Free Finding Camlann by Sean Pidgeon

jealousy, that Lucy may have slept with Healey in return for sundry academic favours, then taken her chance to stab him in the back on national television.
    Outside the window, Windsor Castle makes a dramatic silhouette of towers and battlements on the southern horizon. The train rattles on past deciduous suburbs, along brick-lined Victorian canyons carved through Northolt, Greenford, and Ealing, and finally through a railwayman’s maze of rusting steel into the cavernous dimness of Paddington Station. Stepping out on to the platform, Donald is immediately caught up in the crowd pressing forward in the direction of the main concourse, the Financial Times readers rushing to save precious seconds in their twelve-hour days. Despite the chaos of humanity, this is a familiar and comforting space, with its high curving roof, timetables clicking overhead, the announcer’s voice rising resonant and lifeless above the throng. He heads straight for the taxi rank, climbs into a waiting cab, and is soon being driven through watery London sunlight towards Belgravia.
    The offices of Crandall & Boyd, Publishers, are situated in an imposing 1830s town-house with a polished brass nameplate at the door. The receptionist, tweedy and efficient, looks up at Donald with an overly practised smile. ‘If you’d like to take a seat, Mr. Gladstone, Miss Wickes will be with you shortly.’ She directs him to a cluster of straight-backed chairs arranged in front of a tall bookcase displaying a selection of titles from the publisher’s two and a half centuries of history. On the top shelf is an impressive array of leather-bound volumes, amongst them the arrestingly titled Zoonomia, or the Laws of Organic Life , published in 1796 by Erasmus Darwin, who did not live long enough to see his work eclipsed by that of his more famous grandson. Placed unfortunately, or whimsically, next to the elder Darwin is a Victorian edition of the biblical chronology of James Ussher, seventeenth-century Archbishop of Armagh, according to whom the world began on the morning of 1 January, 4004 BC .
    Donald searches in vain on the lower shelves for his own book, published two years earlier by Crandall & Boyd. It was a surprising success at the time, A Dark Age Landscape: The Archaeology of Sub-Roman Britain . Intended as a serious academic study, it gained some traction in the bookshops largely (Donald has always assumed) because of the publisher’s insistence on a highly marketable title. On the strength of this achievement, he was able to negotiate a second contract for a book aimed more squarely at the popular market.
    ‘Do he"> nald, how are you?’ A plump young woman in a shiny black skirt and purple blouse comes striding across the room towards him. ‘Good to see you again,’ she says, grasping his hand. ‘How was the journey? Packed in like sardines?’
    ‘No, it was fine,’ Donald says. ‘I like the train. It’s a good place to think.’
    ‘Good. Excellent. Let’s go upstairs, and we can have a proper talk.’
    Felicity’s office is a jumbled papery landscape. ‘Sorry about the mess,’ she says. ‘People will insist on sending me their life’s work.’ She taps her hand against a large green bin at the office door, brimming with countless hours of profitless literary effort. ‘At least I can offload the slush pile to Emily—she’s been a great help.’ Emily, who is rapidly turning pages in a small office across the corridor, looks very clever, though much too young to be behind a desk.
    Donald sits in a leather armchair next to the tall sash window with its striking view across the road to the tightly wooded edge of Belgrave Square Gardens. He digs into his briefcase, pulls out the cardboard folder. ‘I’ve made a few changes to the version I sent you,’ he says. ‘I took out some of the denser background material on Geoffrey of Monmouth.’
    ‘Well, I’m glad to hear it, Donald. When I was reading the previous draft, I couldn’t help