LITMIR.BIZ

       1

       CORAX

      RAVEN

       Leiden, 20 March 2015, 1:00pm

      Technically, Peter de Haan’s lecture was already over. He had given a brisk overview of Leiden’s most important churches in his ‘Introduction to the History of Leiden’ for Master’s students. It was part of an elective module, but it packed the small lecture theatre every year. He had stopped being surprised by it years ago, but it always did him good to see the theatre so full.

      Some of the students had started to pack away their things, but they hadn’t yet dared to leave their seats. One young man watched him like a dog waiting for a command from its master.

      An aerial photograph of the Hooglandse Kerk was projected onto the screen behind him. At the start of the fourteenth century, it had been no more than a small wooden chapel. By the end of the sixteenth century it had grown into a cathedral so enormous that it had become too big for its surroundings, like an oversized sofa in a tiny living room. The photograph also showed the Burcht van Leiden, the city’s iconic eleventh-century motte-and-bailey castle. This six-foot-tall crenelated circular stone wall was built on top of a man-made mound about twelve metres high.

      Peter raised his hand, and the quiet chatter in the room immediately stopped. ‘I know you all want to go to lunch,’ he said, with a hint of hesitation in his voice, ‘but which of you are going to watch the first underground waste container being installed at the public library this afternoon?’

      Most of the students looked at him politely, but none of them responded.

      ‘You know that there’s a major project starting in town at two o’clock today, installing these containers?’

      ‘I didn’t know about it, sir,’ said one young man politely, keeping his hand in the air as he spoke. ‘But why would we be interested in that?’

      ‘Well now, I’m so glad you asked,’ Peter said.

      This response drew some chuckles from his audience. The students stopped what they were doing and accepted that they weren’t going to be allowed to leave just yet.

      Peter grabbed his laser pointer and drew a circle around the church on the screen.

      ‘This might come as a surprise to you, but not much is known about Leiden’s origins or how it developed. There aren’t many opportunities to carry out archaeological research in the centre of town. The simple reason for that is that anywhere you might want to dig has been built on, as those of you who go into urban archaeology later will no doubt discover. We might, very occasionally, be given a brief opportunity to excavate when a building is demolished, but it’s extremely rare. This project means that we can go down as deep as three metres, at literally hundreds of sites across the city. Who knows what might be hidden beneath our feet?’

      ‘Or which skeletons will come out of the closet,’ said the young man.

      ‘Exactly!’ Peter replied enthusiastically. ‘Now it looks like we’d rehearsed that earlier, but it was actually going to be my next point. Look …’

      He traced a route along the Nieuwstraat with a beam of red light. ‘This street used to be a canal, but like many of the other canals in Leiden, it was filled in. Some canals were covered over, overvaulted, meaning that instead of being filled with sand and debris, they were just roofed over and then the roads were built on top of them. You can still walk through some of them, like tunnels, but this one was infilled. The cemetery was here, on the other side of the church. But people were sometimes secretly buried in this area, near what used to be the canal, next to the church. Those were people who couldn’t afford to be buried in the churchyard but who wanted to be laid to rest as close to the church as they could get.’

      His mobile phone started to vibrate in the inside pocket of his jacket.

      He looked around the lecture theatre. If he kept on talking, he’d become that uncle who endlessly droned on about the past at parties.

      ‘You can go,’ he said instead. ‘I’ll see you all this afternoon!’

      The room sprang to life again, as though he’d pressed play on a paused video. As they made their way to the door, the students filed past his desk to hand in their work. The course required a fortnightly submission of a short essay about one of the subjects they had covered.

      The room was empty. Peter turned off the projector and gathered up his things. When he picked up the sheaf of papers, a blank envelope fell out from between them. He picked it up and looked at it. It was probably a note from a student apologising for the fact that various circumstances had prevented them from doing their assignment this week.

      He was about to open it when Judith appeared in the doorway.

      She smiled. ‘You’ve not forgotten, have you?’

      ‘How could I possibly forget an appointment with you?’ Peter said, stuffing the envelope in his bag with the rest of the papers.

      He had met Judith Cherev, a woman in her early forties, twenty years ago when he had supervised her final dissertation. They had become close friends in the years that followed. She had researched the history of Judaism in Leiden for her PhD. Now she was a lecturer in the history department, as well as freelancing as a researcher for the Jewish Historical Museum in Amsterdam.

      Her dark curls, accented here and there with a charming streak of grey, were effortlessly tied back with a thick elastic band. She was still a beautiful woman, slim, and dressed, as always, in a blouse and long skirt. The Star of David necklace that hung around her neck glinted in the fluorescent lights.

      ‘Did you just send me a text?’

      Judith shook her head.

      Peter took his phone from inside his jacket and opened the message.

      Hora est.

      He smiled.

      ‘What is it?’

      ‘I think one of my students wanted to let me know that it was time to stop talking.’

      He walked over to the door with the bag under his arm and turned off the lights. He showed the message to Judith on the way.

      The hora est – the hour has come – was the phrase with which the university beadle entered the room exactly three-quarters of an hour into a doctoral candidate’s defence of their thesis before the Doctoral Examination Board. At this point, the candidate was no longer permitted to talk, even if the beadle had entered mid-sentence. To most candidates, the words came as a huge relief.

      ‘That’s quite witty,’ Judith said, handing back the phone. ‘Odd that it was sent anonymously though.’

      ‘Probably scared that their wit will get them marked down.’ He deleted the message. Just as he was about to lock up the lecture hall, he noticed that someone had left a telephone on one of the tables, an iPhone that looked brand new. He walked back into the hall,

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