to do anything this afternoon then?’ Mark asked.
‘I’m going to go into town to see them install the container in the Nieuwstraat. I’ve been following the project a bit. The Cultural Heritage Department invited me. Daniël Veerman, Janna Frederiks … They’ve promised to let me know if they come across anything interesting.’
‘Oh yes! I wanted to show you something!’ Mark said suddenly, as though he hadn’t heard what Peter said at all. He pushed his tray aside. Underneath it was a large envelope, addressed in neat, unmistakably old-fashioned handwriting.
‘To the most noble and learned professor doctor M. Labuschagne,’ he read with amusement. ‘I need to send the author of this letter a quick reply this afternoon.’ He took a large bundle of densely typed pages out of the envelope. They had apparently been written on an old-fashioned typewriter. ‘This is one of those things …’ he said, leafing through them as though he was looking for something specific. ‘Ever since I graduated, people have been sending me things. Amateurs writing to tell me that they think they’ve found the code that makes the Book of Revelation all make sense, or that they have definitive proof that Jesus didn’t die on the cross …’
‘Or that the Apostle Peter is buried in Leiden,’ Judith joked.
They laughed.
‘But this … Look, usually it’s nonsense and probably not worth holding onto, but I keep everything. I might do something with them one day. Sometimes an idea seems crazy, or the whole world thinks an author is mad, but sometimes these people are just way ahead of their time. I had another one today, a Mr …’ He looked at the title page. ‘… Mr Goekoop from Zierikzee, Zeeland. It’s about the Burcht. He says that it originally had an astrological function. Look, he’s even drawn some diagrams.’
Mark held up a sheet of paper with a surprisingly good pen-and-ink illustration of Leiden’s castle. The artist had left space between the battlements so that the whole thing strongly resembled a megalithic circle, like Stonehenge.
‘He has this whole theory about how the first rays of the sun shine through the Burcht’s main gate on the equinox on March twenty-first, taking the earth’s precession into account. The precession is the way the axis moves. The earth is like a spinning top, its axis is never exactly vertical. It’s a bit complicated … He uses all these calculations to try to show that the original castle must have been built more than two thousand years ago. According to him, the word megalith is derived from the Greek mega-leithos, or, Great Leiden.’
‘That should be easy to check. Tomorrow is March twenty-first.’
‘Yes. But actually, it’s not that easy. The earth’s axis has shifted since then. Anyway, that part about the megalith is bunk, and the rest too, probably. Look at this; he thinks he has further proof of his theory in the three trees in the middle of the castle. Because they’re arranged in exactly the same way as the three stars on Orion’s belt. You know, like the Pyramids in Egypt.’
‘And that would make the Rhine the River Nile, I suppose?’
‘He says that the Rhine is the Lethe, or the Leythe, one of the five rivers of the underworld in Greek mythology, just like the Styx. According to him, the name Leythe is connected to Leiden of course.’
‘And this is what you spend your time on,’ said Peter.
‘It amuses me. You never know what someone is going to come up with. Sometimes the amateurs make surprising discoveries. But what fascinates me about this story is his theory that the Burcht was a centre for sun worship. He does have a point about the name Lugdunum …’
‘The Roman name for Katwijk.’
‘That’s right. But he reckons that it was originally the name given to the hill that the Burcht stands on. Lug is the name of the Celtic sun god, and dunum means “hill” or “mountain”. “Lug Hill”, or if you want to translate it more loosely, “the hill where Lug is worshipped”.’
‘With that sort of reasoning,’ Peter countered, ‘you could prove that Mr Goekoop’s hometown of Zierikzee can be traced back to the Greek goddess Circe. And that would put the city of Troy somewhere in Zeeland.’
Mark put the papers back in the envelope. ‘All the same, I always send these people a polite reply. That’s usually enough to satisfy them.’
Judith picked up her tray. She had already eaten her soup and bread.
‘Are you leaving already?’ Peter asked, a little disappointed.
‘I’ve got that appointment at two o’clock. I’m going back to my office to get my things. We could get together for a nightcap later this evening if you like?’
Peter nodded.
Judith rested her hand briefly on Mark’s shoulder. He tilted his head a little to meet it, like a cat reaching to be petted. She winked at Peter and went to tidy her tray away.
‘So, Lug then,’ said Peter, bringing the conversation back to where they had left it.
‘Yes, Lug, but there have been lots of other sun gods over the centuries of course. Fascinating subject, actually. That’s what the paper I’m working on is about. A bit of pop history about how they’re always born on the third day after the winter solstice, on the evening of the twenty-fourth of December, a symbolic celebration of the arrival of light in a dark world. Born to a virgin, usually in a cave, a star appears, they’re adored by shepherds, kings come bearing gifts, a wise man predicts that this is the saviour the world has been waiting for, and so on …’
‘Yes, I know those stories. By the way, did you manage to see some of the eclipse this morning?’
‘No, barely gave it a thought to be honest.’
‘It was cloudy anyway. I don’t suppose there would have been much to see.’
‘Probably, but … where was I? Oh yes, the sun gods … They always die round about the time of the spring solstice and they’re resurrected three days later. Attis, Osiris, Dionysus, take your pick. The god dies or his son dies, there’s a day of mourning, and then on day three, there’s unbelievable joy when the god rises from the dead. Just like the natural world around them that appeared to have died in the winter, but then comes back to life.’
Of course, Peter had also read about the early Fathers of the Church and how they had become confused when they saw the similarities between the Gospels and these other stories that were evidently much older. The only explanation they could give was that the older stories were the work of the devil. Satan would have known about the circumstances under which Jesus would be born and so he established the sun gods’ rites centuries earlier in order to confuse people.
‘My article will lay out the parallels between all sorts of basic Christian concepts and the religion’s sacred mysteries. It’s terribly interesting. Take Orpheus and Eurydice, Demeter and Persephone … all variations of the same theme. The cult of Dionysus slaughtered a bull every year. The followers ate the meat and drank the blood so that they could become one with Dionysus, a communion, and share the power of his resurrection.’
‘It’s … Listen,’ Peter interrupted him. Mark was usually fairly introverted, but once he felt at ease with someone, it could be very difficult to get him off his soapbox. ‘I still need to take my bag back to my office, and the mayor’s coming for the opening
