To Dream of the Dead (4 page)

An instant of connection.

Probably her all-time favourite picture of herself. Eirion had taken it on his digital SLR, on that last September weekend, the day before he’d left for university. For a long time it had been her screensaver, until she’d realised it was only making her sad.

Now it was stashed in the
Sacred
folder on the laptop, along with the membership list of the Coleman’s Meadow Preservation Society. Jane didn’t know why she’d brought it out tonight, unless it was as a kind of prayer to God or the Goddess or whatever unimaginable force might be represented by the bursting of the light over the holy hill.

Long ago, the way to watch the Cole Hill sunrise would have been between the standing stones in Coleman’s Meadow. The stones toppled and buried centuries ago by some pious or fearful farmer but which next year could be back, ancient silhouettes against the red dawn in awesome testament to the sacred status of this place.
A ritual reconnecting of the hidden wires
. This was what she’d written in an essay. And like, to
be
here when that came about. Oh God . . .
If
it came about. If they could prevent Lyndon bastard Pierce fixing it so that future dawns would be rising instead over the fake-slate on the roofs of ranks of crappy, post-modern, flat-pack
luxury executive homes
.

That wouldn’t happen. It couldn’t. With a few thousand members now, worldwide, the Coleman’s Meadow Preservation Society was a powerful lobby.

OK, maybe not
powerful
exactly; councils were rarely influenced by people whose strategies involved subtle threats on the lines of
If we cannot stop it by any other means, we are prepared to invoke the Site Guardian
. But the word was spreading.

Jane had built up the fire in the vicarage parlour. She was sitting on the sofa with Ethel, a mug of chocolate and the laptop on the coffee table, listening to an accelerating wind driving the rain into the 17th-century timbers. At least you could rely on Mum not to take any shit from Pierce tonight. Mum finally understood.

In fact, things were good with Mum right now, had been for a while. Spiritual differences, if not exactly resolved, were acknowledged as being not insurmountable. You couldn’t, after all, operate as a vicar for very long around here without becoming at least
half
pagan.

Anyway, no open confrontation any more. These days Jane was kind of wincing at the memory of herself a couple of years ago, doing her cobbled-together ritual to the Lady Moon in the vicarage garden. A little girl, back then. A virgin. Pre-Eirion.

Abruptly, she killed the picture and switched off the laptop. Ethel had nosed under her arm and onto her knee, lay there purring, and Jane stroked her slowly, staring into the reddening log fire.

She picked up the mobile, almost cracked and called Eirion in Cardiff, then pulled herself together and tried Neil Cooper again. Thinking she’d leave a message on his machine so that both he and his wife would know that she definitely wasn’t—

‘Cooper.’

‘Oh—’

‘Jane,’ he said, and if she was honest she’d have to admit he didn’t sound over-excited.

‘Sorry, I thought I’d get the machine. Coops, listen, I’m not stalking you or anything. You gave me your home number, in case anything came up?’

‘And what’s come up, Jane?’

‘Erm . . . well, like . . . nothing. I mean, that’s the point. Nothing’s happening. It’s all stopped. Why’s it all stopped, Coops?’

She felt stupid, but he must surely understand how important
this was to her. She was carrying the blazing torch lit by Lucy Devenish, folklorist of this parish, now dead, and if she let it go out . . .

‘Weather’s not helping, obviously,’ Neil Cooper said.

‘You’ve got those tent things you can put over the trenches.’

‘Yeah, but it’s not satisfactory. And there’s no desperate hurry, is there? And anyway, I keep telling you, it’s not my—’

‘There is for me, Coops, I’ll be back at school in the New Year.’

‘Jane, they can’t time the whole project to fit your personal schedule.’

‘I just want— Don’t want to interfere or anything, I just want to
be
there. On the fringe, quiet as a mouse. Just like want to be there when the stones are raised again.’

‘Well, yeah,’ he said. ‘I can understand that.’

There was something Neil Cooper wasn’t telling her. Or maybe he was just pissed off because the dig had been taken out of the hands of the county archaeology department: too big, too important, needed specialists in prehistory.

‘And let’s not forget,’ Jane said, ‘that if it wasn’t for me you might never’ve discovered it in the first place. I mean, I don’t like to keep throwing this at y—’

‘
Jane
—’

‘Sorry.’

‘None of us will miss anything, OK? It’ll be on TV. All the best bits, anyway.’

‘Huh?’

His voice had sounded damp and sick in a way that didn’t make sense. ‘What would you expect,’ he said, ‘with Blore in the driving seat?’

‘Sorry . . .’ Jane was on the edge of the sofa. ‘Did you say—
what
did you say?’

Coops said nothing.

‘Did you say
Blore
? As in, like,
Bill
Blore, of
Trench One
?’

‘I’d hate to think there was another one out there,’ Coops said.

‘Holy shit,’ Jane said.

‘Look, don’t get—’

‘But like, I thought the contract had gone to this . . . Dore Valley Archaeology?’

He was silent again.

‘Come on, Coops, who am
I
going to tell?’

‘Dore Valley Archaeology,’ Coops said, ‘no longer exists as an independent contractor. In mid-October it was acquired by Blore’s company, Capstone.’

‘
Wow
. I didn’t know that. I mean, I didn’t know he had a company.’

‘They all do. Archaeology’s a business. Like everything else. And Capstone have swallowed Dore Valley. More people, more resources, more prestige digs, plus TV documentaries on the side. Blore’s got it sewn up, money at both ends.’

‘Bill Blore,’ Jane said slowly. ‘Wow.’

‘Oh, for God’s sake, Jane . . .’

‘Hey, I’m sorry, but
Bill
—’

‘You’re missing the point, Jane, and maybe I shouldn’t expect you to see the significance, but you’re thinking about the so-called glamorous TV presenter, while I’m seeing the man who is
not
Herefordshire Council’s favourite archaeologist.’

Jane thought about this for a moment, and then she started to understand.

‘The Dinedor Serpent.’

‘We still prefer to call it the Rotherwas Ribbon,’ Coops said primly. Well, he would. The council stuck to the original name,
Ribbon
, because that sounded less sexy than Serpent or Dragon. Easier to ignore.

But it
was
sexy. Unique, probably. Coleman’s Meadow, with real standing stones to uncover, might turn out to be more immediately spectacular, but the Dinedor Serpent was the only one of its kind in Europe. Seriously significant.

So
significant that the philistine bastards on Herefordshire Council were shoving a new road across it.

Jane knew all about this. She’d pasted up the news cuttings as part of her A-level project, with a picture of Prof. William Blore next to the partly uncovered Serpent.

‘Coops, come on, what he said . . . the council were asking for it. You know that.’

‘Let’s not forget that if it hadn’t been for the work on the road, we wouldn’t have found the Ribbon in the first place.’

‘
Serpent
. Yeah, but—’

‘Same with Coleman’s Meadow and the housing plan. Same with most finds. Most archaeology today is rescue archaeology, you grow to accept that.’

‘Especially in this bloody county,’ Jane said. ‘But that’s what’s so good about Bill Blore. He doesn’t accept bureaucratic bullshit.’

In her picture, big Bill Blore was stripped to the waist, deeply tanned, hard hat at an angle. Thickset, maybe, but not fat. He’d said that Herefordshire, having been neglected for decades, was now yielding stuff that could change our whole perception of Neolithic, Bronze and Iron Age societies.

And, because she’d quoted it in an essay, Jane knew exactly what he’d said about the council’s decision to go ahead with the new road, regardless.

‘He said local authorities shouldn’t be allowed to make decisions affecting major national heritage sites. Especially councils as short-sighted, pig-headed and ignorant as Hereford’s.’

‘Words to that effect,’ Coops said stiffly.

‘Those
actual
words . . . actually.’ Excitement began to ripple through Jane. ‘Coops, this is just so
totally cool
.’

‘Jane, it’s
not
. Blore’s got into Coleman’s Meadow through the back door, now he’s running this prestigious dig right under the nose of an authority he’s publicly trashed. That is not cool. That is a very uncomfortable situation for all of us.’

‘Only if you work for the council.’

‘They’re blaming my department, naturally. Lucky I still have a job. OK, unless Dore Valley had told us themselves, there was no
way
we could’ve known that Blore was quietly moving in while we were negotiating with them, but that’s not how some people see it.’

‘You wanted to leave the council anyway, didn’t you?’

‘Yeah,’ Coops said. ‘I
did
.’

Another silence. Jane held her breath. She was picking up stuff she could really use – like at the university interviews? To show how seriously au fait she was with trench gossip.

She’d also be able to tell them she’d worked with Bill Blore.

Wow
.

‘Just that when I was asked to join Dore Valley as a field archaeologist,’
Coops said, ‘nobody told me it’d be part of the Blore empire.’

‘But isn’t that, like . . . good?’

‘Goodnight, Jane,’ Neil Cooper said.

S
HIRLEY
W
EST WAS
, arguably, the most sinister person here. Shirley did foreboding in a way that was supposed to have gone out with the Witchcraft Act.

Impressive in a born-again Christian.

A couple in front of Merrily and Lol had slid away, leaving a clear view of Shirley in that grey, tubular, quilted coat. A lagged cistern with no thermostat, and sooner or later – you just knew – she was going to overheat.

Directly ahead of her, at the front of the stage, two pictures were pinned to a display stand. One was a photo showing an empty field with a five-barred gate, the conical hill rising behind it under an overcast sky.

‘Coleman’s Meadow.’ James Bull-Davies tapped his pen on the photo. ‘Earmarked for development of what are described as executive dwellings – like these.’

Tapping the picture below it: an architect’s sketch of a detached house with a double garage, token timber-framing, landscaped suburban gardens, under a blue-washed summer sky.

‘Field being within the village boundaries, therefore seen by county planners as acceptable infill.’

Merrily swapped a glance with Lol. Especially acceptable to Lyndon Pierce, local councillor and chartered accountant. One of whose clients was, as it happened, the owner of Coleman’s Meadow.

It was blatant, really. And because this was a small county, so much interconnected, so many business and family links, sometimes it seemed almost normal, no big deal.

Pierce had sat down now, was examining his nails, like his part
was over. Rain smacked at the windows, making the frames shiver and rattle, smearing the reflections in the glass.

‘Complication, of course,’ James said, ‘being the recent discovery in Coleman’s Meadow, of significant archaeological remains. Now, I don’t want to pre-empt the results of the excavation, but—’

‘Old stones.’ A drawly male voice uncurling from halfway down the hall. Merrily didn’t recognise it. ‘Just a few old stones, long buried.’

‘Megaliths,’ James said. ‘The remains of a Bronze Age monument four thousand years old which people interested in such relics would, understandably, like to have unearthed and conserved.’

‘Not a problem, Colonel,’ Pierce murmured. ‘As I keep saying.’

‘
In situ
.’

‘Ah.’ Pierce sat back, arms folded. ‘
That
’s the problem, yes. Should a prime site be sacrificed in its entirety for a few stones that wouldn’t’ve been discovered if it hadn’t been for this project – I think that’s right, isn’t it, Colonel?’

‘Don’t think anyone’s ever denied that. However, we now know about them, and we appear to have two options: re-erecting them as a heritage site or—’

‘Three options, in fact,’ Pierce said mildly. ‘The stones could be dug out and taken away for erection on another site – in a park or somewhere.’

‘Somewhere well away from this village,’ Shirley West said.

She hadn’t moved. All you could see was stiffly permed dark brown hair sitting on the funnel collar of the grey coat.

Merrily held her breath.

‘Because, see, we have to ask ourselves,’ Shirley said, ‘why they were buried in the first place.’

‘Not our place,’ James said, ‘to pre-empt the results of the official excavation. Just to remind you all, the Parish Council will be discussing Coleman’s Meadow early in the New Year. We have no planning powers at this level, as you realise, but we
can
make our voice heard in Hereford. In theory. So that leaves you two or three weeks to make your individual views known to
us
. In writing, if you—’

‘But I can
tell
you why, Mr Davies,’ Shirley said. ‘We don’t need
no excavation to tell us they were
heathen
stones in a Christian country. Heathen stones in the very shadow of our church.’

Our church?
Merrily knew for a fact that Shirley West was also a member of some born-again, pentecostal-type group in Leominster.

James said, ‘Mrs West—’

‘Bury them again! Bury them deeper! Or, if you have to dig them up, do as Mr Pierce says, put them in a city park or a museum where none of us have to see them.’