The Lives She Left Behind (6 page)

‘I don’t think any of you know these three,’ he said. ‘They’re Alison, Jo and Lucy. If you’ve ever laboured under the iron rule of Christine Massey,
you’ll spot where Ali’s DNA comes from. OK, now, down to business. The reason we’re all here is because a dog disappeared down a rabbit hole. Its owner, Mr Hogarth, was shouting
down into a space which seemed to echo and a few minutes later, when he was starting to panic, the dog – Heineken by name – came bouncing up from somewhere behind him covered in earth.
From which we deduce that there is a large subterranean void down there. Mr Hogarth, being an unusually sensible man, called English Heritage and lo and behold, here we are in a remarkably short
time to investigate Mr Hogarth’s hole.’

He turned to a display board and pointed at a plan.

‘St Michael’s Hill, Montacute,’ he said. ‘The tower on top is an eighteenth-century folly but the rest is pure Norman motte and bailey, built in 1068 by William the
Conqueror’s half-brother Robert of Mortain – part of his campaign to subdue Somerset. There’s been a bit of archaeology here over the years but there is no record that anyone
found any kind of void or chamber. This is a natural pile of earth and rock which once had a timber castle perched on top. Solid is the word. You do not, in the normal way of things, fall into
holes in a place like this.’

He looked around at the attentive faces and pointed to a cross on the plan. ‘That’s where Mr Hogarth’s hole appeared, so we’re going to sneak up on it carefully.
There’s some vegetation to shift so while Johan and Sheila get the finds tent ready and Bobby does food, the rest of us will grab mattocks, hoes and shovels and get stripping.’

It was a steep climb up to a terrace on the side of the hill, in amongst the trees that covered almost all of it. The three girls were given wheelbarrows and told to dump the
turf and weeds on the shoulder of the hill. Ali did it with the experienced determination of someone who had been brought up on such digs. Jo watched her and followed suit, two barrow-loads to
Ali’s three, using just the minimum effort required to keep up with the waste heap. Lucy found indirect routes which took her past where the boys were working with Andy stripped to the waist.
Her gossamer stamina soon evaporated and she began to display a theatrical incapability which produced the entire spectrum of possible mishaps – upturned barrows, downhill runaways and uphill
collisions with those trying to come down. When Rupert finally told them to pack up she was sitting on a tree stump, trying to take it all seriously enough to sulk.

They went to wash and then the other two waited while Lucy changed, complaining about the lack of a proper mirror in the tent. The marquee was already full of hungry diggers.

‘Their table is full,’ Lucy complained. ‘We’ll have to sit somewhere else. We should have got here sooner.’

As the sun dipped behind the side of the hill they ate a vegetable curry ladled, bubbling, from a vast wreck of an aluminium pot that had fed thousands since it last shone. An elderly giant of a
man, white hair tied back in a ponytail and biker’s tattoos on his arms, was sitting next to them and he smiled at them as they ate.

‘I’m Dozer,’ he said in a voice that sounded like a truck engine on tick-over. ‘What was your names again?’

They told him. ‘Got it,’ he said. ‘You enjoying yourselves?’

‘It’s not very exciting yet,’ said Lucy, and Ali kicked her under the table.

‘Exciting? You came for excitement, did you? You did know it was archaeology?’

‘I want to start finding things.’

Ali cut in, her voice stiff with embarrassment. ‘She knows that. I’ve told her. It’s not treasure-hunting.’

Dozer winked. ‘That’s what we all say but we’re all fibbing.’ He piled up their dirty plates. ‘Fire time,’ he said. ‘I’ll start fixing
it.’

‘A campfire?’ asked Lucy. ‘Here? Oh good.’

‘Not here,’ said the old biker, sniffing the wind. ‘Over there.’ He nodded across the field.

‘That’s so the smoke doesn’t affect the trenches,’ said Ali didactically. ‘It messes up the radiocarbon dating.’

The man looked down at her and grinned. ‘Is that right? And I thought it was so the smoke doesn’t blow into our tents.’

When he had got the fire going, the older diggers brought wine and beer from their cars and passed it round in plastic mugs. Dozer had dragged logs into a ring around the fire as makeshift
benches. This time Lucy made sure they got in early, sitting herself firmly down next to Andy and towing the other two after her.

Jo found herself next to the one called Jonno. ‘Did you enjoy this afternoon?’ he asked. He had the build and the broken nose of a rugby player but his voice was light and lilting.
Jo thought he might be Scottish.

‘Enjoy?’ she said. ‘Endure is a bit more like it.’

‘Clearing’s never fun,’ he answered. ‘Tomorrow will be better.’

‘I enjoyed it,’ put in Ali. ‘There’s nothing like hard physical work.’

Conrad, the student next to her, nodded in approval, wiped his thick glasses and his brow with a spotted handkerchief. His pale chin was outlined by a dark, sporadic beard. ‘Spot
on,’ he said. ‘Just right.’

There was a tired buzz of contented people around the fire until Rupert stood up and called for silence.

‘That’s enough relaxation,’ he said. ‘Time for work now.’ There was a chorus of catcalls. ‘No, I mean it,’ he went on.

‘I thought this was going to be fun,’ Lucy muttered.

The boys turned and grinned at her. Rupert seemed to be smiling in the darkness. ‘I’ve asked one of my students to prepare a health and safety lecture for you tonight. Please welcome
Conrad.’

Conrad sprang up into the firelight. His voice was rich and his words were confident.

‘There are clear rules to be followed when working on this site,’ he said, ‘particularly when digging into its depths, as the following cautionary tale will
demonstrate.’

He spun round and thrust out an arm to point towards the banks of the castle. ‘Once upon a time, some time before now and since then, a man called Jehosh dropped a coin down a rabbit hole
in the castle mound and heard it clink, clink, clink as if against metal far below. Buried metal spelled treasure to Jehosh so he went to fetch a spade, intending to dig it up. But Jehosh was a
lazy man.’

A log fell out of the fire in a cascade of sparks and Conrad strode to the other side of the circle. He seized a cup from a woman sitting there, drained it of wine in one gulp and tossed it back
at her, then he wiped his lips and started again, turning constantly as he spoke so that his voice rose and fell, rose and fell in the thickening dark.

Ali turned, smiling, to Jo and Lucy, her eyes shining. Lucy shrugged. Jo smiled back.

‘Jehosh summoned his brother Joseph to help him dig. Joseph was a better man than Jehosh but far worse than their brother Jacob, who was a holy man. They dug all evening until at last they
rubbed the dark crumbs of earth away from the lid of a treasure chest made of solid silver, glinting in the last of the sun. In his black impatience, Jehosh tried to pull it out but when the earth
still clutched it tight, he swore a terrible oath, damning his brother, the heavens and the earth, in a stream of words so violent that they hung, crimson and hissing, in the air after he had
spoken them. As they faded, leaving a shadow of sulphurous smoke behind them, the birds fell silent, the sky turned a foetid purple, and with a scraping groan the treasure chest slipped deeper into
the hole.

‘Jehosh swore again, louder, and the earth crumbled again, taking the man with it so that his head disappeared below the surface of the ground. Joseph, who was a better man than Jehosh but
not nearly so good as Jacob, leapt in after his brother.’

Ali nudged Jo and whispered, ‘He’s really good.’

Conrad glanced all around him and hunched forward conspiratorially.

‘The sharp hobnails on Joseph’s boots landed on the head of Jehosh and this time they both took the name of the Lord in vain. Their words hung, steaming and hissing, in the air above
the hole and the earth below heaved and rumbled. Then it crumbled once more and down they both went.

‘A wandering horse tamer happened by – a man from the high and frozen north. He heard their calls and ran to fetch their brother Jacob, who was, as you will recall, a better man than
Joseph and a far better man than Jehosh. He recognised this as the work of the Devil so he shaved his head in the proper manner and said thirteen prayers before hastening to the castle mound. When
he arrived he took great care to make sure that he walked around it in the right direction and did not go . . .’ here Conrad dropped his voice . . . ‘widdershins.’

‘What does that mean?’ Lucy whispered and before Ali could answer, Andy said, ‘Anticlockwise.’ Ali noticed that he and Lucy seemed to be leaning against each other for
support.

‘He exhorted his brothers far below to avoid all blasphemy but as he climbed down, he dislodged a shower of earth and small stones which fell on to the heads of his brothers below and he
heard their voices join in a fresh invocation of Satan’s name. At that, the day turned to full night and the entire mound shook. The earth tumbled in, taking Jacob, Joseph and Jehosh down
into the far distant depths where voices can no longer be heard. When the sky lightened again there was not a movement to be seen and there was nobody there to see it until a roe deer stepped
cautiously from the fringe of the wood to sniff at the tumbled earth. An entire night passed and in the morning, the searchers raised by the itinerant horse tamer came upon Jacob, white-faced and
white-haired, crawling, shaking, from a badger’s sett a full furlong from the mound. It is said to this day that if you find that same badger’s sett, you may discover a human bone or
two in the excavated earth around it – for that is all that was ever found of Jehosh, Joseph and the treasure of Montacute.’

Jo trembled. It was thirty-six hours since her last tablet and she wondered if this was the first touch of adrenalin anxiety that often came as the effect wore off. The flames of the fire seemed
sharper and brighter. Conrad’s voice still hung in her ears and she saw in her mind’s eye a clear image of the hole and the treasure as if she had heard the story, or a story very like
it, some time before. It felt long ago.

He stopped, bowed, and they all clapped. He held up a hand until they were silent again. ‘That’s the health and safety dealt with then,’ he said. ‘Shore up any trenches
deeper than four feet. Test the ground beneath you for security and remember what happens when you swear.’

Rupert jumped to his feet and thanked him, then yawned. ‘I’m for bed. Early start to catch the weather. Breakfast seven thirty. Briefing at eight. Someone else’s turn to tell
the story tomorrow. Night, all.’

Conrad came back to the log and Ali made space next to her. ‘That was really good,’ she said.

He smiled back at her. ‘Thank you. Why don’t you do one tomorrow? You could do it together. It’s fun.’ And to their horror, Jo and Lucy heard Ali agree.

Jonno joined them and the wine bottles went round, and at some point Lucy and Andy disappeared into the dark and it was much later into the night when Lucy slid back into the tent, trying not to
wake her friends and failing in the attempt.

They slept soundly on the hard earth, and when Jo woke in the morning from a dream she could not quite remember the tent seemed nearer to a home than anywhere else she had
been. Just one day of shared experience had turned the marquee into a place full of friendly faces and kind enquiries. Dozer winked and waved at them. Conrad brought Ali a mug of coffee and she
drank it as if it was what she had most wanted, though the other two knew she only ever drank tea. They stormed the slopes of the hill laughing and chattering in the middle of the group of students
and when they got up to the high terrace, Rupert separated them out and gave them their very own end of a trench to work in, tucked in under a small, overgrown cliff with the hill rising towards
its summit above them.

‘You came back so
late
,’ Jo said to Lucy. ‘Come on, what happened?’

‘This and that.’

‘You were giggling when you crawled into the tent. How much of this and what sort of that?’

‘That’s better,’ said Lucy. ‘The real Jo is coming back again.’

‘I don’t think we should be chatting,’ Ali said sternly. ‘We’re meant to be concentrating.’ She hoped the other diggers couldn’t hear them.

‘Oh really, Ali? Then you won’t want to hear what Conrad said about you.’

‘Conrad? About me? What did he say?’

‘I would tell you,’ said Lucy, ‘but I have to concentrate on this very, very dull bit of earth I’m kneeling on. It needs me to scrape at it very carefully in case I miss
something that could change our entire understanding of the world of the wotsits, William the thingy and all that.’

‘The Normans. Come on, what did Conrad say about me?’

Lucy held up a piece of root at arm’s length and stared at it. ‘No, no. Don’t distract me. Look, this is obviously a Saxon’s leg bone and it shows that they suffered from
a mineral deficiency which made their bones all floppy which explains why they were beaten by the Normans because if you—’

‘Stop it,’ said Ali. ‘Please tell me.’

‘Put her out of her misery,’ said Jo.

‘Conrad likes you.’

Ali’s voice squeaked. ‘Does he? How do you know that?’

‘Andy told me.’

‘Really? What did he say? Exactly.’

‘He said Conrad thinks you’re a good sort. I do have a slight concern that his turn of phrase shows he must actually be about fifty years old and I could have sworn he was forty
tops, but that’s exactly what he said.’

‘Stop it,’ said Ali. ‘He’s only nineteen. And?’

‘What do you mean, “And?” That’s it.’

‘That’s it?’ said Jo. ‘A good sort? You get her all excited and that’s the best you can come up with?’

Lucy sniffed. ‘There might have been something else.’

‘What?’ Ali demanded.

‘It’s not a word I care to utter,’ said Lucy loftily. ‘He said you were . . . no, I can’t. My lips just won’t form around it.’