The Salisbury Manuscript

The Burial Chamber

Helen was dressed for rambling, with thick skirts and stout boots and a sensible hat. She had equipped herself with one of her godfather’s sticks and taken one for Tom as well. Less practically, Tom was wearing his hat and a smart overcoat, which, Helen joked, made him look fit only for the city street. They hired a cab to take them the mile or so north of the city boundary in the direction of Todd’s Mound. The pretence, which wasn’t altogether a pretence, was that they were out for a stroll. However, this was no brisk spring day or a balmy one in summer, but an overcast morning in late autumn.

They paid off the driver, explaining that he need not wait since they’d return to Salisbury on foot. The town was at their backs. Ahead of them rose the steep sides of the landscape feature known as Todd’s Mound, drab under the grey sky. There were, unsurprisingly, no other walkers in sight.

Access on the eastern side looked difficult since the land fell away steeply there. The couple set off on a rough track which ran in a westerly direction round the base of the mound.

‘Tom,’ said Helen, ‘you are a lawyer. I have a question but let me phrase it in a lawyerly way. If one were to stumble over treasure, would one have the right to take it?’

‘In principle, no. One has no right to take anything that is not one’s own property.’

‘Not even under the law of finder’s keepers?’

‘I’m not sure that law has ever been enacted in Parliament.’

‘So this man Andrew North and Canon Slater, they would not have been acting legally in taking items from a burial place?’

‘Probably not. On the other hand, if they picked up something which had been dropped on the way to a burial place and which had lain there over the centuries, then they would have been entitled to keep it.’

‘A clear distinction,’ said Helen. ‘I am so glad you are a lawyer, Tom, though others might consider it a rather dry profession.’

Thinking that this was more or less what Mrs Mackenzie had said to him, Tom pointed out, ‘The law was good enough for your father, Helen.’

‘Oh, he was a dry man. But we’ve wandered from the point. Did North and Canon Slater commit a crime in taking things from a burial chamber?’

‘Strictly speaking, they probably did. But the wronged party here is the Crown rather than the original owner of the property, and the Crown will not be very vigorous in pursuing a few bits of metal and flint, even assuming they have any value. Felix Slater for one wasn’t interested in these things because they might have been valuable but because they were evidence of past ages.’

‘Which is more or less what Mrs Banks said about her brother.’

‘Except in North’s case hunting hidden items had become a kind of obsession.’

By this time Tom and Helen had arrived at the western flank of Todd’s Mound. From here another path led off at right angles to the summit of the mound. They began the slightly steeper ascent, pausing for breath under a copse of beeches.

It was the sharp-eyed Helen who saw it. Something with a dullish glint which was not quite concealed under a pile of leaves below where they were standing. She bent forward and extracted a hip flask from the leaves. She turned it over several times.

‘It must be his.’

‘Whose?’

‘Andrew North’s. See here, Tom.’

On one side of the pewter flask a small set of initials had been inscribed, not professionally but neatly enough to suggest a careful hand.

‘A.H.N.,’ said Helen. ‘Who else can it be?’

‘This flask is North’s all right,’ said Tom, unscrewing the cap and sniffing at the contents. ‘He was called Andrew Herbert, I saw the names in one of the books at his sister’s. And she said that he carried a flask of brandy. There’s a little left in here.’

‘You said he “was” Andrew Herbert. You think he’s dead, don’t you, Tom?’

‘Most likely. A workman with a good reputation who starts to behave oddly, who absents himself for a long period without anyone catching a whiff of his where-abouts, one associated in some way with a churchman who has recently been murdered. Yes, Andrew North is dead.’

‘Murdered?’ said Helen.

Overhead the remaining leaves rattled in a sudden gust. Tom shivered but managed to turn it into a shrug. ‘I don’t know. Yes, maybe murdered.’

‘So if North’s hip flask is here, where is North?’

‘He could be anywhere. The flask might have fallen from his pocket as he was climbing up or down the hill.’

‘But it tells us he was here at Todd’s Mound.’

‘Or that someone was here. It might not have been North who dropped the flask.’

‘His murderer, you mean?’

Tom noted the controlled excitement in the way Helen referred to the ‘murderer’. He glanced sideways. She was still holding the pewter flask. There was colour in her cheeks. He leant across and kissed her.

‘Tom,’ she said half jokingly and only after a little time had passed, ‘what if someone is watching!’

And, as if on cue, they heard a heavy tread behind them, the sound of a person descending the hill. A person who was wearing leather leggings and great boots. In surprise, Tom and Helen sprang apart.

There was another watcher to this encounter. One who was — not by chance — in the vicinity of Todd’s Mound and who had seen the approach of two figures with a familiar outline. This individual took shelter behind a patch of bare brambles and observed the girl pick up an object from the ground. The flask was not easily identifiable from such a distance but the watcher knew what it was straightaway, since the flask had been taken from a dead man’s body and a swig taken from its contents. It must have dropped out of a coat pocket as the watcher was going downhill those few nights before. And now, in the present moment, a third person was added to the scene as the shepherd swung downhill and almost collided with the couple who’d just been spooning and were oblivious to the newcomer. The threesome, the shepherd, Ansell and the girl, exchanged a few words, more than a few words, quite a regular session in fact. After a time the couple turned away and continued their uphill progress while the shepherd kept going at a downhill diagonal, fortunately in a direction away from the observer. This person waited until Ansell and the girl were almost out of sight over the skyline before slipping from the cover of the brambles.

Tom and Helen didn’t speak again until they were inside the embankment at the top of the hill. It took them a moment to catch their breath and they rested, leaning on the walking sticks which belonged to Eric Selby. While they were climbing each was thinking of what the shepherd had said: that few people came to visit Todd’s Mound for pleasure and certainly not at this time of year. But that he had seen someone coming up this same path a few weeks ago, towards the end of the afternoon, and that he had particularly taken notice of the man on account of his shifty, uncomfortable look. The man had a bag slung over his shoulder and might have been an itinerant labourer, but the shepherd did not think so. The man struck a false note, as it were.

The shepherd, whose name was Gabriel as Helen quickly established, did not say all of this in quite such a coherent form or using exactly these words but rather the gist was teased out of him by Helen. To begin with, she smiled at Gabriel and showed him the pewter flask and wondered aloud whose it might be — those mysterious initials A.H.N. — and whether it would be possible to find the owner so as to return the flask, obviously a treasured item as the initials showed. And, by the way, had Gabriel seen anyone recently on these slopes? Tom noticed again what an assured touch Helen had with people. How she was able to speak naturally with them and gain their trust and find out what she wanted to find out. How she could be evasive with the truth (for example, she already knew whose the flask was). She didn’t even seem embarrassed that Gabriel had almost run into them while they were embracing. Of course, reflected Tom, the blonde tendrils of hair which curled down from under her sensible hat and the wide blue eyes might have something to do with it, especially where men were concerned. But the effect worked on women too. Mrs Banks had revealed things to Helen which she might not have done to Tom alone.

‘It must have been Andrew North,’ said Helen. ‘We know that he was in the habit of visiting Todd’s Mound after he worked with Canon Slater. And he disappeared from the house he shared with his sister at about the same time that Gabriel saw someone walking up here, someone looking shifty and uncomfortable. North the sexton?’

‘The shepherd has a good memory for the people he encounters.’

‘So would you, Tom, if you saw more sheep than people. Well, now we are here, what do we do next?’

They looked round at the bare interior of the plateau. It had a roughly rectangular shape, protected by ramparts of grass which had crumbled in places. There were a few shrubs and patches of bramble but no signs of human occupation, whether ancient or modern.

Helen and Tom hadn’t come out to Todd’s Mound totally unprepared. Helen had found a book in her god-father’s library which detailed the locations of some of the tumuli and other ancient remains to be found in the region around Salisbury. Little was known about Todd’s Mound (not even who the eponymous Todd had been) but it seemed there had most likely been entrances or gateways at both ends of the plateau, although a land-fall in the east had made access almost impossible from that side.

Tom pointed to the opposite end, the eastern one.

‘If there’s anything to be found,’ he said, ‘it should be over there.’

‘Why?’

‘Look around, there are no signs of disturbance to the earth here. And there weren’t any marks either near the path we’ve just come by. If North was poking around and digging things up, it must have been somewhere different.’

They began to pace the length of the hilltop. There was a rustling in a patch of bushes as they passed and they turned to see a deer start from shelter and scamper back towards the western side of the mound. Helen paused and held her hand to her breast.

‘That startled me, Tom.’

Tom Ansell, also, had been startled but he wasn’t displeased to see the effect on Helen since it was an excuse to put his free arm round her for a moment. Then they resumed their progress towards the far embankment, in which there was a kind of a larger dip or notch. Through this, as they walked, they caught glimpses of the city and the cathedral spire.

‘This is where one of the entrances to the settlement — or whatever it was — must have been,’ said Tom, as they stood on the lip of ground below which the land fell away steeply. The slope was studded with clumps of yew and to one side lay the great carcass of a fallen tree. Helen turned her back on the view and surveyed the grassy basin they had just crossed.

‘It’s strange to think that our ancestors once lived up here. I wonder why they moved away.’

‘Perhaps they were driven out and had no choice over moving,’ said Tom. ‘Or they got bored with life on this cold hilltop and wanted the comfort of the lowlands.’

‘They have left no traces.’

‘Except their burial places.’

‘They would not be buried here, inside this place,’ said Helen gesturing at the area bounded by the earth ramparts.

‘But not far outside either. On the slopes around this hill maybe.’

They moved back to the entrance or gateway to Todd’s Mound. Tom looked downhill in the direction of the fallen tree. A tattered black shape seemed to unfold itself from the tangle of branches and Tom felt a thrill of horror until he realized that it was nothing more than a crow, a great crow which rose into the air and clattered out of sight round the slope of the hill. Tom wrinkled his nose. He glanced at Helen standing beside him but, though she too had observed the bird, she was now gazing out at the city and the countryside beyond.

‘What are you doing?’ she said. ‘Wait for me.’

‘Stay there, Helen. It’s probably nothing.’

He was already several yards below and to one side of the embankment gateway. The slope was steeper than it seemed from above. To keep his balance, Tom used his walking stick. The hem of his coat brushed against the chalky soil. He edged towards the fallen tree. That was where the crow had been. That was where the smell seemed to be coming from.

He halted to get his bearings. But if he’d expected to see anything he was disappointed. The flank of the hillside rose sharply on his left. The bulk of the falllen tree — a beech, he thought — lay a little below where he was standing. The crown of the tree was further down, although a number of severed branches were strewn casually across the slope. Where the roots had been was a gaping black hole with only tooth-like shards remaining. Nothing more. But not quite, because Tom noticed that just above the root-hole was another gap, a yet darker space, partly obscured by a branch to which withered leaves still clung.

Afterwards he didn’t know what had drawn his attention to that darker spot on the slant of Todd’s Mound. Whether it was the suspicion of something man-made in the arrangement of stones around a hole in the ground. Or the way the severed tree branch almost seemed to have been positioned so as to obscure the hole. Or the sense that, if the smell — a sharp, unpleasant smell — on the hill-side had a source, then it was from here.

Tom covered the few dozen feet to the place. He was right. It was an entrance, of sorts, into the hillside. There were three slabs of stone forming a primitive door, although one of the uprights had fallen. He tugged at the branch laid across the entrance.

‘What are you doing down there, Tom? Are you all right?’

By now, Tom was on his hands and knees, oblivious to the mud on his coat. Oblivious too to Helen’s call. A strong smell emanated from the mouth of the cave or chamber or whatever it was. Something dead lay in there. Of course something dead lay in there! It must be a burial chamber. But this was a recent death, not one from thousands of years ago.

Two things prevented Tom Ansell from rising to his feet and scrambling back to where Helen stood, and then calling for attention and help. The first was the fear of looking a fool. Whatever was inside the chamber might be animal, not human. He did not want to summon a rescue party to pull out a dead sheep. The other reason was that Tom felt he ought to see this through himself. It was up to him to have a first sight of whatever lay inside this hole in the hillside.

Clutching his stick with one hand, he got out a hand-kerchief and held it tight against his nose and mouth as he edged his way inside the aperture. The smell was almost overpowering. He paused. There were small sounds, scuffling sounds, which he could just detect over the banging of his heart. He coughed, and the scuffling stopped. Using the walking stick as a probe he pushed forward and it tapped against a hard object. He picked it up. A bone, a human bone he thought. But not recent, because it was white and dry and stripped of everything.

The day was overcast but there was enough light seeping into the entrance of the hole for Tom to get an impression of what was lying deeper inside. More scattered bones, it seemed, and something else in among the bones, not white and sterile like them, but an object which was wrapped up and foul-smelling and too large to be a sheep. An object with shod feet. He prodded at the soles of the feet with his stick. Then he crawled as fast as he could out of the hole, going in reverse. He sat on the chalky slope, gulping in draughts of fresh air, even if that air was still tainted by the scent from the burial chamber. A movement startled him. It was Helen. Worried by Tom’s absence, she had half walked, half scrambled down the slope. Her hair was tumbling out from under her sensible cap and her face was flushed. Seeing Tom, she shrieked because of his appearance. He’d turned a touch green. But Tom hardly noticed her arrival or her shriek. Instead, he was trying to keep his gorge from rising and he was thinking: two bodies in three days. It’s a bit steep.

Somewhere below Tom and Helen, near the eastern base of Todd’s Mound, was a third figure. The discovery of the body — it must have been discovered, judging by the woman’s shriek, sharp as a bird-call — was no surprise to this person, who had been responsible for putting the body in the burial chamber. Well, it would have been found sooner or later. No great harm done.