The Skull

by Christian Darkin

  Contents

  Megalosaurus: 144 Million Years Ago

  Chapter 1: Alfred Marchant: 1176

  Chapter 2: Alfred Marchant: 1176

  Chapter 3: Thomas Marchant: 1535

  Chapter 4: William Marchant 1693

  Chapter 5: William Marchant, 1693

  Chapter 6: Henry Marchant: 1898

  Chapter 7: Henry Marchant 1898

  Chapter 8: Stanley Marchant: 1932

  Chapter 9: Stanley Marchant: 1932

  Chapter 10: Carl Marchant: 2014

  Chapter 11: Carl Marchant: 2014

  Chapter 12: John Marchant: 2201

  Chapter 13: John Marchant: 2201

  Chapter 14: John Marchant 2201

  Epilogue

  Megalosaurus:

  144 Million Years Ago

  She watched as a crack appeared and snaked across the perfect white surface. Finally, it was time. She scraped away the mound of dirt uncovering one shuddering egg, then another and another. They rocked slightly in the sunlight, and she could hear her chicks calling to her from inside. Suddenly, the top of the first egg burst open. A sharp claw curled over the edge and a scaly head popped up, its eyes blinking and its tiny jaw snapping in a motion evolved to kill creatures larger than elephants. It looked at its mother, head tilted sideways, and hissed.

  She leaned back, using her tail to ground her, and lifted her huge head four metres into the air. Two enormous feet dug into the earth, holding a ton of muscle in balance against the thick bone and curved, serrated teeth of her skull. Her forelimbs, small in comparison to her body, but powerful and armed with tearing claws, flexed slowly.

  Beneath her, four other eggs were hatching. Her young, bristling with rough, primitive feathers, were taking their first breaths of Jurassic air, smelling the damp ferns, rotting bark, and predators and prey of the food chain that would rule their lives. A food chain which, if they were strong enough, they would climb to the very top.

  The next stage of her life had begun too. Now, she was not just a hunter, she was a protector. Nothing, not even her own life, was as important as these five tiny dinosaurs. Their needs were the only thing that mattered. And their needs at the moment of hatching were clear.

  They needed food.

  She narrowed her eyes, sniffed the air, read the signs of the jungle, and followed the smell of living meat down to the waterhole.

  Her territory was wide, but she knew its inhabitants well. She had watched the herds of bony-backed plant eaters scour the ground through the summer. She had hunted the tall duck-billed dinosaurs as they grazed among the trees. And she had followed the family of long-necked cetiosaurs that were now stooping to drink at the lake, a few metres from the dense jungle trees.

  She had seen the cetiosaur mother lay her eggs, and watched the calves grow slowly for two years. The family had guarded their young closely, but despite their vigilance, one calf had been lost to a group of small nocturnal scavengers, and another had been pulled into the lake by a creature that hung just below the surface of the water. The calf that was left was the smallest, and the group slowed their pace to keep it close. She had watched and waited, but the time was never right.

  Until now.

  The calf was large enough to feed her and the chicks, but still small enough to take easily. And it was exposed. The adults had their heads down, drinking and could see nothing but the reflection of the sky in the water. She watched the calf wander towards her, grazing.

  Oblivious.

  There were many ways to make a kill. The safest was to rush headlong at the prey, mouth agape, sinking the teeth deep enough to crush bone, then pulling back, tearing open the flesh. Leaving the wound to do its work, she would follow the prey for hours or days until her victim collapsed from exhaustion, blood loss or disease.

  But this was not the time for a safe hunt. Today she needed a clean kill. The young dinosaur needed to fall close enough to the nest for her to bring back chunks of meat for her chicks.

  She crouched, hunger and adrenaline building within her like a coiled spring, seeping into the muscles of her legs and jaws. Her field of vision narrowed, becoming a red tunnel, every sense focused on a single point at the top of the calf’s long throat. She dug her hooked claws into the ground and tensed to launch herself forward.

  Before she could move, the forest around her was suddenly in motion. Flying reptiles launched themselves from every tree, fleeing with shrieks of alarm. Tiny dinosaurs scattered in every direction, feathers bristling. The cetiosaur family was on the run too. Powerful walls of flesh collided as the dinosaurs crashed into one another. The largest cetiosaur ploughed blindly through the trees, splintering them to either side. The smallest dodged and dived between its parents’ legs. Every animal in the forest was united in panicked flight.

  The clearing was empty in seconds. Unnerved, she swung her giant head from side to side, desperate to catch something, anything, but her jaws snapped shut on empty air. Everything was red confusion. Blood thundered in her ears. She felt the waves of heat flow over her.

  It felt wrong.

  She shook her head, letting her fury subside. But the world was still soaked in red light. The roaring in her ears became deafening. A fierce heat burned her back. She raised her great head and looked up into the sky.

  Something was coming. A ball of fire. As if the sun was falling down.

  Her instinct was to run, but she did not. This was her territory and her young needed her. Whatever was coming, she would stand and face it.

  She felt a rush of fury, pulling every muscle taut. She planted her feet deep in the mud, braced herself against the ground, and looked directly into the fireball.

  In her last second alive, she saw it. The unmistakable face of a predator. Its eyes huge, its mouth filled with piercing teeth, jaw open wide for the strike, with fire and smoke streaming from its red-hot head.

  * * *

  The force of the explosion turned the whole of the forest into a fine rain of ash. The thick grey flakes settled softly on the few remaining trees, left strangely upright, at the centre of the blast. They fell on her body too – lifeless, burned, but oddly undamaged, covering it where it lay until the entire valley was coated in a thick, flat layer of solidifying dust.

  Above her, years passed. Centuries. Millennia. Oceans and mountains rose and fell. The dinosaurs vanished and mammals rose to fill the empty plains. She lay buried while an ape evolved and started to wonder about the mysteries of its world.

  Thousands more years passed. The Roman Empire marched over her in perfectly ordered legions then, centuries later, staggered back in tatters. Behind them, they left a land of warring families, barely held together by the power of the church.

  Chapter 1

  Alfred Marchant: 1176

  ‘“And the devil is the most”…’

  ‘“Enormous”.’ The prior leaned over his shoulder and traced out the letters in the manuscript as he spoke.

  ‘“Enormous of all reptiles like unto the dragon, Draco, which is raised in Ethiopia and India and devours elephants.”’ Alfred got to the end of the sentence and looked up in triumph. The prior smiled back.

  ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘You will be a reader one day.’

  ‘And a writer too,’ Alfred said eagerly. ‘I’ve been practising my name. Look.’ He pulled out a scrap of dry bark on which he had scratched the words ‘Alfred Marchant’, in chalk.

  The prior nodded slowly in approval as he held the bark up to the light of the candle.

  While the prior studied the uneven scrawl, Alfred’s eyes turned back to the precious book in front of him. It was not yet bound into a volume. The monks were still adding pages and would be for decades, slowly scribing out one letter at a time, illuminating each page with intricate
drawings.

  The book was a bestiary – a study of natural history, listing every creature the monks had seen, from the sparrow to the bear, and every animal they had heard about from travellers and legends, from the hippopotamus to the phoenix. All of known nature was to be catalogued and recorded in the monks’ book. It was their great purpose.

  From the moment he had first seen the fabulous creatures, the gold-lined paintings and the strange symbols, Alfred had dreamed of nothing but this book and the amazing things described in its pages. It was this obsession that drove him to learn to decipher the writing.

  ‘I have decided to make your teaching here permanent,’ the prior said, putting down Alfred’s writing. ‘If you would like that?’

  ‘Yes!’ whispered Alfred as he looked down at his hands, stained red by the beetroot he’d spent the day digging. ‘I would like that, very much.’

  Alfred remembered his parents only vaguely. After his mother and father had died, his life had changed enormously. As a young orphan, his only value to the village was the work he could do in the fields, and that was considered little enough by the succession of families that had looked after him.

  He had spent his life moving from one hut to the next and back again, as one job or another needed doing. And he knew well that in each house he moved to, he would earn only resentment from the other children who would have to share their dinner with him.

  Alfred worked hard all day, and came to the monastery in the evening to study, when the other village children were playing or sleeping. He still had the long, dark walk back to the village to look forward to, but suddenly he felt elated. The prior had chosen him to teach. He would be a reader, maybe even a writer. Perhaps he could even live in the monastery?

  The other children would be toiling for their whole lives in the same fields, but a boy who could read and write could shape his own destiny. However far his family line stretched out into the future, Alfred knew that this moment would change its direction forever.

  Outside, the rain drummed against the thin leather covering the glassless window. A storm was brewing. It was the kind of night when Alfred could imagine basilisks, wolves and dragons roaming the woods.

  ‘I’ll walk you back to the village tonight,’ said the prior kindly.

  As they made their way through the cloisters, they found a man waiting for them at the end of a row of stone pillars. He was soaked through. The half of his face and matted hair that was visible in the yellow candlelight shone with droplets of rain. Alfred knew his name was Rolfe Nash. He looked angry, but then he was always angry. He was angry with the villagers, angry with his wife and angry with his children. He drank far more than he worked.

  The prior gestured for Alfred to stay back, and stepped forward to approach Nash.

  ‘I know what you want,’ said the prior calmly, ‘and the answer is still no.’

  Nash mumbled something that Alfred did not hear.

  ‘It’s been a hard year for everyone’s crops,’ said the prior. ‘But some have worked harder than others to keep them alive.’

  Alfred edged closer. Nash’s face was creased with anger. He was leaning in towards the prior.

  ‘You sit up here all day while I work! What do you know about it?’ Nash hissed. ‘All I’m asking for is some food to put in my family’s mouths! Are you going to deny me that?’

  ‘We give help to those who need it most,’ said the prior. ‘But we can’t give help to everyone who asks.’

  Nash was holding a stone bottle. He waved it, gesturing at the walls and pillars. Outside, the old wooden structures were being slowly replaced by more solid stonework as the monastery grew. The work would have proceeded faster if there had been more than one skilled stonemason in the village.

  ‘You’re doing well for yourselves off the back of us,’ Nash spat bitterly.

  ‘We’re working hard, too,’ said the prior.

  Nash scowled. ‘And you pick and choose who to favour…’ He was looking straight at Alfred, his eyes narrowed. ‘While the rest of us starve!’

  ‘We can’t give to everyone who asks,’ the prior said. ‘And now you will have to leave.’

  Nash didn’t move.

  ‘Do you want me to call the abbot away from his prayers?’

  Nash hesitated, then turned his back on the prior without another word and stumbled off into the rain.

  Alfred watched him go. ‘It has been a bad year,’ he said. ‘The crops are washed out all along the valley.’

  ‘I know,’ said the prior. ‘And we have more than we need here. But we don’t have enough for the whole world, and so we have to choose.’ He put his hand on Alfred’s shoulder. ‘Come on.’

  They ran out from under the cover of the pillars and into the storm.

  They were soaked through before they reached the woods. Above them, the wind thrashed the branches against each other, and the rain, which had fallen on to the top leaves in fine sheets, poured off again in concentrated torrents.

  Underneath their feet, the ground was soft – almost liquid. As they climbed down the steep hillside on which the ancient wood grew, it seemed as if the soil was flowing away beneath them.

  Alfred knew the woods well. He’d followed this route many times on his way to and from the monastery, but he never liked it. It was too dark. If you accidentally strayed off the path, thick, ancient thorn bushes tore at your hands and clothes, odd rocks sticking out of the ground tripped you, and loose overhangs hid steep and sudden drops. Although he didn’t believe any of the stories the older boys told about the place, he still felt as though there was something wrong with the wood. Something menacing.

  Tonight the whole place seemed alive. Even the trunks of the trees appeared to be groaning. Far off, there was a splintering crack as one old tree gave way. Alfred followed the prior closely, head down, watching his feet sink deeper into the pale mud with every step.

  Deep underground, where the soil and chalk gave way to harder rock, giant sheets of limestone supported the mountain. Tonight, water was seeping through the chalk, forcing its way into cracks in the limestone, widening, fracturing and weakening the stone. On the surface, mudslides carried away smaller rocks and undermined the roots of trees. As the heavy rain continued to fall, slowly but surely, the balance of the landscape shifted.

  The path wound steeply down, then equally steeply back up, and around a huge sharp rock jutting out of the hillside. Four flat stones protruded from the sodden ground, allowing the prior to quickly step up and climb around the rock. Alfred had to put both hands down into the mud to lever himself up on to each step, one at a time. As he heaved himself to a standing position on the top step, the rock began to tremble under his feet. He managed to leap off and grab hold of a bramble as the slab, nearly as large as himself, suddenly slid sideways and tumbled into the darkness.

  By the time Alfred regained his footing at the top, the prior was out of sight. Alfred stared into the trees. The path was invisible, lost in a sea of darkness, mud and thrashing trees. Alfred shouted out, but he could hardly hear his own voice against the roaring of the storm. He fought the panic rising in his stomach and struggled in the rough direction of the path, hoping to catch sight of the prior’s dark robes ahead, but there was nothing. It was as though the prior had been swallowed by the storm.

  Suddenly the lightning rescued him. A flash and an almost instantaneous crash of thunder shook the ground. Light exploded around him. The trees in front of him were lit up, and beyond them, high up where the sloping backbone of the hill met the sky, not one, but two figures were silhouetted against the night.

  One was the prior. The other, Rolfe Nash. In the brief flash of light, Alfred saw Nash’s fist, clenched and shaking. His mouth wide open, teeth bared in a shout. Without thinking, Alfred grasped the ground and hauled himself onwards, towards the angry man.

  As he got closer, he could see Nash shouting over the roar of the storm. He was clearly ranting. The prior said nothing – even if Nash had stop
ped for long enough to let him speak, it would have made no difference.

  Alfred was still in the shadow of the trees. If he came forward, at least Nash would know the prior wasn’t alone in the forest. He took a deep breath and was about to step out of the shadows when he saw the prior’s hand, waving him back. The prior couldn’t see him, but must have known he was following close behind, and did not want him to be part of this argument.

  Alfred stepped back and watched.

  Nash seemed to be shouting louder and louder now, but Alfred could not make out his words over the howl of the storm. Nash pointed down to the village at the bottom of the hill and then gestured violently out to the fields. He leaned forward, pushing his face towards the prior.

  The prior simply shook his head. Nash’s hands shot out. He shoved the prior backwards onto a wide, flat rock. The rock wobbled, started to slide, then stopped abruptly, caught by some larger structure underground. The prior staggered for a moment, recovered his balance, then froze. The rock started to move again. Not suddenly this time, but slowly, steadily, as though it were a lever that had turned a great wheel deep in the ground, taking with it the whole side of the hill. Even the trees were sliding now, the ground beneath them churning like an angry river.

  Then the trees started to fall. Saplings at first, then a huge old oak, older than the village, crashing into the mud. The ground was sinking faster now, massive rocks upending and tumbling downwards. A deep cliff had opened up, just a little way in front of Alfred’s feet. On the other side of the growing chasm, Nash stood staring down with panic in his eyes. Below them, the prior’s rock tipped. For a second, Alfred saw his arms flail, as he stepped back trying to keep his balance. Then he fell forwards, over and over, down through the widening abyss and out of sight into the darkness.

  Alfred gasped, trying to take in what he’d just seen. He looked back up at Nash, and at that moment a bolt of lightning illuminated both of them. Nash was looking straight at him. Instinctively, Alfred ducked back, but it was too late. He had been seen.