Binscombe Tales - The Complete Series (17 page)

‘About as late as you can get and still be Roman,’ Dave announced.

‘And very prosperous people too,’ Jayney said.

‘Yes,’ Ellie concurred smiling. ‘Prosperous enough probably to be the top people in an off the track area like this. Anyway, the people who buried them made sure they had enough money to pay the ferryman so they wouldn’t need to come back for more.’

‘Note the discrimination against the woman, though,’ said Dave. ‘Lesser value coins for her.’

‘It’s noted, Dave,’ Ellie replied. ‘Now, let’s have a look at that ring.’

She leant over what we now knew to be the male remains and extracted a small, plain looking gold ring which was loosely located on a phalange of what had been a right hand. While brushing it with a whisk, Ellie’s smile broadened even more.

‘Yes, there is an inscription, you’re right. Any Latinists here?’

‘Sorry,’ said Dave, ‘coins and the occasional milestone are about my limit, I’m afraid.’

I did not feel it necessary to announce my ignorance since it was presumably taken for granted, and a quiet born of frustration came over us.

‘Ah well,’ said Ellie, obviously disappointed, ‘It’ll have to wait till we can phone somebody.’

Mr Disvan, apparently having held his peace while he considered the matter, then spoke.

‘That may not be necessary. I have some facility with that language.’

‘Great,’ said Ellie straightening up and holding the tweezer-held ring close to Disvan’s face. ‘What, if anything, do you make of it?’

Mr Disvan screwed up his features and peered at the ring. His head followed the inscription round as he inwardly read it.

‘Well,’ he said at length, ‘it’s tiny script, and much abbreviated: but the sense is:

HELENA: VOX MEA VENIET QUOCUMQUE ES

which broadly translated means:

ELLEN: MY VOICE SHALL COME TO YOU WHEREVER’

‘Wow,’ said the bone man, ‘that’s pretty weird isn’t it, Ellie? Ellie, what’s the matter?’

The person in question was now quite oblivious to our presence and was staring from ring to grave and back again as if at approaching nemesis. The archaeologists were puzzled as to what precisely was happening, but could see that somehow Mr Disvan knew more about it than they.

‘What’s the problem, Mr Disvan?’ asked Dave.

Disvan ignored him and instead spoke to Ellie in a tone that was half admonition and half bitter regret.

‘I told you to go, didn’t I?’ he said.

*  *  *

That summer saw a run of fine evenings when clouds were nigh absent and the sun warmed and cheered rather than oppressed. One such evening, a few days after our visit to the dig, Ellie came once again to visit us at the Argyll. Mr Disvan seemed to have anticipated her arrival since, contrary to normal practise, he suggested we take our drinks in the garden and join the one or two family groups already there. When Mr Wessner and Mr Patel asked if they might join us he politely declined—sorry, no, he said, we may have a guest and the conversation might be personal-like. Mr Wessner and Mr Patel said they quite understood.

A few minutes after seating ourselves Ellie arrived. She seemed both pleased and abashed to see us.

‘How are you settling in at the Constantine’s?’ Mr Disvan asked when she had fetched a drink and joined us.

‘Couldn’t be better. I’m being killed with kindness.’

‘Good, I told you you’d be made very welcome.’

‘It makes a pleasant change from my normal habitat of tents, squats and grotty B&B places,’ Ellie added. ‘I’m well overdue for a spot of pampering—good food prepared for me, clean sheets and that sort of thing.’

The explanation for the above conversation lies in the post mortem held on the events of the previous Friday. In the evening Disvan and I, Ellie, the
ménage
and the bone man had adjourned to the Argyll, nominally to celebrate the day’s find, now safely covered again. By prearrangement, I fielded the archaeologists’ conversation and occupied them with increasingly banal questions while Disvan and Ellie went off in a huddle to discuss matters of more import. The upshot of their sometimes heated debate was a compromise solution in which Ellie refused to abandon the dig but agreed she should minimise the time spent there. To this end, Mr Disvan found her lodgings in the house of Dorothy and Esther Constantine, two spinster sisters of his acquaintance, where she now slept and dined.

For all the doubtless lavish hospitality being showered upon her by the Constantines, Ellie did not look well. Her eyes were surrounded by dark rings that resembled the effects produced by Ros and Jayney’s cosmetics, and her cheeks were sunken. While nominally at repose, her fingers twitched and fiddled with anything to hand.

‘And how is everything else?’ I asked, pretending that her condition was not already sufficient answer to my question.

Ellie either ignored or did not hear me and, draining her drink, she looked up to stare at Mr Disvan.

‘I’ve been thinking,’ she said, ‘and I’ve come to the conclusion that you’re right.’

Disvan shrugged his shoulders.

‘I take no pleasure in your agreement but, at the same time, I’m glad you’ve decided to face facts, however strange they might seem. It’s for the best that you should go but we shall miss you. Shan’t we, Mr Oakley?’

‘What? Oh yes, we shall of course. Er... excuse me, but what exactly is going on?’

Ellie favoured me with the arresting look she had just bestowed on Disvan.

‘Its getting worse, as Mr Disvan said it would. The voice is loud and clear now. When I walk to the site in the morning and back again in the evening it calls to me. All the way through the woods it never stops. He—for it is a he, that much is obvious—has become quite eloquent in the last few days.’

‘What does he say?’

Ellie mimicked in a quavering, loud whisper, ‘ “Waiting for you, waiting for you... for so long, for so long” or “Another world here in the woods for us, for us... and it lasts for ever, for ever...” and other such phrases. Sometimes he just laughs and I can hear a woman’s voice screaming or weeping.’

‘How can you bear it?’

‘Good question. Quite frankly I don’t know, but I do know that I’ve had enough. You see, the worse thing is that while one part of me is frightened and revolted another, less conscious, part is relaxed and passive in an almost... well, erotic sort of way. You know—that sort of anticipatory tingle you sometimes get just beforehand.’

‘Quite,’ replied Mr Disvan abruptly.

Ellie said nothing more for a little while being obviously deep in thought. We left her to her reflections, thinking this to be the kindest thing to do, although Disvan watched her with great care. At length she lifted her head again and met Mr Disvan’s gaze.

‘It’s me, isn’t it,’ she said slowly. ‘It’s me or a one-time me in that grave, isn’t it?’

‘It rather looks like that, I’m afraid,’ Disvan answered calmly.

‘Somehow I escaped, perhaps a long time ago, and now I’ve come back—or been drawn back, maybe. Remember what it said on that ring!’

‘Since Saturday it has rarely been out of my mind, Ellie.’

The note of alarm in Ellie’s voice heightened as her thoughts raced ahead. ‘And from what I’ve heard—across the gulf of years—I don’t think it was a happy marriage; not happy at all. I think that he flourishes in the cold of the grave and wants me back to be his wife there, to hold me prisoner like he did in life!’

‘This could well be so,’ agreed Disvan as if agreeing that the weekend might be warm or Arsenal might win the cup.

Ellie slammed her glass down on the table, alarming the other occupants of the beer garden.

‘Well,’ she shouted in anger, ‘he shan’t have me!  I’m going and I’m not coming back. Tomorrow morning I’m going!’

A sudden burst of wind came from nowhere sending everyone scuttling to secure their drinks and possessions from being blown away. Mr Disvan’s Panama hat went flying and a sun parasol over one table took to the air in unmanned flight. Ellie’s hair was lifted up and alternately played wildly about her face or streamed straight back. She seemed to be concentrating on something other than the uproar around her and, to my surprise, great rolling tears began to slip from her eyes.

The wind then ceased as abruptly as it started.

‘I don’t care what you say,’ Ellie sobbed, ‘I’m still going.’

*  *  *

It had been agreed that Mr Disvan and I would settle up things for Ellie and explain her sudden departure with some plausible lie. I took yet another day off work and as the church clock struck ten (signifying it was circa 9:45) I met Mr Disvan outside the Argyll and drove us both to the excavation site. On our way we were obliged to pull over to allow a police car and an ambulance, both with their sirens and flashing lights on, to speed past us.

‘Another family dispute in the estate, I expect,’ said Disvan. ‘Either that or the council trying to evict someone—probably the Abbott tribe again.’

For once, however, one of Disvan’s predictions, although based on his seemingly omniscient knowledge of Binscombe, proved to be incorrect. As we made our way up the track to the ridge, there was every sign that someone had immediately preceded us—in large vehicles, such as a police car or an ambulance. This proved to be the case, and when we came upon the site through the already opened five-bar gate, it was to see said vehicles, their beacons still in operation, parked as close to the barrow as safety would permit.

Abandoning the car, we made haste to join the small crowd that was milling around the ambulance. I saw the
ménage
, two policemen and some MSC lads removing a large wooden structure that had inexplicably come to be on the side of the barrow. The ‘bone man’, as we knew him, was also there directing other people who were in the burial trench itself.

As we drew near and made our way through the mob, the ambulance men finished loading an occupied stretcher into their vehicle and then drove off back down the hill at reckless speed.

Having disposed of the strange wooden object, the senior of the two policemen was having strong words or, more accurately, a strong monologue with Dave, who was weeping bitterly and ignoring his questioner completely. Ros and Jayney, one either side of him like book ends, were attempting to comfort the distraught archaeologist.

The policeman gesticulated wildly once more and then gave up in frustration. Following the direction of his arm I saw that the site hut had somehow been beheaded and that the puzzling wooden structure now lying by the side of the barrow was the hut’s one-time roof. A horrible suspicion began to form in my mind.

Our approach was now audible even over the general furore, and the peeved look on the policemen’s faces eased as they turned to inspect the new arrivals.

‘Ah, Mr Disvan,’ said one, ‘good morning to you.’

‘Morning, Alan. Morning, Desmond. What’s going on?’

‘Difficult to say. I can’t get no sense out of these weirdoes. An accident caused by appalling safety standards, that much is plain, though.’

‘Who’s been hurt?’ Disvan asked.

‘Young girl. The one you’ve been taking a drink or two with lately.’

‘How badly?’