The Salisbury Manuscript

Todd’s Mound

The man turned aside from the farm-track as the autumn afternoon closed in and storm clouds were scudding from the west. He was glad the light was fading. Even though he’d been careful to dress in his roughest clothes so that he might be taken for an itinerant labourer, he preferred to be moving in the gloom. Nevertheless it was going to be dark sooner than he expected. He would have to move briskly.

The man had a bag slung over his shoulder and, despite weighing little, it felt awkward on his back. He set off to his right on a path which was scarcely more than a flattened line of grass on the uphill slope. When he reached a copse of beech trees, he paused to adjust the bag so it sat more comfortably. Pulling his cap down and shrugging himself more deeply inside his coat, he left the shelter of the beeches and set off at a smart pace.

Ahead of him was the bare ridge of the slope with forlorn clumps of sheep were grazing on either side. Because he was keeping his head low, the man wasn’t aware of the presence of another individual making his way in the opposite direction until he saw a pair of leather leggings and great boots almost under his nose.

He nipped off the makeshift path as the shepherd — the other man striding downhill was carrying a sheep-crook — nodded and mumbled something inaudible. The man with the bag nodded in reply. He didn’t speak. He couldn’t see the shepherd’s expression, on account of the fading light and the speed at which they passed, but he had the impression of a certain irritation, as if this hillside belonged to the shepherd. When he halted and looked back he observed that the shepherd too had stopped and was gazing uphill at him. Near the bottom of the slope the man saw what he hadn’t noticed before, the roof of a simple house, more of a hut. Meanwhile the shepherd clutched his free hand to his felt hat and, using the sheep-crook as a pivot, turned away and made towards the hut.

The man wondered why he hadn’t spotted the place before. Probably because it was in a small hollow and surrounded by bushes only now losing their leaves. He should have surveyed the surroundings more carefully. Not that it made any difference to his plan. His destination was well out of sight of the shepherd’s hut, up and over the ridge of the hill. The shepherd did not matter. The man did not intend to return to the area after this visit. He resumed the path which now crossed an extensive ditch-like depression before climbing to the top of the ridge.

At the top he paused for a final time to catch his breath and look round. The landscape stretched away to the south and west, broken by mounds and low hills and with the glint of water. No living thing was visible, apart from the sheep waiting out the rain which had begun to fall. He could still see the corner of the roof of the hut. He wondered if he was being watched even now. Telling himself that if he was genuinely what he appeared to be — a travelling workman with his tools in a bag slung over his shoulder — then the last thing he would be doing was stopping to take in the view, the man set his back to the wind and rain and walked down the lesser slope on the far side of the ridge.

He was entering on an oblong-shaped plateau, whose sides were high enough to obscure the view of the outside world. The wind slackened and it grew quieter. The hill was a natural feature of the landscape but there was a queer sort of design to the top of it. It even had a name: Todd’s Mound, though no one knew who Todd was or why his name should have been associated with the place. The man had discovered from all his reading and researches that it had first been adapted to human use many centuries ago, long before it had become Todd’s Mound. He knew that ancient people had chosen the hilltop as a secure site from which to overlook the surrounding country. They had strengthened the grassy ramparts and excavated a kind of ditch which ran almost the whole way round the base of the hill, before laying paths and constructing simple places to live and work.

At some point these people had abandoned the hilltop. Perhaps they were overrun by their enemies, perhaps it was difficult to obtain water from such chalky soil or the lowlands below became a more attractive prospect. Whatever the reason, they were long gone and forgotten. But until that point they had lived here in large numbers, and died here too. That was what interested the man. Those who had died on this fortified summit.

He walked the length of the plateau, several hundred yards. There were no trees, only shrubs and brambles. At points around the grassy rim there were small dips, even clefts, and the man was making for one of these on the south-eastern corner. Once he stopped and looked behind him, convinced that he was being followed. He was startled to see a deer shoot across an exposed area between clumps of undergrowth, a flash of brown and the white tuft of the tail showing up in the gloom. Rebuking himself for nerves, he resumed his course.

When he reached the cleft at the far edge he saw the town in the distance and the cathedral spire against the smoky clouds. He didn’t spend time on the view, which was familiar to him. The man paused to readjust his bag once more, knowing that the going would become tricky from now on because of the fall of the land on this aspect of the hill. This was why he had approached the spot via the hilltop rather than making the scramble up from the eastern side. He swung through the cleft, which was like a natural gateway into the plateau, and moved slantwise down the slope, bracing himself with his right leg and keeping his arms out for balance.

He reckoned that at some time there’d been a slippage of land at this south-eastern edge. There were areas where the grass was thin and the chalk showed through. In addition, the cleft or gateway through which he’d just passed had the appearance of having once been an entrance — a kind of back entrance perhaps — to the hilltop settlement, a function it could hardly have provided given the current lie of the land. There were trees on the slope too, a few beeches but mostly clusters of yew. The man was heading for a spot just above one of these clusters, perhaps a hundred feet or so below the top of the hill and about the same number of yards to the left of the notch in the plateau.

The point was marked by an uprooted beech tree, an old and diseased one brought down by a storm sometime in the spring of that year. The man was lucky on several counts. Lucky that this side of the hill was not used for grazing and was too steep for any other purpose, including a comfortable walk. Lucky that his researches had brought him to this general area of Todd’s Mound. Lucky that what he was searching for had until the springtime been concealed by the beech tree. Not intentionally concealed, for the tree was of a much later date. But the great trunk and the arm-like roots clinging to the hillside had effectively hidden the few yards of ground around its base from the casual glance of a passer-by strolling either at the bottom or at the top of Todd’s Mound.

This was his third expedition to the spot. The first had been discovery. The second had been for investigation and preparation. And now came the third: the fruit of his labours.

The man with the bag on his shoulder reached the fallen beech tree. Jagged shards protruded from what remained of a base which had been half torn from the soil by the violence of the fall. The great mass of the trunk and the crown with its out-flung branches, lay slantwise across the slope and provided good cover. Not that much cover was required in the growing gloom. To his left, that is on the uphill side of the tree, the man sensed rather than saw what he was looking for, a pile of mud and chalk thrown up when the tree fell. Near the centre of the mound was a darker place like the entrance to a tunnel. He experienced a tightening in his chest.

He felt his way forward in the rain until he was at a crouch and grasping a stone upright set to one side of the entrance. The stone, about four feet high, had been cut for a purpose. The work was primitive but there could be no doubt it was done by the hand of man. Resting on top of the upright was another slab of stone like the lintel to a door. The corresponding upright on the other side had fallen inwards so that the lintel was at a diagonal across the entrance. The resulting triangular aperture was small but sufficient to allow someone to worm his way inside. After his most recent expedition the man had made a rudimentary attempt to hide the spot by dragging across a severed tree branch so that it partially blocked the opening. Now he tugged at it with both hands and hefted it down the slope.

The man eased off his bag and placed it by the aperture. He glanced uphill for a last time. Seen from this crouching position, the sheer bulk of Todd’s Mound seemed about to tumble down and bury him and he felt, as well as excitement, a tremor of fear. He shrugged the feeling off and pushed the bag ahead of him into the narrow entrance.

He had to crawl to make his way to the interior but, once there, the space grew bigger and he was able to kneel. His head was brushing against the low roof. There was the smell of damp and leaf-mould, and something more rank underlying it. It was pitch dark. The man unfastened his bag and brought out an oil lamp which he placed carefully between his spread knees. He took a box of matches from his coat pocket and, working by touch, struck a light. The acridity from the match filled the tiny space.

When the lamp was going the man spent some time adjusting the wick until he was satisfied with the quantity of light. The light was a warm gold. Like the smell of the match, it was oddly comforting. He squatted on his haunches and raised the oil lamp to examine the interior of the cave as if for the first time. Really, he was making sure that no one had penetrated this secret space since his last visit. The fact that the tree branch outside the entrance hadn’t been disturbed was not conclusive enough for him. He was a careful man who took precautions. And what he saw now did not reassure him.

The light from the lamp showed that this space, burrowed into the side of Todd’s Mound, extended for about two dozen feet at right angles from the little entrance. There were pale objects piled at the end, far enough away for the lamplight not to reach fully. The tunnel-like space was wider than it was high and the roof of rock and chalky soil sloped down towards the end. If this place had once been a natural cave or fissure in the hillside, it had been enlarged and reinforced at the sides with thin slabs of stone. These stones, like the ones around the entrance, bore man-made marks.

On his second visit the man had taken some of the bones which were among the items he had discovered at the other end of the burrow. When he first picked up the bones he experienced a momentary unease. Yet he told himself, he won’t mind, he’s out of it now. Or was it a she, not a he? But he thought not. The bones seemed too large to be a woman’s, and he was a good judge of such things. So he had placed them in a deliberate pattern a couple of yards inside the opening. The bones — shinbones and a forearm from a human skeleton — were greasy and unpleasant to the touch. Even so, handling them did not trouble him. He wanted another small guarantee that no one would disturb the burrow, ‘his’ burrow as he considered it.

Accordingly the man spent some time thinking of a pattern to put the bones into, a pattern that would look arbitrary but have meaning for him. He remembered the private smile he’d given as he positioned the bones in the form of an H, the initial of one of his names. It looked like an accidental arrangement yet anyone stumbling across the hidden place and worming his way into the interior could hardly avoid disturbing these carefully placed remains.

By the light of the lamp the man saw, with a thrill of fear, that that was what had happened. The shinbones which formed the uprights of the H, together with the ulna that made the cross-piece, had not merely been disturbed. They had been scattered. They were lying to one side of the burrow as though they’d been impatiently tossed there. By a human intruder? By someone trespassing on his burrow? The man suppressed an instinctive urge to douse his lamp as if he was being watched at that very instant, and examined the area around where he’d placed the bones.

But the ground was a mess of mud and chalk and fragments of root. There were no discernible human marks. He simply couldn’t tell whether anyone else had blundered into this place. The man realized that his little precautions didn’t amount to much. He recalled the shepherd striding down the hill on the far side of Todd’s Mound. Was it possible that the shepherd or some other country fellow had gone poking into his burrow and pushed aside the bones which had been positioned in the shape of a letter? Had this other person found. . what there was to be found at the far end?

There was only one way to make sure of course. To go and see. Yet the man did not move. He stayed on his haunches, surveying the space by the light of the lamp. His breath came short and fast. He heard the beating of his heart mingled with the hiss of the oil lamp. The burrow seemed to close in round him. He made a conscious effort to calm himself. When his heart slowed and his breath eased, he listened hard. The wind moaned outside and he was startled by a movement in the corner of his eye. Something small, something grey and scuttling, which disappeared into a fissure in the flank of the burrow. That was the explanation for the moving bones, no doubt. A mouse, a rat, some earth creature, had disturbed the bones. Yet the man was not altogether convinced by his own explanation.

Anyway there was nothing to be done except to get on with the job. He’d be making his way back in the darkness. Too late, he cursed his caution in not working by daylight. Carrying his burden away by night, he risked a broken leg or worse. Even so, he couldn’t avoid the thought that there was a certain appropriateness to doing all this under the cover of night. A moonless night too. He brought a flask from his coat pocket and unscrewed the cap. He took a good swig of brandy. Its warmth reached down inside him. He stroked the flask as if in gratitude, mechanically running his fingertips over the initials incised into the surface.

Fortified, he took up his bag and the oil lamp and, with back bent, shuffled awkwardly on his knees towards the further end of the burrow. There was a collection of bones up here, including a skull and the arch of a ribcage. The skull was resting against a rock. The man himself had put it in that position. Fortunately, it remained as he had left it, lolling like a head against a pillow. The skull grinned at him, as if it knew some secret. There was a hole in one side of the head although the man couldn’t tell whether it was as a result of a wound inflicted before death — if so, certainly a fatal one — or whether it had been produced by the manner of his burial or even later. It was likely that this individual had died by violence or perhaps been sacrificed in some ancient, barbaric rite.

He put the lamp on the ground and lifted the skull up from its place near the ribcage. The space was cramped and airless. It would have been easier to work here if he cleared the bones but he was curiously reluctant to disturb them further. Behind the spot where the skull had been the rock was relatively smooth. Using a trowel from his bag, the man scraped away the mud which he himself had plastered there on his last visit. His arms and legs bumped against the remains of his underground companion but he was so absorbed in his work that he hardly noticed them or the small sounds behind his back — that grey scuttling creature, no doubt.

Soon his efforts revealed a low rock face. This far end of the burrow was composed of small slabs of stone, square or oblong, almost wall-like in their overall effect. They didn’t fit quite snugly together but, like the entrance and the sides of the burrow, they had certainly been created by human hand.

When he had cleared a large enough area, the man used his gloved hands to grasp at the edges of a rectangular slab in the centre of the wall. It came away easily enough and he placed it on the ground. The resulting space was like the mouth of a post-box. He removed another slab. Then he reached in and groped around the recess that lay at the end of the burrow. His fingers closed round familiar objects and he breathed a sigh of relief. His secret was safe.

He brought the first of the items into the warm glow from the lamp. Its feel and weight were well known to him, likewise the dull sheen of the thing. Once again, he marvelled at the intricate workmanship. Let no one say that he was a common despoiler of graves, unable to appreciate beauty when he saw and handled it!

Swiftly he retrieved all the objects from the recess, piling them next to the bones of the skeleton. Using the lamp, he made a final examination of the recess. The light showed a roughly rectangular cavity lined with stone which had been cut to the same primitive finish as the exterior. Nothing remained inside. The cupboard was bare. He debated for an instant replacing the stone blocks but what would be the point? Anyone was welcome to visit the place now. But some instinct did cause him to return the stones to their position in the wall after all, the same instinct that had made him reluctant to disturb more of the bones than necessary.

The man, sweating from his efforts and his hunched posture and the confined space, now proceeded to wrap up the objects from the hidden recess. He had brought fragments of cloth in his bag for this purpose. Otherwise the bag had been empty, apart from the lamp and the trowel. Returning, it would be full. He loaded the bag and hefted it a few inches from the ground. It was heavier than he expected. He contemplated sitting out the hours of darkness here and sneaking back with the first glimmers of light from the east.

Dragging the bag with him, he moved into the more spacious area of the burrow near the entrance. He suddenly felt weary, not simply from the physical effort of emptying the stone cavity within the burrow but from the tension and concealment of the last few weeks.

The man had discovered the burrow revealed by the fallen beech tree in late summer. It wasn’t the first time he had tramped over the area of Todd’s Mound within sight of the cathedral spire, tramped without success. He persisted because his researches had shown that there should be something here on this flank of the hill. But it was only during one fine September afternoon that he observed the stone blocks above the great bole of the tree. A cursory inspection of the stones revealed that they had been shaped to serve some purpose, an entrance to an underground chamber.

Feeling slightly foolish, he crawled inside the triangular ‘door’ and found himself in the larger space beyond. He carried no light with him but, when his eyes adjusted to the gloom, he was just able to discern a skeleton laid out at the far end. He assumed the bones were the remains of some large animal. He crawled closer and, working by touch rather than sight, quickly established that they were human. But more than that he couldn’t discover although the dark chamber seemed to offer some kind of promise. Surely it must conceal more than a pile of bones?

The very next day he returned with a lamp, pick, hammer and other tools in a leather bag. The weather had turned and the wind was gusting. He was wearing a long black coat, half as protection, half as disguise. This time he was conscious of moving more surreptitiously than on previous expeditions, conscious of playing a part. He crossed the sunken plateau on top of the hill. Anyone watching would have wondered exactly what business brought him to this isolated place. But there was no one to witness him disappear, like a rabbit wearing a greatcoat, into the hillside.

On this, his second visit, he operated methodically, lighting the lamp, unpacking the pick and the rest of the things from his bag before examining the interior of the burrow. Only to be disappointed. The sides were composed of chalky soil held back in places by stone slabs. There were no hidden recesses. It was not until he reached the area at the back of the chamber occupied by the skeleton that his straining eyes made out, beneath a veneer of muddy slime, a feature that seemed more promising. Slabs of stone arranged like large irregularly sized bricks.

The man shifted a portion of the skeleton and scraped away the mud. Soon he was prising away a block that offered the most purchase to his eager fingers. It was difficult work. He was on his knees, leaning forward, encumbered by his black coat. He raised the lamp so that it illuminated the cavity beyond. His heart banged in his chest when the lamp beams reflected off a mound of objects. He reached in and drew out the nearest. It was an elaborate neck-piece or collar, heavy and ungainly to modern eyes, perhaps, but most attractive to him. He placed it respectfully on the dirty ground and fumbled inside the recess for the next item.

Later he returned all the objects to the cavity and replaced the slab. Then he smeared mud back over the stones. He positioned the skull just below the slab against a smaller stone. He retreated to the outer part of the burrow and sat in thought. Then he gathered up three bones and arranged them near the entrance in the style of the letter H. He could not laugh at his little joke but he did smile slightly. He packed up his implements and doused the lantern.

He returned to the outside world. The wind had dropped but autumn was in the air. He looked down and observed clots of mud and streaks of chalk on his coat. He wiped them off and then used his spittle and a handkerchief to clean his hands and face as best he could. After that, he retraced his path uphill and so through the back entrance to the hill settlement, across the plateau and down the gentler slope on the western side.

For the next few weeks he remained in a fog-like state of indecision, wrestling with his conscience. Could he — or rather should he — go back and retrieve the items which he had unearthed in the burrow? The man had always regarded himself as an honest, even honourable, individual. He read widely and thought about things, even though he occupied a position where neither reading nor thinking was expected of him. He argued with himself. Didn’t he have a right to goods which had been uncovered through his own ingenuity and labours? He was depriving no one else by his find. The long-dead had no use for them. If he hadn’t almost stumbled across the cavity sheltered by the base of the beech tree, the objects in the burrow might have rested there until the end of time, to no one’s benefit.

At one point the man set off with his bag, intending to return to the burrow and take the hoard. But his nerve failed him and he had hardly got to the halfway stage between the city and Todd’s Mound when he turned back, irresolute. He attempted to bend his mind to his daily work in the cathedral and to forget about his discovery below the hillfort.

But it was in the cloisters of the cathedral that enlightment or guidance of a sort came to him. There was a memorial tablet on the inner wall of the covered walk of the cloisters which included a quotation from Ecclesiastes: and if the tree fall toward the south, or toward the north, in the place where the tree falleth, there it shall be. He’d noticed the inscription before without paying much attention to it or wondering greatly at its meaning. But, one morning, walking briskly down the cloister, he stopped and read the words on the tablet more carefully and saw how they had an odd application to his discovery.

The inscription was from Chapter 11 of Ecclesiastes. When he got back to his house, the man wrote out the inscription from memory. He stared at it for a long time. He realized that the verse provided not only a strange allusion to his discovery but an even stranger one to himself. The man wasn’t especially superstitious but he’d grown into the habit of looking for little signs and markers. It was enough to determine his course. He would go back to Todd’s Mound and open up the cavity in the burrow once more and bring out the objects.

As soon as he was free of duties — the next afternoon as it transpired — he slipped out of the cathedral close and, once on the edge of the city, he donned the rough coat and hat which might cause him to be mistaken for an itinerant labourer and walked rapidly into the surrounding country. The sky was overcast and he was glad that there were few people about. The only person who had taken any notice of him was the shepherd striding downhill on the western slope of Todd’s Mound.

Now, a couple of hours later when it was dark outside, he sat in the stuffy burrow by the light of the oil lamp, hefting the sack which contained the treasure hoard. He took another swig from his flask. He had almost forgotten that someone, or something, had intruded on the burrow in his absence. Then the sight of the bones casually thrown to one side reminded him that the burial chamber had been visited. The idea of waiting for first light was not an appealing one.

He prepared to leave, looking round to make sure that he’d gathered up all his implements. He doused the oil lamp. He waited while his eyes adjusted to the near-absolute dark inside the burial-chamber. The entrance showed as a slightly less dark shape in the gloom. He unscrewed the flask for a final draught. Whether it was that he was no longer so absorbed in his task or whether the absence of light had somehow sharpened his senses, the man abruptly stopped in the action of returning the flask to his pocket and listened.

What was that sound from outside? A kind of rushing noise. The wind, no doubt. And that flicker of movement across the mouth of the burrow, like a curtain being drawn? The man scrabbled to get clear of the confined space as if afraid that the entrance was about to be sealed up for ever. He emerged into the open on his hands and knees, drawing in lungfuls of cold air. Still crouching, he looked from side to side. Nothing to see beyond the great bulk of the beech tree on the slope below him and the blotted shapes of the yews. The rain had stopped and the sky was clear apart from some scudding clouds and the starlight which shone stronger in the absence of the moon. He gazed up at the rapidly shifting sky and there came to him another line from Ecclesiastes, Chapter 11: he that regardeth the clouds shall not reap.

The man reached back into the burrow and dragged out the bag containing his spoils. He stood up, momentarily unsteady on his feet after being confined for so long. He looked out at the few scattered lights of the city and the silhouette of the cathedral spire. He put the bag over his shoulder. It was heavy. He would be exhausted by the time he got back to the security of the close. He would have to take care returning through the town even though he would be threading its streets in the dead hours of morning. And he knew its streets and alleys well.

The man was still standing near the entrance to the burial chamber. A few feet to his left was the branch which he had earlier thrown to one side. He was reluctant to leave the burrow exposed so he shuffled across to lay hold of the branch and tugged it back to conceal the entrance. Breathing deeply from the effort he turned about to begin his progress uphill, guided by starlight and the contour of the slope. He glanced at the area above the burrow. There was something up there he hadn’t seen before. A darker shape squatting against the sky. For an instant he thought it was a tree with two branches splayed out in queer symmetry, one on either side. But the tree began to move. It seemed to grow higher. The branches became arms. Then it left the ground altogether and launched itself at the man. He was too shocked to move. He received the flying shape full force in his chest and tumbled backwards down the flank of Todd’s Mound.

The breath was knocked out of him and an object in the bag — the trowel or an item taken from the burrow — stabbed him painfully in his back. There was another duller pain in his left leg, as though in falling down he might have injured himself. But the man was scarcely aware of any of this. Instead from where he was lying, his head lower than his feet, he saw the tree-shape once more raise itself further up the slope of the hill. Like him, the shape was breathing hard. Both of its arms were extended and it was jigging and swaying as if to keep balance. In one of the outstretched hands the man made out a metallic glint, a knife blade. If he stayed very still he might pass unnoticed. Irrelevantly, out of the depths of his mind there sprang a name, a strange name. It was that of Atropos, one of the old Greek Fates, the one who wields her shears like a blade and who cuts off the thread of life. It had all been explained to him.

Seeing the outline of the figure waver uncertainly as if it didn’t know what to do next, the man remained where he was, stock still. After what seemed an interminable length of time, the black shape turned about as though it intended to make its way uphill, away from him. Yes, it was moving away. Without thinking, the man on the ground raised himself slightly so as to relieve the stabbing pressure from the bag at his back. As he did this, a much worse pang seized his left leg like a hot wire cutting into the flesh. He must have broken something in falling, broken an ankle, perhaps a leg-bone. He heard a suppressed groan and wondered who was making it. Another groan, louder this time, before he realized that the noise had come out of his own mouth.

Alerted by the sounds of pain, the black shape which had been startig to ascend the flank of the hill twisted back on itself. Even though the man on the ground could see nothing, he felt the eyes of the other boring into the spot where he lay. He’d betrayed himself. Now the shape started to descend the slope, almost bounding down, coming straight for him.

He put out his hands as if to ward off the figure but it continued to advance directly downhill towards the sprawling man, the knife seeming to cut a slice out of the starlit sky.

And, for the last time, another quotation from Ecclesiastes 11 passed through the man’s mind: thou knowest not what evil shall be upon the earth.