The Rings of Poseidon (5 page)

"Pardon?"

"I went around with a cousin and his mates. I
got into pub crawling and drinking a lot. I got picked up for
fighting a time or two."

Gill wondered whether he was playing down the
football violence. "What about football matches?" she asked. "I
thought they told you to stay away from football grounds."

"My cousin and one or two of his crowd were
pretty nasty characters," said Steve, "but I didn't recognise that
at the time."

There was a silence as Steve withdrew into
his thoughts again. Gill didn't like to pursue him into such
private territory but he continued of his own accord.

"They were part of an organised disruptive
element at matches. They used to go to games for no other reason
than to cause trouble. I started drinking and going with them, just
when there was a clamp down on crowd violence. The prison sentence
sobered me up, I can tell you."

"Do the others know about your prison
background. I mean, about your record?"

"I neither advertise the fact, nor hide it,"
said Steve in reply, "but I imagine Alicia knows about it since
she's seen my file. I don't think the others do." He paused a
moment and then added, "I don't know why I'm talking about it to
you. I don't usually mention it at all."

"Perhaps you're talking about it to me
because we've both turned over a new leaf," Gill replied.

They began walking along the beach a little
in the fading light. "That's true enough, I suppose. Anyway,
prison's full of failures with a big opinion of themselves. As far
as I can see the real successes aren't caught, are they? The only
reason people are found in prison at all is that they've been
caught." There was a pause before he added "Like me."

"Successes?"

"Murderers, thieves, swindlers, embezzlers,
People who spoil football matches by fighting. If they get away
with it, they aren't caught. Prison is not the place to learn from
anyone who's done it and got away with it, is it?"

This was a new idea to Gill and she was
considering it when she suddenly stumbled over a small rock, and
Steve caught her. For a moment or two he held her gently. At length
she drew away.

"Are those the lights of a ship?" she asked
him unsteadily.

Steve turned toward the gentle swell.
"Where?" he asked.

"Over there on the water."

"Well I imagine if they're on the water they
must be. Oh I see where you mean. Yes I think it's some kind of
small boat close in. Perhaps they're fishing."

"And that sweeping light you can see
sometimes must be a lighthouse," she said

"I saw one on an island from the ferry. Cava
I think it is." There was silence for a moment or two. "Anyway, I
ought to be getting back to see to the generator and things," he
added, but he didn't actually turn back.

"I think I'll go back with you," said Gill.
"It's getting late and chilly." She turned with him and they walked
back together towards the lights of the camp.

Chapter 4

Steve was off meeting the ferry again when
Gill discovered the entrance to the underground village, for
village it was they were now certain. Of course, the excitement of
the discovery was marred a little by the realisation that the way
in was just where they thought it would be, but one house and
several feet of passageway had been uncovered.

A larger slab of stone had been used as a
lintel over the opening, just as a similar slab had been used where
the house joined the passage. Still, as Alicia said, it was nice to
know that they were right and Gill was unreasonably excited by the
discovery. She and her team threw themselves with renewed vigour
coupled with even greater caution than before into the work of
uncovering the entranceway. At almost the same time - before Steve
was back anyway - some charcoal was discovered in the sand inside
the house.

"We'd better get that photographed before you
move it," said Alicia, "but I wouldn't be surprised if it was once
a timber supporting the roof, or rather the remains of one."

When Frank was told he agreed with her,
saying, "Assuming this house is about the same proportions as those
at Scara Brae, that's just where I'd expect to find remains of the
roof."

Alicia made a non-committal noise which might
have been agreement and, since Steve wasn't around, went to fetch
the camera from the cabin.

With the photographs taken, Frank took charge
of the careful digging and sieving of the sand. Alicia noted in
passing that her 'double failure' might lack skills in exams but
had a real instinct for the practical work.

It was during this patient trowel and sieve
excavating Alan and Frank uncovered the tip of a bone that could be
human, and Alicia was privately ecstatic.

"Did she or he just sit there while the place
burnt around him or her, or was he or she already dead?" she
wondered.

For a time the whole of those involved in the
dig stood and watched as Frank and Alan carefully brushed off the
sand and Alicia took far more photographs than were necessary.
Eventually she tore herself away long enough to get the other teams
back to work. Some of the workers needed a lot of persuading that
what they were doing was really of some significance.

"You're digging down through sand that's
blown in," she told Gill and Manjy, "and sooner or later you're
going to strike the level at which these people had their floor.
The village was underground, but there had to be a slope down to
the entrance. What you do or don't find when you reach that level
may well tell us whether some outside agency was involved in the
destruction. At least we know that human remains would be found in
this soil, if there are any more."

With that Gill's team, rather reluctantly,
started digging again. It was fortunate that they did.

Gill watched the Landrover pull into the
field and stop near the caravans. She saw Steve emerge to begin
unloading, while she rubbed her back with one hand, sighed and gave
her attention again to the dig.

Frank straightened up and climbed out of the
house "Here, you take over," He said to Alan, continuing to Alicia,
"It's my bet that the victim was hiding in the house when some
intruder or other came along and killed him or her before the place
was burnt down. Mind you, whether I'll ever be able to prove that
is another matter entirely."

"You're probably right about the second but
you may also be right about the first," said Alicia. "Do you think
you'll get much from the exchange?"

"I'm enjoying this dig. I don't know if it's
doing me any good careerwise, it's a bit early to say, but it makes
a change from the Mayans. Mind you, these people are a bit
primitive by comparison."

"Were they more violent, do you think?"

"Violent? I don't know. I don't know how
violent these people were, but the Mayans were pretty rough
themselves. By our standards at any rate. Human sacrifice, wars,
ruthless games in which the losers were killed and so on. This lot
probably weren't any worse than the Mayans and pre-Mayans I
shouldn't think. Those were violent times."

Alan discovered that there was, like the
houses at Scara Brae, a bed area with stone retaining walls about a
foot high. This 'bed' seemed to be full of ashes and the position
of the bones suggested that the figure had been lying partly on and
partly off the bed. Alan thought this favoured violence.

"If a body was dead already he'd be laid out
on the bed and if he wasn't dead he'd be trying to get out, not
trying to go to bed." he said.

Alicia had to agree with him but said, "We
don't know what happened do we? Let's get on with uncovering the
remains as carefully as possible and look for any hard evidence
there might be."

Since Steve was around by this time, he took
up the camera from where Alicia had just dumped it in the grass
and, before anything was moved, the remains were photographed. "I
feel like one of those forensic fellas the police use," he said,
"You want as much evidence as you can get, I suppose. Shall I
fingerprint it? Then he added in a more serious tone, "I've never
realised that archeological digs were so serious."

"Oh, we're serious right enough." Alan told
him as he and the other workers stepped back out of the way to give
him a better field of vision as he photographed remains.

"We're nothing if not thorough." said
Alicia.

"I'll give you that one," Steve told her.

While the snapping and the chatting had been
going on, Frank had been watching Gill stop her team while she
carefully dusted something with a soft brush.

"Look at this!" she called excitedly to
Alicia, who tore herself from Alan's excavations and went over to
Gill.

"What?" she questioned, peering.

"Looks like more human remains," said
Frank.

The two of them stood watching as Gill and
her team dusted sand off what looked like heel bones, carefully
trowelled away more of the sand and dusted more bones. Feet and
ankles were uncovered.

Things were slowed down somewhat by the fact
that he or she was lying feet towards the entrance and head
outwards, so the skull end of the bones was away from the digging
and it was necessary to dig down very carefully through a deep
layer of sand.

"He or she must have fallen away from the
entrance" speculated Manjy.

"Oh I don't know," said Gill, "he/she may
have been pushed."

"Or he may have been dragged there after he
was killed, there's nothing to say one way or the other," said
Frank looking down from the edge of the trench.

"Well one thing's certain," Gill commented to
him. "This is hardly a place to leave a body. This is more or less
ground level, so he wasn't buried and they didn't move it or come
back for it."

Frank conceded the point. "Yeh," he said,
"And it may not even have been male." To Alicia he added, "We'd
better get Steve over to take some photographs before we disturb
anything and I'm itching to take a closer look."

"Steve's already here," said Steve, who had
joined the watchers.

When he had made the photographic record of
the find, they returned to uncovering and studying the remains, and
it was at this stage that Frank made the discovery.

The ring was made of copper but it seemed to
be coated with something which had prevented it from tarnishing or
rotting away with verdigris the way that copper tends to do. That
the figure had been wearing the ring at the time of its death Frank
was in no doubt - a finger bone was still inside it! He was also
fairly certain that the body - if you can call a pile of bones a
body - had been wearing an amulet or talisman of some sort on a
cord, possibly of hide.

Alicia was as inclined to speculate as
anybody else. "I wonder whether he was, or she was, trying to get
out of the village," she said, eyeing the remains, "and either
didn't make it because he was injured or ran into somebody who was
lying in wait."

"Maybe," said Frank, "Or he may have been
trying to keep out some third party and got killed for his
trouble.

"Since you've got all the photos you want,
shall I take the ring and the amulet inside, so that you can
examine them in the cabin?" asked Gill.

"Yes, take them in," answered Alicia, "
They'd be safer in the office. Anyway it's getting dark and it's
looking like rain. In any case, I've worked you all long
enough."

Clouds were banking up threateningly to the
south west and shutting out the lingering sunset ominously. Gill
began the process of picking up the ring and amulet with as little
disturbance as possible, while the others downed their tools and
turned back across the field towards the camp.

Manjy saw the bird watcher in the distance
but paid no particular attention. "Keeping an eye on the nest." she
thought in passing. She didn't notice that he had been watching
them through his binoculars for some time.

Darkness fell early, but there was no
immediate rain. With the aid of the generator chugging quietly
under a canvass awning, the whole area was a pool of light and
pretty soon the camp broke up. Frank went to sort out a few things
and write home, Manjy went to finish that letter to her father,
while most of the rest of the gang including Alan, who seemed be
popular with the younger volunteers, went into one of the caravans,
leaving Alicia and Gill in the cabin with Steve, who was finishing
the washing up and putting away.

Frank's letters reflected the sort of person
he was. His handwriting was large and bold and what he had to say
was colourful and good humoured observation. He was more conscious
than one might have expected that his travel and career meant
considerable time away from home and his widowed mother.

Manjy's letter was slow and painstaking. She
wrote in Punjabi, of course, and re-wrote frequently. Saying "No."
to one's father is not something which comes easily to a Hindu
girl, so she had tried to avoid an outright negative. She had
settled instead on a carefully worded appeal for a marriage partner
who would accept her career.

Alan got out his guitar for a sing song but,
for want of anywhere else to put it, he had crammed a pack of Tarot
cards into the guitar case. Somebody wanted to know whether he
could tell fortunes with it and the group was off on a different
tack.

"What age do you place the village?" Gill
asked Alicia. "If the ring is copper it must have been occupied
into the bronze age."

"I've said already that this method of
construction began quite far back into the Stone Age and continued
as late as the eighth or even ninth centuries AD." Alicia paused.
"I'd guess this was built in the later Stone Age, say two and a
half to three thousand years BC and continued in use well into the
bronze age, but I'm only guessing. The place could have been used
well into the iron age, though I should think the people themselves
must have been too small to have been Celts," and she picked up the
amulet to inspect it more closely.