His Alan Bennett voice is as light as ever but Ruth thinks she can hear the excitement underneath. The tomb of King Arthur – or even the tomb of a man who might be King Arthur – would be the biggest thing ever to happen to Pendle University, and to Clayton Henry. In fact, Ruth is surprised that Henry has not already alerted the press. She is sure that if Phil found even a hint of a legendary British king, he’d be on Newsnight in two seconds flat. She asks the question.

For the first time, Clayton Henry looks really uncomfortable. He fiddles with his letter-opener – a rather ornate silver knife – and avoids meeting Ruth’s eyes.

‘It’s a bit sensitive,’ he says at last. ‘I wanted to make sure. Our department … well, our department isn’t that popular in the university.’

‘Why’s that?’

Clayton laughs though he still looks rather shifty. ‘Oh, probably just because I’m Yorkshire and this is Lancashire. The old Wars of the Roses stuff, you know.’ Ruth looks at him incredulously and Clayton must feel the inadequacy of this explanation because he says, still not meeting her eyes, ‘History doesn’t bring in much money. There are always people who’d like to see us replaced with something sensible like metallurgy.’

‘But if you made a really big discovery …’ says Ruth.

‘Exactly.’ Clayton Henry looks up with almost painful eagerness. ‘If this did turn out to be the real thing, we’d be made. Press, TV, conferences. It’d put Pendle on the map all right. But if I went public with it and the bones turned out to be a hoax, I’d be a laughing stock. That’s why I wanted you to look at them.’ Now he does look at Ruth. His eyes are a very clear blue, almost childlike,

‘I’d be happy to look at them,’ says Ruth. In fact, she can hardly wait. This could be the biggest find of the decade and she is right there, the first archaeologist on the spot. After Dan, of course.

‘I can take you to the site now, if you like,’ says Henry. ‘The bones aren’t still there. We’ve moved them somewhere safer.’

Ruth wants to ask if the bones have been excavated with due care but realises that this would sound insulting. All the same, she wishes that she had been able to supervise. One false move, one mistake in recording and an entire excavation can be ruined. She would have taken days over this – cataloguing, examining the context, just looking. As Erik always said, ‘First, you look. Look as long as you like. You won’t get that first sight again.’

‘Did Dan send any samples for analysis?’ asks Ruth.

‘Yes, he sent samples off for carbon 14, isotopic testing and DNA. We haven’t had the results yet.’

Again, Ruth feels a thrill of excitement. Who knows what the results might show? And she will be the first to see them.

‘The temple,’ she says. ‘Who was it dedicated to?’

‘A strange deity,’ says Henry. ‘A version of the Celtic god Bran, which means …’

But Ruth knows what it means. Bran means Raven.

The Raven King.

CHAPTER 11

Nelson, though he doesn’t know it, is only a few miles away from his youngest daughter. His mother has insisted on taking him and Michelle to Rook Hall, a nearby stately home. Nelson’s sister, Maeve, has accompanied them, along with her granddaughter, Charlie.

‘Charlie?’ Nelson had said, peering at the blonde moppet in a fairy dress. ‘I thought she was a girl.’

‘Of course she’s a girl, Harry,’ said Maeve, hoisting a nappy bag on her shoulder. ‘Don’t be stupid.’

‘Is it short for Charlotte?’ asked Michelle, crouching down to say hello to the baby.

Maeve had shrugged. ‘Not as far as I know.’

Nelson can never get used to these new androgynous names. He has a colleague with daughters called Georgie and Sidney. At least Judy had chosen a traditional name for her baby. Michael. But why does that name choice make him feel uneasy?

He also can’t get used to his sister being a grandmother. But since Maeve, at fifty-three, is ten years older than him, she’s not especially young to have grandchildren. Her daughter, Danielle, had married at twenty-three and had Charlie at twenty-five. All very respectable. It’s just that it makes Nelson feel old. He’s a great-uncle now. Jesus wept.

Maeve seems to do most of the childcare while Danielle is out at work. Nelson’s mother helps too, still fit at seventy-five. She now looks critically at Charlie’s uncovered head.

‘She needs a sun hat on her, Maeve.’

Maureen Nelson’s voice is still unashamedly Irish after five decades in England. Her daughter, on the other hand, is broad Lancashire. The first thing Maeve had said to Nelson was, ‘You’ve lost your accent.’

‘I haven’t!’ said Nelson, outraged. His colleagues in Norfolk think that he talks like a combination of Peter Kaye and Wallace from Wallace and Gromit. He’s heard them imitating him.

‘You have a bit, Harry,’ said Michelle. ‘So have I.’

And that’s always the pattern of visits to Blackpool. Michelle is continually shocked at the abuse directed at Harry by his ever-loving mother and sisters. She throws herself into the breach as a peacemaker, not realising that all four of them actually enjoy these exchanges.

Now Maeve snaps at her mother. ‘She’s fine, Mum. The sun’s not out anyway.’

‘It’s not the sun that gives you heatstroke,’ says Maureen unanswerably. Maeve rolls her eyes and wheels Charlie off in the direction of the gift shop.

Rook Hall is a perfect Georgian house, almost scarily symmetrical, set in beautiful landscaped grounds. Nelson doesn’t mind trudging round over-decorated rooms and oohing and aahing over dovecotes and lily ponds but he does wonder why, in her seventies, his mother has suddenly got into culture. When he was growing up, Maureen would have been actively suspicious of anyone whose idea of a good time was visiting National Trust properties. He still remembers what she said about their neighbour who listened to classical music. But now Maureen is actually a member of the National Trust as well as a friend of the local theatre and a frequent operagoer. Do you just get more interested in these things as you get older? Nelson, remembering a God-awful modern play Michelle made him see two years ago, doesn’t feel that the process has started with him.

In one aspect, though, Maureen hasn’t changed at all. She is determined to get her money’s worth and to see every inch of the house, even though she has visited many times before. Maeve soon gives up and takes Charlie out into the grounds but Nelson and Michelle follow Maureen’s indomitable figure through dining rooms laid for some invisible banquet, up and down ornate staircases (marvelling at the rococo ceilings), through kitchens complete with plastic meat that reminds Nelson of an autopsy, and into myriad rooms whose only function seems to be to display collections of eighteenth-century thimbles.

Nelson is soon tired of ancestral portraits and moulded cornices. His mind starts to wander, reliving his conversation with Sandy yesterday. Was Dan Golding murdered and, if so, what does Ruth expect him to do about it? Where is Ruth anyway? He rang her at home last night and there was no answer. He’ll have to try her mobile. He still has to be careful where Ruth is concerned. Michelle might have forgiven him for the affair (if two nights counts as an affair, which Michelle assures him it does) but the subject is still very raw. Michelle understands that he wants to see Katie (and few wives would understand as much, he knows) but any sign that he is interested in the mother rather than the baby would jeopardise the whole, fragile consensus.

He thinks they’ve finished but, at the last moment, Maureen leads them up another staircase into a green and white room that reminds Nelson of a Wedgewood vase he once impounded as stolen goods. Bored, he looks out of the window, wondering if he can catch sight of Grandma Maeve and Charlie.