2. The Wrong Composer

Morning arrived without warmth, a grey wash seeping across the Valdorian sky that made the priory ruins look like a charcoal rubbing of themselves. Helena had not slept. She sat on a folding chair outside her tent, wrapped in a blanket that did nothing to stop the shivering, and watched the camp rouse itself in slow motion. The vellum page was locked in the site safe, a steel box bolted to the floor of the equipment farmhouse, and its crimson inscription had been repeating in her mind for six hours. *You must die.* Not a threat, she had decided somewhere around four in the morning, but a statement of fact. A liturgical observation. The distinction had not made her feel better.

Lena emerged first, her camera bag already slung across her shoulder, and paused when she saw Helena’s face. “You look like hell.”

“Good morning to you too.”

“I mean it. Did you sleep at all?”

Helena shook her head. She told Lena about the vellum, the linen strip, the voice in the neumes that had burrowed into her skull. Lena listened without interrupting, her expression shifting from concern to something more clinical. When Helena finished, the photographer set down her bag and crouched beside her.

“You’re saying someone left a death threat written in medieval notation on a spoil heap in the middle of the night.”

“I’m saying I found it there. Whether it was left for me specifically or I was simply the first to walk past, I don’t know.”

“And Iris took it.”

“Iris documented it and secured it.”

Lena’s mouth tightened. She glanced toward the archivist’s tent, still dark and silent. “Iris has been here less than any of us. She arrived late, she keeps her own hours, and she’s the only one who can read that notation as well as Marcus. You don’t find that worth noting?”

Helena had found it worth noting at three in the morning, then again at four, then again at five. But Iris had also been the one to insist on level-two documentation protocol, the one who had spotted the defensive wounds on the radius, the one whose presence in the crypt had felt less like intrusion and more like recognition. “I find everything worth noting. That’s the problem.”

The sound of an engine interrupted them. A black saloon car was picking its way up the rutted track from the main road, its suspension complaining at every stone. It was too clean for the countryside, too expensive for academia, and the Valdorian flag decal on its rear window marked it as government-affiliated. Helena’s stomach dropped.

The car stopped at the edge of the camp and disgorged three people. Two were uniformed officers from the Valdorian National Police, their caps tucked under their arms and their expressions suggesting they had drawn the short straw on a morning they would rather have spent elsewhere. The third was a man in a plain grey suit that fit him badly at the shoulders, as though he had borrowed it from a larger colleague. He was in his fifties, with a face that looked like it had been carved from a root vegetable and then left out in the rain. His eyes, however, were sharp and entirely awake.

“Dr. Voss?” He approached with a walk that was more deliberate than it appeared. “Detective Inspector Callum Nash, Valdorian Criminal Investigation Division. I understand you’ve had an incident.”

Helena stood, the blanket falling from her shoulders. “We reported nothing to the police.”

“No, you didn’t.” Nash smiled, a brief rearrangement of his features that conveyed no warmth. “The Aethelgard Music Holdings legal department contacted us this morning. They seemed concerned about the security of the excavation. Something about a manuscript discovery that might affect their intellectual property interests.”

The name hit Helena like cold water. “Aethelgard called you? How did they even know we found anything?”

“That’s one of the questions I’d like to answer.” Nash produced a notebook from his jacket, its cover worn soft with use. “Perhaps we could start with you telling me what happened, and then we can work our way around to who might have told a corporation in the capital about a discovery that, as far as I can tell, was made less than twenty-four hours ago.”

They sat in the farmhouse kitchen, the only space large enough to accommodate the gathering. Nash had dismissed the uniformed officers to walk the perimeter, a decision that seemed to relieve everyone. Marcus had been summoned from his morning examination of the manuscript photographs, his eyes red-rimmed and his temper fraying at the interruption. Iris had appeared wordlessly and taken a seat in the corner, her hands folded in her lap like a parishioner awaiting a sermon. Tom was still asleep in his tent near the crypt entrance, and Lena had stationed herself by the window, her camera hanging unused around her neck.

Helena recounted the previous day’s events: the discovery of the crypt, the circle of skeletons, the reliquary and its manuscript, the inscription attributing the work to Oswin rather than Godric. Then she described the night, the sound that had no source, the vellum bundle on the spoil heap, the words that were still wet.

Nash listened without taking notes, his eyes fixed on a point somewhere above Helena’s left shoulder. When she finished, he was silent for a long moment.

“You’re certain the vellum page came from the manuscript inside the reliquary?”

“The hand is identical. The notation style is identical. The linen strip matches the one that sealed the box.” Helena hesitated. “But the manuscript in the reliquary was dry. The pigment was centuries old. The page I found last night had fresh ink. Someone is reproducing the script.”

“Or someone has access to the original materials,” Iris said from her corner. Everyone turned. She met their gazes with her customary calm. “The pigment used in ninth-century Valdorian manuscripts was typically iron gall ink, made from oak galls and ferrous sulphate. The ingredients are not difficult to source. A knowledgeable person could replicate the mixture in a modern kitchen.”

Nash studied her. “You seem well-informed, Ms. Kenric.”

“I’m an archivist. It’s my profession to be well-informed about the materials I handle.”

“And did you handle the manuscript yesterday?”

“I did. With gloves, in accordance with protocol, and in the presence of three other people who can confirm that I did not remove any pages from it.”

Nash nodded slowly and made his first note. Helena watched the exchange with a disquiet she could not name. Iris had answered the question perfectly, but there was something in her phrasing—in the presence of three other people—that sounded rehearsed, as though she had been expecting to be asked.

“The sound you mentioned,” Nash said, turning back to Helena. “You described it as a low frequency that seemed to come from everywhere. Can you be more specific?”

“It was like a drone. A single sustained note, but not musical. It felt like pressure. It made my vision blur.”

“And it stopped abruptly.”

“When I dropped the vellum. As though it had served its purpose.”

Nash made another note. Marcus, who had been fidgeting with the cuff of his waistcoat, cleared his throat. “Inspector, if I may—the idea of a sound having no source is physically impossible. Acoustics don’t work that way. What Dr. Voss experienced was likely a combination of exhaustion, stress, and the suggestiveness of the setting. The priory ruins are known to produce unusual echoes. It’s well documented.”

“Is it.” Nash’s tone was neutral. “And the fresh ink on the vellum? Is that well documented too?”

Marcus flushed. “I’m merely suggesting that we should not leap to supernatural explanations when mundane ones are available.”

“I’m not leaping to anything, Professor Fell. I’m collecting information.” Nash closed his notebook and stood. “I’d like to see the crypt. And the vellum page. And then I’d like to speak to Mr. Balfour, once he’s awake.”

The crypt had changed overnight. Helena felt it the moment she descended the ladder behind Nash and the two uniformed officers. The air was colder than it had been, and the silence had a different quality—less like emptiness and more like held breath. The skeletons lay in their circle as they had the day before, but the shadows in their eye sockets seemed deeper, more attentive.

Nash examined the scene with the methodical care of a man who had learned that details were the only things that could not lie. He crouched beside the nearest skeleton and studied the twisted vertebrae without touching them. He shone his torch into the reliquary, now empty of its manuscript. He traced the circumference of the chamber with his beam, pausing at the rough stone walls, the low ceiling, the single entrance through which they had come.

“There’s no other way in or out,” he observed.

“None that we’ve found,” Helena confirmed. “The chamber was sealed until we opened it. The collapse that buried the entrance probably happened in the twelfth century, based on the stratigraphy.”

“So whoever left the vellum on the spoil heap last night either came through your camp, or was already inside it.”

The implication settled over the group like the mist outside. One of the uniformed officers shifted his weight. Marcus opened his mouth and closed it again.

Nash straightened and dusted off his knees. “I’ll need a list of everyone who has access to the site. Everyone—including university personnel who haven’t been here yet, delivery drivers, local guides, anyone who’s set foot on this ground in the past month. And I’ll need the vellum page for forensic analysis.”

“That’s a historical artefact,” Marcus protested. “It belongs to the excavation, not the police.”

“It’s evidence in a potential criminal investigation, Professor. It belongs to whichever institution gets to it first, and as of this morning, that’s mine.” Nash’s voice had not risen, but something in it had hardened. “I understand the university has concerns about the manuscript’s attribution and its implications for Aethelgard’s copyright holdings. What I need to understand is whether those concerns are connected to someone leaving death threats on your spoil heap.”

The word hung in the cold air. Death threats. Not a prank. Not a scholarly dispute. Someone had written you must die in medieval ink and left it where Helena would find it, and now there were police in the crypt and a detective inspector asking questions that had no comfortable answers.

Tom was awake when they emerged from the trench, standing outside his tent with a mug of tea and a bewildered expression. He had slept through the police arrival, the conversation in the farmhouse, and the second descent into the crypt, a fact that seemed to distress him more than any of the previous day’s discoveries.

“I didn’t hear anything,” he said, his voice still rough with sleep. “Not the cars, not the voices. Nothing. I was out cold.”

“You were camped directly above an eleventh-century mass grave,” Marcus said, not unkindly. “Exhaustion is understandable.”

But Nash was watching Tom with an expression Helena could not read. “Did you leave your tent at any point during the night, Mr. Balfour?”

“No. I mean, I don’t think so. I went to bed around eleven and the next thing I knew it was morning.” Tom hesitated. “Why? Did something happen?”

Helena told him. The colour drained from his face in stages, leaving him looking younger and more frightened than she had ever seen him. He was twenty-three, she remembered—only twenty-three, a postgraduate student who had signed up for a summer excavation and found himself in a story that was spiralling into darkness.

“Someone’s trying to scare us off,” he said. “That’s all. Someone doesn’t want us digging here.”

“Or someone wants us to dig exactly here, exactly now, and find exactly what we’re finding,” Iris said. She had followed them up from the trench and stood a little apart, her arms crossed against the morning chill. “The vellum wasn’t a warning to leave. It was a page from a manuscript that hadn’t been opened in a thousand years. Someone wanted Dr. Voss to see those words. Someone wanted her to know that the song kills.”

The wind stirred the mist, and for a moment the priory ruins seemed to lean closer, their broken arches like the ribs of some vast, buried creature stirring in its sleep.

Nash spent another hour at the site, interviewing each member of the team in turn. Helena watched from the farmhouse window as Lena spoke to him with short, precise gestures, as Marcus paced and gesticulated, as Iris sat motionless on a fallen stone while the detective filled pages of his notebook. Tom had retreated to his tent and not emerged.

When Nash finally came to find her, she was in the equipment room, staring at the locked safe that held the vellum page.

“I’ve arranged for forensic collection this afternoon,” he said. “The page, the linen wrapping, and soil samples from the spoil heap. I’d also like to take samples from the manuscript itself, for comparison.”

“That’s Marcus’s decision. It’s his area of expertise.”

“I’ve spoken to Professor Fell. He’s agreed, with conditions.” Nash paused. “He also mentioned that you received a call from Aethelgard before the dig began. A call you didn’t mention during our earlier conversation.”

Helena felt her shoulders tighten. “It was a routine inquiry. They’d heard about the excavation and wanted to know if we expected to find materials related to Godric of Dunmoor. I told them we had no way of knowing what we might find. Which was true.”

“And did you tell them when you found the manuscript yesterday?”

“No.”

“Did anyone?”

The question stopped her. She had not. Marcus had been too absorbed in the notation. Iris had been too focused on the skeletons. Lena had been photographing. Tom had been in his tent. But someone had told Aethelgard, and Aethelgard had called the police, and now there was a detective inspector in her equipment room asking questions she could not answer.

“I don’t know,” she said. “I don’t know who told them.”

Nash nodded, as though this was the answer he had expected. He reached into his jacket and produced a card, plain white with a single phone number. “If you think of anything else, Dr. Voss. Anything at all. Even if it seems insignificant.”

She took the card. “You think this is more than a prank.”

“I think eleven people died in that crypt a long time ago, and someone in the present day doesn’t want their story told. I think the person who left that page knew exactly what they were doing, and I think they’re not finished.” He met her eyes, and for the first time she saw something beneath the weathered exterior—not warmth, but a kind of weary determination. “I also think you know more than you’ve told me. Not because you’re hiding anything, but because you haven’t yet worked out which details matter. When you do, call me.”

He left her standing by the safe, the card cold between her fingers. Through the window, she watched his car disappear down the rutted track, swallowed by the mist that still clung to the valley like a shroud.

That evening, after the forensic team had come and gone, after the site had been photographed and sampled and catalogued, Helena gathered the team in the farmhouse kitchen. They sat around the scarred wooden table—Marcus with his notes, Lena with her cameras, Iris with her silence, Tom with his unease—and tried to make sense of the day.

“The police will find out who left the page,” Marcus said, with more confidence than Helena felt. “It’s probably a local. Someone who’s heard the legends about the priory and wants to stir up trouble.”

“What legends?” Lena asked.

Marcus waved a hand. “There are always legends. Cursed ruins, ghostly monks, buried treasure. Every medieval site in Valdoria has them. This is no different.”

“This is different,” Iris said quietly. “Eleven bodies in a sealed crypt. A manuscript that attributes itself to someone other than the accepted author. Fresh ink on ancient vellum. It’s not a legend. It’s a pattern.”

The word made Helena’s skin prickle. Pattern. She had been trying not to think about the arrangement of the skeletons, the precision of the broken necks, the care with which the bodies had been placed. A massacre, Marcus had called it. But massacres were chaotic. This was something else.

“We need to keep working,” she said. “Whatever someone wants—whether it’s to scare us off or to push us toward something—the best thing we can do is our jobs. Document everything. Publish nothing until we’re certain. Let the police do theirs.”

The others nodded, but the agreement was hollow. As they dispersed into the night, Helena caught Iris watching her from the doorway, her expression unreadable.

“What is it?”

Iris hesitated. It was the first time Helena had seen the archivist uncertain about anything. “The line in the manuscript. He who steals the song kills the soul. It wasn’t a metaphor. In ninth-century monastic theology, the soul resided in the voice. To steal a song was to steal the breath of God from a man’s body. It was considered a form of murder.”

“And the response? You must die.”

“Not a threat.” Iris’s voice was barely audible. “A sentence. The prescribed punishment for the crime.”

She turned and walked into the darkness, leaving Helena alone with the weight of a thousand years and the growing certainty that whatever had begun in that crypt was not yet finished. Somewhere in the valley, an owl called—a single, low note that seemed to hang in the air a beat too long, and in its wake, Helena felt the faint, almost imperceptible pressure of a frequency that had no source.