Ben came back over to where he was standing in the corner. ‘I’m off then. Text me when you want picking up again.’
‘You are not staying?’
‘Yeah, that’s what off usually means. This is your sort of thing, not mine.’
‘My—?’
‘Monitoring and being annoying.’ Ben brushed his arm once more as he sauntered out.
Half a dozen children suddenly wandered nervously into the room. Emilia immediately gave a silent squeal of pleasure and went up to them, dragging them into a private huddle in one corner. They were students? At Cambridge? He felt depressingly old and slid into a chair. Morwenna gathered all the various bits and pieces she’d removed from her bag and swept them along with her as she chair-hopped until she was sitting next to him. ‘So, whyareyou here? Are they investigating La Luz as part of this thing?’
‘Light Island and no.Privateislandsprivatelyowned don’t get investigated.’
‘Theirprivateowners might one day.’
He couldn’t help a small smirk at that. ‘Who is to say they have not already been?’
‘Interesting. What did these investigations uncover?’
‘No one knows. The investigators cannot be found. Why areyouhere?’
‘I’m the unofficial scribe. I’ve already done an article forScilly News, and that got picked up byThe Independent—did you see it? And Mark’s allowing me to cover the whole project. Some more articles, but possibly even a book if he finds anything. He’s drawing extensively on my research on Lyonesse in the first place. So, again, why areyouhere?’
Aleksey couldn’t think of a lie that would stand the test of time so was reluctantly forced to admit, ‘I’m funding the expedition.’
She fiddled with the pen with which she’d been doodling on a pad of lined paper and rejoined hesitantly, ‘I don’t think so. Jerome Barthrop is. Well, the museum, I suppose. But he wrote up the grant proposal for all the other bodies.’
‘Museum?’
She grimaced. ‘Calls itself theCornishMuseum. Up Truro way.’
He was about to enquire about the obvious antipathy in her voice when a man blustered into the room apologising for being late, which he clearly wasn’t. He was wearing a khaki safari suit and genuine pith helmet. Aleksey couldn’t recall ever seeing a man in real life dressed so, and was quite impressed with the lack of self-awareness this odd dress sense conveyed. Until, within one minute, it became clear that it was the conscious choice, the affectation of a man who very much wanted to be noticed. Within the space of time it took him to shake everyone’s hand, they had all been told that, yes, he was indeed the famous filmmaker Lawrence McCullough (call me Mack) who had madeGrant: The Last Strike, a documentary about the unfortunate survivors of the sinking of theGeneral Grantwho, in 1866, had ended up being shipwrecked in one of the most inhospitable places in the world. Auckland Island, not quite New Zealand and not quite Antarctica, but some frozen, ghastly hellhole in between, was not a place anyone should end up with only one match left between them and cannibalising their fellow passengers. Still, as Mack pointed out to anyone who would listen, their predicament had made for great television. While he was still impressing the students, although possibly not with his sartorial choices, Aleksey saw another man had entered the room and had slid into a chair entirely unnoticed by anyone. Even without Mack’s over-large presence, this man appeared oddly diminished in his own right. The only things that took up any space were his ears, and as Aleksey was studying these unfortunate protuberances, his neighbour murmured under her breath, ‘That’s Barthrop.’
Aleksey had never met a museum director before as the only such places he’d ever visited had been officially closed when he’d been there, but he supposed if you spent your days dusting things with brushes and examining shards of useless pottery, then this is what you might end up looking like—as if you never saw the light of day or spoke to anyone but an elderly cat when you got home. It was entirely possible, of course, that he was permanently in the shade anyway. Given the ears. Trying to be more charitable, imagining what Ben would say if he were there, which would inevitably be something nice which would make everyone smile in gormless wonder at him, Aleksey nodded at the man when he looked their way. He was highly amused to find himself entirely overlooked, as Jerome’s gaze landed squarely on Morwenna Eames. His flush of annoyance— anger? fear?—went immediately to his ears, and they glowed red as he began to delve into the briefcase he’d brought with him.
Last to arrive was an equally quiet man, and he would have been unnoticed under the noise still emanating from Mack—yes, he had made the Oscar-winning documentaryThe Last Nanuqabout one of the few remaining polar bears in the Arctic and her frantic struggles for food due to diminishing ice—but for that very quietness. With this new man, silence was poised stillness. He glanced around, appeared to assess the room, and then slid into a chair where he could see the screen. Annoyingly, Aleksey had not noticed either this or the projector Dr Mark was now fiddling with and had consequently sat where it was hard to see. He hoped it was the film about the bear. Then he could snooze. He knew all he wanted to know about polar bears. Finally, the students were encouraged to sit down, and Aleksey was amused to see that Emilia sat as far away from him as she could, obviously pretending that they were not related, which he supposed wasn’t that hard to do as they weren’t. If he resembled anyone, it was the young professor, of course.
Aleksey felt a slight chill of shock trickle down his spine. This thought had just crossed his mind as causally as all his other bullshit, but now he turned his eyes to the younger man. Tall, blond, rangy, high cheekbones. What did this mean? Fucking hell! It meant he couldn’t now leave Ben unattended in the same room with the professor either! It was like trying to herd cats.
Mark began to welcome everyone to the meeting. He was especially pleased, he emphasised, to see seven students had made the effort to attend. This group pretty much consisted of all his Celtic studies class from the South of England—three from West Wales, and four from Devon and Cornwall—but they would relay any information back to their northern friends from Scotland and Ireland who wanted to join in the trip but hadn’t been able to attend that day.
Then, to Aleksey’s horror, he asked everyone else to introduce themselves and briefly outline their areas of expertise and proposed involvement with the expedition. He nodded to Morwenna first. She laid down her pen. ‘My name is Morwenna Eames. I live on St Mary’s and own the bookshop in Tre Huw. My father, Professor Randal Eames, was Mark’s tutor at Cambridge. I’m a historian—amateur now—and I wrote the book which inspired Mark to plan this exploration of the seas around the archipelago. I’m hoping he’ll find Atlantis, and I might have a best-seller on my hands next time.’ Mark and the students all laughed, so Aleksey assumed this was a private joke within academia. He didn’t get it anyway.
Mack apparently decided to make his next Oscars acceptance speech when it was his turn, and once more they were all treated to his filmography and other details of his fascinating exploits. When prompted gently by Mark, he added hastily, ‘Oh, yes, sorry. I’m making a follow-up documentary to Nanuq—impacts of climate change on the oceans around the world, and we’ll be filming in Scilly when you’ll be there. So if this expedition finds any evidence of previous cataclysmic climate change, Mark’s agreed to let me incorporate it into my documentary, and in exchange he’ll have the footage I take available for his lectures.’
Barthrop’s ears lit up once more as it became his turn to speak. ‘Jerome Barthrop. I’m the Director of the English National Museum for Cornwall in Truro. Besides that role, I am responsible for all archaeological work within Cornwall, including, but not limited to, approving study grants, authentication and subsequent preservation of potential Grade II and Grade I properties, again, including, but not limited to, buildings, mines, and churches.’ Aleksey snapped his eyes open and tried to force himself to stay awake over the droning pedantry. ‘I immediately approached Professor Trebetherick when I read about this proposed expedition in the newspaper, as I was not informed through the proper channels. As I said, in liaison with my colleagues in Historic England and the local county council, I am responsible for all proposed archaeological work within the county of Cornwall—which includes Scilly. I am therefore now funding the field trip, and although I don’t intend to have day-to-day involvement with the dig, or diving, I will, in consultation with Natural England, decide on the relevance, provenance andfutureof any and all finds of specific interest to our Englishnationalcultural heritage.’
Morwenna’s pencil suddenly snapped in half. All eyes swivelled to her. As she studied the piece left in her fingers, she pointed out very calmly, ‘I forgot to add that I also representFleghes Kernowhere today.’ She smiled at the students. ‘Hopefully, some of you will join—Children of Cornwall. We’re a…’ The trailing away seemed delightfully deliberate and vague to Aleksey. ‘…soweare the ones who have absolute claim toany and allfinds due toournational cultural heritage.’
Aleksey kept his grin inside. This meeting was proving more interesting than he’d anticipated. He helped himself to a biscuit from the plate in the middle of the table, turning a three into a two, and settled back to watch the spat. Much to his disappointment, Dr Mark swiftly moved along to the quiet man, but he proved to be the most interesting attendee so far—he had a boat: theRogue Wave. Aleksey liked boats—and he was fascinated by this one particularly. He also very much liked the idea of hunting for sunken treasure, and apparently that was how this man made his living. Eliam Colter ran a company called Colter Finds, which specialised in taking paying customers on dives, either hunting for or exploring shipwrecks. As the man was talking, Mark clicked on his laptop and a video began projecting onto the screen. There were a few murmurs of delight from the younger members of the audience. The film started with a distant shot of a stunning white catamaran floating in a serene cove of shimmering blue water. Even from a distance there was clearly something unusual about this dual-hulled boat, and that difference became evident when the drone closed in and then circled around the superstructure to view the boat from the stern. Where in a traditional catamaran the two fibreglass hulls would be separate, onRogue Wavethey appeared to balance between them a soap bubble. This was ahydrosphere. Colter had designed and installed a glass viewing platform, a glasselevatorwhich descended into the underwater world his wealthy patrons were paying to explore. Clearly, this was not an entirely new concept, as glass-bottomed boats were fairly common in the tourist industry, butRogue Wavewas the first vessel to have an extendable and retractable viewing platform, thus enabling the boat to go into waters entirely inaccessible to permanent glass-hulled ones. Also, it was for far more than just viewing the undersea world. Working on the same principle as a diving bell, once the top hatch was sealed and the whole thing was submerged, a bottom hatch would open, providing easy egress and ingress for divers who wished to explore anything they spotted of interest. Those who wanted to stay dry could enjoy just watching from the leather bench seating which ran around the inside.
Aleksey was particularly fascinated with this whole concept, and was busy planning how he could have one installed inSticky Wicketbefore he took possession of his superb vessel, when he discovered he was the one actually paying for this technical wonder. Morwenna had been partially right—the Cornish Museum and the various English heritage departments were now funding the overall exploration, but his offer of an additional (and unlimited) top-up had enabled Dr Mark to afford Eliam Colter and his catamaran for the duration of the trip—three weeks currently. Everyone would live onRogue Wave,and a huge amount of the ‘diving’ could then consist of merely observing and recording.
Naturally, this explanation from Colter drew all eyes tohim.
He felt he’d been introduced enough and so merely added, ‘Yes, I am a recent Scilly resident. A philanthropist. I am only too glad to help.’
Colter was eyeing him up as he spoke, but as he was used to being studied by other men, for various reasons, he didn’t return the look. ‘Will you actually be accompanying us, Mr Rider-Mikkelsen?Rogue Wavehas extensive passenger accommodation, obviously.’
