By the time they reached the northern trench, the window had been freed from the soil and was being cleaned off. It was almost six feet long and more than two wide, slightly curved, and irregular in shape, the base being longer than the top. The glass was heavy, perhaps half the thickness of a little finger, and when the two men holding it up turned it for Shadwell’s inspection, it was possible to see that not only was it slightly darkened, but it contained within it, almost invisible, a delicate wavy filigree of metal threads.
Hancock said, ‘A window so large must be from a building.’
Shadwell didn’t answer him. He pushed his spectacles up on to his cap, breathed on the glass and wiped his fingers through the mist, circling round and round, as if he might conjure some spirit from it. ‘Eight centuries it has lain there,’ he said softly, ‘waiting for us to find it.’
‘Aye, but what function did it serve?’
‘As a window at the front of one of their mechanical carriages, to protect the driver from the elements. In London I have seen them used in houses, despite their age. The glass is very strong.’
‘Strong because of the metal threads?’ asked Fairfax.
‘No, I believe the threads were placed within the glass to spread electricity around it.’
‘For what purpose?’
‘To heat it, one presumes.’
Hancock said, ‘What manner of people would pamper themselves with heating glass?’
‘A decadent people,’ responded Shadwell, ‘which I conjecture was part of their undoing, as it ever has been in the history of civilisations. The Romans depended on slaves, the ancients on science. They made their lives too luxurious and in the end rendered themselves helpless.’ Reluctantly he lifted his hands from the glass and settled his spectacles back on his nose. He addressed the workmen. ‘As you dig, you will doubtless discover other pieces of the same carriage – glassware smaller than this, plastic objects, perhaps some larger rusted metal parts. There may even be the traces of a road that once ran up here.’
Hancock interrupted him. ‘Ye do not want us to stop on each occasion, I hope?’
‘No, sir. On another day I would say yes, but we have a larger prize in view. This beauty we shall store, noting the position of its discovery. Mr Fairfax, if you would help us?’
Fairfax took one end of the glass and Quycke the other, and together they carried it into the tent that Shadwell had requested be set aside for the storage of artefacts. A trestle table had been erected, and upon this Shadwell had arranged his books, a pile of paper, pen and ink and pencils. They leaned the glass against the table and the old man made a careful note in a large ledger. When he had finished, he looked up.
‘See how the place begins to yield its secrets? A road, perhaps. A carriage possibly abandoned when it was no longer possible to fuel or repair it. And fifteen people – there may be more – slaughtered in cold blood …’ He paused, glancing through the tent flap towards the tower. ‘May I borrow your services again, Mr Fairfax?’
Shadwell led them outside and over to the tower. He stood with hands on his hips, between the northern and western trenches, and surveyed the surface, then reached out and began tearing away the strands of ivy. ‘Would you oblige me, sir, by kneeling with your face up close to the tower?’
Fairfax did as he was asked, and found himself staring directly into the line of small cone-shaped holes that pitted that section of the concrete. He felt the tips of two of Shadwell’s fingers pressing into the back of his head, and heard him say, ‘Yes, that is how it was done. Do you see, Ollie?’ He raised his voice in his excitement. ‘Here was where they were lined up and murdered, one after the other, by a bullet to the brain. As I thought – it was a massacre!’
Fairfax turned in alarm. ‘Please, Dr Shadwell – speak more discreetly!’
But it was too late. Several of the men in the nearby trenches had already stopped their work to watch this curious re-enactment, and now one of them called out, ‘Massacre? What massacre were this?’
‘Nothing,’ said Fairfax quickly, scrambling to his feet. ‘Dr Shadwell was merely speaking of a possibility, nothing more.’
‘But “massacre” he said – I heard the word distinctly!’
‘Aye,’ joined in the man next to him, ‘I heard it too.’
They huddled together. After a moment, they threw down their tools and clambered from the trench and went to talk to their friends in the neighbouring trenches. Shadwell resumed his inspection of the concrete, dictating notes to his secretary, apparently oblivious to the effect he had produced. As word spread around the site, the noise of digging and sawing gradually diminished, until eventually it ceased altogether. Some of the men who had been working on the other side of the tower came round to find out what was going on, although they kept their distance. The rest stayed where they were, leaning on their picks and shovels.
Hancock jumped out of his trench and marched over. ‘What is this tale of massacre, Mr Shadwell?’
Shadwell affected surprise at the grimness of his tone. ‘It is the truth.’ He looked around at the faces watching him. ‘What are they – men or children?’
Fairfax said, ‘They are men who have been told since they were children that this place is full of evil spirits.’
‘Then the truth should reassure them.’ Shadwell raised his voice enough for it to carry to everyone. ‘This was not the work of evil spirits, but human beings – people just like us. For God’s sake’ – he laughed derisively – ‘devils don’t fire guns!’ and then the laugh turned into a racking cough.
‘Easy for ye to say!’ someone shouted. ‘Ye’re half a corpse thyself!’
It was Keefer, once again, who spoke up for the weavers. ‘We were persuaded to come out here to dig for objects that were buried. No mention was made of bodies or massacres. Yet look over there at the graveyard!’ The church clerk clasped his hands in prayer. ‘This ground has been hallowed by death, and should not be disturbed.’
There was a murmur of assent.
‘I’m not asking ye to dig where the dead are buried,’ said Hancock. ‘Let them lie over yonder, left in peace. Has any man here found a single human bone?’ There was no answer. ‘Good. Then let us forget the foolish talk and return to work.’ Nobody moved. Hancock struck the tower with his fist. ‘God damn ye – move!’
‘We’re not your slaves, John Hancock …’
‘Ye tricked us …’
‘This was my husband’s land!’
It was a woman’s voice – so unexpected a sound to hear in such a place that all heads turned at once towards her. Not that Sarah Durston at that moment much resembled a woman. Her hair was all hidden beneath her cap, her sleeves rolled up, her freckled arms and man’s white shirt streaked with soot, her face wet and shiny with the heat of the fire. ‘This was my husband’s land,’ she repeated, walking towards the tower, ‘and he dug here for many years, searching for a treasure that might restore the fortunes of our family. The effort of it broke his health.’ She stopped and stared around. ‘You all knew Sir Henry – as good and brave a man as ever lived – and I for one am not afraid to dig in this spot, if only in honour of his memory.’
She jumped down into the trench, took the shovel from the nearest labourer and began to jab it into the ground, criss-cross, breaking up the earth and flinging it inaccurately towards a nearby wheelbarrow. After half a dozen spadefuls she broke off, breathing heavily, and stared at the workmen around her. ‘Well? Will you leave it all to a woman?’ She fixed on one young handsome half-naked fellow in particular. After a few moments he nodded and grinned ruefully at her, spat on his hands, lifted his pickaxe and swung it. The men next to him reached for their shovels and resumed work. The rest watched them for a while, and then, one by one, they too began to drift back in silence to their trenches. Within a few minutes the noise of activity was restored around the camp, the mutiny was over, and Sarah returned to her bonfire.
The hours passed. The sky darkened. The unearthed mounds of soil and r
ock grew higher, the excavations deeper. At Shadwell’s suggestion, learned by years of experience, the floors of the trenches were formed into ramps, with the deepest section closest to the tower, so that the wheelbarrows could more easily cart away the spoil up the slope to ground level thirty paces distant.
Fairfax took his turn in the lowest section of the shaft, where the work was most arduous. He was obliged to shed his cassock and work in his underclothes. Cold water pooled over his boots up to his bare ankles and made each shovel-load of oozing black earth feel twice as heavy. The strip of grey sky above his head seemed far away, and although the sides of the trench were shuttered with timber for safety, he sensed the pressure behind the thick planks and could not rid himself of the dread that they might cave in upon him at any moment. Whenever the man working beside him knocked into him, he imagined them buried alive together in this loathsome place, clawing and gouging at one another in their efforts to escape.
At every level the earth yielded evidence of human presence from centuries earlier, most of it plastic – translucent shreds of plastic bags that clung to the hands like torn-off skin; lumps of foamy white polystyrene; bottles of various sizes, both clear and coloured; fragments of moulded casings from the ancients’ wondrous devices. Occasional reddish streaks in the soil showed the shape of objects that had rusted to nothing; apart from a few coins and unidentifiable flaking lumps that crumbled between his fingers, nothing that was metal had survived. Wood was black rot. Of glass there was plenty – fragments of bottles, delicately shaped bulbs, and more elaborate shattered pieces that might have come from the same hoard as Colonel Durston’s collection. The most interesting find was made by a man working at the shallow end of the trench, who dug out a pair of spectacles, perfectly preserved, the frames made of brown plastic and the lenses still intact. He cleaned them on his sleeve and they were passed along the trench, the men taking turns to try them on. Someone declared they restored his vision perfectly, but when Fairfax settled them upon his own nose, his sight became blurry, as if he was seeing the world through tears.
He said, ‘I should take them to Dr Shadwell. They may be of significance.’
The man beside him hawked and spat. ‘’Tis all a fearful waste of time and effort, Father, if ye ask me! We work like miners, half the hillside’s dug away – and all for a pair of eyeglasses!’
Fairfax yielded his place to the man behind him and walked up the ramp to where he had left his cassock. The mood in the trench had deteriorated as the afternoon had worn on, from fear to sullenness to downright dejection. He could see it in their faces – in the slump of their shoulders and the sluggardly way they were working. The landscape around the tower, hazy with smoke, scarred by trenches and disfigured by the heaps of spoil, did indeed resemble an ugly open mine-working. From the distance came a rumble that he thought at first must be blasting in the quarry but then realised was the thunder of a coming storm. He wondered how much daylight they had left. An hour or two, no more.
Shadwell was seated at the table in his tent, writing in his ledger. Quycke was beside him, sketching. Piled up on the table and arranged around it was the soil-encrusted litter of their discoveries, through which Hancock was picking gloomily, like a man who had travelled a long way to market in the hope of a bargain and had found nothing but rubbish. Fairfax gave Shadwell the spectacles. ‘Western trench, twenty-five paces from the tower.’
Shadwell said, ‘At what depth?’
‘Two or three feet, no more.’
Shadwell made a note and tried them on. ‘Made for a person with short sight. One of Morgenstern’s scholarly colleagues, perhaps.’ He offered them to Hancock, who waved them away irritably.
‘I did not pay a fortune for such trinkets. I want the ark. Where is it, Dr Shadwell? Ye sounded so certain last night.’
‘No, sir. I was never certain. I guessed that whatever lay underground – if it existed – was likely to be joined to the tower. But we may be digging in the wrong spot entirely. One can never tell.’
‘That is not my memory of our talk. How much deeper must we go?’
‘I should say to twenty feet.’
‘Twenty feet! Soon it will be nightfall! And if we find nothing at twenty feet – what then?’
‘We start again tomorrow, but this time we dig further from the tower, and make the trenches parallel.’
‘And what if we still find naught that is significant?’
‘Then that itself will be of some significance. Today, for example, we have found no farming tools – no evidence of cultivation. If we still find none tomorrow, then we may conjecture that the people who were here eventually moved on. Two acres are required to feed one person for a year. Where did Morgenstern’s colony grow its food if not here?’
Fairfax said, ‘Perhaps they did not survive long enough to grow food? Perhaps they were all lined up and shot soon after they arrived?’
‘That is possible.’
‘Then we are wasting our efforts,’ said Hancock, ‘for whatever they brought here would have been stolen from them.’
‘That is true.’
‘“That is true”,’ repeated Hancock in exasperation. ‘“That is possible.” I am starting to conclude that ye know very little, Shadwell!’
Shadwell was unconcerned. ‘Indeed, sir. That is also possible – and true.’
At that moment the tent flap opened and Sarah Durston’s head appeared. ‘Dr Shadwell, gentlemen. Would you come at once, please? The men have found something.’
The discovery had been made at the end of the western trench, where Fairfax had been digging just a few minutes before. The men stood back to let them pass along the narrow alley. Hancock strode down the ramp, followed by Shadwell, Quycke, Fairfax and Sarah. Heads appeared above them, peering down at the source of the excitement. But there was nothing to see, merely a pool of dirty water reflecting the dull sky.
Hancock stared at it, disappointed. ‘Well?’ he said to the man who had raised the alarm. ‘What is it?’
‘That I don’t know, Captain. Listen.’ He plunged his shovel into the water. The metal blade scraped stone. ‘Thought at first it might be a rock, but if so ’tis a big one, and dead flat. Hear that?’ He demonstrated by prodding beneath the surface right and left, front and back, each time producing the same noise. Whatever it was that was underwater covered the entire width of the trench and extended in length a distance of three or four feet outwards from the tower.
‘We must drain it off,’ said Hancock. He shouted again to the men looking down from the surface. ‘Lower some buckets so we may see what we have here. Fetch a torch as well.’ He took the shovel and experimented himself, striking the sharp edge against the solid underwater platform. He turned to Shadwell. ‘Might this be the road ye spoke of?’
Shadwell shook his head. ‘The ancients’ roads were shoddy stuff. None survives in such a state. Besides, it’s buried too deep to be a road.’
Two large buckets were lowered from the top of the trench. Hancock bailed water into one and Fairfax the other. But as fast as they tried to empty it, the pool refilled. ‘Sandbags!’ commanded Hancock. ‘And light, so we may see!’ A torch made rapid progress along the cutting, passed from hand to hand, until it reached Quycke, who held it up for them. Sandbags followed in the same fashion, and were laid like bricks to form a foot-high barrier across the trench. Hancock and Fairfax resumed their bailing. When only an inch or two of water remained, Hancock drew his boot through the mud. A flat, smooth grey surface was briefly visible before the black liquid closed over it.
‘Dr Shadwell – your opinion?’
Shadwell leaned over. ‘The roof of an underground chamber, almost certainly, built of concrete. I believe we have found it, Captain.’
Someone whistled.
‘Pass me that pickaxe,’ said Hancock. ‘Stand clear, gentlemen.’
Fairfax stepped back over the sandbags. Hancock planted his feet apart, lifted the axe and let it rest over his right shoulder.
He paused to gather his strength, then his body seemed suddenly to expand as his muscles tensed and he swung the pick in an arc with all his force. The pointed tip struck the concrete and seemed to bounce off. The shaft almost jarred out of his hands. He dropped it, took the torch from Quycke and bent to inspect the result. ‘God damn!’ he muttered. He handed back the torch and tried again, and again – four, five, six times: massive shattering blows that left him panting. He leaned against the side of the trench to recover his breath.
Fairfax took the torch and flourished it above the water, then bent and ran his left palm over the concrete. ‘Barely a scratch.’
They looked to Shadwell. He held up his hands. ‘This is why it has lasted nigh on a thousand years. I fear we shall have to dig outwards from this spot until we find the entrance.’
Hancock glanced around the steep sides of the trench. ‘We cannot shift ten thousand tons of earth. ’Twould take us weeks. We shall have to tunnel.’
Fairfax said, ‘Is that not dangerous?’
‘Not if we put in props and beams. We have sufficient timber, if we salvage from the other trenches. I take it we may abandon the other workings, Dr Shadwell?’
‘Indeed so, Captain. This is where we must put our effort.’
Hancock took out his pocket watch. ‘Just after six. Two hours of daylight left – though if we tunnel we may work by torchlight through the night. Is Keefer there?’
‘Yes, Captain!’ The clerk pushed his way past Fairfax and Shadwell to the front of the group.
‘How many men do we have?’
‘Thirty, or thereabouts.’
‘Sort them, if ye please, into three shifts of ten. Those who are the least tired to work from now till ten, the next to work the period of the first sleep from ten till two, and the last to cover the second sleep, from two until six.’
‘Aye, sir.’
Fairfax thought, half a dozen men have deserted already; how many will be left by morning?
Hancock went on, ‘We’ll dig out four shafts a yard high – one out either side from here, the other pair to start fifteen paces back. Timbered every yard for safety. Does fifteen paces sound right to ye, Dr Shadwell?’
The Second Sleep Page 25
