Temporal Tales

by S. J. A. Turney

As he lay there, his mind starting to drift, he could hear Mark in the distance clomping around the nearby caves. The thought went though his head that he was glad they were most likely alone in here with no night security, because Mark wasn’t exactly a stealthy cat burglar.

  As he dozed, his mind still worked on mapping the details, piecing together all the clues and information: the cave layout, the clues on the map, all of it. The problem was that while there were tantalising clues that almost matched, for example the chariot wheel and the cave’s spoke-like structure, it was all vague, not specific or accurate enough; it was like trying to push a peg into a hole, when it was just the wrong size. It was all close but not quite spot on, and when looking for this treasure, that was like missing by a mile.

  It was all, quite frankly, becoming frustrating as hell. Carter needed to get away from thinking about the location, just for a moment, and instead he decided it was a great time to look at some of the history.

  He was, at heart, a history nerd, and it wasn’t often that you could get this close to relics like this one. As he lay there daydreaming, he wondered if they really had sacrificed people down here? It was such an unknown with the druids of Britannia. The dark reputation they had in the modern day was mainly created by the Romans, who wanted to destroy a unifying force in the fractured Celtic Britain that they were trying so hard to conquer.

  It was then, when he had finally stopped thinking about the problem, that he saw it – a shape, a vague glimmer of an outline carved into the ceiling. The whole ceiling appeared to be a large, almost circular shape. In fact, it appeared to be a roughly shaped chariot wheel, misshapen because of the topography of the ceiling, and he probably only recognised it because he wasn’t looking for it. He had turned off his brain and turned on his imagination to sift the information.

  After all the searching, he couldn’t believe it. He would have missed it if he hadn’t been ‘fucking daydreaming again,’ as Mark would describe his regular flights of fancy.

  “MARK! Get your arse in here!”

  Only after bellowing did he again cross his fingers and hope there was no security, if there was, they were now right royally screwed.

  “Will you keep your fucking voice down!” came Mark’s response – equally as loud. “There still might be people up top, and voices echo round here and magnify something crazy.” He realised his own loudness and lowered his voice slightly. “What do you want?”

  “I’ve found it! Look!” Carter made him lie down on the floor and he pointed upwards.

  Mark lay there and grinned and muttered to himself," Under the right spoke…” He turned and beamed at Carter.

  “Is this it, mate? Are you sure?”

  “Well, look at the ground, it’s packed like granite, no-one has dug here for hundreds of years, if ever. It must be here, or that design is a bloody great co-incidence. Also, the history books would tell us if it had been found, wouldn’t they!” Neither of them wanted to contemplate the other option, that the treasure was buried in some other sealed cave, far from the sight of man, awaiting some accident of man or nature to discover it again.

  “Fucking ‘A’, mate!” Mark replied, still grinning – all his previous disappointment forgotten, once again. The emotional rollercoaster that was called Mark really was a dizzying, changeable experience.

  The two of them pulled out their entrenching tools, the only shovels they could bring in without attracting attention, and got to work on the solid floor with the skill of men used to digging and the enthusiasm of men at the end of a long quest.

  After the initial sparks of shovel meeting a compacted surface which was littered with flint and stones, they gradually made it through the rock-hard soil to a softer spoil that should not have been there. This floor had been dug before, otherwise they would still be hitting chunks of flint and rock. They turned and grinned at each other, they now knew they were on the right track. Something was buried here.

  THUNK!

  They had hit something solid and so started to clear back away from the object, trying to locate edges. This took much longer than they had expected. By the time they had finished, they had excavated almost to the edges of the room, and to a depth of about two feet. They had had to find a bucket to cart the spoil up the tunnel to give themselves more room. They had uncovered a set of flagstones that looked to be tightly set into the floor and were clearly man-made.

  “Bloody hell,” whispered Mark, in awe at the sheer size of the hole.

  “If it’s under here, the treasure must be huge,” muttered Carter.

  Each were lost for a moment in their thoughts of glory and greed.

  It was the ever practical Mark who was first to snap back to reality.

  “Right, c’mon, Carter. It's one twenty-five in the morning, so we have about six hours to find it before we get arrested for criminal damage. If we don’t find something, we need to be gone. If we do…” His face lit with a huge grin. “Who gives a shit at that point!”

  The back of each entrenching tool had a pick, and they both levered the points into the central flag stone. It was slightly damaged, giving some purchase to the tools, the rest were mortared together tighter than a Jock’s wallet.

  After more than an hour of levering, sweating, grunting and wrenching their arms and entrenching tools to the point of snapping, the stone finally gave a load groan, a hiss like escaping air, and pivoted upwards. As suddenly as it had released its air, it collapsed back, but because it was no longer flush it fell right through the opening at an angle smashing down with a huge crash a short distance below them.

  “Christ almighty, Mark, there’s a void down there.” He edged slowly forward on his chest in case they had made the whole structure unsafe. Waving his light from side to side, he could see the stone block about 5 feet below him, in another tunnel very much like the others they had been searching through.

  Carter pulled his head back up and turned to Mark with a smile, “It’s a secret tunnel.”

  “WHOOOOOOOOOOO HOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!” Mark bellowed, then stopped himself by slapping his own hand over his mouth, listening to his voice echo back from the tunnel walls. “Shit! Sorry, mate, got carried away. This tunnel must mean they hid something, and something big."

  Carter, surprising himself, in an impetuous move started to lower his legs into the void. It was only when he was dangling by his arms did he wonder if the slabs might become unstable without this central one locking them together. “Too late now,” he thought, as he dropped the last foot to the tunnel floor.

  Even with the torch he held, it took a moment for his eyes to adjust to the dark tunnel, which stretched out in front of him. Turning, he saw that the opposite direction ended at a wall a few feet away, a wall that corresponded to the edge of the altar room. He immediately noticed that the walls of the tunnel were much rougher than those above, the pick and chisel marks seemed ragged and rough, as though this were a freshly dug tunnel. The tunnels above having been rounded by the centuries of use and people brushing against the cavern walls, smoothed down by the progress of ages and perpetual use.

  “What the arse are you doing down there, Carter?” Mark called in what he probably thought was a whisper but to Carter sounded like someone shouting between cupped hands.

  “Sorry, mate, I got lost there for a moment, thinking about the difference in the tunnel. This is something different, this was covered a long time ago.” And with a whisper of hope, “It’s got to hold the treasure.”

  Almost before Carter had time to move out of the way, Mark dropped down next to him. Carter was shocked for just a second, and then horrified. He rasped in a hash whisper at Mark, “How the fuck are we going to get back out of here, you twat?”

  With a slight shrug of his shoulders, Mark replied, “I’ll give you a bunk up, dick head, it’s only a few feet.”

  “Oh, yeah… Sorry, I’m a little on edge here. The tunnel looks undisturbed, but we have no idea how stable it is. If we were doing this properly, we wo
uld prop the ceiling up as we go, at least until we hit bedrock."

  Mark cast a dirty, slightly worried look at the ceiling he was stooping away from to avoid hitting his head, shrugged his shoulders and with a mutter of, “Fuck it,” started slowly down the tunnel.

  “Wait for me,” Carter whispered, all thoughts of doing this the right way forgotten in his hurry not to be left behind.

  Mark’s bulk blocked most of Carter’s view of the tunnel, but as they slowly progressed down the slight decline, the pair of them could stand fully upright. Carter could also sense a change in the echoes of their steps. There must be a larger cavern ahead. Carter’s heart skipped a beat. He whispered to himself, “A cavern could only mean the treasure room, surely?”

  Ahead of him, Mark came to a sudden halt. “Well, you don’t see that every day do you?” he whispered, the awe clear in his voice.

  Carter all but shoved him out of the way to see what he was talking about.

  “Well bugger me.” Carter, too, was awed into immobility. The two of them stood there for what seemed a lifetime.

  In front of the two men were a pair of horse skulls, standing at head height to them. Panning their torches down and along the bones, they could see what looked like the rest of the horses' skeletons, held together by what looked like gold wire.

  “OH SHIT ME!” Carter dropped his torch in shock. A second later, Mark found what had so shocked his friend. Directly behind the horses was a skeleton, the mummified remains of a warrior at first glance: flaming red hair hanging around the rictus of someone long-dead. The skeleton, like the horses, seemed to be held together with braids of gold wire. Whoever this person was, they were standing in what looked like a war chariot, reins still in hand, although the leather looked long rotten and only braided gold wires remained, interspersed with scraps of dark leather.

  It was an awe-inspiring sight, and on its own a fantastic find. But it wasn’t a golden hoard of treasure.

  Eventually, the pair regained their voices. Carter picked up his torch and started to examine the artefacts.

  “This is certainly Celtic work; look at the designs on the chariot face.”

  Mark panned his own torch down the face of the chariot, amazed at how small the chariot itself was. It appeared to be made up of thin, curved wood bars, held together with wooden pins and faced with an animal skin face, over laid with a golden design of stunning beauty.

  This must surely be a piece of the treasure. The plate looked to have been beaten wafer-thin, so there was not a huge amount of gold, but it was the design that gave it beauty and value. “That’s probably a year’s work for a highly skilled craftsman,” whispered Carter, utterly entranced with the plate. Mark quickly moved on, looking for more treasure, stopping momentarily to stare at the wheels. While the rest of the chariot looked sleek to the point of being flimsy, the wheels were solid, brutal-looking things, with thick, rusted iron shod bands wrapping them.

  “Man, if you had a few dozen of these charging across a field at you, it would have sounded like a squadron of tanks attacking. It's no wonder they were so fearsome. And to drive one of these, shit! It would have taken some serious power and skill.”

  Mark was momentarily distracted from the gold hunt by this thought. He was a man of action and so appreciated the strength of body and will it would have taken to drive this chariot. To face it, well, that’s something he doubted he would ever want to be in the position to do. Those Romans must have had giant balls of steel to face up to an attack from even one of these.

  Mark was brought out of his reverie by a touch on his shoulder from Carter. “We had best find that treasure, mate. Time to look at this lot properly later… well, if they let us.”

  The pair slowly made their way past the chariot — not the simplest thing to do as it almost filled the cavern opening. As they rounded the far end, they could see an alcove behind it, and a second, and a third. They all seemed to be piled with objects. Grinning at each other, they carefully made their way to the first opening.

  It seemed to be filled with objects, ones that might be religious, stone carvings and scraps of material that could, frankly, have been anything. Even in this arid, sealed cavern, the rot of time had done its worst with anything made of organic matter. After a quick, but thorough, search of the space and its contents, it was clear that what gold that had been here, had been removed a long time ago. The first stirrings of doubt crept into both of their minds. Removed? Gone? Taken?

  The search of the second alcove was much the same as the first. There were a few pieces of silver scattered as if dropped in a hurry. As they made their way to the third and last alcove, their hearts leapt. There were barrels stacked neatly and there were what looked like swords with ornate scabbards and grips chased with gold and tarnished silver wire.

  They stood together for a moment, next to the first barrel. It was still sealed.

  “What do you think is in them?“ Mark asked, his voice now taking on Carter’s reverential whisper.

  “How the hell should I know?”

  Carter pulled his Leatherman Multi-tool from his belt and started to pry the lid from the top-most barrel. The seal and wood were surprisingly strong given the level of decay in most of the other organic material in the cavern. But after a few minutes prising with the screwdriver adaptor, the lip edge cracked away. The pair were suddenly assaulted with a rank smell. Carter lifted the lid, immediately dropped it back and vomited all over Mark's shoes.

  “What the fuck! Christ, mate, what the hell's wrong with you? What’s in there that’s that bad?”

  Wiping his mouth with the back of his hand and slumping down next to the chariot wheel, Carter pointed at the small barrel. “Go look for yourself.”

  Mark proceeded to do just that, and immediately regretted it. Blessed with a stronger constitution, he didn’t vomit as Carter had done, but he still went pale and dropped the lid on the floor.

  “A head, a fucking human head, what kind of sick bastard puts a head in a barrel?”

  Pulling himself together, Carter pushed himself to his feet. Taking a deep breath, he looked down again into the barrel at the head. Looking at it again now the trapped, fetid air had dissipated, he could see that the head had been cured somehow. It was some form of mummification, or drying. It had then been dipped in what looked like some form of resin or sap to preserve it, and it was this resin that had spoiled. Ignoring all thought of self-preservation, he picked up the barrel and gently tipped the head onto the floor. It rolled once, to stop left cheek down to the floor. Whoever it was had clearly been brutally decapitated. Looking at the stack of barrels, all the same size, and after a quick check of their weight, they surmised that there were eight heads in eight barrels in the alcove.

  “Blood-thirsty buggers, weren’t they?” Mark muttered, the level of butchery stunning them both and leaving them to their own thoughts for a moment.

  Shaking it off, Mark started to search the rest of the alcove, sure now that there was nothing here of the golden hoard. He knew there was a priceless wealth of history here. He knew Carter would have fulfilled his wish of historical immortality, and he knew that meant him too. But he could not help but feel that he had been cheated of his Indiana Jones treasure moment.

  As he was about to give up, his eye fell upon a chest lodged under the debris, just to the side of the alcove. It looked like it had been buried under old shields and weapons during the moving of what ever else had been in the alcove. He hurried towards it and hurled open the lid.

  “Flint! A box full of fucking flint! No! No! No! You utter, fucking bastards!” Mark collapsed back on his haunches, tears in his eyes — eyes that blazed with fury and despair at the same time.

  Then something under the flint caught his eye.

  “Carter, come look at this.” Mark sounded excited again.

  Shaking off his musings on the harsh way of life these men must have had, and the sudden violent death they had experienced, Carter stepped over to look at what
it was that had got Mark keyed up again. He himself was worn to a nub, emotionally, and just wanted to sit down, to step away from all of this for just a moment and think about something else.

  “What now, mate?” The exhausted tone in his voice conveying clearly he was at the end of his hunt, and he wanted out.

  “Before you give up, Carter, look at this.” Mark held up a golden plate covered in swirling, intricate designs. Beyond it lay a chest brimming with flint chips.

  A tired but resigned look crossed his face. Mark was already muttering about wankers messing with him and making it look like the chest was heavy enough to be full of gold.

  “This is it, mate, we have your immortality in the history books, and we also have the gold, one fucking plate’s worth and an old ginger bonce over there in the chariot with the gold threads. They must have been taking the piss with this one when the place was cleared out.”

  Mark span the plate as he said this and Carter reached out a hand to stop him.

  He didn’t want Mark dropping this priceless item, but also as the plate span he saw writing on the back.

  “Give it here, Mark, there’s something on the back.”

  Carter took the plate reverently and sat down on the floor, suddenly invigorated again. He held the plate steady on his knees and shone the torch on the writing.

  The first thing that struck him was that the writing was in Latin, not Celtic.

  “What does it say?” asked Mark, in a tone that made it very clear that he didn’t really give a toss any more.

  “This is some shit Latin, whoever wrote it, it clearly wasn’t their first language, but if I can make out the crude engraving it says:

  “We came, we stole it, screw you, Narcissus. We are on a beach drinking a tasty Falernian, love your friends in the frumentarii, Marcus and Castus. Come and find us if you can! And don’t disturb Boudicca in her chariot, there were some nice golden plates with curses on them for anyone messing with her body.”

  The pair looked at each other and then reverently at the now majestic bones in the chariot. “Boudicca,” they both whispered.