applied to the dead people I dig up.”
“And were you digging up someone dead in your sleep just now?”
“No, but someone was stealing something that belonged to dead people in my sleep just now.
Dead Moravians actually.”
“This is big coincidence. I am Moravian.”
“Mmm…you do look a tiny bit like Tom Cruise.”
“I am wishing my bank account was looking like his. But what are you meaning, Harry
Ballantyne?”
Harry laughed at Honza’s words. She loved to listen to Czech people speaking English. It
sounded so quaint. And he had a nice way about him that made her want to laugh. He smiled a lot and
17
his eyes talked as much as his words. She found herself recounting her strange dream over again,
reliving the slow motion parts with equally slow gestures, her violet eyes dancing around far more than
they had when she’d told Mutley.
The bus drove through Dover, into the ferry terminal and onto the back of a large blue boat.
“Come on, Harry Ballantyne. I am buying you a beer.”
“Well, I hope it’s a Czech one then,” she replied as they stood up to vacate the bus. She
glanced at the driver on the way down the steps, hoping she wouldn’t recognise him from her most
recent dream. Thankfully, she didn’t, but he winked at her in an altogether too friendly manner and she
hurried off after Honza with a creepy feeling up her spine.
“What are you going to do in Prague, Harry Ballantyne,” Honza asked once they were seated
in the bar with their beers. “What dead people are you finding there?”
I work in the castle. Prague Castle. Most of the dead people have already been dug up. You
know the legend of Bořivoj?”
“What Czech or Moravian is not knowing this? When I was boy my aunt was telling me these
stories”
“Well, the 9th century Moravian princes were frequent visitors to the castle. They brought
their wealth with them. Moravian gold. They brought their craftsmen with them too. They buried it
with their dead and centuries later archaeologists came along and dug it up.”
“And you are one of these archaeologists?”
“No. Not really. Most of the good stuff was dug up in the fifties and sixties. But my students
and I will be working on re-interpretations of those excavations. There’s also going to be an exhibition
of the Moravian gold in the Palace museum. You should see it. After all, it’s your heritage.”
“Maybe I am visiting you there, Harry Ballantyne, and you are showing me?”
“Well, I’m easy enough to find. The unit shares offices with the Castle Police, in the bottom
right hand corner of St George’s Square.”
“Castle Police? Are you knowing dat they once were known by some other name?”
“What, the Secret Police? Oh, yes. But they’re quite harmless now. No more files on every
citizen, just guarding the president. That’s mostly what they do now.”
“Maybe dat’s what they are wanting you to be thinking, Harry Ballantyne?” She saw the
humour in his eyes and realised he was teasing her. “So, am I being interrogated when I visit you?”
“They’ll ask you for ID, and the name of the person you’re visiting, that’s all. Unless of
course you do something that’ll make them use those guns. But there’s never more than two of them
on the desk at one time, except when they change shifts. You can handle four well-built Secret
Policemen holding you at gunpoint can’t you, Honza?” Her own eyes flashed mischievously in return.
Beer was emboldening her usually stilted sociability. “They’ll release you into my custody. Once
they’ve managed to locate me.”
When the large blue boat arrived in its continental berth they returned to the bus.
“So, Harry Ballantyne. You are telling me about my heritage?”
“Yes. Your Moravian heritage.” Harry rubbed her hands together conspiratorially and grinned
widely. “Did you know that the beginnings of the Czech State as a nation are to be found in your
18
Moravian heritage?” She didn’t wait for Honza’s answer, just launched herself into a diatribe that all
too few people were ever willing to sit and listen to, beer or no beer. “Moravian prince, having much
experience of this thing called empire, seeks refuge in Bohemia and helps Bohemian prince set up his
empire after the collapse of his own. Jolly neighbourly of him? Well, not really, more a way of
ensuring that he stays somewhere on top, even if it’s only as a guest at the top of a Bohemian hillfort.
Several factors have to be firmly in place before a nation state can be formed. Unity’s important. You
know, one prince among many making it to kingship and leading all to work together. Religion’s the
next thing. If the Moravian prince can do it before him, not to be outdone, the Bohemian’s
conversion’s a foregone conclusion. Before you know it they’re working themselves up into a frenzy
of nationhood and creating a thing called a nation state. And it all started off with the Great Moravian
Empire. Your heritage. Archaeologists are mere tools of nationalist propagandists looking for this kind
of evidence to beef up political integrity. Nationhood for nation’s sake.”
“My aunt would be liking you, Harry Ballantyne.” Honza was nodding his head in apparent
appreciation. “And what about the castle. Where is it fitting into today’s scheme?”
“Seat of government. Always an important thing to have: a permanent place from which to
rule. The more history you can heap on it the better. And Prague Castle has been continuously
occupied as the Bohemian capital ever since the nation’s emergence onto Europe’s political field under
the Přemyslid princes in the late 9th century. That heaps the history on. And makes it pretty damned
important.”
“If you are being Czech. What if you are being Moravian and are wanting your own empire
back?”
“Well, it’s still a gorgeous place to visit. And to work in. And I don’t think I’ve ever met a
Moravian who wants to devolve power so completely away from the Czech state that he can’t see
Prague Castle in terms of a continuing seat of government, if only nominally.”
“Are you not finding it strange to be working in this environment?”
“What environment?”
“In the same corridors and rooms where so many people were held prisoner during the
communism, probably they are being interrogated and tortured. Are there no phantoms?”
“Well, no. It’s really very civilised. The policemen are all very friendly.”
“I am thinking that Auntie Eva would not be agreeing with you, Harry Ballantyne.” For a
moment Honza stared off into the distance, just enough for Harry to notice, but before she could
question the pain she’d sensed in his eyes his face became as animated as before. “They are talking to
you much?”
“Yes. They like to practice their English. And they ask me lots of questions about life in the
west. Particularly in the US, which of course I know next to nothing about, except for what I’ve seen
on telly, but they seem fascinated with the glamour and the glitz of it all. You know, all that Men in
Black stuff.”
“You would also if communism has been dominating your life until you are growing up.”
“I suppose so. But it’s a concept that’s so anathema to a westerner’s existence that I find it
hard to imagine what it must have been like.”
19
“All you are needing to imagine is how you are feeling if you are having your cultural identity
overlaid by morons who are having no culture at all. I think you are already understanding the
historical principles of the subjugation our nations have been forced to accept, Harry Ballantyne. It is
really little different now. We are reveling in our freedom. We are wanting to be trying all things from
the west because that is where civilisation is looking like it is coming from.”
“That’s why this exhibition is so important. The Moravian gold represents more than just
heritage. It’s a backward glance at a time when the Czech State was still in formation and still very
much in control of its own destiny. Still deciding things for itself, like what brand of Christianity it
would choose, what influences it would allow in, which people it would mix with. It doesn’t just
represent a thousand years of political history. The Moravian gold represents the freedom the Czech
State once had in its infancy and the current freedom it now has to become a political player on the
world stage once more.” Harry had the feeling that her words were expressing a little more than she
felt, but she had let herself get carried away on a tide of beer and high spirits and it all sounded good as
it came out so she just carried on. She couldn’t remember ever enjoying that journey quite so much
before.
“So, Harry Ballantyne, what part are you playing in this celebration of Czech nationhood?
What are you working on that’s so firing up your heart? I am expecting that it’s something you are
enjoying very much.”
“Well, all this stuff that we already have … the Moravian artefacts that’ve already been dug up
… they’ve only ever been analysed with a certain rationale in mind, like how they could prove the
beginnings of the Czech State and strengthen the present idea of nationalism. But no one’s ever really
looked at the context from which they came, namely graves in cemeteries, and studied them for what
they can tell us. At least not as extensively as I’d like to. High status burials in and around hillforts
can tell us loads of stuff about how the new Czech State progressed in its early life. And that’s what
I’m interested in, what I’ll be doing in my re-interpretations with my students this summer.”
“What kind of stuff are you telling from these old graves?”
“Things like how wealth increased when the Moravians arrived from their newly toppled
empire. How Christianity was more of a political tool than a belief system rigidly adhered to in its
early adoption. How inheritance patterns kept things out of graves and still in use for several
generations. How there was no apparent need to scrimp on burial costs for conservation of resources.
How the expression of status continued to be a big thing. And that’s just for starters.”
“Okay, Harry Ballantyne, I am getting the picture. Even if I am not understanding how these
things are possible to tell.” Honza looked strangely thoughtful, as if he were indeed really interested.
Harry was much more used to strangers glazing over at that point in any discussion of what her work
involved. “It is seeming like the Czechs are owing a lot of things to these Moravians without their
empire. I am hoping they were gracious enough to be saying thank you to them.”
“Well, I’m thankful to them, if only for leaving us such a wonderful legacy in gold. It’s a
particularly good choice because it preserves so well in archaeological contexts. You should see the
beautiful little trinkets they liked to make. Little gold relic boxes with stunning granulated patterns.
20
Buttons and beads and baubles to die for. Earrings you’ve never seen the like of. All with this
distinctive granulated patterning so reminiscent of Byzantine craftsmen.”
“Oh, yes, Harry Ballantyne. I’m believing you. Really I am.”
“I’m sorry. All this must sound very boring to the uninitiated.”
“I am seeing that you are much enjoying your work. That is being plain to me.”
“Is it? I’m not sure I even want to be an archaeologist any more. I do have a profound love of
medieval history. But I think I’m a bit stuck in a rut, not knowing how, if at all, to get out, or even if
I’d have the guts to.”
“This I am not believing, Harry Ballantyne.” Honza folded his arms and shook his head
sombrely. Harry got the distinct impression that he was teasing her again, although there did seem to
be more than a grain of sense in what he said next: “No, Harry Ballantyne is being an archaeologist
whether she is liking it or not!”
*
When they emerged from the bus several hours later Honza went his way, politely, and Harry went
hers, stiffly. She watched him cross the bus station as she got in line for a taxi. A tall, willowy woman
in her sixties with big hair, and lots of sparkling jewellery that looked distinctly kitsch from that
distance, ushered him into a parked car. It was a sleek black car with blacked out windows. It moved
away at some speed as soon as the doors were closed. Harry wasn’t expecting to ever see him again,
although she had enjoyed his company very much indeed. She felt as if she had undergone several
hours of extremely useful therapy and there was a spring in her step that her stiff legs had difficulty
keeping up with, until she got into the first available taxi and sat back down.
She felt alive. She felt more alive than she could ever remember having felt before, even
when she had committed her one outrageous act of rebellion. That had left her feeling slightly more
alive than she usually felt, more noticeable; it had quickened her blood until she could feel it racing in
her veins, a little. Now she felt as if her body was made of pure adrenaline, as if nobody could fail to
notice her. She felt empowered. And the further out from the centre of the city the cab took her, the
more empowered she felt. By the time it dropped her off at the Státek in Bohnice, somewhere in
Prague 9, she felt as if she could almost walk on water if so required to do. Luckily she wasn’t.
The Státek was a very old building owned by the Archeologicky Ustav in Prague. A kind of
historical farmstead enclosed by a high wall, with a large tiled barn at one end, a house and
outbuildings at the other and crops and gardens in between. No more than an acre in all, it was of great
historical interest, a monument in its own right, used by the Institute to put visiting archaeologists up
in, and it was considered a rare privilege to stay there. Visiting students stayed in the university halls
of residence. They were like huge concrete hostels five storeys high, so different to the pretty,
traditional layout of the Státek. Harry had stayed in both. As an undergrad she’d done her fieldwork
there and stayed in the hostel-type halls. Every time since, she’d been lucky enough to stay in the
Státek. And she loved it. Every year she wondered if she’d be lucky enough to take another team back
to the castle, and every year but two she had been. But she’d never felt quite so excited about her work
as she did now. Today the Státek seemed especially beautiful under clear blue skies.
21
She let herself in through the small side gate, locking it again behind her, and walked
alongside the wall of the house and around the corner to the padlocked outer door. She had the padlock
key poised to open up … but it wasn’t locked.
The heavy, wooden door was thrown wide open. She could see the spiral staircase easily.
“Hello, Harry,” a familiar voice called from somewhere up above. “Thought I heard someone
coming through the gate. Glad it’s you and not some stranger I’ve got to share with.”
“Tom!” Harry shrieked in delight as she threw her head back to view the balcony above the
door. “Why are you here? Oh, never mind. Am I glad to see you! I’ve got so much to tell you.” She
darted up the spiral stone staircase as rapidly as anyone carrying several bags of luggage can, dropped
her load at the top and ran to the balcony where Tom greeted her with open arms and a big hug.
Once they were both settled in wicker chairs on the balcony in the late afternoon sunshine,
Tom poured her a glass of wine from his half-finished bottle. “So, tell me his name,” he demanded
with a menacing smile.
“There is no him!” Harry replied indignantly. “Why ever should you think there might be?”
“Because I’ve never seen you looking so radiant before. That can only mean you’ve got
yourself a man. Or is it a woman?” The smile broadened into a grin.
“You’re wrong. Very wrong. On both counts.”
“Okay. So, tell me what it is that’s making you look so pink and alluring.”
“Well, I did meet this really nice Moravian bloke on the bus, but before you say anything,
there was no hint of romantic involvement. He was just good to talk to. A good listener. Although he
was actually quite good-looking, in a young, dark Moravian sort of a way.”
“I knew it. Harry, you’re such a sucker for a pretty young face.”
“How can you say that? After all the years you’ve known me…” Harry’s voice rose by
several octaves and she flung her hands around in remonstration “…you of all people should know—”
“And after all the years you’ve known me you of all people should know when your leg is
being remorselessly pulled.”
“Oh. I never was much good at that one, was I?”
“Drink up! You get better at it with every glass.”
“Mutley did that thing he does again, you know.”
“What thing’s that?”
“You know, being a total arsehole the night before I leave college and virtually breaking our
friendship off for the whole summer. He’ll be fine once the autumn term starts again. Always is.’
‘Have you not managed to figure out why he does that yet? I mean, apart from mere
manifestation of his good archaeologist, crap person traits.”
“No, but I suppose you’re going to tell me?”
“He’s mad about you, Harry. Always has been. Ever since the day we all started at the
Institute and he saw how you handled your trowel.”
“Now you really are pulling my leg.”
“Actually, now I’m really telling you the truth. What surprises me is that you’ve never
realised it. Why d’you think he and I don’t get along?”
22
“What are you talking about, Tom?”

“He and I don’t get along because we both had serious crushes on you in the first year. We
had to flip a coin to decide which one of us got to take you to the Christmas ball and he’s never
forgiven me for calling heads first on his double-sided Roman fake. Didn’t know I knew about it.”
“Why have you never told me any of this before?”
“Never seemed the right time. Always either too many people around, or it just never came up
in conversation, like it ever would. Hadn’t had quite so much to drink? I don’t know. Ask me
another!”
“But you’ve only had half a bottle now. Not exactly alcoholic poisoning time.”
“Maybe I never got over my crush either.”
“And maybe now you really are pulling my leg.”
“And maybe you’re right,” Tom said cryptically, almost in a whisper. “And maybe you’re not.
Now, are you ever going to tell me about this bit of fluff you met on the bus?”
Harry glanced down into her glass, not sure whether to laugh, blush or cry. She too had had a
crush on Tom in their first year as undergraduates. She hadn’t flipped a coin to decide whether or not
to accompany him to that ball, Roman or otherwise, but she had been cured of her crush by the end of
the evening. His had been one of the passionless kisses she’d experienced that she’d not bothered to
follow up on. She was not intending to start following up now. Tom Paris was considered quite a catch
during their undergrad days, always elusively mysterious and lurking modestly behind his good looks.
Harry though he looked a lot like Richard Gere. But there was no chemistry there; never had been.
“He wasn’t a bit of fluff. He was a kind and sensitive young man who managed to make me laugh and
feel good about myself. And let’s face it, precious few have ever done that. How did you know it was
a double-sided coin?”
“Watched him mint it in an archaeo-metallurgy practical when he didn’t know I was looking,”
Tom grinned. “What was so special about this Moravian geezer, then?”
“He made me focus on what makes me tick … I think. He was asking me what I do. I said I
didn’t know whether or not I ever really wanted to be an archaeologist, and after listening to me
describing the re-interpretations of the Moravian stuff and the exhibition, he assured me that I did.
Simple as that. He made me realise that I do too.”
“And were you ever really in any doubt about that?”
“Well, I never realised that I could be passionate about it. I never get passionate about the
work I do in college.”
“So maybe it’s just a Prague thing?”
“No, it’s more than that. Mutley said some pretty strange things to me that night before I left
London, things that got me thinking. My travelling companion just gave me the opportunity to figure
some of it out. It’s all pretty abstract as yet. I’m not even sure what any of it means, let alone if any of
it makes sense. But I do feel as if I’m on the threshold of finding out.”
“What sort of things was Mutley saying then?”
“It all started with another one of those peculiar dreams I have sometimes.”
23
“What, like the one where you dreamt about the pub underneath the Carmelite convent a week
before you’d ever even been to Prague—”
“And the décor and layout were exactly as they’d been in the dream, yes.”
“That was spooky. When you told me what it was like inside then made me go in to clock the
place while you sat on the steps outside—”
“And it was identical to my description?”
“Yeah, that was freaky.”
“What d’you make of this one then?”
She described the dream in which Tom Cruise had played such a large part, in which he’d
made the impossible look merely difficult.
“Wow, that’s some subconscious meandering! So what did Mutley the Oracle have to say
about it?”
“Oh, he said I should forget all about Jesus and give myself to the SAS.”
“Sex Appreciation Society?”
“You know about that one too? Is there anything you two didn’t share in the days when you
still spoke to each other?”
“It’s an oldie, but it’s a goodie. Is that all he said?”
“No. He said he wished I’d lighten up and get laid. Presumably he meant by him.” Her face
clouded over as she remembered that awful conversation in the least favourite of her Bloomsbury
supper haunts. Then she remembered an earlier conversation. “He said I was looking for Mr
Impossible, that Tom Cruise was acceptable because he’s real, but if Ethan Hunt was my psyche’s
projection of perfection I had problems because he didn’t exist in anything other than my mind. Or
something like that anyway. He couldn’t tell me why there were two of those soaker-upper thingies
though, and I think there’s more than an element of importance attached to them or they wouldn’t stand
out so clearly. What do you think?”
“I think you’re both barking. But I still love you as much as I hate him.”
Harry ignored him. “Don’t you think there’s anything in it then, the dream?”
“Yes. Psychic energy! It follows you around. Always has. I do think getting laid would
help.”
“Well, tough. Why does everyone think that sex is all there is to life?”
“What, you mean it isn’t?”
“Sex should be something beautiful that blesses a good marriage. It’s something that a man
and a woman should mutually enjoy as husband and wife. It’s not a toy to be played with at every
opportunity and with whoever’s willing.”
“Oh, Harry. You’re beautiful when you’re angry.”
“And you’re funny when you’re drunk.”
“You just haven’t found the right person. But I’m sure you’ll feel different when you do. And
I’m not drunk!”
“Why does everyone think I’m looking. I’m not, you know.”
“Everyone is, subconsciously. Your psychic energy knows.”
24
*
Psychic energy indeed! What did Tom know of these matters? He was a good prehistoric
archaeologist, knew his upper paleolithic from his late neolithic better than anyone else she knew, and
he was far more charismatic than Mutley, better with people. But she still considered him to know
about as much as she did about relationships, and that was very little. He’d played around, even gone
steady for a while with a pretty young Czech archaeologist, until she’d tried to drag a more lasting
commitment out of him. He’d worked in Prague for the Archeologicky Ustav ever since he’d
graduated. Unlike Harry and Mutley, he’d gone straight into practical archaeology and forsaken the
further lure of the doctorate. He and Harry had worked together in Prague on their undergraduate
fieldwork, he’d just extended his and made it his whole working life, while she had gone back to
college the following term and carried on studying. She wondered if he was right about it being a
Prague thing. She always felt so much more alive there than she did in London. Not as alive as she
felt now, mind.
Tom had given her his car for the day, while he stayed home to catalogue some small finds, he
said. She hadn’t seen much evidence of his work, and she’d wondered why he was there in the house
of the itinerants at all. He’d said something about a girl and needing to maintain anonymity that she
hadn’t believed, then chucked her the car keys before she could question him further. Something
wasn’t right with him, almost like he was in hiding, but she had too much to think about to worry about
it. Still, it was unlike him to be quite so generous with his prize possession; his custom-built US
imported blue metallic jeep. That was Tom’s style: turn up on site in something as outrageous as it was
practical, with the top down of course.
Harry had the top down herself that morning. The sun was shining and there was less of a
haze hanging over the city than usual. As she drove past the Zoological Gardens high up on its
geological shelf she witnessed for the first time that summer the wonderful sight of the whole of Prague
shimmering in light morning mist and sunshine in the wide valley below. The breeze worked her hair
free from its braid as she drove down the wide sweeping hill towards Holešovice bus station. She kept
pushing it back from her face as she crossed the river Vltava and headed for Mariánské. As she turned
into Prague Castle Bridge a large black limousine with dark-tinted windows drove slowly across her
path, blocking her progress. The driver’s window was wound down and if she hadn’t known better she
would have sworn Tom Cruise was at the wheel. He smiled at her as he rolled past. She could see the
gold in his teeth.
As she drove along behind the limousine she wondered who might be in the back. The
president maybe? The limousine preceded her, very slowly, into the Castle Police car park and
disappeared out of sight into an off-limits area behind a security gate, out of bounds to lesser mortals
such as herself. The gate shut automatically behind it.
A stone bridge with heavy wooden planking spanned a deep mote. Steep grassy banks fell
menacingly away on either side as Harry crossed. She was just tall enough to see over the thick walls.
The thought of her recent encounter played over in her mind’s eye. So like Tom Cruise, he’d been.
Was he following her out of her dreams and into every day life? She imagined the driver of the
limousine trussed up in mountaineering gear, abseiling down the natural bank of the mote, landing with
25
a plonk in the sharp vee at the bottom with a comical look of thwarted heroism on his face. No.
Definitely not Tom Cruise. She couldn’t suppress the giggle that erupted involuntarily as she continued
on past the two Palace Guards standing so still on either side of the north gate. Had one of them
broken with tradition and actually winked at her?
Familiar flags under her feet felt good. Better than usual, she thought, as she noticed that
same lightness that had been in her step when she got off the bus, like she was noticing what it was to
be alive for the first time. Past the darkly Gothic exterior of St Vitus’ cathedral and down the narrow
street beside it she walked, her enthusiasm mounting. She couldn’t wait to see her first view of St
George’s Square, the Basilica on its far side and the Palace on its left side. And in the diagonally
opposing corner, tucked unobtrusively away under its huge circular entrance vault, the door to the
offices the unit shared with the once secret and foreboding Castle Police.
“Ahoj, Doctori Ballantynova! Jak se mate?” a policeman behind the security desk asked her
in Czech as she breezed down the nine stone steps into the entrance hall. She remembered him well
from previous years as one she had been on good terms with. He was obviously pleased to see her as
his bright eyes and wide grin testified.
“I’m good, thanks, Martin. How are you?” she answered in rather rusty Czech that would
hopefully soon be in much better working order.
“Yes, I also am okay. How long you are staying here? The whole summer as usual?”
“Yes, the whole summer,” she grinned in return. “And there will be more students coming
later too.” She promised to give him their names before they were due to arrive and he let her pass into
the labyrinth of 18th-century corridors that wound themselves throughout the many floors built
vertically into the side of the mountain the castle was perched upon. From the town far below the
windows of these offices looked like endless rows of imposing order and officialdom, like many
soulless and watchful eyes of a towering state. From inside, the town, old bits and new, seemed to
sprawl freely, creating pockets of civilisation that nestled easily in the snakelike meanderings of the
dominant Vltava. It always seemed something of a paradox to Harry that Prague Castle, as the seat of
government, where matters of national security had for so many centuries been protected from atop
such a well-placed naturally defensible geological outcrop, should so recently have become so terrible
a symbol of destruction.
On the third floor down the side of the mountain, and around at least one bend that followed
its contours, a scream of recognition greeted her. “Harry! So pleased dat you are here.” She had
reached the door to her boss’s office. Josef Trochta’s English was almost as embarrassing as his hug.
She was hoping, hope upon hope, that no one else would do the same and hug her too. It was a vain
hope. It always was. They were all always so pleased to see her that she had to endure hugs from
everyone. Language was the only disparate greeting issue. “Everyone waits to greet you.”
And, sure enough, as Josef led her out of his office and into the lab where finds were
conserved and reconstructed everyone did indeed wait to greet her.
Alena Justova and Eliška Beranova, two young ladies with large aspirations, who held Harry’s
London degrees in the highest esteem, were the first to greet her with the customary hug. Harry often
26
wondered if without such good credentials they would even pretend to like her or bother to treat her
with such professional deference.
To add further embarrassment to the proceedings Alena, just finishing her masters at the
Charles University in Prague, and younger than Harry by a few years, kissed her on each cheek too. “I
am so glad to see you again, Harry. I hope we will work together a lot this summer. We have much
planned.” She spoke in Czech. Her English was at best very patchy and it was easier for her to talk to
Harry in her native tongue. She knew Harry well enough to know that she understood.
“Just wait and see how much there is to do!” Eliška, still in the middle of a PhD at the
Sorbonne in Paris and back in Prague for the summer, spared her at least the kisses and stopped at a
brief hug. Her English, like her French, was superb and she never missed an opportunity to prove it to
the others on Harry. “You’ll wish you’d stayed in London!”
The unit’s matronly secretary, Sibyla Havlova, went for the whole works, hugs, kisses and a
mussing of Harry’s hair, which heaped indignity heavily upon the embarrassment. “It is good to see
you Harry. Your pretty face brightens up our dull little office and gives me something new and
different to look at.” She fussed around Harry in a motherly way she was very unused to. In that way
that always made her feel extremely uncomfortable, that Harry could never anticipate getting used to,
and that made her feel more like a fairground attraction than an intelligent woman. Sybila did that to
everyone she liked. Harry always hoped she’d fall out of favour one year, but never seemed to. The
thought that she perhaps just wasn’t trying hard enough had often crossed her mind, but she was
usually far too busy to make it reality.
She was introduced to various Czech students, there for a week or two on work experience,
and other diggers she’d known from previous years said their hellos to her, thankfully with handshakes
rather than hugs.
The rest of the day was spent in familiarisation chats with Josef, Alena and Eliška.
They talked of the plans for the Moravian exhibition, how Harry and her team of students
would be responsible for looking more closely at the documented evidence of the existing archaeology.
How they would be subjecting it to new techniques of analysis and hopefully coming up with some
new interpretations by the time they went back to London. There were three areas in which these old
excavations could be re-evaluated and by the end of the day Harry had concrete plans for her motley
crew in relation to all of them. She would split them into two groups. One group would work in the
crypt of the cathedral re-drawing its predecessor’s foundations. The other group would investigate its
existing foundations from the outside. She would study the old finds, site plans and reports and try to
come up with new and exciting ideas about status and statehood using the Moravian gold in its in situ
context.
By the time she left the office and crossed St George’s Square once more, she thought she had
it all so neatly sewn up that even the straggling six couldn’t muck it up. Her mind was on her work.
What happened next jolted her out of her comfortable and intelligible world and jettisoned her further
into the wilderness that had been encroaching upon her.
As she approached the jeep, triggering the automatic removal of the roof with a sensor on the
key ring, she noticed something small, round and white stuck on the windscreen, held in place by the
27
blade of the wiper. As she got closer she could see that it had scalloped edges and that something was
written on it. Her heart beat wildly as she reached for the kind of soaker-upper thingie she usually
found between her cup and its saucer in the many naff Italian coffee bars she hung out in all too
frequently. The kind of soaker-upper thingie she had all too many surreal questions about already. Was
this anything to do with psychic energy, she wondered?
Her hand was shaking as she reached out to release the little circle of paper from the
windscreen wiper’s grasp. Time nearly stood still. A thousand violins starting ringing in her ears as
Harry read what was written on the rather pathetic soaker-upper thingie. They screeched to a sudden
halt and reality kicked in as she read in not terribly sophisticated Czech. I’m the driver of the
limousine and you’re gorgeous. Ring me on my mobile if you want to go for a drink. There was a
phone number scribbled on the bottom of the note.
“Oh for heaven’s sake!” she exclaimed crossly. For the second time within twenty-four hours
Harry didn’t know whether to laugh, blush or cry. “What is the matter with everyone this summer?
Have all the men in the world gone completely bonkers? Or is it just the ones I meet?”
“This is being archaeologist thing? Or anyone can be joining in?” The Czech-accented voice
came from behind her. Too close for comfort, as she stood with the little round paper thing in her hand
exclaiming angrily at it. The voice continued, “What is being bonkers?”
Harry reeled sharply, turning a hundred and eighty degrees on herself, almost sitting on the
bonnet of the jeep. If she’d possessed pistols they would have been drawn. She had horrible visions of
gold teeth flashing before her memory and was ready for an extremely violent confrontation, at least
verbally.
Anger seethed through her gritted teeth as she turned. She could feel her hair fly loose from
its braid with the force. The little round soaker-upper was gripped tightly in her fist. She made every
effort to control herself. Public scenes were not her thing. She couldn’t bring herself to look at the
man. Her eyes started at his feet. She hoped she would be calm by the time they met his face.
Definitely not Tom Cruise. This was David Duchovny double incarnate.
Gucci shoes. Not what she would have expected of a chauffeur who bragged quite so publicly
about his new post-communist toys. Understated elegance of perfectly laundered Armani took the sting
out of her anger, relaxed the grip of her jawline. Could this really be him? A silk tie hung loosely at
an open collar, tanned skin and a clean-shaven chin. Her fists softened as she recognised this face. She
breathed in gulps of relief. She began to feel unsteady on her legs and despite the early evening
warmth a shiver tingled through her body. The little round soaker-upper fluttered to the ground.
Alarms bells went off in her soul.
He bent to pick it up for her, his shoulder softly brushing her leg. She could smell his after-
shave as he stood back up. She shivered again and realised that her mouth had fallen open just in time
to shut it again before he looked at her. “Dis is what makes you going bonkers?” He looked at the
writing on the coffee mat and laughed. “I am knowing dis…how you say…imbecile? Yes, yes,
imbecile. You are being too good for dis type of man. I am glad to be seeing you back here again, Dr
Ballantyne.”
“You are? Er…I mean…thank you. It’s good to be back again. “I’m sorry, but—”
28
“But you are not remembering my name? Dat’s okay, we meet only briefly summer last. I am
admiring you from afar for long time. You are good archaeologist. I am hearing about you. I am Karel
Svatoš.”
“Of course,” Harry answered, hoping that something would fall into place in her memory
before too many more precious seconds had elapsed. It did. “Your office is close to my boss’s.
Communications. Castle Police. Am I close?”
“Dat was before. Now I am being promoted to bodyguard of President.”
“That would explain the Men in Black routine.” Harry couldn’t quite believe she’d said that
and fumbled over an apology that only seemed to make matters worse. “Sorry…um—”
“Men in Black. Yes, we are…how you are saying…going in for the overkill. The President is
liking for us to be blending in with the CIA. Nice jeep, by the way.”
Harry laughed. Men didn’t often make her laugh. Pull her hair out, shout, stamp her feet, but
seldom laugh. She liked his sense of humour. She wondered why she hadn’t really noticed him the
previous summer.
“So, Dr Ballantyne, are you still liking Czech beer?”
“Well, yes, but how—”
“How am I knowing dat you are liking Czech beer?”
“Well, yes.”
“I am hearing you speak to your friends when you are not knowing dat I am hearing.”
His accent sounded so rounded and soft, like it had velvet edges. She had never known her
own language to give her goose bumps and make her shiver in quite such a way. She certainly did not
understand how he did it, or even what it was that he did that made her feel like that. “I see,” she
replied rather ineffectually.
“So, Dr Ballantyne, are you drinking some Czech beer with me?”
She was so stunned that there was no time to prepare an answer. “Yes,” she said limply. “Of
course.”
“Dis is good,” he replied taking her hand. “I must working now. I am finding you soon.
Goodbye, Dr Ballantyne.”
“Please. Call me Harry.” He still had her hand in his. The effect was electrifying.
“Okay. Goodbye Harry.”
And he was gone.
Harry found herself staring at his back as he disappeared in the direction she had so recently
come from. As he rounded the corner of the car park, its gate blocking him from further scrutiny, her
gaze gradually adjusted and she found herself staring at the space he had occupied in front of her. She
leaned against the jeep for a few moments until a long black limousine slid into view where her last
glimpse of Karel’s back had been. She came to her senses, dived into the driver’s seat before the driver
of the limo could spot her and shot off as he hurled a volley of honks at her from his horn.
*
“The whole world seems to have gone absolutely crazy!” Harry expounded to Tom with excessive
flailing of arms in demonstration. She had thought about it on the drive home. So much so that she’d
29
reached Bohnice without paying any attention to any of her favourite landmarks along the way. They
seemed now to fit into a crazy pattern that just kept on getting crazier, all these strange things. First
there’d been Mutley’s strange behaviour, which she’d never noticed in previous years. Honza’s over-
keen attentiveness on the bus. What Tom had said about Mutley. What Tom had said about Tom! The
driver of the limousine’s outrageous display of the common male’s idea of a courtship ritual, ending in
a form of explanation for at least one of the soaker-upper thingies. And hadn’t Karel actually asked her
out for a drink? Now that one was subtle. How did she feel about that? How did she feel about any of
it? It all seemed to her like an elaborate kind of wake up call. She wasn’t sure that she wanted to be
awoken. “Well, the male part of it anyway.”
“Relax, Harry. Sit down. Take the weight off your brain. Let me pour you a Campari,
massage your shoulders and lull you into a sense of –”
“Shutup, Tom!” She shrugged hard to throw his hand off her shoulder as he attempted to rest
it there. “Listen to this!”
Harry retold her version of strange occurrences fitting it all into its newly formed patterning.
“Why is all of this happening to me?” She held her hands up in frustration, then buried her
face in them as she sat down at the table, deflated. “What have I done that’s so different? And why
now?”
“Harry, this energy has always been there. At least its potential has. Lying latent, dormant,
waiting. You’ve just never noticed it before. You are a powerhouse of sexual energy waiting to be
tapped. I’ll willingly help you to find a channel for it if you like. Even if you don’t like.”
“Tom, why are you being like this? You’ve never talked this much crap to me before? Is
there something I should know about? Are you on drugs? Bout of schizophrenia you forgot to
mention? ”
“No. We’ve never shared a house before. I’ve never had you all to myself before. That’s it.”
“Try a little harder you might even convince yourself you know what you’re talking about, but
you won’t convince me.” She stared pensively up at the beamed ceiling resting her chin in her hand
and almost forgot that Tom was there. “What d’you make of the coffe mat thing? I mean is that
spooky, or is that spooky? Out of the realms of dreamland and straight into nightmare territory, I’d
say.”
“And you’d probably be an idiot to see anything other than coincidence. What d’you make of
this Karel bloke? You won’t actually go out for a drink with him, will you?”
“And why on earth shouldn’t I?”
“Because he’s a plod?”
“He’s not a plod! He’s ex-secret police.”
“And that’s any better, is it?”
“President’s bodyguard.”
“Just means he’s a plod with attitude.”
“Are you jealous?”
“Don’t turn this back on me! It’s just not a good idea to be going out drinking with coppers in
this country.”
30
“Why?”
“Don’t have a particularly good rep. Group of people hated by most other groups of people.
Except gypos of course. Sly, snide, slimy. Do I need to go on?”
“No. You can stop right there and get off your soapbox. I’m going to phone Erica. For a
sensible answer.”
Harry felt disgruntled. Had she stopped to think about it she might have wondered why. She
stood up from the table and flounced off towards her bedroom, picking up her leather satchel bag from
the door where she’d left it. “Where are you, phone?” She rummaged in the bottom of the bag for a
few seconds before withdrawing her mobile. “Bugger! I’ve got no reception.”
“Go outside,” Tom shouted, “It’s okay in the middle of the garden. I got three bars earlier.”
She went outside.
Grass tickled her ankles as she strode out to the middle.
“Rickie! It’s me! Harry. Can you phone me back?”
Erica rang back.
“What’s the crack then, H?” Erica…Rickie…was the only one who could get away with that.
She had been Harry’s first friend on her first day at her first school. They’d held hands in the
playground then. Metaphorically they still held hands now. Harry was the only one who could get
away with calling her Rickie. “Is he good-looking?”
“Is who good-looking?”
“Oh, so there is a who then! You normally say bloody gorgeous or bloomin’ awful. You never
say who!”
Harry told her what the crack was, briefly, and her interpretation of it, which was warping
with every re-telling. As she got to the bit about noticing a recurring pattern she finished with a
question, “So, what d’you think of that?”
“I repeat the question, “Is he good-looking?”
“Think X Files, think David Duchovny, and you tell me.”
“You watch too much telly. I reckon that’s why you never hold on to a bloke. You expect too
much.”
“That’s what Mutley said. You’re not going to tell me you like the idea of inhabiting the same
planet as him after all, are you?” Rickie and Mutley had met on several occasions. Sparks had flown
on all of them. Harry usually tried to keep as much distance as possible between the two of them.
There were times when this was impossible. Her twenty-first birthday party was one such. Harry and
Mutley’s academic histories had been written on parallel pages, so her graduation ceremonies had been
others such. “And I don’t hold onto them because they don’t interest me.”
“Mutley and I could co-exist quite nicely together as long as one of us was bound and gagged,
preferably him. And they don’t interest you because you don’t give them a chance.”
“Wrong. I don’t give them a chance because they don’t excite me.”
“Aha. Now we’re getting to the truth. And this David Duchovny bloke does.”
“I didn’t say that. I don’t know yet. And his name’s Karel.”
31
“Yes you do, H. Describe that feeling to me again! You know, the bit where he picked up the
naff git’s note. The delicious shudder that electrified your whole body as he brushed against you. I
know you, Harriet Ballantyne. You’ve found passion for the first time in your life and you’re not sure
how to deal with it. You’ll deny it, of course, try to stay just friends with him because you don’t know
how to handle anything else. But sooner or later you’ll have to admit it. Or lose it. Are you prepared
to let something you want so badly slip through your fingers just because it scares you?”
“Rickie, what are you talking about?”
“Life, H. I’m talking about life. Possibly…probably…hopefully I’m talking about love too.”
“I suppose it’s too much to ask for any thoughts on the dream?” Harry wished that Rickie
wouldn’t do this to her every year, this broody, best-friend, match-making type thing. Just because she
was happily married to a successful stockbroker, who provided more than adequately for her and their
two beautiful little blonde children, who caved in with a smile to her every whim. Why did she feel it
gave her the right to expect Harry to fall into the same mold, to settle for the beautiful house in rural
Sussex and the freedom to write endless romantic novels while the nanny took the kids to play-school
and did the shopping? “You must have some dream scenes in at least one of your bodice-ripping
plots.”
“Well, yes, actually I do. But, H, they’re just make-believe, pure fantasy written for bored
housewives like me who have more spare time than they can handle and who need a bit of spice in their
dull routines. It’s not real. If you’re asking me to tell you whether there’s a significance, if it carries
portent, then I’d have to agree with Tom’s diagnosis: it’s just coincidence. Nothing more. Don’t nag it
to death until it becomes real!”
“Bored housewife? You? Wait ‘til I tell Robbie he’s invested his hard-earned cash in the
whim of a bored housewife!” Harry thought about the passion Rickie had for her work, the research
she put into her particular brand of historical romance, and the effort both she and Robbie had put into
getting her published. It was typical of Rickie to be so self-effacing about her success, but it always
made Harry laugh to hear it. No one could ever say of Erica Johnson that success had gone to her head.
“Seriously, H. If he’s got you as fired up as I think he has, then go for it. Give it all you’ve
got. Don’t hang around and wait for the next one. There might not be another.”
“Next you’ll be telling me to get laid too.” Harry had begun to sulk. She wasn’t getting the
answers she wanted from Rickie either. What answers did she want? Did she really expect them?
“No, I’d never do that to you. I can’t say I’m surprised Tom did. I’ve always known he was
carrying a secret torch. The way he watches you when he thinks no one’s looking. Gives the game
away every time. Amazing he’s held out this long before coming on to you. But he doesn’t appreciate
the finer points of what makes you you. Can’t exactly imagine him on his knees with a prayer book, if
you know what I mean.”
“But why now? Why are they coming out of the woodwork, like rats from a sinking ship?”
“Good analogy. But, sweetie, they’ve always been there. You’ve just never noticed them
before. Never been ready to notice them. Tom’s not so far off with his psychic energy thing. I’d have
put it differently myself. Used words such as aura and projection, maybe even synchronicity, in the
32
same sentence. But it amounts to the same thing. You’re ready, darling. Whether you like it or not, it’s
your turn. Get used to it.”
Harry was not intending to get used to anything. She wrapped the phone call up as quickly as
she could. It cost her an invite later on in the summer. Just Rickie. No Robbie. No kids. She could
handle Rickie in the Státek for a week. She’d work on her laptop, argue with Tom, if he was still there
by that time, and Harry would be free to carry on with her work. No problem. If everything went
according to her neatly laid plans and she managed to suppress the Karel thing. She could. She would.
Tom was easy. No problems with delicious shudders that electrified her whole body as he
brushed up against her. He’d put away at least half a bottle more wine while she’d been in the garden
talking to Rickie. His amorous advances were becoming increasingly unsubtle, to the point of insult,
Harry thought. She resisted the urge to punch him in the face and went to her room to check her e-mail
instead.
One from the Doc with due felicitations; one from Karen Grimes to remind Harry that, shock,
horror, she still intended to arrive a week early, and would Harry mind very much picking her up from
the airport! And there was one from Mutley. An unusually contrite Mutley, apologising for being such
a pig on her last night in London and lodging his intention to honour his debt and visit her later on in
the summer. She replied without much thought that, yes, that would be fine, but she’d believe it when
she saw him get off the bus, plane or train. So distracted was she that the thought of Mutley and Rickie
arriving together, or the effect of putting them both under the same roof with Tom, failed to trigger
vital alarm bells in her head.
Her last waking thoughts were of involuntary but very delicious shuddery feelings, which she
tried to displace by further wondering about Tom’s continued reluctance to go into the castle to work
and his even more worrying generosity with the jeep. Something was up with him. She’d have to do
some careful digging to unearth the foundations of whatever it was.
*
Tom let her have the jeep again. If that in itself wasn’t worrying enough, there were the comments.
“Quite a catch, that Tom.” It was Eliška. “Thought of cultivating the connection myself, but
you know what it’s like. Studying in Paris. Only here in Prague for the holidays. Long distance
relationships never work, do they? Still, shame about his current misfortunes.” Harry caught these
snippets of Eliška’s conversation, realising that she was meant to. The only other person whose
English was good enough to understand was Josef Trochta, and Harry knew that Eliška was far too
ambitious to be caught in flagrante with such a tasty morsel of gossip by him. So, who was she talking
to? A door was kicked shut. Harry obviously wasn’t about to find out.
She concentrated on plans for the arrival of the students. There was a lot to sort out. Old site
plans to put under the scrutiny of her trained archaeological eye; new excavations and redraftings of
them to organise. But the task Harry was most drawn to was the study of the Moravian gold found in
these sites and what it could tell her with the benefit of her modern eye. The gold itself was precious
and beautiful, delicately crafted with intricately granulated geometrical designs. Exquisite earrings and
tiny little relic boxes for the ladies, rings and buttons, pins and buckles for their men folk.
33
Laid out in front of her, like a pirate’s treasure, its wealth was staggering. Wealth of historical
fact; wealth of an opulence once possible in a young yet complex society eager to prove its worth on
the world’s stage. What were they like, these princes who commissioned such beauty? And their
women? How were their lives structured, travelling between Moravian and Bohemian courts as they
did? How deep was their grief at the passing of their own empire and the sharing of another yet newer
era? Was it the arrogance of youthful wealth and the desire to display it that spurred them on to their
defeat? Or simply a political manoeuvre or two that heralded their disaster? Whatever it was, Harry
could feel its truth crying out to be held up. She felt the privilege of being the one to rediscover it more
strongly than she’d ever felt anything. It burned in her heart and sparked off a deeper, more primeval
desire. She found her mind wandering and an unsolicited shudder crept up through her body, strongly,
pleasurably.
Moravian gold made her think of Karel?
She shelved the thought, and the impulse that caused it, with an immediacy that should have
scared her. Denial by nature goes unnoticed, but Harry pushed even the idea of denial away before she
had to deal with it and deny its existence.
Exhibitions were, in Harry’s estimation, hard work to arrange. Celebrating 1000 years of
statehood, then, had its down side for her: the curating side of the archaeological life was never one
that came easily to her. Digging things up was second nature to her; putting them in glass cases was
much more laborious and wasn’t a process she particularly enjoyed. It didn’t seem right to her to free
precious things from their private earthy confines just to imprison them once more behind glass. It
made her feel that by encasing the artefacts she was in some way taking away the dignity of their past.
And she didn’t like the responsibility. The only reason she had the task of arranging this one was
because she’d had more recent hands-on experience with the Moravian artefacts that were to provide
the opening display than anyone else. They were to be on show as representing not only the ideal of
nationhood which heralded the Czech state, but also the way in which that newly formed state
welcomed its Moravian brothers into its courts after the collapse of their own empire. It worried her
that she was the resident expert.
The more contact she had with the gold, the harder she had to work to control the impulse that
was rising within her. It was like nothing she’d experienced before and she was ill equipped to deal
with it. Continual denial would only work for so long, even she was aware of that. She figured that to
avoid the cause would avert the tragedy of a nasty accident, while also being acutely aware of Rickie’s
insistence that she should give in to the feeling and resolutely refusing to do so. Going with the flow
had never been Harry’s way: she preferred to gently sidestep it and create her own currents,
unobtrusively.
Avoiding the cause was easy, or so she thought. All she would have to do would be to stay out
of Karel’s way and hope that he didn’t come and find her. She’d never bumped into him casually in the
labyrinthine corridors of their shared offices more than once, to her knowledge, and didn’t anticipate
doing so on many more occasions than that now.
Then there were the other distractions that would keep her mind and associated shuddery
feelings off secret policemen. There were the students for whom she was preparing so much work.
34
Harry’s little brood of ugly ducklings, as she also liked to think of them, who were going to help her to
put together an altogether more accurate picture of life as a Moravian prince, complete with entourage.
Her perception of them would change. She knew that she was going to get to know them all well, grow
to celebrate the differences in their personalities rather than dread them. Jude Preston was the only
truly undefined quantity. She hoped and prayed that she wouldn’t turn out to be too much like Karen
for comfort.
By mid June Harry had completed the preparations for both the exhibition and her fieldwork.
And she’d only bumped into Karel once. He’d been as busy going in the opposite direction to her as
she had to him. They’d exchanged perfunctory pleasantries on the corner joining two corridors;
phrases full of promise that had made Harry cringe with familiar discomfort and hope that she never
bumped into him again. She drove Tom’s jeep home to Bohnice feeling satisfied and looking forward
to a restful weekend. She was tempted to ignore the shrilly intrusive noise that came from her handbag
as she rounded the corner past the zoological gardens that took her onto the long straight road to the
Statek. Of course, she could just keep driving and pretend she hadn’t heard it. And probably for that
precise reason she didn’t.
It was Karen. Karen at the airport, a week earlier than expected, demanding to be picked up.
It was the demand rather than the action itself that so readily found the post to which Harry’s goat was
tethered and worried at it quite so mercilessly. There was nothing she could do but turn the jeep around
and go, retrace her journey back from one of the most northerly of Prague’s suburbs, over the river and
back past the castle in order to reach one of its most westerly features. Her only hope was that there
was no hitch at the hostel she had booked.
Of course there was. She wasn’t supposed to arrive until the following Monday. There was
therefore no room at the inn until then. Harry couldn’t face the prospect of a whole weekend with the
large-bottomed Karen and her equally large sense of self-importance. So she spent the most part of a
beautifully warm and dreamy Friday night traipsing around all the other university hostels trying to
make stubbornly ignorant caretakers agree with her that it would be a very good idea to give Karen a
room in their establishment. None of them did. She had to do the least agreeable thing of all: take
Karen back to the Statek with her. All sense reeled against it. But what else could she do?
“I’m afraid you’re going to feel quite isolated out here,” Harry explained with a bit of quick
thinking while she pulled a couple of cold Czech beers out of the fridge, “because I’ve got plans for the
weekend, so I’m not actually going to be here much.” She prayed that Katka, or Roman and Julie
would help her out with an impromptu invite as soon as she managed to get to a phone alone to ask
them for one.
“Oh, don’t worry about me, Dr Ballantyne. I’m resourceful. Just point me in the right
direction, I’ll find some form of public transport and hit the sights.”
Hit the sights? Yes, that sounded like something only Karen could say. Harry found herself
hoping that she didn’t hit them too hard and had to suppress the resulting giggle. “Please, call me
Harry while we’re here! It’s not as if there’s anyone around to impress.”
“You can impress me if you like.” Tom came into the kitchen wearing very little and grinned.
Karen jumped back, almost spilling her beer. “Got any more o’ those?”
35
“You can have mine.’ Karen’s voice was uneven as she shoved the bottle into Tom’s hand and
shuffled quickly out of the kitchen towards the spare room. “I want to go to bed now anyway.
Goodnight, Dr…um…Harry.”
“Sorry, Tom,” Harry apologised after a suitable interval during which Karen disappeared.
“Had no choice but to bring her here. Bloody stupid hostel people. You know how it is.”
“’S okay. I can cope.”
“Well, then you’ll have to cope all weekend, because I’m out of here soon as I can arrange
somewhere to go.” She pulled out her mobile, cursed at it again for its lack of service and shot off up
the garden to where it would work.
“Chicken,” Tom called out to her back.
*
“But if she’s that much of a pain now,” Harry concluded, “I really don’t know how I’m going to put up
with her for the whole summer. The only saving grace will be not having to live with her after
Monday. It’s just something in her attitude. Can’t quite put my finger on it.”
“I know what you mean,” Julie agreed. “It’s just a kind of superciliousness that winds you
right up. I’ve had my fair share of Karens.” She nursed the baby while Roman rubbed her back.
It was an intimate scene of family life that would have left Harry feeling highly embarrassed
had she not known this particular family better than her own. Julie had been one of her best friends at
college along with Mutley and Tom. They had begun their lecturing career together, continued to do
fieldwork in Prague together year after year, then Julie had surprised them all by marrying one of her
colleagues in the environmental department of the Archeologicky Ustav. She had carried on with her
work for a couple of years, more for love than the money, then taken maternity leave. She was a good
environmental archaeologist. Her husband, Roman, was a good environmental archaeologist. They
were good parents too.
“Well, you are welcome to spend the day and night with us to avoid this Karen, but you must
pay the price of your lodging.” Roman’s English was near perfect, if a little formal, but his accent gave
him away with its lovely soft edges that made it sound like a language of romance. “You must tell us
all about this policeman Tom tells me you have met.”
“What’s he been saying?” Harry was a little outraged that he should have said anything at all.
But through indignation came an idea. “Okay, but only if you tell me what’s what with Tom!”
“It’s a deal then.”
Harry spent a very pleasant day and night with Roman Láska and Julie Láskova. She almost
entirely forgot about the monster who had driven her out of her temporary home, almost entirely forgot
about her strange encounters with the opposite sex and her shuddery feelings every time she wasn’t
forgetting about Karel.
On Sunday morning she left their apartment and went to mass at the big Carmelite church
she’d adopted as her own on Karmelitská. Jezulátko, the shrine of the Infant Jesus of Prague, which no
self-respecting Roman Catholic could pass by without entering and offering an unwonted act of piety.
Katka was there, much to Harry’s relief. Katerina Richterova, her sister in arms; yet another
lady with a brain and a family and too many tasks to perform.
36
The mad Italian friars, Father Mario Ciccone and Father Paolo Benedetto, were there too, and
Brother Pavel, Brother Petr and Brother Bohumil, Sister Marta, Sister Marenka and Sister Mlada. It
was a perennial reunion Harry always cherished. The love of her closest Czech friend and her
Carmelite family always made her feel warm inside, like she truly belonged with them.
“So, what was what with Tom, then?” Katka’s English was also near perfect. Her father had
brought her up to speak English at every opportunity and the experience had paid off; she worked as a
translator for the highest bidder. “Did Roman…what is that phrase…dishing the dirt?
“Well, yes, he did dish the dirt actually.” They sat in Katka’s kitchen. Harry had driven them
both there after mass, after the huge hugs of welcome reconciliation she had received from everyone
had ended. Katka’s house lay south of the city in the little village of Barandov, with its pretty little
church perched precariously on a sharp outcrop overlooking the city. Harry liked spending a lazy
Sunday afternoon there in the kitchen, watching the kettle boil on the range, catching up on all the
gossip. She’d already told Katka all about the dream and about Mutley and about the journey and
about the chauffeur. And about Karel. “Not that I understand what it’s all about, though.”
“So, spill!”
“Apparently he’s got himself into a very sticky situation over a Moravian girl. Jirina
Zelenkova, her name was, I think.”
“And of course you realise that Zelenkova is the feminine form of Zeleny? Maybe your
Honza has a wife stashed away in Brno he forgot to mention to you on the coach.”
“He wasn’t my Honza. And there was no reason why he should have declared his marital
status. But, anyway, there must be tons of people called by that name.” When she listened to herself
Harry realised that she was being far too defensive, without quite knowing why. She countered: “It
would make Tom’s present predicament more understandable if there was an angry husband baying for
his blood though, wouldn’t it? Especially one newly returned from somewhere far away for the
summer. I don’t think he’s been out of the Státek since I arrived, and it’s so well defended by the outer
wall that no one could get in, even if they did find out where he was.”
“Don’t you think maybe our imaginations are over-active this afternoon?”
“You could well be right, Katka,” Harry replied, laughing. Katka could always be relied on to
provide the voice of reason that tamed her own wildest suppositions.
“But what will you do about this Karel? He sounds too good to be true. You should snap him
up while he’s still going. My Tomaš was also too good to be true. He still is.” There was a twinkle in
her eye as she talked about her husband of ten years, a twinkle that transformed itself into round
laughter as she continued. “Despite the four children.”
37
Chapter Three
What would she do about Karel? Absolutely nothing, or so she thought.
For the next two weeks Karen followed Harry around like a dominant puppy dog, pushing her
nose into everything that wasn’t her business and getting invited out with all Harry’s archaeologist
friends. Networking, she called it. Harry called it downright rude; her friends called it hysterically
funny, and made notes in their palm top computers not to ever employ anyone with a behind that large
in case they got stuck in a trench and destroyed the archaeology.
Harry couldn’t wait for the others to arrive, the motley crew whose arrival she’d dreaded so
much before Karen had turned up. Surely Karen wouldn’t have to be shepherded everywhere she went
then. She could attach herself like glue to them instead. At least the hostel had got their act together
and recognised the booking she’d made for the girl without too much trouble. That at least spared
Harry the perpetual clinginess twenty-four hours a day.
Monday 4th July arrived, finally.
Harry left the Státek in Bohnice bright and early with an upbeat sense of anticipation that
pleased her. Tom still hadn’t surfaced further than the corner shop and the off-licence, which was
worrying. Today she gave it no further thought than that it enabled her to drive to work in the luxury
she was becoming all too accustomed to and would dread giving up when he did finally come out of his
strange self-imposed exile.
Karel. She was getting good at ignoring the butterflies that raced around her stomach every
time she thought of him. She was getting good at not thinking about him. She continued not thinking
about him all the way to the castle as she planned her Karen-free existence.
“Hey, Indiana.” The voice came from behind her. Footsteps brought it closer. Rapid
footsteps running down the old echoing corridor outside her office that caught her up before she had a
chance to dive for safety. She couldn’t remember exactly when he’d started calling her that, but she
knew all too well the weakness in her knees every time she heard him do so. It nearly floored her,
every time. She turned, bravely. “Hi, Indie,” he said intimately as he reached her side. As he smiled
down at her she noticed the way his eyes creased up at the corners and the dimples that appeared at the
edges of his mouth. Involuntarily, of course. “I am inviting you to my office after work this evening.
There is party for my birthday. All my friends are being there and you are one of my friends, so you
cannot refuse me?” He raised the tone of his voice at the end of his request in irrefutable question.
How could she refuse when he’d put it so politely yet insistently? One of his friends, huh?
That didn’t sound so bad. Maybe he would never even notice how she quivered in his presence and she
could melt into the background and go unnoticed. “Okay, I’ll be there. What time?”
“O’clock four.”
“You mean four o’clock.”
“Oh. Yes. That’s what I am meaning.” He laughed, quite able to accept having his mistake
corrected.
“See you there then.”
“Yes. See you there, Indie.”
38
And he was gone. Running down the long, dark corridor towards his own office, long legs
gracefully striding beneath him. She turned away abruptly, refusing to let her eyes linger on them any
longer.
“Our first day here and already Dr Ballantyne’s got a date.” It came from inside the bones
room as Harry pushed the door open, the voice of Lizzie O’Rourke. “He’s been in twice already to
find you. Rather dishy that one, I must say. Very Fox Mulder. I approve of your taste in men.”
Harry laughed. “It’s good to see you too, Lizzie. I shouldn’t go reading too much into it. It’s
just an official function I have to attend, that’s all.”
“That might be what you’d have yourself believe, but the twinkle in your eye’s not yet dead
from gazing on those lovely features, I can assure you.”
“Lizzie! That’s quite enough. Can’t you see you’re annoying Harry with your insinuations?”
“Oh, Harry now is it? When did you become so pally with the boss, y’fat slag?”
Harry could see the astonished looks on the faces of Ellie, Nathaniel and Rebecca as they sat
round the huge finds-processing table listening to Lizzie and Karen. She also noticed the look of mild
amusement on the face of the last, unknown member of her crew. “Lizzie, how much did you have to
drink last night?” Harry hoped her instincts were correct.
“Quite a lot,” Lizzie replied with a sheepish grin. “Have y’seen the price of the beer here?
Almost makes up fer the lack o’ Guinness.”
“Hello, you must be Jude,” Harry began, turning to the dark-haired, dark-skinned girl who sat
next to Lizzie.
“Indeed I am. And most indebted to you, Dr Ballantyne, for taking me on recommendation
alone.”
“You’re another Egyptologist, aren’t you? Like Karen and Ellie.”
“Egyptologist, yes. Like Karen and Ellie? No, more like myself, I think.” Harry listened to
the careful intonation of Jude’s words, trying to place where she’d heard such perfect diction before.
An image of long gone colonial opulence and superficial dignity went through her mind. An Indian
Mortimer Wheeler in a skirt. “Not all Egyptologists are mummified at birth.”
Harry left them to it and made herself a cup of coffee while she prepared for their first
briefing.
“Right,” she began, once they were all settled around the table and listening attentively. “This
is what’s happening. I’m in the process of compiling an archaeological database of excavated cemetery
data in order to make a well overdue start on an aspect of Bohemian archaeology that’s been largely
ignored by Czech archaeologists. As most of you probably already know, my area of specialism is
Anglo-Saxon cemeteries. I’m planning to use my expertise in the field to open up the study of
Bohemian cemeteries. Really put cemetery archaeology on the map here. That’s one aspect of my
work. The other is a careful re-examination of the sites and artefacts that have been turned up from
cemeteries here in the castle in the past fifty years or so. Most notably the Moravian stuff that’s now
on display in the castle museum. What I propose to do is split you into two teams each working on one
aspect of my research. You can swap over half way through your time here so that both teams have the
benefit of learning different fieldwork and research techniques.”
39
“Yeah, but what’s it mean in practice, Dr Ballantyne?”

“It means, Lizzie, that three of you will be working here in the castle drawing old walls and
looking at pretty jewellery, while the other three will be out in the country digging up graves.”
“Oh. Cool. Bags I the neat plunder. Worth much is it?”
“Depends which perspective you’re looking at it from. And, please, call me Harry while
we’re here!”
During that day she had far too much to do to worry about not thinking about Karel or his
birthday party. She gave her two teams a collective tour around both the castle sites she required them
to re-draft and the cemetery five or six miles away in the country village of Stará Boleslav.
“Construction began on this Gothic cathedral in the fourteenth century but underneath it are
the foundations of the earlier and much smaller round church built late tenth early eleventh century.”
This was Harry at work. She considered herself very privileged indeed that Prague Castle’s wonderful
cathedral dedicated to St Vitus should be her work place. She led her motley crew towards the crypt
where their real work would be carried out. “And here are the walls that you will be drawing so
painstakingly to improve not only your draughtsmanship but also my research potential.” She pointed
at a large expanse of intricately carved wall then continued on through a narrow corridor between the
underground caverns of the crypt. “And here are the foundations of the round church.”
“What, through there?”
“Yes, Karen. Through there.”
“Wha’s’a matter fatso. Worried you won’t fit through the door?”
“Lizzie! She might be a little rotund, but it’s hardly polite to keep pointing it out to her quite
so frequently.” Jude had a way with sarcasm that made it sound almost pleasant.
“Won’t it be a bit claustrophobic in there?” Nathaniel chimed in.
“Yeah, claustrophobic?” Rebecca echoed.
“What are you? Archaeologists or mice?”
“Well, I don’t mind going in there,” said Lizzie defiantly. “I’m no mouse.”
“Nor me,” Ellie agreed.
“I would imagine an Egyptian tomb is not entirely dissimilar, so I’ll be quite happy in there,”
Jude pitched in.
“That makes for an easy division of labour then. Three in, three out.” Harry hadn’t expected
it to be that simple. “I hope none of you gets travel sick.”
She drove them all out to Stará Boleslav in Tom’s jeep, Rebecca on Nathaniel’s lap and the
others jostling furiously for bum space. It was a half-hour journey west of Prague and by the time they
got there several small-bottomed people were moaning and groaning quite stridently at two large-
bottomed people, and very ready for a tour around a dark and breezy tenth-eleventh century church.
“The story begins here in this relatively small Romanesque church dedicated to Sts Kosmas
and Damian.” She led them into a small crypt. “Prince Boleslav assassinated his brother Wenceslas in
this crypt on Christmas day 959.”
“Nice fella, was he?” Lizzie had as real a grip on history as she had on Guinness. “What
happened to him afterwards?”
40
“He became king of Bohemia instead of Wenceslas.”

“Is that the same Wenceslas as in the Christmas carol?” Nathaniel asked.
“Yeah, deep and crisp and evil, like as in the snow?” Rebecca augmented.
“The very same. This is the spot where he was killed and outside the church is where the
snow was said to fall which he staggered through to get help, although I think it was even rather than
evil.”
“Ugh. Makes you go all goose-pimply just to think of it.” Ellie shuddered as she did so.
“I think it’s all pretty fascinating,” Karen said defensively, as if she figured she must be the
only one who did.
“Any pubs in this place?”
“Yes, but you needn’t think you’re going in it,” Harry laughed. “We still have a cemetery to
visit.”
“I hope Wenceslas isn’t buried in it,” said Ellie.
“No, he’s in Prague. In the cathedral. About a yard away from the walls you’ll be drawing.
But don’t be too alarmed, no one’s ever reported any really strange supernatural phenomena. Not that I
know of, anyway.”
Harry took them all to see how the excavations were progressing at the cemetery site on the
outskirts of the old town. It was accessible only through the orchard of a large house belonging to an
ancient order of canons. The house, like the church, was in the process of post-communism repair and
restoration, but an air of mystery and charm still hung about the place. Walls enclosed the orchard on
three sides, the part of the cemetery that hadn’t been destroyed by root action stretched out beyond the
line that marked the position of the fourth wall before its destruction. Harry liked this orchard site.
She liked being in charge of its excavation. She liked cemeteries. Anglo-Saxon or Bohemian, it made
no difference once she had constructed a research model that could be adapted to fit the criteria she was
looking to identify and study in each type.
“So, how d’you know where to dig?”
“Nathaniel, I’m surprised at you.” And Harry genuinely was. “You’re a second year
archaeology student, so you’ve apparently done a whole season’s-worth of fieldwork somewhere at
least vaguely earth-filled, and yet you haven’t learned the cardinal rule about context?”
“Um, how do you know where to dig, then?”
“Rebecca? Not you as well? Did you learn nothing last year?”
“Even I know the answer to that?”
“Well, do regale us with the benefit of your expertise, Lizzie.” Harry was now genuinely
irritated.
“Obvious, isn’t it? It’s all in the soil colouration. Where there’s been a disturbance in the soil
you get a different horizontal variation in the colour of it. Or something.”
“Yes, well. At least you were paying attention when you read your Renfrew and Bahn this
year, if nothing else.” She was still irritated and not hiding it very well.
“Not really,” Lizzie replied with a grin. “You see, me ol’ man’s an archaeologist too, an’ he
was always bein’ asked stupid things like that. Always goin’ on about how stupid all the gawpers were.
41
Went on about it so much that me and me brother always knew what to tell ‘em when they asked. He
used to do a good line in thumpin’ chalk with a pickaxe handle an’ all.”
“What are you on about, Lizzie?” Karen didn’t seem to be able to open her mouth without
hurling condescension. Harry knew she’d pay.
“Are y’completely stupid! What d’y’ think I mean? Chalk, right? When yer diggin’ in chalk
it’s easy to hear a loosely compacted fill by the thud instead of the ring when y’ bang it with something
made o’ wood. And you want t’ be an archaeologist? Oh, no, I forgot, y’ want t’be an Egyptologist.
Quite different.”
Harry couldn’t help thinking Karen had deserved that. “She is in fact quite right, and you
could all do with taking notice, if your present lack of knowledge is anything to go by.”
“Well, I think it would also be fair to say that there won’t be too many Bohemian graves in
and around Cairo.” Jude, who had remained silent during the tour of the orchard cemetery, now gave
her opinion on the subject. “Although I would also have thought that common sense might have
prevailed somewhere in the course of those deductions. Karen, you can be quite ludicrously daft
sometimes. It’s no wonder you get so much stick off people.”
Harry couldn’t have agreed more.
Once the introductions to Bohemian cemetery archaeology were over and Harry had stated the
major differences between the shape and form of the graves, the type of grave goods expected in them,
the orientation and alignment of them within the cemetery and the status of discrete groups of graves,
she took them all to the one pub that she had alluded to earlier. Then she drove them all back to Prague
Castle to sort out who would be going where the next day when they began work.
At four fifteen Harry and her motley crew were back in the bones room discussing the
logistics of each team’s travel arrangements. As she gave out bus schedules for Stará Boleslav to Nat,
Becky and Karen, with the thought of how glad she was to be getting rid of Karen so easily, there was a
knock on the bones room door. None of her Czech counterparts were around. They all knocked off at
four, just like the rest of the Czech work force. Before she had the chance to act, a head came around
the door.
“Ah, Indiana. There you are being.” Her knees began to shake in that debilitating way she’d
not yet managed to get used to or stop, and her pulse started to race, with what…fear? excitement?
embarrassment? “You are ready to come to my birthday party now?”
“Um, yes,” she answered distractedly. “I’ll be along in a minute.”
“Okay, Indie. Seeing you there.” He smiled broadly and disappeared from the doorway as
quickly as he had appeared in it.
“So much for a formal function, then,” Lizzie jibed. “He’s got the hots for you big time, he
has. And you can’t say as you haven’t for him either after that.”
“I don’t know what you mean, Lizzie.”
“Yes, y’do. It’s all in the way you almost swooned when you saw it was him. “’Bout time
you faced up to it. You’re smitten.” As Lizzie stood up to leave, the others followed her example.
“And we’re leaving. See y’tomorrow.”
*
42
Harry knocked on Karel’s office door. She had no idea what to expect. A sedate gathering of Czech
secret policemen all sitting around sipping sherry or port? What greeted her as he opened the door to
let her in was little different to the party she’d been to in the Human Environment department of the
Institute the previous Christmas. Wine flowing more freely than she would have thought possible and
more burly raucously laughing policemen than should ergonomically have fitted into that one room.
Desks had been moved and a buffet set up in one corner, with more bottled alcohol than they could
hope to get through in one night, surely.
“Indiana! I am very pleased to be seeing you at last. I was thinking you are not coming here
to me.”
The way he phrased the statement was disarming, too personal. But Harry was already aware
of the difficulties that language and cultural barriers presented. She fought the weakening in her knees
and answered cheerfully. “Why would I not? You invited me, I accepted. It would be highly impolite,
churlish even, not to come after that.”
He slid his arm around her waist as he ushered her into the smoke-filled room heaving with
his many colleagues. His touch was like a bolt of electricity that went straight through her. It was all
she could do to stay upright, every part of her wanted to reach out to him and respond to that touch.
She couldn’t understand why her back instinctively arched into his hand. It was all so alien to her she
actually wondered if she was ill. But the voice of instinct deep inside her told her exactly what was
happening. She looked up at him. Their eyes met and she knew he would have kissed her had he not
been in an office so crowded with people he knew very well. If they hadn’t been in that office Harry
would never have allowed the situation to arise. So now she knew.
Then a lot of strange things began to happen all at once.
Locked in the magnetism of that look, with his hand still in the small of her arching back, she
was not best placed to understand the first of them.
It sounded like a grenade launcher going off and felt like an earthquake. There was a long
stunned silence before policemen began to run around in all directions at once making a lot of
unnecessary noise.
“You are coming with me, Indiana!” Karel grabbed Harry’s wrist protectively and hauled her
along behind him as he ran out of his office. Up the winding stone staircase at the end of the corridor,
along a short connecting corridor, onto a wider, longer corridor, through the heavy main doors and up
the steps to the entrance lobby that took them onto St George’s Square they went. Karel still had hold
of her wrist, and he moved so fast that it was all Harry could do to keep her feet underneath her.
The scene that greeted them outside was stranger still.
Palace guards in their powder blue jackets and midnight blue trousers with red stripes down
the outside leg were running across the square, holding onto their peaked caps with one hand and their
dress swords with the other. Castle administration staff were running after them to see what all the
noise had been about. Castle police streamed out of the entrance behind Karel and Harry, some in
uniform with pistols drawn, some, like Karel and his colleagues, in the customary black suits of the
president’s bodyguard. They were all running towards the south gate. Karel and Harry followed the
crowd through the gate and up onto the topmost rampart of the castle.
43
Behind the wall was a steep drop, a patch of waste ground that looked like it hadn’t been
touched by human hand since the middle of the eighteenth century. It was one of Harry’s favourite
places. In the heat and stress of the day she would sometimes walk along the rampart just to gaze onto
this little untouched space. A house stood in the middle, ramshackle and derelict, with all the forgotten
features of a time gone by that attracted Harry so readily. Where there had been at least the skeleton of
a roof, doors and windows, there was now a large, gaping hole and a lot of dust. Harry’s mouth fell
open in disgust.
“Who could do this?” she asked, but Karel was already pulling her back the way they had
come, pushing his way through the gathering crowd and the dust.
“This is diversion only,” he said as he urged her onwards. Harry thought he seemed a little
odd, like there was something he was hiding from her. “The real target was not here.”
She sensed the something long before they reached it. “How do you know? What do you
know? And why won’t you tell me?”
“I know because I have secret microphone in my ear which tell me.”
“Tells me, Karel, not tell me.” Harry was letting her irritation show.
“This is not time to be correcting my wrong English. You are not liking truth.”
“Well, tell me what the bloody hell the truth is and I’ll judge for myself!” She was so far past
irritation that she was almost shouting.
“Okay, Indie. Here I am going.”
“I think you mean here goes.”
He ignored her and carried on: “Exploding house is for diversion. Diversion is doing by
thieves. Thieves are stealing attention away from target and are taking while every people is else
somewhere.” His deteriorating English mirrored his mounting exasperation.
“So, what is the target, then?” She looked at him desperately, without even the thought of a
correction.
“Target is Moravian jewellery.” He caught her as she fell.
Once she had regained her balance, Harry forced her way through the crowds pushing the
other way towards the source of the commotion, in effort to reach the museum entrance in St George’s
Square. She didn’t know quite why. If the jewellery had already been stolen there was little point
getting to the scene quickly just to stare at the empty spaces where she had placed it so short a time
ago. Yet some force propelled her onwards. It was all Karel could do to keep up with her.
As she stepped inside the museum entrance everything went into slow motion. People moved
out of her way as she passed, staring at her with a strange mixture of confusion and patronising pity in
their faces. It felt like moving through treacle, each step dragging her further and further into a dark
and dangerous mess.
And then it was there, right in front of her. The glass cabinet with the perfectly round hole in
it. The velvet cushion with Moravian-jewellery-shaped indentations still in it. The little round, white,
scallop-edged soaker-upper thingie with the writing on it.
“The little…round…white…scallop-edged…soaker-upper thingie…with the…writing on it?”
44
Karel had caught up with her; his hand was on her elbow. Proprietorial? Concerned.
“Indiana,” he said softly.
She turned, looked into his eyes; shock and fear coloured everything she did, everything she
felt, in its cloying indifference. She stood for what seemed like eternity, a scared rabbit caught in the
glare of his headlights, then folded onto his chest, sobs convulsing out of somewhere deep inside. His
chest wasn’t chosen; it was just there. Anyone’s would have done, or so she would have had herself
believe.
“Are you understanding what the words are saying, Indie?” His voice was still soft, soothing,
velvety and brown.
Through her sobs she nodded her head, rubbing her wet face into his crisp white shirt.
As she lifted her face from his chest he looked down at the mascara smudges on his shirt and,
doing his best to ignore them, asked valiantly, “And are you telling me what it means?”
“I don’t know what it means, but it says, ‘I love you, Harry’, and it’s signed Ethan.”
He reached a long, elegant arm inside the perfectly round hole in the glass cabinet, still
cradling Harry in the other, and lifted the small white circle with the blue writing on it off its velvet
cushion. He turned it over. “Indiana. I think you should be looking.”
His voice was so full of gravity it almost crash-landed. It got her attention. She took it from
his long, slim fingers, brushing them with her own. A deliciously involuntary shudder coursed down
her spine from top to bottom. She had a vividly out of place mental picture of what an electric eel must
feel like which almost made her giggle except that she managed just in time to suppress it. “It’s in
English again,” she said, trying to regain some measure of composure.
“Mmm. Astute. This I am knowing already.” Sarcasm in English didn’t suit him, Harry
thought, but this was neither the time nor the place to let him know. He read slowly: “‘An emperor
who loses his jewels is foolish indeed; but is a president who loses his merely careless? Moravia more
rightly claims the new jewel in the Czech crown.’ Indie, are you knowing what dis is meaning?”
But Harry wasn’t listening. “Why would anyone want to steal the Moravian jewellery? It’s
not as if they can sell it on…not as if they can get rid of it at all...too well known…stick out like a sore
thumb.” She felt an emptiness that seemed to be filled with danger inside her about the same size as
the space on the velvet cushion in the display case and wasn’t yet sure how to interpret it. She also felt
another involuntary shudder up and down her spine as Karel put his hand on her shoulder and ran it
down her arm protectively. She didn’t want to interpret that one; the thought scared her too much.
45

The Secret Policeman's Ball - Part One

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The Secret Policeman's Ball - Part One

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The Secret Policeman’s Ball by Vivienne Jay

“What’re you looking so pleased about?” she asked.

All three screamed and hugged each other.

“What are you talking about, Tom?”

“Yeah, but what’s it mean in practice, Dr Ballantyne?”

“He became king of Bohemia instead of Wenceslas.”

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The Secret Policeman&#39;s Ball - Part One

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The Secret Policeman&#39;s Ball - Part One

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The Secret Policeman’s Ball by Vivienne Jay

“What’re you looking so pleased about?” she asked.

All three screamed and hugged each other.

“What are you talking about, Tom?”

“Yeah, but what’s it mean in practice, Dr Ballantyne?”

“He became king of Bohemia instead of Wenceslas.”

You might also like

The Secret Policeman's Ball - Part One

The Secret Policeman's Ball - Part One