Lovers and Newcomers. Rosie Thomas
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of their tent, watched by Miranda and the others from their picnic place. They could hear the metallic clink of trowels. Bags and buckets filled with spoil were brought out, and a young woman with dreadlocks longer than Kieran’s knelt to sift the loose earth through a sieve.
Amos ate smoked salmon sandwiches and loudly fumed about the delay, until Miranda snapped at him.
‘It’s my land too. My home for twenty years, Jake was born here. Can’t you acknowledge that whatever is lying in that trench might have at least a comparable importance to your house?’
At once Amos put his big hand on hers. ‘Of course, Mirry. I do apologize. How thrilling for Mead if this does turn out to be a major discovery. But I don’t think you’ve quite got the hang of what a disruption it may turn out to be.’
‘Let’s wait and see, shall we?’ Miranda said quietly. Colin lay back and seemed to fall asleep.
At the end of the afternoon, Kieran came out of the tent and crossed to where they still waited. His face was flushed under the faint pockmarks.
‘Would you like to come and take a look?’
They got to their feet and followed him.
Within the white tent, sheltered from the wind that had got up, it was warmer and surprisingly still. The fabric rippled and snapped with small popping sounds. The pleasantly diffused light coupled with the strong scent of trampled grass was reminiscent of a garden fête or agricultural show. The archaeologists were lined up beside their trench, mostly with their hands folded, looking downwards like proud but modest exhibitors. A photographer’s tripod and camera stood in place at one end of the tent.
Miranda looked down and caught her breath.
The earth had been cleared partially to expose the skeleton. It was dark, discoloured and broken, but still shockingly human. It lay on its left side, the legs bent up towards the chest and the forearms extended. Earth filled the collapsed ribcage and crusted the pelvic bowl. The skull was tilted at an angle, the eye sockets blinded with dirt and the jaw with a rim of teeth seeming to grin into infinity.
Two feet away from it lay a second skull, much smaller, and the ribs of a young child.
Only when she had taken this in did she see that resting between the jaw of the larger skeleton and the framework of its ribcage lay a band that once would have circled the neck. To the side of the body, the curved edge of metal that Colin had glimpsed had been further exposed. It looked like the edge of a large plate. A raised pattern that might have been part of a scroll or leaf design was just visible.
Stillness spread outwards and seemed to press against the nylon walls and roof of the tent, where the wind chafed.
At Miranda’s side, Colin remembered Stephen’s funeral in the village on the edge of the Yorkshire moorland, and the priest and the mourners gathered at the edge of the open grave as handfuls of earth thudded on to the coffin lid. He raised his head now in an attempt to blot out the memory, searching along the line of silent people as if he hoped to see a priest amongst them.
He was not a religious man, but he would have liked to hear some words of blessing or a simple prayer spoken over these bones.
The first person to break the silence was Christopher Carr. His voice was low and they had to listen to catch his words.
‘This is an important discovery,’ he said. ‘Perhaps very important. We have a rich burial here, probably dating from the later Iron Age. We may be looking at a prince, a tribal leader at least, who was buried with his symbols of rank and power and provisions for the afterlife.’
‘What about the child?’ Katherine asked. This time she looked directly at Chris. He nodded sympathy at her.
‘We can’t tell yet. Perhaps it was an attendant, maybe even a human sacrifice as part of the funeral ritual. Our osteologist, that’s David over there, may well be able to establish the cause of death.’
David was a small man with glasses. He smiled and then suppressed it, all the time looking as if he couldn’t wait to start handling the bones. The atmosphere was slowly lightening. The archaeologists began quietly to stack their tools. Kieran ducked out of the entrance with one more yellow plastic bucketful of loose earth.
One by one, the Mead people turned away from the trench and its contents. As the shock of staring death in the face subsided, they became aware that these relics were from a time so distant that they could hardly connect with it.
Chris said, ‘There’s one more thing. We’ll be leaving a security guard here overnight. The site will have to be protected until the artefacts have been removed to a safe place.’
Miranda demanded ‘Why? This is a private estate. No one comes here.’
‘Forgive me, Mrs Meadowe. We don’t know yet what these grave goods are, or what else we might find. If they should turn out to be alloys of precious metals, or even solid gold, imagine what the material alone might be worth, without adding up the historical value.’
Amos began to say something, then stopped himself.
‘I see,’ Miranda said, although she was only just beginning to. This discovery was going to change the delicate balance of life at Mead, the life she had wanted for them all, that much was already clear.
Chris continued, ‘With your help, we’ll keep this discovery quiet for as long as possible. But in my experience news inevitably leaks out sooner or later, and you’d be surprised at the nighthawks who will turn up looking for a piece of treasure to keep for themselves.’
Outside the tent it had grown chilly and the sky was overcast. Another van had arrived, this one marked ‘Lockyer Security’. A very large shaven-headed man sat in the driver’s seat, frowning over a print-out.
Amos stood in front of Chris. ‘Can you give me any idea of how long?’ he asked yet again.
‘How much time my team will be granted to complete the excavation is the decision of the county archaeologist, and that depends on how important he judges the findings to be, in terms of local and national history.’
Amos’s lower jaw was protruding now, a dangerous sign. ‘And so?’
The archaeologist sighed. ‘If I have to put a frame on it I’d say something more than a few days, but not as long as several months. We’ll do the job as quickly as we can.’
‘Thank you,’ Amos said, as if he were dismissing the most unreliable of witnesses.
Chris turned to Katherine, who stood a yard behind her husband. ‘I’m sorry,’ he told her.
Katherine’s smile was transforming. Miranda saw it, and so did Polly, although Amos wasn’t looking at her. ‘Please don’t be,’ she said. ‘There’s no need.’
As he passed Kieran, Colin asked him, ‘Did I meet your brother, at the Griffin in Meddlett, with a girl called Jessie and a dog?’
‘Yeah, that’ll be him. Damon.’
‘I thought so. You’re very alike.’
‘Not really,’ Kieran frowned.
The security guard lumbered out of the shelter of his van, and Amos made his comment about monkeys and the zoo.
They sat in the kitchen, over the remains of dinner. Selwyn had taken the blue chair next to the range and he balanced it on two legs and drank whisky as he surveyed the room. They had been talking all evening about the day’s discovery. Amos insisted that he was no expert on the exact terms of the Treasure law, whilst leaving no doubt at all that he knew far more than the rest of them. He explained that if they fell within the definition of treasure, the finds would belong to the Crown. If they turned out to be spectacular, or historically significant, they would probably be bought by a museum. There might be a reward for the landowner.
‘The best reward I can think of would be to get my house built,’ he growled.
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