CLANG!
Something solid for a change, instead of the steady stream of small, useless pieces of spoil thrown away over the years. Mark was down on his knees in seconds, with Carter hot on his heels. The clang must have been audible all the way across the field, so solid was the object Mark had hit. (And so hard).
The pair worked together, for the first time that day, to dig around the shape, quickly, but carefully — it appeared to be a large pot.
A large pot, which had a bloody great spade mark right across its lid. Carter’s frustration at his friend flew to the surface again.
“Fuck, Mark… look at the state of that. You’d get shot for that on Time Team!" As soon as he had said it, he regretted it. It had been a long day, and if he was honest, his optimism about finding this treasure had been rapidly fading. It was Mark’s indefatigable energy that had kept them going. He might have liked to moan, but he was first to work and last to stop every day.
“Yeah, like they’re careful with their JC-bloody-Bs! It was a frigging accident! What is it anyway? It looks old.” Grouchy as Mark was, his phenomenal staying power had kept them going all week, long after Carter would have packed up and gone home. Mark was the heart of the team and they both knew it.
“This, my friend, is an iron cooking pot… I’d say 1st Century.” Grinning, he turned to Mark. "Get the fecking lid off, then!”
Centuries in the ground had rusted the lid tight to the pot, as tight as if a welder had been to work on it.
“Look, Carter, we can do this the fucking Time Team way or you can go get the hammer and chisel… take your pick,” growled Mark.
The look Mark gave Carter left little doubt as to what he was thinking… hammer, chisel… SMASH! That was the way forward as far as he was concerned… who cared about a bloody pot?
Carter was torn for about thirty seconds. But then Mark twirled the gold Iceni coin in his fingers and off he shot. They had come too far and had been too close to quitting to worry about a pot now. He was back in seconds with the tools.
“Hold the pot just there; I’m going to give it a few taps first, then one solid whack near the lip, here, OK?” Mark took the hammer Carter had fetched. Carter just nodded; he was way too excited now to think about the wrongness in Mark’s approach. God, this was it, he was giddy as a bloody schoolgirl, all their work down to this moment… please be it! His level of personal desperation was almost palpable.
Tap, tap, CLANG! The lid sheared off and a large crack appeared in the side of the pot.
“FUUUCK, Mark… look what you did, man!” Carter squealed.
“Screw that… look at THAT…” Mark’s face darkened with disappointment and frustration.
From within the pot gleamed three more of the Celtic gold coins. Closer examination showed each one minted from a different tribe, but still only three. The tribal mark was clear on the coins, and something that seemed unique to this variety of coin.
All that work, all that effort, for three, measly coins! Carter felt like crying… in fact, a tear did trickle out the corner of his eye, and run down the side of his face; a tear not borne out of sorrow, but out of frustration at yet another failure. He couldn’t stop it and angrily brushed it away whilst staring in disbelief at their find. They had put so much into this, not just work and effort, but he personally had put a bit of his soul into finding this treasure. This was his bit of immortality; he was going to have been the man who finally found Boudicca's treasure.
Sitting in all those history lectures, telling himself that history was about more than dusty, old books, he had wanted to bring it to life — a real-life Indiana Jones. He wanted to have his own place in history. It was the only immortality that was real and available to someone like him. He wanted to be remembered and talked about in the future.
Mark, on the other hand, just sat there shaking his head, muttering to himself.
“Three lousy coins. Three lousy, fucking coins! That bitch sacks three, major Roman towns and we only get three, mutha’ fucking, lousy coins!”
Mark’s mumblings started to filter through to Carter after a few minutes.
“Mark… what did you just say? Say it again.”
“Are you taking the piss? I’m REEEAAALLLLLY not in the mood right now!” Mark snarled, his own frustration and anger threatening to boil over into some form of mindless violence, the pot being the most likely victim as he twirled the hammer in anger.
“No, seriously!" Carter almost pleaded, whilst backing away a step from the obvious frustrated fury of his partner. “Say that again."
“I said,” repeated Mark as though to an idiot,” she sacks three friggin towns and we get three lousy, friggin coins. It’s just not fair!” Mark clearly and slowly enunciated the last few words and laced them with as much menace as he could muster. He was not in the mood for this shit any more.
“That’s it,” Carter grinned after a short pause, “it’s not the end, it’s a clue! It must be. That's too deliberate to be a coincidence. Get some water and, for fuck’s sake, don’t damage that pot any more, I have a feeling that old pot may just be the key to the treasure!”
Mark looked at him for a moment, thinking he was bonkers, and then slowly caught on to what he was saying, his anger dissolving in an instant, the way it often did… "Maybe I’m the twat,” he thought. It was times like this that he remembered how smart Carter was and why he had followed him for so long on this mad quest.
Slowly, and carefully, the pair washed the accumulated mud of centuries off the pot’s exterior. Nothing! The pot was corroded and pitted. There were some vague outlines of swirling patterns and what may have been a chariot, once. But if a clue had existed on the outside, it was long gone.
Carter slumped down, knees getting muddier and muddier by the minute. But he was long past caring about his clothes or appearance. His thoughts were only on the pot.
But wait, thought Carter, what an idiot… If there was a clue, surely it would be on the inside? Especially given that the pot had been almost airtight… Well, maybe.
He shared his thoughts with Mark and the pair set to work. Carter was determined to do this methodically, and every time Mark tried to jump ahead, he had his hands slapped like a naughty schoolboy. They slowly cleaned and traced every millimetre of the inside of the pot, using their bottled water, a few brushes and their fingers, cleaning away the filth of centuries and with every fibre of their being, praying to find something, some clue.
“NOTHING!” cried Mark. “So much for your bloody great ideas, mate!” The last word laced with sarcasm and venom.
“Oh, do please feel free to fuck off, if you like,” said Carter who was more than used to Mark's pessimistic nature after years of searching for clues. Then, suddenly, he sat back holding the pot lid, with a huge grin on his face.
He had left the lid until last, purely because it was farthest away, and he could kick himself now; it was obvious really. Inscribed on the inside was a map. And what other flat, unexposed surface was there except the inside of the lid.
He turned the lid upside down so Mark could see the carefully drawn map etched on the underside, along with some carefully written Celtic….
”How’d ya like me now, mate?” crowed Carter.
He doubted Mark heard the last bit - he was too busy whooping and dancing round in a circle like a lunatic… They were going to be rich! Rich! In fact they were going to be rich AND famous! They had succeeded where everyone else had failed – they were going to find Boudicca's treasure.
***
“I would never have guessed we were so far off target!” said Carter. After packing up from the dig, they had returned to their hotel. The receptionists made them almost strip outside before entering. Carter did wonder if the girls just wanted to see Mark in his skivvies rather than a need for a clean lift and hallway.
Once back in their room they booted up the laptops. Despite their exhaustion from the day's digging, they were running on pure enthusiasm and greed, and couldn’
t stop now, not before they at least had a destination, a target.
The two men had traced the map and were matching it against printouts from Google Earth. Not as easy as it sounded. Matching the scribbling of some amateur map-maker — or worse, an amateur engraver — from 2000 years ago, no matter how intricate, against modern GPS mapping was bloody hard work. But, that said, there were some obvious landmarks if you knew your stuff — the main ones being Roman roads. From these points, Carter and Mark started to extrapolate the likely target zone.
It took a bit of cross-referencing to corroborate the major landmarks on the map. The first thought was to look for references up near Viroconium, now known as Wroxeter. The farther reaches of the old Watling Street being one of the likely spots for Boudicca’s last battle. The logic was that if you were going to hide your gold, you would do it before a fight, just in case of defeat. But very soon, Carter had discounted this; there were no likely spots for caves in the area, at least none that would correspond to the map. The map clearly showed the hoard was hidden in some sort of cave.
Carter decided the best place to go was the National Archives in London. They finally had to admit that this was not something they could solve in a few hours online, but just having that as a next step left them elated and invigorated. They had something to hunt down again. They were not at the end of a dead trail anymore.
The problem they now had was: were they looking for either undiscovered caves or well known ones? And if well known, then how was it that no-one had found the treasure?
After half a day’s fruitless searching in the archives, comparing map after map after map, they decided to call it a day. They needed a break, some piece of luck to get them on the right track. They were starting to feel all the effects of the dig site, and the mental ups and downs of the last few weeks.
The luck, when it came, came in the guise of an offhand comment from Mark. Mark who, according to him, was “Staying the fuck out of all that educated crap,” had a habit of saying something insightful, even when he didn’t mean to.
“How long are you going to keep looking at fucking maps of roads? We’re looking for a fucking cave… Just Google bloody ‘caves’ and see what we find.”
A stupid and possibly naïve idea at best, yet in reality, it was a stroke of utter genius. One that provided them with a list of likely prospects in less than thirty minutes. Those prospects had been easier to narrow with a clear list of requirements. After all, if it was a known cave, it needed to be a cave or cave system that had been known or mined since Roman times, and if that was the case, there would either be some information on the web or in the museum archives.
With a quick topographical survey and cross search of Roman sites, they had this down to two locations. There were only two that had a similar Roman road network in the vicinity. A further not-so-quick online check of the tourist web sites for these caves gave them what they hoped was a winner. The topography matched the map; it matched the Roman road layout of the period as well; it also met the date requirement for Boudicca’s period of history. The nagging doubt was that it could still be an undiscovered cave, filled in by Boudicca’s people to hide the treasure, in which case they were screwed and they would never find it. Carter could not voice this, though, for the sake of keeping both his own and Mark’s spirits high.
***
After a couple of hours' drive, mainly stuck in bumper-to-bumper Central London traffic, and with several wrong turns due to Mark's crap directions, they had finally arrived at the ‘X’ on the map: Chislehurst Caves. This was it, it had to be, it was the only site that matched all of their criteria. Anything else was just inconceivable right now.
“What does the map say next?” Mark said in hushed tones. He was clearly feeling the finality of the new location; one way or another their search ended here.
Carter paused to collect his thoughts and then slowly read his notes; he was enjoying being the centre of attention again, and not having to listen to Mark's moaning about the research, or being lost again.
“Iceni Celtic isn’t my best language, but from what I can make out, it says, ‘Follow the map to the caves of druidic flint, there you will find the Boudiccan chariot wheel, open the earth below the right spoke.'”
Looking at the tourist pamphlet that they had picked up earlier at the caves, the two men read the paragraph that had interested them on the website and which had led them here:
They are divided into three main sections: Saxon, Druid and Roman. Each section was later connected by digging additional joining passages, like the spoke of a wheel.
The presence of chalk has been important to civilizations over thousands of years, and still is to date. Mining chalk also provides lime and flint.
This really had to be it! Didn’t it? Except they had then taken the tour and seen just how touristy and well trodden the place was. These caves had been used and expanded continually since the Roman period and before. They had been closed, and then re-opened recently for underground concerts. Their more recent history was during World War I as storage for mines from the Woolwich Arsenal, used again as an air raid shelter during World War II, and most recently as a TV set for some dodgy Sky TV drama. With all these centuries of regular use, how could anything have remained hidden?
Mark had once again fallen foul of his pessimistic, grumpy temperament and so started arguing with Carter for a few hours about where else the treasure could be. There must be another cave. It couldn’t be here, no matter what the landmarks and history said. It was fairly standard fare for Mark on a long, boring drive, something to keep his mouth busy.
Carter stuck to his guns, after all, he had Googled the internet to within an inch of its life. They had no other known choices — this had to be the place. If it wasn’t, then it was likely that the cave was unknown and would wait for the day some amateur stumbled upon it with their metal detector.
They needed to get back inside the caves and they needed to get off the tourist routes; they needed to go back stage.
***
“I can’t believe no-one has found us,” whispered Carter.
The caves had closed at 4pm, so Mark and Carter had hidden in the toilets. Each stood with feet planted either side of a urine splashed toilet bowl with their breath held tightly – expecting to be discovered at any minute — to avoid the stench that comes with an overused, outdated toilet system. Thirty minutes they stood there, legs slowly cramping up, until all was finally still and quiet, and the sound of the slapdash security checks had long subsided.
The first response Carter heard was a loud torrent of water being poured as if from a great height. “Are you having a bloody piss?” rasped Carter.
“We’ve been here ages, in a toilet, so yes, I bloody am,” replied Mark. “God, it’s a dump in here. I don’t know why we’re being quiet; I doubt anyone would stay the night. It’s damp, cold and darker than Satan’s arsehole. Why would anyone want to? It’s not exactly the Hacienda down here is it?”
“The what?” Carter asked with a puzzled expression that lost any meaning in the pitch-black toilet.
“Oh, fuck off! Please tell me you’re joking!” Mark got down from his toilet perch and shined his torch in Carter's face, stumbling slightly from the cramp in his legs.
By the expression on Carter’s face, Mark could see he wasn’t joking at all. Mark shook his head, not sure whether it was more telling of Carter’s ignorance or his own age.
“The biggest and best club of the 80’s and 90’s, birthplace of Madchester, is what.”
Again, the vacant expression on Carter’s face told Mark everything he needed to know, so he stomped off out of the toilets, muttering loudly to himself. Waving his torch from side to side like it was toy light sabre.
“Fucking kids… know nothing about nothing. They want a good fucking slap most of the time anyway. If he doesn’t find the bloody treasure soon, I’m going to bury the bastard down here and leave my own map: here lies a know-nothing twat in a drui
dic cave.” Mark chuntered away to himself, eventually trailing off to silence, leaving Carter chuckling to himself. He swore Mark was a bit deaf, because his muttering was loud enough for everyone in the room to hear.
Much as Mark liked to swear at him, Carter knew that when it came to the crunch he would be the first person to defend him. It was how they had originally met in a pub in Oxford. Some of the locals, pissed off their faces, were picking on what they thought of as ‘poncey looking student wankers’. Mark showed them that some of these PSWs also fight back and the two of them — slightly battered — had ended the night with a couple of black eyes and broken ribs, but the best of friends. And in one of those totally bizarre twists of adolescent nights out, they had spent a good part of the night getting pissed, with the same locals whom they had been fighting. Apparently, for fighting back they were ‘bloody good blokes’. Who knew? He was just glad to have made it out in one piece and with a new friend.
While daydreaming of their first meeting, Carter wandered up and down some of the tunnels. He eventually came to the focus of the tourist area, the Druidic altar. Worn out from the last few days, the emotional ups and downs, the arguing with Mark, the back and forth through the tunnels to little or no benefit, he finally gave in to his tiredness and lay down, head resting on the base of the altar. They would need to start looking again soon, but for now, pillowing his coat under his head, surely he could take forty winks?
Temporal Tales Page 5
