The Bog

Hovern Bog: 53 B.C.

Gwynedd sat on a dogskin beside the charcoal fire while her sister plaited her long golden hair. In the corner her mother wept. Gwynedd did not weep because she saw no reason for it. It was not that she wasn’t afraid. She was terrified, as any young woman would have been. But she was also very proud, proud that she had been chosen. There were numerous other potential candidates in the village who might have been picked, but the elders had decided upon her. This made her feel important, even exalted, and for the moment all that she could think of was the very special destiny before her.

On the fire a kettle started to rattle, and Gwynedd’s sister Maelgwyn took a rag in her hand and removed it from the flame, allowing the steam to drift up over the golden locks on Gwynedd’s forehead. After wetting her thumb with spit, Maelgwyn carefully formed each lock into a curl. Then she stood back to admire her work. After all, Gwynedd had to look her best. Next she stepped forward and straightened Gwynedd’s linen tunic.

Throughout all of this Gwynedd kept her hands clasped tightly in her lap. Her stomach growled. To purify herself, for three days she had eaten nothing but the seeds of wild and cultivated plants, and she would have sold her soul for a piece of salt meat. But it was not to be. Even if her family had had some salt meat in the house, she could not have allowed herself to eat it. She had to remain pure. Maelgwyn, sensing her sister’s discomfort, offered her a cup of cold spring water, and Gwynedd drank it slowly while Maelgwyn put the last touches on her appearance.

At length Ceredic, their father, appeared at the door. Ceredic was a tall man with bright red hair and a beard. He wore a scarlet cloak and, because their family had some money, wore it fastened at his neck with a brooch instead of a thorn. His eyes glowered with the silent intensity that had become his trademark. At the sight of his arrival Gwynedd’s mother broke into a wail. Without a word, Ceredic crossed the room and struck her silent with his arm, sending her tumbling into the corner like one of the dogs. All the while he kept his attention trained on Gwynedd. The time had come.

Gwynedd stood and kissed Maelgwyn on the forehead. Then she strode to her father’s side and together they walked out the door. Outside, the entire village had gathered. The sky was cold and gray and the winter wind ripped at their clothing. In the distance lay the moors, rising ledge on ledge in blue, and beyond, the dense wall of blackthorn and briar that marked the beginning of the vast expanse of floating peat and inky water that was Hovern Bog.

Gwynedd gazed silently at the moors as she had done so many times before, the eternal moors. And then she looked at the Roman tent on the hill, its imperial banners flapping violently in the wind. At the moment it looked all but deserted, but she knew that this was not the case. Almost certainly the vice-prefect, Lucius Divitiacus, was watching clandestinely from within. Gwynedd had not expected him to put in an appearance, for he had more than voiced his disapproval of the evening’s planned events. This, in itself, was curious, for long before the Roman legions had first begun to subjugate their lands, word of their practices had preceded them. And one of the most often voiced revelations was that, far from condemning local gods and customs, the Romans usually shrewdly embraced them and incorporated them into their own pantheon. In this case, however, and for reasons unknown, Divitiacus had scorned their practices, and his absence during the proceedings was evidence of his disapprobation.

Gwynedd and her father were joined by the elders, and started to walk ahead. Behind them the villagers followed quietly. Down the ravine they walked, down the high, heather-covered slopes and through the long rolling hills of the moors. Only once did Gwynedd look back to see a fiery sunset settling over the huts of the village. She looked ahead and saw that dusk had started to purple the distant hills. They had to move quickly, for soon it would be dark.

They reached the thicket and continued on through. They walked carefully here, for they were now in Hovern Bog proper and the marshy ground had a way of suddenly sinking into oblivion. Several times as a child Gwynedd had actually seen cows swallowed up by the bog, and once even a man. She herself had never even been in this far, and only some of the elders now knew the route they had to take. It took them about ten minutes to reach the hill.

The hill itself was completely dry. Gwynedd looked into her father’s eyes. He had never been a compassionate man. In fact, he had seldom even treated his daughters as flesh and blood. Dimly, she had expected that this evening’s circumstances might have elicited some small mote of affection or remorse from him, but when none was forthcoming her thoughts drifted only to the great honor that was before her, and the fear, vague but growing, like a leaden tumor in her stomach. Sunk deep into the hill was a wooden pillar, and Gwynedd approached it. One of the elders walked behind the post and withdrew a hide tether from his robe.

Suddenly there was the sound of something coming through the brush, and a frightened murmur passed through the crowd. Some of the villagers even started to run, but then a figure appeared. Much to Gwynedd’s surprise, it was the vice-prefect’s wife, cloaked and hooded. The bottom of her robe was muddied, and it was clear from her haste that her coming here had been a last-minute decision. She passed quickly through the throng until at last she stood before the pale young woman. For several seconds everyone remained silent and Gwynedd wondered why the woman had intruded. Had the vice-prefect sent her? Was she there to stop the proceedings?

The silence continued for many tense seconds, then at last the woman reached into her cloak and withdrew a beautiful comb carved of horn. Slowly she reached out and proffered the treasure to Gwynedd. Without thinking, Gwynedd accepted it. She had never before owned such a beautiful object. It was only after she had admired and tucked the comb into her tunic that she looked into the woman’s eyes and saw. Although her face was shadowed by the cowl, there was terror in the woman’s eyes. Something in the past several weeks had caused her to become a believer, and the comb was an offering, a votive in attempt to make some humble amends for her former disbelief.

Then the woman stepped back, and the elder proceeded to tie Gwynedd’s hands firmly to the post. The elder finished, and because it was becoming so dark, the villagers left quickly. Few of them even looked back. Gwynedd’s father did, and this surprised her. The vice-prefect’s wife also looked back. But soon everyone was out of sight and she was completely alone.

It was only in her solitude that she began to focus on how numbingly cold she had become. She also realized more clearly that she was frightened. Whatever feelings of exaltation had tinged her mood earlier had now all but departed, and she started to squirm within her bonds. Before long, all she could think of was how hideous and dark the fate was that had befallen her, and her only solace was in knowing that it would all be over soon. But as the night closed in around her and she anxiously surveyed the growing shadows, she knew only that death would come. But she did not know in what form, or when.

The call from Brad Hollister had come at five o’clock on a Saturday morning, and David Macauley was still very much asleep. As his grogginess slowly dispersed, the first thing he noticed was that his wife, Melanie, had neatly rolled herself up in all of the blankets and left him shivering with nothing but a sheet. The second thing that entered his consciousness was the ringing of the telephone, relentless and annoying. He glanced out the window, saw that the sun had not yet begun to peep over Oxford’s Bridge of Sighs, grunted, and answered the phone.

“Professor Macauley?” came Hollister’s voice from the other end, a slight crackle of static on the line because it was long-distance.

“Hollister? Do you know what time it is?”

“I’m sorry it’s so early, but I’ve found a body.” David went silent for a moment, allowing the words to fully sink in.

“What kind of condition is it in?”

“Perfect. You should see it. The flesh around the neck and chest has disintegrated a little, but other than that she looks as if she died yesterday.”

“She?”

“Yes, the body’s definitely that of a young woman.”

“Is it naked or clothed?” David asked in a tone of voice more dispassionate than might have seemed appropriate in posing such a question. Melanie stirred restlessly in the bed beside him as she became cognizant of the conversation. She propped herself up on her elbow, blinking.

“She seems to be naked, although there’s some cloth arranged over her. The lower half of her’s still buried, though. I just wanted to call and let you know about the discovery. I’ve been digging all night.”

“Where are you, anyway?”

“I’m in a tiny village known as Fenchurch St. Jude. It’s about four miles from the Hovern Bog site.” Hollister, being an American, expressed the distance in miles instead of kilometers, and David, also an American, had no objections.

“Any indication of how old the body is?”

“Well, since she is naked and what cloth there is is fragmentary and rotted, it’s difficult to identify her by her clothing. However, she does have an object buried with her. It’s a comb carved out of horn. And guess what, it’s Roman.”

“My God, do you think she was a Roman?”

“I don’t know. Her features look distinctly Celtic and she does have blond hair... or did. The comb indicates, however, that she at least had some sort of contact with the Romans. That suggests that the body is at least sixteen centuries old, maybe older. We’ll have to run other tests to date it any more precisely than that.”

The rest of the conversation concerned details of how and when David would drive down from Oxford to examine the body firsthand, who owned the land the body had been found on, and other mundane particulars. When David finally hung up the receiver he could hardly contain his excitement. Melanie gave indications that she was about to say something, but stopped when the familiar sound of nails tapping against linoleum met their ears. They both looked up to see Ben, their black Labrador retriever, standing expectantly in the doorway of the bedroom. Although it was several hours too early for his normal morning walk, he had heard voices and had decided to test the waters. He wagged an exuberant good morning.

“Is this it, then?” Melanie asked worriedly.

The
it
she referred to was an eventuality they had both known about for some time—brought closer by Brad Hollister’s entry into the matter two months before. David Macauley was an archaeologist and a visiting lecturer at Oxford. His special area of interest was in so-called bog bodies, bodies of Iron Age men and women that—because of the remarkable preservative properties of certain chemicals in bog water—had been almost completely protected from decomposition for hundreds and even thousands of years. A number of important bog-body finds had been made in various bogs throughout England and northwestern Europe since the 1950s, but it had long been David’s cherished hope to discover and extensively study a site of his own. To this end, two months previously he had commissioned Hollister, a Rhodes scholar and a graduate student of his, to travel around England’s West Country bogs looking for just such a location. The telephone call this morning had been the first fruit of that effort.

David disengaged himself from the covers and sat on the edge of the bed. He turned and looked at Melanie. She was concerned because she loved the life they had made for themselves at Oxford. She knew it was inevitable that Hollister would make such a discovery, but she had long dreaded the day that the family would actually have to pull up their roots and once again relocate.