Spiral: Book One of the Spiral in Time (3 page)

To most proud ‘Celts’ his theories were heresy. His calling their Celtic heritage false was the equivalent of someone calling your mother a whore; it took away your legitimacy and put your whole ancestry in question.

Germaine knew both sides of this ongoing argument, but Nigel Mallory’s antagonistic attitude had struck a nerve. To define someone as Celtic had recently come under attack by some in her field, and Mallory was the ring-leader. He had made a point of seeking her out and immediately haranguing her about the Celts. His attack felt so personal. He was so smug about his opinion that she gave him a blazing response, defending all claims to a Celtic identity.

She should have known better.

Germaine was used to the on-going wars among archaeologists, sniping at each other in the books they published, where each authority took long-range shots at new interlopers. Their own territories were well defended and neatly staked out with accepted markers. Just mention anything that supported their primary theories, like context, carbon dating, or the newest technology for establishing a time period—and time was everything in archaeology—and their eyes happily glazed over.

Her response was the equivalent of shooting a flaming arrow into Nigel Mallory’s territory. They were now at war.

With painful hindsight, she wished she had not been so outspoken in opposition to his favorite theories. When would she ever learn to think first? A quick tongue had plagued her all her life. Now, she would have to deal with the repercussions at the end of this year, for Mallory authorized any new position for tenured faculty. Her chance for tenure hung in the balance, and Nigel Mallory held the weight. Thank god she had scheduled a year away before Mallory came on the scene.

It was too late for hindsight or regrets, and she was not ready to give up. With one year to finish writing the book, her objective was clear. No excuses allowed. Publish or perish was the mantra for gaining a tenured position at Berkeley.

Provocatively titled,
Sex,Pagan Celts and Death,
the book would put her on the archaeological map with her peers. She had already published two short monographs on the Celts, but this book had to make the archaeology world—and Berkeley—sit up and take notice. It had to be so astute, so academically ground-breaking, that Mallory could not ignore it, and the tenured position would be offered to her, like an engraved invitation.

It would be a year spent with Aubrey Clarke, for she planned on living in England. It was like coming home; Aubrey was the father she never had and more. He was her mentor, her teacher, and the only person left in the world who truly cared about her. His great comforting hug when she landed last night at Heathrow had been a welcoming balm for her spirit. A world-renown authority on the prehistory of Europe, Aubrey would be there to consult with, if needed. Away from her past problems, she was sure the rest of her troubled book would come back to life and fly to completion. It had to work.

Germaine glanced at her watch. She was early—a good thing. She could not stand up one more minute. She entered the conference room, found a seat next to a colleague she knew and murmured a quick greeting. For a change, the chair was cushioned and comfortable. With a thankful sigh, she sank down and leaned her head back.

The conference was held at London University in a building resembling a concrete bunker, a relic of the sixties, with massive, impersonal architecture. Designed to be impressive, it failed. The building looked like a prison. It had no soul.

She hated institutional buildings and much preferred being around prehistoric places that resonated with their own kind of soul. Great monuments like Stonehenge or Newgrange in Ireland were meant to be impressive in a different way, even though they were built by so-called primitive people. She always felt they were sacred places, just standing in their shadows.

The people living before written history were her passion. Pagans or barbarians, everyone called them primitives because they did not write. She used the term in her work because she had to, but it seemed such a derogatory term and implied someone inferior. Who really knew anything about them? Everyone relied on archaeology to reconstruct the lives of prehistoric people; it offered a window to that ancient past.

Germaine sighed and turned her head to a large plate glass window in the opposite wall. “Thank the goddess!” she murmured. Safely seated, she gazed out the lone window, trying to stay awake. The persistent headache was still there. Did prehistoric people have effective cures for a hangover? She felt sure they must have, what with all that potent mead and wine drinking. Probably some vile tasting herbal mash made into a tea. But that kind of useful information was never found in any history book she’d ever read.

Low rain clouds hovered outside, bringing the gray city and darkening sky close together. Gusts of wind blew rain against the window, making a light pattering sound, and the damp seeped in through the concrete walls. She shivered, even though she’d dressed for the weather in wool slacks and a cashmere sweater, with her old, Burberry trench coat doubling as a raincoat over her shoulders. Attending university at Cambridge had taught her what to expect from English weather.

She closed her eyes and a faint, ghost-image of the red-inked message about the past flashed briefly before her eyes. Almost faint with anxiety, she jerked her head up. Don’t go there. Be here, now, she thought. It’s over
.
She sat up and straightened her back.

“Another fair summer day in England,” she said to the woman sitting next to her, who laughed. Germaine knew her from several past conferences. Moira McKenna, an anthropologist from the University of Dublin, another woman in a man’s profession.

The room was almost full and, as usual, the audience was heavily weighted with men. Germaine narrowed her eyes with disapproval. Not much had changed since she was in graduate school. She sighed. Equal rights for women had a long way to go.

In her field, females were still held to a different standard and best accepted if they were quietly married. Or neutered. There were some women who fit that unpleasant definition, who dressed in sexless, dowdy clothes designed to present a professional facade that said, “I am a scholar and don’t you dare forget it.”

Germaine knew she fell dangerously close to that group. Driven by a need to succeed, she tried to present a professional image and wore her dark clothes like an animal’s protective coloring. Self-conscious about her height, she always wore flats. And no makeup, not even to conceal a few annoying freckles sprayed across her cheeks. Titanium rimless glasses were her one nod to fashion; she drew the line at the large, plastic-rimmed atrocities favored by some of her colleagues. Her long, red-orange hair was pulled back tight, a futile attempt to make it less conspicuous. The hair was shocking against her pale skin. Wide set eyes, a much too long nose. Not a beautiful face by any common definition. Pure Celt, she often thought and wondered what ancestor passed on her particular genes—probably some virile conquering warrior. And why should it be a man? She laughed at that thought, aware of her own clichéd generalities.

Impatient, she stood to look for Aubrey. He had sent her one of his hastily scribbled notes asking her to meet him here. Commanded was more like it, for rarely did anyone refuse him. The seminar’s topic, mitochondrial DNA, sounded technical and possibly boring, even though DNA testing was one of the hottest emerging fields in archaeology. There was even a name for it—Genetic Archaeology.

Aubrey was nowhere in sight. She yawned, slumped back down, and took another big sip of her drink. Out of habit, her thumb rubbed the silver ring she always wore on her left hand, a relic from her days at university when she impulsively bought it from a hippie street vendor. It would bring good things, prophesized the woman. That day Germaine received news of the coveted job at Berkeley and, not quite seriously, decided the ring was a charm. Inscribed with small scrolled spirals, it reminded her of ancient Celtic jewelry. It soon became her talisman; she rarely took it off. Touching the ring made her feel more confident and she needed that assurance. Later tonight, she had to be alert to give her own presentation. She would have to
will
the jet lag away. Perhaps the magic of the ring would help.

It was irrational superstition. She prided herself on having a scientific mind, and her reliance on the ring did not fit that image. Even Aubrey teased her about the ring.

He liked her cool scientific approach. She was usually analytical, relying on modern science to lead the way. Aubrey used the science, too, but he often relied on intuition, finding answers she sometimes overlooked. They worked well together.

Then she heard his distinctive voice. Deep and booming, it was the first thing you remembered about him. There he was, entering the other side of the room, the center of a laughing group. He always stood out. A rotund, Falstaffian figure, his longish white hair just touched his collar and rimmed a pink, balding head. He spotted her and, waving, started making his way across the crowded room.

Moira McKenna nudged her. “He looks more like Winston the older he gets.”

They both laughed. Aubrey did look a little like Winston Churchill. He was very distantly related to that famous Brit and more than a little vain about the connection. He knew they shared a resemblance. “Blood always tells!” he was fond of saying and took pleasure in quoting little
bon mots
of Winston Churchill whenever he could, appropriate or not. As far as Germaine could tell, it was the only flaw in his character.

They both enjoyed the show as he sought his way across the room, greeting friends, shaking hands, bowing to some, waving to others. He was not making much headway.

“Where did you meet?” Moira asked.

Germaine smiled. “At Cambridge. He was a friend of my father’s. They went to school there at the same time, and both were brilliant. I decided to go to Cambridge and keep alive the family tradition of studying archaeology.”

Except I never knew my father, she thought. She always wondered if going to school there was her way of keeping open some line of communication to her charismatic, unknown father. Or perhaps it was just in her genes; she had loved the discipline and being in the same field as her parents.

“At that time, the government had quotas for non-resident admissions—it added a good amount of money to the university coffers. There was some resentment. My paying the full tuition meant I took the place of a British resident, who didn’t have to pay. And no one wanted the American from across the pond poaching on their territory, so they pointedly ignored me in class and gave me menial jobs on the local digs. Aubrey took pity on me and not just because I was Jack O’Neill’s daughter. I was his best student, and he swept me under his great protective wing and stopped that right away.”

Of course, that didn’t tell it all.

That first year at Cambridge, her guardian had died. A distant aunt on her father’s side, Aunt Edie raised Germaine after her parents died when she was two. Aubrey had brought the news of her guardian’s death and discovered she had no other relatives, only some far distant cousins in Germany, unheard from since the war. He took it upon himself to keep an eye on her. Intellectually, they were well-matched—each endlessly fascinated by the Celts and prehistory. A brilliant teacher, he demanded a lot from her and became her mentor. His wife had recently died, and Germaine soon filled a void in his life. She became the daughter he always wanted, while he became an idealized form of the father she never knew.

He was not going to make it across the room. There were too many people who had to say something to their favorite. The noise level increased. Germaine idly watched the flow of people entering the conference room. Then one grabbed her attention: he was hard to ignore.

Tanned with the golden glow of someone who spent time outside, he came in and stood at the back of the room. Gilded hair curled and waved away from his face. With an elegantly shaped, classic nose, he looked like a Greek god come down from the Parthenon. A small ring in one ear gleamed in the light whenever he moved. Bright blue eyes scanned the room as though looking for someone. Muscular and fit, he wore a tight conference t-shirt that said,
We Dig the World
.

She nudged Moira and nodded toward him. “Look at the golden god.” They both rolled their eyes.

“Who is he?” Moira whispered, visibly enchanted.

“Adonis,” Germaine laughed. “He doesn’t need a real name. And he probably knows his effect on women. He’ll be jumped on by every woman here.”

Neither could take their eyes off him. As they watched, he was joined by someone who could not have been more different. Dark and unkempt, his shoulder-length hair hung loose and looked like a wild man’s mane.

“Now, that one could pose as a cave man. He just needs the animal skin,” Moira said. “Or perhaps a barbarian warrior.”

“Yes, I suppose,” Germaine said thoughtfully. He seemed vaguely familiar. Perhaps she’d met him in passing at another conference.

The caveman’s cheekbones were high and tilted; his eyes a pale, light color, intense under thick eyebrows, as he glanced around the noisy room. He lifted one hand and nervously smoothed his dark hair, as if he had just remembered where he was. In his own way, he was as interesting to watch as his gorgeous friend. When they started down the aisle, she noticed he used a cane and there was a slight hitch to his walk. She pondered him briefly and then shifted her gaze back to the Adonis. Deep in conversation, the two men sat down in front of Moira and Germaine.

Germaine shook her head. She was staring and caught herself as she looked longingly at the blond head in front of her. A series of explicit, sensual images raced across her mind. After all, she told herself, she was not a nun.
Yet
. She shuddered and firmly closed her mind to that dismal monologue.

The fact was she hadn’t been interested in anyone since her divorce last year. Ten long years of marriage were now gone, leaving a deep sense of personal failure. Julian had been English through and through, complete with charming accent and manners. What initially attracted her was immensely seductive to many women, she discovered. Next time—if there ever was a next time—charm would be very low on her list of desirable qualities.