The Holy Lance - Chapter 1

Just a couple of inches more. That was all it would take. He’d spent the last 10 minutes listening to Arabella Milthorpe tie herself into increasingly tighter knots as she struggled to explain the political manouevrings of the late Roman Republic. Having decided that he was wasting his time trying to teach her, Simon turned to his second task, willing her to lean far enough back on his saggy old sofa so he could see up her skirt.

Not that he was a pervert, of course, but it had been a long time and the population of female ancient historians was a limited and not particularly attractive pool. He wasn’t even that much older than her, 8 or 9 years, but he had a faint suspicion that Arabella probably would not consider him to be in her league. That was the problem today, too many students taking the easy route into Oxford by applying for unpopular courses, too few who were actually passionate about the subject. Doubtless Arabella was planning a future in the law or banking (daddy’s connections would be useful there), with classics relegated to an interesting diversion at a dinner party.

Crossing her legs while locking him in the eyes, she let him know that she was completely aware of what he was up to. Simon went a shade of pink, almost as deep as the battered old sofa. Am I that obvious, he wondered. Well, I did inherit the sofa from Jonathan, and he was well known as a randy old goat. Charming, but with a certain reputation amongst the female students.

Duly chastised, he got out of his chair and wandered around the book-lined study, picking volumes at random. Something about Arabella’s knowing smile had got to him, so he would play a game of his own. He remembered from his undergraduate days, one tutor, who would pile up books on his chair arms, each new volume intimidating the unfortunate student in front of him that day. After he had finished reading his essay, the books would never be referred to, merely left there, an reminder for the rest of the tutorial of how little the student really knew, and how his undergraduate pretensions could be torn to shreds at a moments notice.

Arabella was made of stronger stuff though. Refusing to be intimidated, she finished her essay and endured 30 minutes of desultory conversation before asking to be excused so that she might prepare for a job interview. Happy to acquiesce, Simon suggested that she might want to write something about the early Civil War for next week’s tutorial. Nodding, she turned the brass door handle and made her escape down the stairs.

This will be a long term, he thought. Oxford, with the logic for which its scholars are known, numbers the weeks of each eight week term as First Week, Second Week etc. Today was Tuesday of First Week, which meant seven more sessions with Arabella. Seven more hours of listening to her inane prattle while trying desperately to find some way of entertaining himself, particularly since the most obvious route had been so terminally closed to him.

Still a bit early for lunch, he stood up, looking round his room. Two of the four walls were covered in bookshelves, full of a selection of ancient texts, learned works and souvenirs gathered on trips round the Med. The other wall was the location of the infamous sofa, and a selection of prints of ancient sites, arranged around a couple of Monty Python posters to show that he was really a trendy young don.

The Window looked out over the quad, not that there was much to see on this Oxford January day, unless one was a fan of persistent drizzle (and some of the geography tutors he knew were). He had placed his desk there, complete with computer and all the impedimenta of the working academic, dictionaries, lecture lists and knick-knacks.

His eyes were drawn to the piles of orange books stacked by his desk and he let out a slow, gentle sigh. Proconsular provinces under the Julio-Claudians was, he would be the first to admit, not the catchiest of titles, but it was far from the worst also. Five years in the writing, it was supposed to launch him higher into the academic atmosphere, put him on the path to a professorial chair. 2 years after publication, 4 reasonable reviews in the journals, and a grand total of 150 copies sold, Simon had to admit to himself, that it had not had the impact he had hoped. In his pre-publication fantasies, he had imagined being contacted by the BBC, becoming a telly don and launching a new, more glamourous and financially rewarding career. Sadly, none of the 150 copies seemed to have found its way into the right hands, so here he was, just on the wrong side of 30, single and ever so slightly scared of the comfortable if tweedy future opening up ahead of him.

Not that he could really complain, of course. The life of the Oxford don was remarkably civilised really. He gave six hour-long tutorials a week for three eight-week terms and one course of eight lectures a year. That was one hundred and fifty two hours of work a year. Now, the monetary rewards were hardly generous, but he had friends in the City who worked those hours in a week, and they didn’t get subsidised housing, in a beautiful seventeenth century building, three free meals a day, and access to a really quite reasonable cellar. Maybe he should count his blessings. But, but, but.. the gnawing realisation that he was on the slippery slope to wearing tweed and brown brogues, smoking a pipe and engaging in academic sniping across High Table still got to him. He had never expected to be Indiana Jones, but had, perhaps, wanted more than this.

Gathering himself up, he headed out of his rooms, not bothering to lock them. After all, anyone who wanted a copy of his book was, at this stage, more than welcome to it. Heading two floors down the creaking oak staircase, he exited into the damp quad and dashed the hundred yards or so to the Senior Common Room, for a quick drink before lunch. First week was always entertaining for dons as they gathered to swap notes on their new charges.

While most colleges have tutors in most subjects, no-one can be an expert across the whole of each field of study. If a student wants to study something outside their college tutor’s usual purview, arrangements are usually made to send them to a scholar at another college who is more of an expert. The web of connections based on students sent out and accepted created obligations which served to tie the various scholars in a subject together. Simon was aware that both an anthropologist and a mathematician had undertaken studies of the system, one comparing the arrangement to bartering practices in the Pacific Islands, the other to Cold War generals playing with their nuclear missiles. While Simon (and, he suspected, most dons) rather liked the idea of bemedalled omnipotence, he rather suspected that comparison with grass skirt wearing native islanders (never savages these days) would prove more accurate.

Wondering if any of the others had outside students of interest (History and English usually attracted pretty girls), he was shaken out of his thoughts by Tim, the Head Porter calling him, while closing at a rate of knots. Ramrod straight, Tim was a former NCO in the Guards, who had slowly over the past years come to realise that students were not squaddies to be knocked into shape, and fellows not officers to be followed blindly. Usually, it was the other way round.

“Dr Pelham, sir”. Tim had never quite lost the habit of calling the fellows sir.

Simon stood in the doorway of the common room, trying not to get wet while Tim stood there in his suit and bowler hat, seemingly oblivious to the weather. “Yes Tim.”

“I’ve got something sir, think you should take a look at it.”

“Can it wait? It’s almost lunchtime.” It wasn’t so much the food Simon was concerned about, more the fact that he really didn’t fancy getting any wetter than he had to.

“Well sir, it’s rather odd and I’m not sure whether I should call the police.”

The police? What now? And why him? Simon was a historian, what could he possibly add to anything involving the police, unless Julius Caesar had decided to come back from the dead and enroll at Oxford. And if that happened, then they all probably had better things to worry about.

“Can’t you just tell me what it is? Or I can pop into the lodge after lunch?”

“The thing is, it’s quite odd, really upset some of the other porters, sir. I’d like to get it dealt with now. And it is addressed to you” Tim could be a bulldog when he wanted to, but then again, leading your men across the Falkland Islands fighting Argentinians every step of the way probably did call for a degree of persistence.

“OK Tim, lead the way.” Simon gave in, resigning himself to a slightly damper and later lunch than desired.

Crossing the quad again and heading under the vaulted arch carved from Cotswold stone four centuries ago, the two turned left into the porters lodge, past the student pigeon holes and through into the Head Porters office, a small cubby hole, with an extremely strong heater. “It’s the arthritis, sir” Tim had once explained.

On the desk lay an envelope, covered in a familiar green scrawl. A green scrawl Simon recognised instantly, but could not begin to comprehend.

“It can’t be. Turn it over.”

Tim carefully flipped the envelope over, using a pen, either a product of army training or the result of watching too many police dramas. And there it was, as it always was. The name and address: Dr Jonathan Strange, Wadham College, Oxford.

Jonathan, his predecessor as Ancient History tutor, Jonathan, his mentor, Jonathan whom he found in a heap at the bottom of the stair case, not seven months ago. Jonathan whose eulogy he had given and whom he missed every day.

White now, a strangely empty feeling upon him, he asked Tim to turn the envelope over again. “When was it posted?”

“That’s the funny thing sir. It was posted on December 27th”

“But he’d been dead for almost six months then”

“I know sir. And that’s not all. It was posted in Vienna.”

“Vienna, as in Austria?”

“Yes, sir. See the postmark?” Simon looked at the envelope and it did indeed say Wien and December 27 2010.

All thoughts of lunch gone, indeed, food was more likely to come up than stay down given the churning in Simon’s stomach, he picked up the letter and slipped it into his pocket.

“It’s alright Tim, I’ll take it. Probably just some sort of student prank. Did any of them go to Austria over the vac?”

“I don’t rightly know sir, but I’ll find out. It’s not right this, he was a good man was Dr Jonathan”

“I know he was, Tim, I know” Simon mumbled as he left the lodge, heading back to his room, and the bottle of whiskey hidden under the infamous sofa.

Cliche though it was, the letter really felt like it was burning a hole in his pocket. He could sense it there, a malevolent presence, desperately needing to be resolved, but what resolution was possible? Maybe it was just a hoax, he thought, that would be it, some silly student playing infantile tricks.

Seeing his door open momentarily confused him, but focused on the letter, Simon assumed the scout or cleaner was on her rounds. An assumption which lasted all of three seconds.

Mrs Crane might not have been the most efficient cleaner, but she did actually clean. She did not sweep papers off desks, books off shelves or slash open battered old sofas. She did not know how to operate his computer, which was not only on, but whirring in the background and she did not generally dress from head to tow in black, with a ski-mask covering her face.

Shit! The burly dark figure was barreling towards him, shoulder lowered, eyes glaring through the slit in the mask. Simon had played enough rugby in his time to know that this would hurt, and he also knew there was little way of avoiding it. With no room to move, he spread his legs, lowering his centre of gravity and hoping to be able to stay upright. Arms stretched out, he tried to deflect his assailant, but one of the pair was fit and the other had been leading a sedentary lifestyle for far too long.

The irresistable force met the all-too-movable object and Simon went crumpling against the wall, his legs flying out from under him and his head cracking against the wooden bookshelf. Woozy and winded, Simon tried to call out, but nothing came. His legs seemed powerless to obey the commands his brain was desperately sending them. Despite the mask, he could sense his attacker smirking, standing there, towering over him, almost exulting in his power over Simon for both knew that there was no fight left, no way he would be able to escape.

Kicking Simon savagely in the stomach, with his large, heavy boot, the assailant reached behind his back and withdrew the longest, sharpest and downright scariest knife ever seen in a respectable Oxford college. Not sure whether it was designed for Davie Crockett or for an orthopedic surgeon, the historian was sure that whatever part of his body it touched, would not be his much longer.

Closing now, the knife poised terrifyingly in his hand, the giant readied himself for the end of this scuffle. No stranger to killing, he focused on the job at hand, blocking out everything else. This would be easy, but still demanded his full concentration. It was always the unlikely ones who caused the most problems, that was what he had been taught. Professionals had been taught the same things and you could predict how they would react. Amateurs, though, they hadn’t been trained, and they did strange things, things which might force a change of plan.

Moving round, away from Simon’s legs to avoid the possibility of any last minute kicking, the assassin turned his back to the door and prepared to stab Simon in the chest. He had been taught how to locate the heart, with almost surgical precision and was sure that in a matter of seconds this damp, dishevelled specimen would be breathing his last on the stained wooden floor.

Crack. The door flew open, knocking the killer in the back, kicking him off balance. A new actor had entered the drama, this one younger and altogether fitter than his proposed victim. Quickly taking in the situation, the young man aimed for the giants legs, launching himself at them in an attempt to bring him down. Narrowly avoiding the tackle, the giant hastily re-calculated the odds.

His orders were to attract as little attention as possible. One murder could possibly be explained, but two, that was more difficult. Plus the interloper could cry out and attract more help. Don’t get caught, that was the rule. Even if you don’t get the package, make sure you don’t get caught, the project is too advanced now. He would get hell if he returned empty handed, but if he ended up in prison, well, his boss was a powerful man, and all he would probably get would be a crudely fashioned knife across the throat in a staged prison riot.

Like all animals, man has an advanced ability to choose between fight or flight. At that moment, in the deepest recesses of the giant’s brain, his calculations had subtly changed. Dimly aware that his young attacker was re-grouping for a second go, the giant dashed through the door and bounded down the steps two at a time.