Death of a Burrowing Mole

3

Donkey-Work

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What do you think of Dr Lochlure?’ asked Priscilla, as they were enjoying the afternoon respite from labour.

‘Think of Susannah? How do you mean?’ asked Fiona.

‘Do you call her Susannah to her face?’

‘That, or Su. Only in private, of course.’

‘Do you have a schmaltz thing about her?’

‘Good Lord, no. What do you think of her yourself?’

‘She is very beautiful. I have had to choose between adoring her for her beauty and envying her its effect on other people. I have selected adoration. I believe in sublimating my emotions. Why do you think she invited the two of us to accompany her on this jaunt?’

‘Me for my muscles – from what we have seen today I should say we are in for heavy work on that castle mound – you for your brains and enthusiasm, and both of us because we are not potential rivals of hers where men are concerned.’

‘Is that why you bother with me? I have often wondered about it.’

‘Bother with you? Wonder about what?’

‘Wonder about our friendship. We must appear an unlikely couple to other people.’

‘Who cares about other people?’

‘I’m afraid I do. They must wonder what you see in me.’

‘I see somebody who helps me with my essays and who stands on the touchline at home matches and roots for our side, that’s all.’

‘Reverting to Dr Lochlure, have you noticed Tom Hassocks? He has eyes for nobody else.’

‘He doesn’t stand an earthly. Nicholas Tynant is her man for all seasons.’

‘So much so that perhaps it is as well she has not put up at his hotel.’

‘I’ll tell you something else about Tom Hassocks,’ said Fiona. ‘He and young Monkswood—’

‘Are not here in the interests of pure scholarship? I couldn’t agree more. They have some secret ploy in mind, otherwise surely they would have camped out at the foot of the hill near their cars and our caravan, where it’s grassy and pleasant. Instead of that, they have dragged camp-beds and sleeping-bags up to the keep.’

‘Tom has locked the boot of his car, too.’

‘How do you know that?’

‘I tried it, thinking there might be a couple of cans of beer I could manage to sink without trace. I would have paid him for them, of course.’ She was sunbathing. She turned on to her back and pulled a towel over her face.

‘What a blessedly quiet spot this is!’ said Priscilla.

‘It won’t remain so, once the school holidays begin.’

Priscilla agreed. Then she said, ‘If you like me, I wonder you never came for a holiday with me before this. I’ve often wished you and I could hire a horse-drawn caravan and lead a gypsy life for a week or two.’

‘It would bore me to death. Besides, there would be the horse to look after and feed, and the ever-present problem of finding somewhere to pull in for the night. Oh, no! Give me rock-climbing in the Cuillins!’

‘You must have a good head for heights.’

‘I’ve never thought about it.’

‘That’s the whole point, I suppose. Anybody who did not have a good head for heights would have to think about it.’

‘Oh, nonsense. They wouldn’t do it, that’s all. One soon learns one’s limitations.’

‘I climbed the stair in the keep, but my head swam. Fiona, exactly why did you accept Dr Lochlure’s invitation to come here?’

‘The sixty-thousand-dollar question! I don’t know. I’m already bored with the scenery and bored with the people. Oh, well, at least we’ve got the car now.’

The reason for Fiona’s having been able to test the lock on the boot of Tom’s car was that she had persuaded him to agree to her proposal. Once the young men had surveyed the young women and had decided that amorous dalliance was what Tom described as a non-starter, the possible advantage of having two cars at their disposal had disappeared, so when, earlier that afternoon, Fiona had approached him with her offer, he had accepted it.

‘I suppose you’ve got a driving licence?’ said Priscilla.

‘Of course. I’m a very experienced driver. If there is an accident, it certainly won’t be caused by me.’

‘How I envy you your self-confidence!’

‘You envy me my self-confidence, but you don’t envy Susannah her beauty. I don’t, either. Being large and unbeautiful keeps one out of a lot of trouble.’

‘I also envy you your rude health and your physical fitness. I was always a sickly child.’

‘You have compensations. I wish I could write good essays and make up poetry. Will you get a First, do you think?’

‘Oh, yes. Examinations hold no terrors for me, not even the vivas.’

‘Well, there’s self-confidence for you! And you envy me mine!’ Fiona ran seawards, laughing, a Scandinavian giantess from Jotunheim, a veritable Hyrrokin, her hair streaming in the wind. Priscilla sat clasping her knees, her thin shirt flattened against her undeveloped breasts by the same seawind as was tossing Fiona’s hair. She thought of Susannah in the arms of Nicholas Tynant, and the first line of a sonnet came into her mind. ‘Put out the light and be my body’s balm.’ She fumbled in the large basket she used as a handbag, took out notebook and pencil and unclipped the sunglasses she had fastened on to her powerful spectacles.

Before her the sun gleamed on the wet, pale sands against which the few scattered pebbles looked black; behind her rose limestone cliffs, and to her left a long, flat rock of the same stone ran out into the sea and would be covered at high tide. A gull, with wings incredibly white against the blue of the sky, hovered for a moment and squawked an insult to the poet before it soared and flew off. Priscilla, completely absorbed, saw and heard nothing. She wrote, frowned, crossed out, rewrote, and only looked up when Fiona put a sea-wet hand on the back of her neck and said it was time to think about tea.

‘Yes, all right,’ said Priscilla. ‘I think I’ve got the octet, so I can let the sestet wait. I’ll just make a fair copy of what I’ve done, if you’ll leave me alone for five minutes.’

‘Something for the college magazine?’

‘No, it’s going to be too good for that. I don’t want it printed until I really publish.’

‘God bless the work,’ said Fiona. ‘You are a genius.’

‘I bet you someone else will find our well before we do. I think we’re on to a mug’s game,’ said Tom, straightening his back.

‘It doesn’t matter who finds a well, so long as we know where it is. The only concern of the others will be to locate it and clear it down to five or six feet and then put a grating over it. They won’t attempt to do any more excavating than that. Why should they?’

‘How deep were these castle wells?’

‘Goodness knows!’

‘They could go down a couple of hundred feet, I suppose,’ said Tom gloomily. ‘I’m beginning to wonder whether the story about the treasure is true. I mean, even supposing the stuff was chucked down a well to stop the enemy from getting hold of it, how were the owners – and how are we – going to get it up again?’

‘First find your well and then I’ll lower you down in a bucket. Banish these morbid thoughts. The lark’s on the wing, the hillside’s dew-pearled.’

‘That bird up there isn’t a lark; it’s a kestrel. It probably nests in the keep. They like old buildings if they can’t find a rocky cliff.’

‘Oh, well, so long as it isn’t a magpie, we’re all right. Magpies are the birds which bring bad luck.’

‘One magpie wouldn’t matter. It’s two or four together you have to beware of, according to our cook, who comes from Northumberland. You know, I don’t see why we should have been fobbed off with clearing up this gatehouse. All the outer walling on the east side as far up as the ditch has disappeared. The stone has been carted off by the locals, I suppose. Once Veryan and Tynant begin their digging, we shall be much better off working with them than with Saltergate. Besides, they are paying for our meals; he isn’t.’

‘True enough. There’s another thing: when Veryan begins the actual trenching, he won’t go anywhere near where the old stable block used to be.’

‘How do you make that out?’

‘It’s simple. If there really is an Anglo-Saxon cemetery under the outer bailey, the builders of the castle would never have dug a well where there were corpses.’

‘Oh, well, we shall see. One thing: at the rate Veryan and Tynant are taking their measurements and plotting out where to begin the dig, somebody may have found all the wells before they and we and the workmen have to put our backs into the spade-work. Let’s hope it will be easier than humping these blocks of stone.’

Malpas Veryan joined them. He was accompanied by two burly fellows in jeans, shirts and unzipped, grubby windcheaters.

‘Our fellow labourers,’ he said. ‘They will be helping to clear the outer bailey and we shall begin digging in a day or two, when we’ve got the circle of the cairn mapped out and the site free of stone and rubble. This is Bill Stickle and this is Gideon Stour. Gentlemen, Mr Monkswood and Mr Hassocks, who will be helping us to excavate the last resting-place of a prehistoric chieftain.’

‘I do fondly hope as he won’t haunt us,’ said Bill Stickle, with a laugh in which Gideon Stour joined.

‘I thought we were going to dig up an Anglo-Saxon burial ground,’ said Bonamy in a murmur to Tom. ‘You can’t call the Anglo-Saxons prehistoric. What exactly shall we be looking for, sir?’ he asked in his ordinary voice.

‘Bronze Age burials. Did I hear you murmur something about the Anglo-Saxons? Undoubtedly they had a settlement in these parts, but we are after something which is of the greatest interest to Tynant and myself. We hold somewhat differing theories about Neolithic and Bronze Age burials and this excavation may go some way in proving which of us is right.’

‘So what are we looking for, sir?’

‘Basically, a central grave, but multiple interments are not unknown. Sometimes members of a family were buried in the same mound. The principal grave will no doubt be easy enough to locate, for it will be in the centre of the circle we are measuring out. The other interments may be almost anywhere within the same circle. Our guide is the enormous ditch which is so obvious a feature of Saltergate’s defence system. I am certain it represents a segment of a circle and that is our clue, for it must have been part of a henge.’

‘It sounds splendid fun, sir.’

‘I think so. Now I don’t want you fellows breaking your backs lugging Saltergate’s blocks of stone about. You ease yourselves in gently until you get used to the job. In any case, these two splendid fellows will help both parties, I am sure, if Saltergate needs a little assistance occasionally.’

‘You be our employer, sir, not t’other gentleman,’ said the older workman firmly but civilly. His companion was more forthright.

‘We be hired to dig, not to tote blocks o’ stone about,’ he said.

‘Oh, dear! These union rules!’ said Veryan lightly.

‘Would you be wanting us further?’ asked the older man.

‘No, no. There is nothing to do until the marking-out is all done. That is why I thought you might care to help Mr Saltergate a little.’

They made no reply except to touch their foreheads and slouch off.

‘Not exactly chaps I would choose to go with on a walking-tour,’ said Tom, ‘if you don’t mind my saying so, sir.’

‘Oh, I do so heartily agree, but, having made their point, they will now help Saltergate if and when he needs assistance,’ said Veryan.

‘How soon will you be going to commence digging, sir?’ asked Tom.

‘Oh, probably tomorrow. That’s why we don’t want you to wear yourselves out dealing with blocks of stone. I wonder what made you think of Saxon cemeteries?’

‘Something Mr Saltergate said, I think.’

‘Oh, well, his interest is in buildings and his conception of history begins with Edward the Confessor,’ said Veryan, laughing. ‘No, no. Tynant and I will be looking for signs of a disc barrow.’

‘But the area you are to cover is pretty flat for that, isn’t it, sir?’ said Bonamy.

‘Tynant’s theory – and here he is in agreement with Saltergate – is that the earliest castle on this hill was a motte and bailey and constructed of wood. The stone buildings came later. The wooden keep was where the remains of the later one still stand, and Saltergate thinks that the outer bailey was flattened when the second castle was built. That meant the domestic quarters could be erected on level ground at the foot of the sharp rise which leads up to the keep. The earliest castle would probably have had only a palisade around the living-quarters. In time of trouble all the inhabitants would have crowded into the keep, the drawbridge over the defensive ditch would have been raised and on the slope up to the keep there might have been a broad ladder from which a section could be removed to make an assault on the keep more difficult. But this is childish stuff compared with our excavations.’

‘Are we likely to find skeletons or anything else interesting, sir? What exactly do we expect?’

‘At some sites archaeologists have found two types of funeral procedure, inhumations and cremations. First, whether it was one or the other, came, as I told you, the main burial, usually the deepest down, then followed what have been termed satellite burials, sometimes on a level with the primary interment, sometimes rather higher up in the mound, and, later still, secondary burials have turned up, but, as those were higher up still, we may not find any traces of them on this site. Any bones might have been dug up and thrown away when the Normans flattened the site to make their outer bailey, but we hope not.’

‘Would there be any good finds in the primary grave, sir, apart from skeletons or cremated dust, I mean?’ asked Tom.

‘It depends upon what you mean by “good finds”, Mr Hassocks. Anything we shall find is certain to have been duplicated elsewhere – a bronze dagger, a beaker, perhaps an archer’s wrist-guard, possibly (although this is fairly rare) some magic symbol such as the head of a hawk which was found in the barrow at Kellythorpe.’

‘Couldn’t the hawk’s head have been, like the dagger, the beaker and the wrist-guard, something simply to help the chap with his hunting when he reached the next world, sir? Why was it thought it had to do with magic?’

‘Grahame Clark argues that, if the intention was simply to provide an aid to future hunting, the entire body of the bird would have been there and not merely its head.’

‘Strange how this theory of a life after death dates back far, far earlier than so-called Christian times,’ said Bonamy.

‘You would think that the lives lived by Bronze Age people were so nasty and brutish that they certainly wouldn’t want to have another bucketful of existence, no matter what form it took,’ said Tom. ‘From these grave-trappings it seems they didn’t think it would be any different from life here on earth. Could they really have wanted a second innings?’

‘Their lives were not only nasty and brutish, Mr Hassocks. They were also (to complete your quotation) short. It is doubtful whether many of them extended to more than between forty and fifty years.’

‘Oh, well, after the age of fifty I suppose most of us will be living on borrowed time,’ said Bonamy. To cover up what he saw immediately as a somewhat tactless remark to a man who must have been very near, if not beyond, his fiftieth year, he added hastily, ‘I except my godmother, of course, but, then, I really believe that she is indestructible.’

‘I sincerely hope that you are right,’ said Veryan. He nodded amiably and left them to their labours. They worked on their clearance of the gatehouse for a bit and then, easing off, Bonamy said, ‘I see that Saltergate has joined Fiona in the keep and turfed Susannah out to join Mrs Saltergate and Priscilla on the perimeter to do the lighter work. You know, Tom, from what we know now, it looks to me as though the vested interests may clash – Veryan and Saltergate, I mean.’

‘Why should they? Everybody has been warned by Saltergate that none of the activities is to interfere with Veryan’s dig.’

‘Only because he thinks, as we did, that the dig will be confined to the middle of the outer bailey. What if this earthwork, of which the ditch forms part, went out to where the flanking-towers and all the rest of that wall used to be?’

‘That isn’t our problem. Come on, let’s buckle to and show willing. If only my parents could see me now, they would be proud to have bred such thews and sinews!’

They heaved and sweated. Although, considering the bombardment it must have suffered, a surprising amount of the gatehouse was still standing, there was giant’s work to be done in removing the chunks of stone which blocked the entrance and in clearing up the rubble and small packing-stones which had helped to bind the larger blocks together.

‘Well, if this is your idea of a good way to spend the long vac,’ said Bonamy, when they knocked off for lunch, ‘what’s the matter with Dartmoor?’

‘Don’t weaken. Any day and at any time, somebody will find traces of a well and then we’re home and dry.’

‘You won’t be, when I’ve lowered you into the slimy depths in a bucket. Don’t go putting your hand into any holes, nooks or crevices on the way down. Remember The Treasure of Abbot Thomas.’

‘Who was he?’

‘Ignorance is bliss when it comes to the stories told by M. R. James. I suppose they’re fiction, but they carry such a stamp of authenticity that I’m never quite sure. Thomas was Abbot of Steinfeld and he is supposed to have buried some gold treasure in a well and, I suppose, put a curse on it.’

‘So what happened? I suppose somebody found out about the treasure and went to look for it and ran into trouble.’

‘You shall read all about it. The thing is that treasure buried in wells may be better left alone. I am not as anxious as I was to locate this well of yours.’

‘What has changed your mind? I thought you were as keen on the scheme as I am. Don’t tell me that a story by an ex-Provost of Eton College has affected you to this extent? What brought Abbot Thomas to your mind?’

‘I was pulling your leg about the story, brilliant and frightening (like most of his) though it is. What I don’t much like is this double-talk from Veryan. I know he told us we were to excavate a small Saxon burial ground. Now it turns out that we are to dig up what may be the remains of a Bronze Age chief.’

‘So what? You don’t think Veryan is a treasure-hunter like us?’

‘I don’t know. What I like least of all is the treble deal the owner of the estate has made with us, with Saltergate and with Veryan. At some point the various interests are bound to clash and then there is going to be trouble.’

‘Not necessarily. We’re all civilised people. I don’t think there is any chance that the fur will fly. All I care about is our well and, so far as that is concerned, it doesn’t matter who finds it so long as it’s located and nobody finds out why we’re so keen on it.’

‘Isn’t it going to attract attention when it’s seen that we are deepening it beyond what Saltergate thinks is necessary for his reconstruction?’

‘Remember the immortal advice, “Sit still and let Time pass”. In other words, some situations never arise, so be patient.’

Lights were on in the caravan when the two young men turned in on the following evening. The weather looked settled, the day had been hot and, although no work had been done in the afternoon, the two were aware of muscles which were responding adversely to unaccustomed manual labour. At dawn Tom woke Bonamy and they went outside for a breath or two of the fresh morning air before they returned to the keep to search for signs of a well.

They themselves had cleared enough space to be able to put up the camp-beds, but Saltergate and Fiona had made a complete clearance and that morning it became obvious that the water-supply to the garrison was not inside the keep itself, although it was probably not far away.

In one angle of the walls, which were sixteen feet thick (as a splayed tiny window indicated), there was the archway to the newel stair. They had climbed the stair in turn and more than once since their arrival, deeming the top of the keep an advantageous place from which to get a complete picture of the site.

Tom again climbed the winding, narrow, stone newel to the parapet. Below him, on the side nearest the hall, was the heap of stone and rubble which had been cleared out of the keep. To his jaundiced eye it looked mountainous.

‘So what did Sister Anne see?’ asked Bonamy, when Tom came down again.

‘Sister Anne saw the result of a lot of misplaced effort on the part of other members of the party. Do you know what?’ said Tom disgustedly. ‘I bet there were outbuildings to the keep and they joined it to the hall. They’ve gone now and, in the space, Saltergate and Fiona have dumped a mountain of stone and rubble. Suppose they’ve covered up one of the wells? It will take us days to clear it again.’

‘We had better not touch it at present, or somebody will wonder why, and that’s the last thing we want. We can’t afford to have people smelling rats and asking all sorts of awkward questions. Let it ride for the present and don’t worry.’