Lovers and Newcomers (11 page)

‘Sorry,’ he muttered.

‘Why? You’re doing your job.’

The boy wasn’t looking at him. His gaze was fixed on the earth.

‘There’s something here.’ He knew he should keep the discovery to himself, maintain a professional detachment, but he couldn’t help blurting it out. His fist closed tightly on the handle of his trowel and it was all he could do to stop himself in his eagerness from lunging back at the find and gouging at the remains.

Colin heard how his voice shook.

‘What? What is it?’

The boy glanced quickly past him. Miranda and Katherine sat a way off, talking. Amos was still telephoning, the site crew lounged in the sunshine.

‘Look.’ He pointed downwards.

Out of the earth close to the edge of the trench, the rim of something smooth and curved now protruded. Crusted with dirt, it might have been taken for a large piece of broken glass or pottery, but the archaeologist had already rubbed an inch of it clean. The sun struck a dull gleam out of precious metal.

‘Good God,’ Colin said.

‘Yeah. And a bit,’ the boy agreed.

‘What happens now?’

‘Well, it doesn’t happen every day, does it? It’s killing me but I’ve got to wait for my field supervisor to show up. I don’t know much, but I’m pretty sure this is big.’

In the middle distance, a car drew up at the point where Amos’s driveway would one day meet the curving route to the main house. A uniformed policeman got out and opened the gate, then the patrol car bumped slowly over the builders’ track to the site.

‘Christ, now here’s the cops. I hoped the boss would get here first,’ the boy sighed.

‘You can handle it,’ Colin told him. The boy’s resemblance to someone he knew was no longer troubling. It came to him that this wasn’t actually Jessie’s boyfriend from the first evening in the pub, the one she had squabbled with about ownership of the dog, but the two of them were certainly sufficiently alike to be mistaken for one another.

A second solid policeman emerged from the car. Amos made straight for the pair of them, with the site manager bobbing at his side.

‘Here we go then,’ said the archaeologist as he climbed reluctantly out of the trench.

Across the field, alerted by the sighting of police in the driveway of the house, Selwyn was hurrying towards them with Polly moving more slowly in his wake.

‘Has there been a murder?’ Selwyn asked.

‘Not recently, by the look of it,’ Colin told him. ‘Although I think Amos would prefer it to be a straightforward drug-related shooting. History may take longer to unravel.’

Amos said, surveying his site later that afternoon: ‘So, the monkeys have taken over the zoo.’

A van arrived, with ‘Anglian Archaeological Services’ painted on the sides. Several archaeologists of various degrees of seniority climbed out, donned helmets and fluorescent jackets with AAS printed on the back, fanned out and began measuring, pegging lines and scribbling on clipboards. The field supervisor, a lean bearded man in his forties, made a series of urgent calls. A frame tent was brought out and quickly erected over the trench, and the white nylon fabric sucked and billowed in a rising wind. The policemen conferred with the supervisor, the intermittent crackle of voices from their radios carrying across to where Selwyn stood joking about how English Heritage and the county archaeologist would never let Amos dig the channels in the earth for his futuristic ground exchange heating now that there was known to be treasure beneath.

‘Buried gold,’ Selwyn murmured. ‘Who knows, Amos, you might just have got even richer.’

‘Probably not, under the 1996 Treasure Act,’ Amos retorted. But that they should be even discussing this sharpened the sense that an unwelcome change was coming to Mead.

Another car wound its way towards them and yet another archaeologist emerged, bearing a licence from the Ministry of Justice to allow the human remains to be excavated. A copy of it was formally pinned to the door of the Portakabin. Amos read the licence and gave a curt, unwilling nod to acknowledge that, for now at least, he would have to agree to a suspension of work. It was clear that there would be no more progress on the site for the time being, so the builders packed up and went home. The police lingered long enough for the osteologist who had arrived in the van to assure them personally that the uncovered bones were hundreds of years old, then they folded their double bulk back into their patrol car and drove away.

The bearded field supervisor introduced himself as Christopher Carr. He promised that as soon as his team had had a chance to make a first assessment of the finds, Mr Knight would be informed. In the meantime, it was important that the excavation be conducted methodically in order that no vital information or clues were lost in the process, and they would understand that, wouldn’t they? His young assistant, Kieran, had acted correctly in calling a temporary halt to the site work. He thanked Amos for his cooperation.

‘When can we have a look?’ Katherine asked him, then glanced away, as if she suspected it had been in some way wrong of her to ask.

‘As soon as there is anything interesting to see,’ Christopher told her. ‘But I would be grateful if for the time being you wouldn’t mention the find to anyone at all outside this group. Sightseers and the press are never helpful on the scene until we are ready for them.’

Amos struck his forehead quite hard with the heel of his hand.

Katherine and Polly left the site to go back to the house and make sandwiches, but Miranda found that she couldn’t leave the site while so much of Mead’s unimagined history was being uncovered. The archaeologists moved in and out of their tent, watched by Miranda and the others from their picnic place. They could hear the metallic clink of trowels. Bags and buckets filled with spoil were brought out, and a young woman with dreadlocks longer than Kieran’s knelt to sift the loose earth through a sieve.

Amos ate smoked salmon sandwiches and loudly fumed about the delay, until Miranda snapped at him.

‘It’s my land too. My home for twenty years, Jake was born here. Can’t you acknowledge that whatever is lying in that trench might have at least a comparable importance to your
house
?’

At once Amos put his big hand on hers. ‘Of course, Mirry. I do apologize. How thrilling for Mead if this does turn out to be a major discovery. But I don’t think you’ve quite got the hang of what a disruption it may turn out to be.’

‘Let’s wait and see, shall we?’ Miranda said quietly. Colin lay back and seemed to fall asleep.

At the end of the afternoon, Kieran came out of the tent and crossed to where they still waited. His face was flushed under the faint pockmarks.

‘Would you like to come and take a look?’

They got to their feet and followed him.

Within the white tent, sheltered from the wind that had got up, it was warmer and surprisingly still. The fabric rippled and snapped with small popping sounds. The pleasantly diffused light coupled with the strong scent of trampled grass was reminiscent of a garden fête or agricultural show. The archaeologists were lined up beside their trench, mostly with their hands folded, looking downwards like proud but modest exhibitors. A photographer’s tripod and camera stood in place at one end of the tent.

Miranda looked down and caught her breath.

The earth had been cleared partially to expose the skeleton. It was dark, discoloured and broken, but still shockingly human. It lay on its left side, the legs bent up towards the chest and the forearms extended. Earth filled the collapsed ribcage and crusted the pelvic bowl. The skull was tilted at an angle, the eye sockets blinded with dirt and the jaw with a rim of teeth seeming to grin into infinity.

Two feet away from it lay a second skull, much smaller, and the ribs of a young child.

Only when she had taken this in did she see that resting between the jaw of the larger skeleton and the framework of its ribcage lay a band that once would have circled the neck. To the side of the body, the curved edge of metal that Colin had glimpsed had been further exposed. It looked like the edge of a large plate. A raised pattern that might have been part of a scroll or leaf design was just visible.

Stillness spread outwards and seemed to press against the nylon walls and roof of the tent, where the wind chafed.

At Miranda’s side, Colin remembered Stephen’s funeral in the village on the edge of the Yorkshire moorland, and the priest and the mourners gathered at the edge of the open grave as handfuls of earth thudded on to the coffin lid. He raised his head now in an attempt to blot out the memory, searching along the line of silent people as if he hoped to see a priest amongst them.

He was not a religious man, but he would have liked to hear some words of blessing or a simple prayer spoken over these bones.

The first person to break the silence was Christopher Carr. His voice was low and they had to listen to catch his words.

‘This is an important discovery,’ he said. ‘Perhaps very important. We have a rich burial here, probably dating from the later Iron Age. We may be looking at a prince, a tribal leader at least, who was buried with his symbols of rank and power and provisions for the afterlife.’

‘What about the child?’ Katherine asked. This time she looked directly at Chris. He nodded sympathy at her.

‘We can’t tell yet. Perhaps it was an attendant, maybe even a human sacrifice as part of the funeral ritual. Our osteologist, that’s David over there, may well be able to establish the cause of death.’

David was a small man with glasses. He smiled and then suppressed it, all the time looking as if he couldn’t wait to start handling the bones. The atmosphere was slowly lightening. The archaeologists began quietly to stack their tools. Kieran ducked out of the entrance with one more yellow plastic bucketful of loose earth.

One by one, the Mead people turned away from the trench and its contents. As the shock of staring death in the face subsided, they became aware that these relics were from a time so distant that they could hardly connect with it.

Chris said, ‘There’s one more thing. We’ll be leaving a security guard here overnight. The site will have to be protected until the artefacts have been removed to a safe place.’

Miranda demanded ‘Why? This is a private estate. No one comes here.’

‘Forgive me, Mrs Meadowe. We don’t know yet what these grave goods are, or what else we might find. If they should turn out to be alloys of precious metals, or even solid gold, imagine what the material alone might be worth, without adding up the historical value.’

Amos began to say something, then stopped himself.

‘I see,’ Miranda said, although she was only just beginning to. This discovery was going to change the delicate balance of life at Mead, the life she had wanted for them all, that much was already clear.

Chris continued, ‘With your help, we’ll keep this discovery quiet for as long as possible. But in my experience news inevitably leaks out sooner or later, and you’d be surprised at the nighthawks who will turn up looking for a piece of treasure to keep for themselves.’

Outside the tent it had grown chilly and the sky was overcast. Another van had arrived, this one marked ‘Lockyer Security’. A very large shaven-headed man sat in the driver’s seat, frowning over a print-out.

Amos stood in front of Chris. ‘Can you give me any idea of how long?’ he asked yet again.

‘How much time my team will be granted to complete the excavation is the decision of the county archaeologist, and that depends on how important he judges the findings to be, in terms of local and national history.’

Amos’s lower jaw was protruding now, a dangerous sign. ‘And so?’

The archaeologist sighed. ‘If I have to put a frame on it I’d say something more than a few days, but not as long as several months. We’ll do the job as quickly as we can.’

‘Thank you,’ Amos said, as if he were dismissing the most unreliable of witnesses.

Chris turned to Katherine, who stood a yard behind her husband. ‘I’m sorry,’ he told her.

Katherine’s smile was transforming. Miranda saw it, and so did Polly, although Amos wasn’t looking at her. ‘Please don’t be,’ she said. ‘There’s no need.’

As he passed Kieran, Colin asked him, ‘Did I meet your brother, at the Griffin in Meddlett, with a girl called Jessie and a dog?’

‘Yeah, that’ll be him. Damon.’

‘I thought so. You’re very alike.’

‘Not really,’ Kieran frowned.

The security guard lumbered out of the shelter of his van, and Amos made his comment about monkeys and the zoo.

They sat in the kitchen, over the remains of dinner. Selwyn had taken the blue chair next to the range and he balanced it on two legs and drank whisky as he surveyed the room. They had been talking all evening about the day’s discovery. Amos insisted that he was no expert on the exact terms of the Treasure law, whilst leaving no doubt at all that he knew far more than the rest of them. He explained that if they fell within the definition of treasure, the finds would belong to the Crown. If they turned out to be spectacular, or historically significant, they would probably be bought by a museum. There might be a reward for the landowner.

‘The best reward I can think of would be to get my house built,’ he growled.

The others sighed. They had heard this enough times already. Miranda cupped her chin in her hands and looked at Amos.

‘Jake would have loved the Warrior Prince of Mead.’

‘The Warrior Prince?’ Selwyn tried out the sound of it, dangerously tipping his chair and steadying himself with one hand burrowed amongst the tea towels and laundry hanging from the bar at the front of the range. ‘This could make us as famous as Sutton Hoo. English Heritage will come and put up a tearoom. There will be boxed fudge, and a coach park.’

‘No, there will not,’ Miranda said sharply.

‘Amos might decide otherwise. He owns the land, I believe.’ Whisky made Selwyn malicious.

‘Shut up, Sel,’ Polly advised.

Amos got up from his chair and crossed to Miranda’s side of the table. He hovered behind her chair, not quite able to do what he wanted, which was to hug her.