Lovers and Newcomers. Rosie Thomas
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few inches below the surface the cut edges of turf, roots and a few inches of topsoil gave way to dense earth, packed with stones. Protruding from the bottom of the trench, where a band of earth seemed to be darker than elsewhere, Miranda saw what appeared to be a long piece of flint. It was grey, clogged with dirt, and splintered where the sharp edge of the digger blade had smashed into it. The young man ignored her, and everyone else. He knelt to examine the find.
‘Just caught my eye, didn’t it?’ the digger driver was saying to the other workmen. He was big with a red face, his yellow helmet perched above it looking much too small for his head.
‘Right you are, Alan. Let’s take a look,’ the site boss said. He vaulted into the trench, but the young man snatched at the collar of his jacket and pulled him back.
‘Wait there,’ he snapped, with surprising authority. ‘Everyone, just stand where you are.’
Silence fell over the little group. Even Amos hesitated.
The young man slid down into the trench. With his right thumb he rubbed the earth from the protruding flint, stroking it as if it were a baby’s fist. Then he took out a tiny trowel, and with infinite care began to scoop the debris from around it.
‘Who is he?’ Colin murmured.
‘The archaeologist,’ Amos said curtly.
‘The what?’
‘Oh, for Christ’s sake. It’s the planning regulations. One of the hoops you have to jump through to get anything done. The county bloody archaeologist assessed the site, told me and the architect that there was a minimal chance of there actually being any old bits of Roman pottery or anything else buried here, but he was sending someone in on a watching brief just in case. Someone I end up paying for, naturally. That’s him.’
It was obvious to Miranda now that what was protruding from the ground was not a flint but a broken bone. She watched intently, only half hearing Amos’s tirade.
The archaeologist gently worked the bone free. He placed it in a bag, carefully labelled the exterior, and laid it on the lip of the trench.
‘Right, then. Let’s get going again,’ Amos called.
The men shuffled, and the archaeologist continued to ignore them all. He was kneeling again and scraping at the earth. A moment later he came up with a smaller bone. He cupped it in his palm and brushed away the dirt.
Amos trampled forwards. Miranda wanted to restrain him, and when she caught Katherine’s eye she knew she felt the same.
Amos called, ‘Look. I know you’ve got a job to do. But I can’t allow the remains of some animal to hold up the work of an entire site crew for half a morning.’
The second bone went into a separate bag.
Amos raised his voice. ‘It’s a dead…’ there was a second’s hesitation while he searched his mind for a farm animal, any animal ‘…cow.’
The archaeologist did look up now. Beneath the plastic peak of his helmet his face looked startlingly young, almost unformed. To Colin, standing beside Miranda at the end of the trench, his features seemed vaguely familiar. Until recently he would have searched his memory for where and when, and what they might have done together.
‘These are human remains,’ the young man said.
A deeper pool of silence collected. Bowing his head, one of the workmen took off his helmet and held it awkwardly across his chest. Shocked, Miranda gazed down into the freshly sliced earth at the bottom of the trench, and then at the labelled bags. Who was it, buried here in this peaceful place? Who, and when?
Amos broke in again, ‘This is my land. We have all the necessary permissions in place to build a house right here, and that’s what you are delaying.’
Katherine put her hand on his arm. ‘Amos, please.’ But he shook it off. He marched to Alan’s side and tried to nudge him backwards towards the digger. The two of them performed a tiny dance with their chests puffed out. The gulls rose in unison from their perch, their wingbeats loud in the stillness. Alan scratched the back of his head under his hard hat and retreated a couple of reluctant steps, followed by the site manager making pacifying gestures. Miranda reached for Colin’s hand and held it, but her eyes were still fixed on the disturbed ground. Amos measured up to the contractor and Alan, as if he were going to manhandle them back to work. His face was red and he was puffing slightly. Amos was not used to having his orders ignored. For a moment it looked as if he might win, as Alan placed his boot on the step of the machine and prepared to climb up.
The archaeologist put down his trowel. He stood in front of the digger with his hand raised.
‘Work at this site is temporarily suspended,’ he said, ‘pending further investigation.’
‘On whose authority?’ Amos demanded.
‘On my own, for the time being,’ the young man answered. ‘I am just going to notify the police, and the coroner’s office.’
‘The police? The police?’ Amos came to a standstill, his arms flopping to his sides.
Katherine looked at her husband, then turned away from him.
‘What is it? Who was it?’ Miranda murmured.
The workmen were already filing cheerfully in the direction of their caravan, pulling off their helmets as they went.
‘I’m sorry,’ the young archaeologist said to Miranda and Amos and the others. He had a stud in his nose, and ropes of hair pulled back and buried under the loose collar of his plaid flannel shirt. His hands, heavy with dirt, hung loose at his sides. Colin tried to recall where he had seen him before.
‘I can’t say for certain, not immediately, but I’m fairly sure, based on what I can see, that this is not a recent interment. But I’ve got to act by the book.’
Miranda lifted her head. Her face was white. ‘Recent? What does that mean? I’ve lived here for more than twenty years. It’s my home. This was my husband’s land, he grew up here. Who would be buried in a spot like this?’
‘Are you sure these are human bones?’ Colin asked.
‘Yes, I am. There is part of a femur, and a patella.’ He tried to sound authoritative but a flush coloured his face, showing up the scattered pocks of healed acne. He was probably in his early twenties. Hardly a match for Amos, Colin thought, the poor kid.
The archaeologist continued, speaking directly and gently to Miranda because of the shock in her eyes. ‘The way the thigh and the knee were uncovered makes me think that the corpse may have been buried in a semi-crouching position. The remainder of the skeleton will be there, almost definitely.’ He raised his hand and pointed to the wall of the trench. Grass roots and a few bruised daisies overhung it.
‘How long ago?’ Miranda asked.
‘I’ll really have to check with my field supervisor. I’m not all that experienced.’ His colour deepened. ‘There are tests, of course. But he’s probably prehistoric. That would be my guess. Bronze Age, or Iron Age. Something like two thousand years old.’
‘Two thousand?’ Amos muttered, in spite of himself.
They looked out over the plateau of grass and the sweep of farmland and dappled country beyond it.
The regular perspective tilted, and swung out of alignment. Miranda steadied herself against Colin’s arm. She and the others had been thinking about their present concerns, she realized, and speculating only about the new house and next month and next year, but now their attention was forcibly dragged back through the centuries. Under the thin skin of earth, hardly more than two spade-depths below the grass, lay history. Silently she wondered what this landscape had looked like so long ago, and who it was who had come out of the opaque past to be uncovered in front of them.
Miranda found that she was shivering.
Amos