Reginald Hill - Dialogues of the Dead

He put his hands to his ears in response to an explosion of noise.

“Turn it down, turn it down!” screamed Follows.

The noise declined and became recognizable as a babble of voices intermixed with horses neighing, cocks crowing, dogs barking, bells ringing, children laughing, and the occasional strains of a faintly oriental music, with brass notes blaring at a distance and plucked strings resonating much nearer.

“That’s better,” said the librarian.

“You think so? You must attend a lot of very quiet markets. They’re not like Sainsbury’s, you know, all Muzak and the swish of plastic. They are very noisy places,” said Bird.

“Ah, your famous crowd expertise,” mocked Follows. “Which must, I presume, have come from a previous incarnation as you can’t have picked it up from your theatre audiences. But that language-isn’t it supposed to be Latin and Anglo-Saxon these people are speaking? That doesn’t sound like anything I’ve ever heard.”

“Why should it be when all you ever heard was some old fogey in a dusty gown declaiming Cicero or Beowulf? This, as far as the best palaeo-demoticists can assess, is how it must have sounded in its vernacular form.”

Dalziel, observing Dee, thought he caught a flicker of self-approval and said, “That pally whatsit one of yours, then?”

It was good pay-back for the Fusiliers’ Ball. Dee’s features registered surprise which he tried to cover not by concealment but by exaggerating it into comedy.

“Ooh, what a sharp old detective you are, Superintendent. Indeed, I did drop the neologism into a conversation I had with Mr. Bird and it’s pleasing to learn that, with his finely tuned actor’s ear, he has added it to his word-hoard. I should add that it seems to me a perfectly logical compound and one I would not be surprised to find already existent. What else, I wonder, has your own sharp ear extracted from these exchanges?”

Dalziel said, “Well, it’s confirmed what I knew, that they’re a right pair of mutton-tuggers. At a guess, I’d say that when poor old Phil took badly, Ambrose put himself in charge of sound effects and Percy took smells. Seems about right.”

“Spot on again,” said Dee. “I like mutton-tuggers , by the way. An evolved usage, but much apter than the original. Do you want to watch the rest of the shall we call it performance? Or shall we make a small tour while we talk?”

The internal interrogative was offered with a small smile which Dalziel stored up for future ingestion along with a lot of other stuff which was raising interesting questions.

“Talk about what?” he said.

“About whatever it is you’ve come to talk to me about,” said Dee. “Though at a guess I’d say it was the sad death of Lord Pyke-Strengler, and its place in the wider context of your pursuit of the Wordman.”

As he spoke he led the way around the market between the various stalls. Most were pure artefacts, as realistic as lighting and sound effects could make them, but with the goods on display and the traders selling them all ingeniously moulded out of plastic. There were, however, three or four stalls which were stocked with real articles and attended by real people. Dee paused before one of these which was selling small articles made of metal, weights, cups, ornaments and so on. The stallholder, a handsome dark-haired woman in a simple brown robe which complemented rather than concealed the sinuous body moving beneath it, smiled at him and said, “Salve, domine. Scin’ Latine?”

Dee answered, “Immo vero, domina,” then picked up a brass cat and rattled off a whole sentence in Latin to which the woman replied ruefully, “Oh shit. We’re not going to get a lot like you, are we?”

“No, I’m probably a one-off,” laughed Dee. “What I said was, I liked the pretty little pussy-cat but I liked the one in the brown robe a lot better.”

“Did you now? I see I’d better learn the Latin and Old English for cheeky sod if I’m going to survive here.”

Dalziel watched this little piece of by-play with interest, noting the ease with which the librarian joked along with the woman and her readiness to slip into flirt mode. No one had suggested to him that Dee might be a ladies’ man, but maybe that was because he hadn’t been questioned by a woman.

As they moved away he said, “So what were that all about?”

“In the interests of verisimilitude, some of the stalls are manned by real people. Ambrose Bird supplies them from his company, actors who aren’t in the current production and who fancy making a bit of extra cash. They’re taught enough Latin and Anglo-Saxon to say hello and ask any potential customer if they speak either language. When, as in most cases, they get a blank look, they relapse into a sort of broken Shakespearean English.”

“Except now and then they’ll get some clever bugger who does speak the lingo.”

“What would the world be without clever buggers?” asked Dee.

“A sight happier,” said Dalziel. “And do they actually sell that gimcrackery?”

“Very high quality reproductions,” corrected Dee primly. “Yes, when you enter the experience, you can purchase a follis full of folles …”

“Eh?”

“Follis means money bag, but it also came to refer to the coins, particularly the small-denomination copper and bronze coins, that the bag holds. These can be used to make purchases from the active stalls or in the taberna over there.”

“That’s like a pub, is it?” said Dalziel with interest.

“In this case more like a café,” said Dee. “But it might be a good place for us to have our talk. Note, however, the calidarium or bathhouse as we pass.”

He indicated a door which had a glass panel in it. Peering through, Dalziel saw a small pool of steaming water with a naked man sitting in it, reading a papyrus scroll. Beyond and only dimly visible through the wreathing steam stretched other expanses of water in which and along whose tiled edges disported figures, some draped with towels, some apparently naked, though the swirling steam kept all within the bounds of Mid-Yorkshire decency. It took him a moment to work out that what he was looking at was the first small pool multiplied by cleverly placed mirrors and backed by a video projection probably culled from some old Hollywood Roman epic.

“Clever, isn’t it?” said Dee.

“Not really,” said Dalziel. “Not when you’ve seen the big bath down the rugby club. And they know all the verses to ‘The Good Ship Venus’ down there too.”

The taberna also fell well short of the rugby club in its provision. There was no service and when there was, as Dee explained, the choice would be between a sweet more or less authentic fruit drink or a totally anachronistic cup of tea or coffee.

“A concession to Councillor Steel who had to be persuaded that there was going to be a strong self-financing element in the project,” said Dee.

“You’ll not be sorry he’s out of the way then?” said Dalziel as they sat on a marble bench.

“I might find that question provocatively offensive if I weren’t persuaded that it is your intention to provoke,” said Dee. “In any case, Superintendent, you should understand that the success or failure of this project means very little to me. On the whole, despite the educational arguments, it all verges a little too much on the kitsch for my taste. In these days of interactive user-friendly fully automated hi-tech exhibitions, I still feel nostalgic for the old-style museum with its musty smells and its atmosphere of reverential silence. The past is another country and I sometimes feel we are visiting it more like football hooligans on a day out than serious travellers. How about you, Mr. Dalziel? How do you feel about the past?”