The legal team arrived at nine-fifteen in the morning, two days after the police had left. Helena saw the convoy from the trench—three vehicles this time, sleek and dark as polished beetles, moving up the track in formation. A saloon, a people carrier, and a small van with the Aethelgard Music Holdings logo on its side: a stylised lyre encircled by a ring of barbed wire, a design choice that had always struck her as uncomfortably honest about the company's self-conception.
Marcus was the first to react. He climbed out of the trench with an agility that belied his years and stood wiping his hands on a rag, his face settling into the expression of a man preparing for a confrontation he had rehearsed in his head for thirty years. "They've sent the full circus," he said. "That's not a courtesy call. That's a claim of possession."
Helena pulled off her gloves and walked to meet them. The saloon door opened and disgorged a woman in her early forties, dressed in a charcoal suit that had been cut by someone who understood the architecture of intimidation. Her hair was a precise shade of auburn, her heels were unsuited to a farm track, and her smile was the kind of professional arrangement that never reached the eyes.
"Dr. Voss." She extended a hand. "Eleanor Severin, General Counsel for Aethelgard Music Holdings. We spoke briefly on the telephone, before the dig began."
The voice was the same one Helena remembered—silken, unhurried, carrying the unspoken assumption that every conversation was a negotiation and every negotiation had already been won. "Ms. Severin. You brought an entourage."
"A necessary precaution. The materials on this site may include intellectual property that falls under Aethelgard's custodianship. Our presence here is to ensure that nothing is damaged, misattributed, or inadvertently released into the public domain before proper legal assessment can be made."
"That's an interesting choice of words. 'Custodianship.' Not ownership."
Severin's smile did not waver. "The distinction is precisely what we're here to establish."
The people carrier had emptied while they spoke. Three junior lawyers emerged, each carrying identical briefcases, followed by a middle-aged man in a tweed jacket who looked profoundly uncomfortable. Severin gestured toward him. "This is Dr. Alistair Crowne, independent musicologist. We've retained him to assess any manuscript materials you've recovered."
Marcus made a sound that was somewhere between a laugh and a growl. "Crowne. I've read your monographs. You've spent twenty years arguing that Godric of Dunmoor's corpus is unified and singular in authorship. You're not independent. You're an advocate."
Crowne's discomfort deepened, but he met Marcus's gaze. "I've argued from evidence, Professor Fell. I remain open to new evidence. But I remain also mindful that attributions have consequences."
"They certainly do," Severin interjected smoothly. "And those consequences are why we've also secured a court order." She nodded to one of the junior lawyers, who produced a folded document from his briefcase with the solemnity of a priest presenting a relic. "The Valdorian Circuit Court has granted Aethelgard interim custodial rights over all artefacts recovered from St. Adhelm's Priory that pertain to musical composition, notation, or liturgical text. Pending a full evidentiary hearing, nothing leaves this site without our consent."
The trench seemed to tilt around Helena. She took the document and read it carefully, aware of Severin's gaze on her, aware of Marcus's breathing growing heavier beside her, aware of Lena's camera clicking somewhere to her left, capturing everything. The order was real. The judge's signature was real. The language was dense with legal artifice but the meaning was clear: Aethelgard had moved faster than the university, faster than the police, faster than anyone had anticipated.
"This is an archaeological excavation," Helena said, handing the document back. "Not a recording studio. We don't answer to a music publisher."
"You answer to the Valdorian courts, Dr. Voss. As do we all." Severin folded the order and returned it to her lawyer. "We're not here to obstruct your work. We're here to observe, to catalogue, and to ensure that nothing is disseminated in a way that might prejudice the legal questions at stake. You may continue your excavation. We'll simply be alongside you while you do it."
Iris had appeared at the edge of the group, her presence as quiet as ever. She had been working in the crypt all morning, documenting the skeletal remains, and a fine dust of ancient mortar clung to her sleeves. "And what legal questions are those, exactly?"
Severin turned to her with an appraising look. "You must be Ms. Kenric. The archivist." She pronounced the word as though it were a minor diplomatic post. "The primary question is one of provenance. If the manuscript you've discovered was composed within the scriptorium of St. Adhelm's, and if that scriptorium was under the authority of Godric of Dunmoor, then the works contained therein fall under the existing copyright stewardship of Aethelgard, which has held the Dunmoor rights in perpetuity since the Valdorian Cultural Heritage Act of 1953."
"And if the manuscript was composed by someone other than Godric?" Iris's voice was calm, almost curious. "If the attribution reads 'Oswin made me' rather than 'Godric made me'? What happens to your copyright then?"
The silence that followed was dense enough to walk on. Severin's expression did not change, but Helena saw something flicker behind her eyes—a reassessment, a recalibration. "That would be a matter for the courts to determine. The Valdorian Discovery Clause permits rights holders to refile claims when new evidence substantially alters the understanding of a work's authorship. If the manuscript proves to be the work of a previously unknown composer, the copyright status would need to be re-evaluated."
"Refiled," Iris said. "Not voided."
"As I said. A matter for the courts."
Marcus had been listening with his arms crossed, his fingers drumming against his elbow. "The Discovery Clause was written for lost works that resurface in attics, not for archaeological finds that overturn the entire attribution of a medieval corpus. You can't simply refile a claim on a work that was never Godric's to begin with."
"And yet," Severin said, "here we are."
The morning dissolved into a tense ballet of supervision. Aethelgard's lawyers established themselves in a corner of the farmhouse that had previously held gardening equipment, now transformed into a makeshift legal office with laptops and portable printers. Dr. Crowne was given supervised access to the manuscript, his examination conducted under the watchful eyes of both Marcus and one of the junior lawyers. The van disgorged equipment cases that Helena initially mistook for recording gear until she saw the company logo on their sides: digital preservation scanners, archival-grade cameras, a portable spectrograph for ink analysis. Aethelgard had not come to observe. They had come to build their own record of the evidence.
By midday, the camp had divided into two distinct territories. The archaeologists occupied the trench, the crypt, and the northern half of the farmhouse. The Aethelgard contingent occupied the southern half and the area around their vehicles. Between them lay a no-man's-land of trampled grass and unspoken hostility, patrolled by Lena with her camera, documenting both sides with an impartiality that Helena found increasingly unsettling.
"She's compiling her own archive," Helena said to Iris, watching Lena photograph the Aethelgard equipment cases. "Not ours. Not theirs. Hers."
"Lena has always been her own institution." Iris was sketching in her notebook, a detailed rendering of the crypt's skeletal arrangement with annotations in a hand so small it was almost microscopic. "She worked in war zones before this. She understands that documentation is power."
"What does she want with the power?"
Iris's pen paused. "I don't know. But she's been here since the beginning, and she hasn't missed a single frame."
The afternoon brought a new arrival, this one unexpected. A motorcycle came up the track at speed, its rider dressed in leathers and a helmet with a darkened visor. The bike stopped beside the Aethelgard convoy, and the rider dismounted with a fluidity that spoke of long practice. When the helmet came off, Helena saw a woman in her late twenties, her dark hair cropped short, her face angular and striking. She was not one of the lawyers; she wore no suit, carried no briefcase. Instead, she had a courier's bag slung across her chest and an expression of focused intent.
She walked past the Aethelgard vehicles without acknowledging them and approached the farmhouse. "I'm looking for Dr. Helena Voss."
"You've found her."
The woman reached into her bag and produced a sealed envelope. "Delivery from the Valdorian National Archives, Department of Restricted Manuscripts. It requires your signature and identification."
Helena signed the proffered form and took the envelope. It was heavy, made of archival-grade paper, and the seal bore the insignia of the National Archives: a quill crossed with a key. "What is this?"
"I'm not authorised to know. But the archivist who sent it said to tell you: 'The catalogue entry was altered in 1958. Look for the excision.'" The woman nodded once, returned to her motorcycle, and was gone before Helena could ask anything more.
Inside the farmhouse, away from the Aethelgard lawyers and their watching eyes, Helena opened the envelope. Inside were photocopies of a catalogue entry from the National Archives' Dunmoor Collection. The entry described a twelfth-century copy of Godric of Dunmoor's "Missa Sancti Adhelmi," the Mass of St. Adhelm, composed, according to tradition, for the consecration of the priory in 891. The copy had been donated to the archives in 1952 by the Morrow Trust, a private foundation that Helena had never heard of. But it was not the entry that made her stop breathing. It was the annotation in the margin, written in a different hand, dated 1958.
Page 17 excised. Contains notation incompatible with Godric attribution. Referred to legal department. No further action permitted.
Below it, in what looked like the same handwriting but fainter, as though the writer had been pressing less hard: Qui cantum furatur, animam occidit.
The same words that were written in the crypt manuscript. The same accusation. Written in 1958, sixty-six years ago, by someone in the National Archives who had seen a page that had subsequently been removed and suppressed. Referred to the legal department. No further action permitted.
Helena's hands were unsteady as she laid the photocopies on the table. Iris was beside her in a moment, her eyes moving across the text with the speed of someone who had spent a lifetime reading marginalia. When she reached the final line, she went very still.
"The Morrow Trust," Iris said. "That name."
"You know it?"
"I know that it's listed as the original donor of the Dunmoor Collection to the archives. I know that it's a private foundation with no public offices and no listed directors. And I know that when I tried to access their donor records last year, I was told they were sealed under a permanent non-disclosure order." She looked at Helena, and for the first time since the dig began, there was something other than calm in her expression. "Someone has been hiding evidence of Oswin's authorship for at least six decades. Someone with enough legal power to alter catalogue entries, excise manuscript pages, and silence anyone who noticed."
"And now we've found the original."
"Now we've found the original," Iris echoed. "And Aethelgard arrived with a court order before the police had finished their initial investigation. They knew what we were going to find before we found it. Someone told them."
Helena thought of Tom, asleep in his tent while the vellum page was left on the spoil heap. Of Marcus, with his thirty years of academic grievance against the Dunmoor orthodoxy. Of Lena, documenting everything for an archive of her own. Of Iris herself, with her unsettling knowledge and her careful silences.
"Who else knew the excavation was targeting St. Adhelm's?" she asked.
"The university board. The funding committee. The Valdorian Antiquities Commission. Aethelgard, because you told them yourself when they called. And anyone any of those people chose to tell." Iris paused. "The circle is too wide to draw conclusions. But someone in that circle has been waiting for this excavation. Someone wanted us to find Oswin's manuscript."
"To expose the fraud?"
"Or to complete it."
The words hung between them. Outside, the afternoon light was beginning to fail, the shadows of the priory ruins stretching across the camp like fingers reaching for the trench. Helena thought of the skeletons in their circle, their necks twisted, their bones arranged with precision. Someone had killed them. Someone had buried them in a sealed crypt and covered their story with centuries of silence. And someone in the present day was still protecting that secret, using copyright law and court orders and excised catalogue pages as their weapons.
"We need to tell Nash," Helena said.
"We need to tell him more than that." Iris tapped the photocopy. "The Morrow Trust owned the Dunmoor Collection before it was donated. It owned the manuscript pages that were excised in 1958. And if it still exists, if it's still operating behind non-disclosure orders and sealed records, then it's connected to Aethelgard in ways that the court order doesn't disclose. The question is whether Aethelgard is the beneficiary of the trust, or whether the trust is something else entirely."
"Something else like what?"
Iris met her eyes. "A holding company for stolen property. A mechanism for extending a fraud across generations. The original theft was the song. The secondary theft was the copyright. And the third theft—the one that's happening right now—is the discovery itself. They're not trying to suppress Oswin's authorship anymore. They're trying to control when and how it comes to light, so they can be the ones to 'discover' it and reset the clock."
Helena stared at her. The logic was monstrous and utterly coherent. The Valdorian Discovery Clause permitted rights holders to refile claims when new evidence altered the understanding of a work's authorship. If Aethelgard—or the Morrow Trust behind it—had known about Oswin for decades, had suppressed the evidence, had waited for the right moment, they could orchestrate a "discovery" that would grant them another seventy years of exclusive rights over a corpus that had never rightfully been theirs. The excavation was not a threat to their copyright. It was the mechanism for extending it.
"They've been waiting for us to find it," Helena said. "Not to stop us. To use us."
"And the death threats? The vellum page? The sound you heard?"
"I don't know. But someone in this camp is working for them. Someone has been feeding them information from the beginning. And that someone may not want the rest of us to live long enough to tell anyone what we've found."
Outside, the last light drained from the sky. The priory ruins stood black against the horizon, their broken arches like open mouths, and in the trench below them, the crypt waited with its circle of bones and its stolen song, a thousand-year-old crime that was only now beginning to bear its final fruit.
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