A Shroud of Leaves

by Rebecca Alexander

  ‘Peter—’ I started to say, but he interrupted me.

  ‘Lots of fellows – chaps like us – marry girls. It seems like a sham, but we can’t risk being discovered.’ He sighed.

  I hardly knew what to call it. I knew what we had done was illegal although I couldn’t name it. Yet what harm could kissing and touching each other really cause anyone else? ‘What do we do now? I don’t want to leave you.’

  ‘We’ll find a way to meet.’ He picked a blade of grass and ran it over my lips. I held my breath, lost in the sensation. ‘Matt Goodrich was a good sort, at least to start with. But now he wants money. It seemed like harmless fun at the time. We were so young.’

  ‘What will you do?’

  Peter rolled onto his back. ‘I will have to pay him, I suppose. At least enough to keep him quiet.’

  ‘Will Molly say anything?’

  ‘No, I don’t think so, if I talk to her.’ Peter sounded sad. ‘I know she won’t want to get me into trouble. Do you have it safe?’

  ‘In my journal, which I normally carry with me back and forth to the barrows.’

  ‘She’s got it bad for you, poor kid.’ He stood up, and I watched him brushing himself down in the moonlight. ‘I’ll go in the back door, you go in the front in a few minutes. Say you were clearing up here.’

  I was cold inside as I sat up. ‘But what are we to do now? I must see you again, but my mother can never know. It would kill her.’

  ‘Mine, too. She has such hopes for me now my sister has gone.’

  We fumbled our dew-damp clothes on and wandered back through the trees, Peter leading me by my hand in case I walked into a branch. When we reached the edge of the lawn we spontaneously let go.

  ‘What shall we do?’ Soon I will have to go back to stay with my mother. I might never see him again, unless we arrange a sordid little rendezvous and pretend to be brothers, or make up some other subterfuge, so we can share a room.

  ‘We’ll find a way to be together,’ Peter said, his voice drifting back to me in the darkness. ‘When Claire died, I resolved never to let life slip away again.’ His teeth gleamed in the light from the hall. ‘We shall be Alexander and Hephaestion.’

  ‘Achilles and Patroclus,’ I said. ‘And we know what happened to them.’

  He laughed then, not his carefree voice but a tired chuckle. ‘A heroic death awaits.’

  * * *

  The next morning, I tried not to look at Peter or act in any way differently. He was in a teasing mood, so I frowned at him and concentrated on my breakfast. Before we finished our meal, a letter was brought over from Fairfield.

  ‘Oh, what a nuisance,’ he said. ‘I forgot that I had promised to take the girls riding over to the big house.’ The ‘big house’, I knew, was the local manor and an invitation there was virtually an order to troops. ‘Hilda can’t have told them you were still here, or you would have been invited too. I’m sure they wouldn’t mind if you turn up.’

  ‘I have a lot of work to do here,’ I said. ‘Not least to stop the gardeners taking more spoil to level up the tennis court. I was hoping to examine at the top of the cistern, to see if we can have another look inside.’

  ‘Well, I shall only stay for lunch. I’ll be back by three, and we can have a look together.’

  The maid, who had brought the letter, curtsied. ‘Mr Peter, we was wondering when those bones were going to be properly buried? In a churchyard, like proper Christians.’

  ‘I’m afraid the man was born many years before Christ, Tilly, and the wolf was never a Christian.’

  ‘It’s just unseemly. Cook says,’ she qualified her answer.

  ‘Well, you’ll be glad to know the bones will be reburied somewhere very safe,’ Peter compromised. ‘Could you get me my kit bag? The one I took to the cadet training.’

  The girl disappeared upstairs. I brushed my toast crumbs off my hands. ‘What are you thinking?’

  ‘It’s a good, thick bag. It should take both skeletons, and we can bury them under the roses or something, and dig them up when we have more time to examine them. Or when my father agrees to let them go to a museum.’

  I thought it a good plan: the bag would certainly protect the remains for a decade or more. I went off to the excavation with Peter’s cheerful goodbyes ringing in my ears. I shall tuck this journal in my bag and carry it with me. I couldn’t bear for it to be read by another, now, nor the picture found. In the meantime, I will take the professor’s advice and just dig around the flat stone at the top of the well head. I think we might find a way to see into the stone chamber and complete the puzzle.

  * * *

  Later

  I hardly know how to write this. I was excavating around the flat stone right at the top of the well head, for it seemed to me that we might be able to peer down the crevice beside it into the two shafts that seemed to make up the well. Something happened, and I woke here, scrabbling blindly in the almost dark. Fortunately, I still had my bag and the remains of a pencil that I stuck behind my ear. I fear my legs are hurt, I cannot move either, although I am wedged almost upright between the sides of the shaft. Above me is the faintest grey light, filtered through the grasses and moss that grow there, barely enough to see what I have written. I have shouted, but no one comes, I do not know how long I have been down here. Perhaps Peter has stayed on for dinner at Fairfield, perhaps it is earlier than I think. I cannot know how long I have been here and my watch is smashed. There is some water by my knees; I have been able to soak my sleeve in it and drink a little. I shall not die here. Peter will see what has happened and come.

  35

  Later, Wednesday 27th March, this year, in the barrow

  It felt like Sage was being kicked and punched as she fell, darkness enveloping her, slipping down a narrowing shaft. She was abruptly stopped by the shock and splash of ice-cold and her feet finding a solid surface under the water. It immersed her as she crumpled in the narrow space, held up by one arm caught above her. She exhaled a cloud of bubbles as the breath was shocked out of her, and a bolt of pain shot through her snagged arm. One foot pushed against the floor and she stood up, forcing her head and shoulders above the water’s surface. She gulped a few breaths of air, reaching up with her left hand to feel along her right arm, caught somehow above her. She couldn’t move it at first, wedged as she was in the narrow space. She couldn’t pull on it, it was like red-hot nails digging into her shoulder, but with the other hand she could wiggle it in the darkness and finally free it, every movement sending white-hot flashes into her fingers. Her arm slid to her chest where she cradled it with the other. Her shoulder felt dislocated. The pain was agony, burning in torn muscles and tendons. A dull grinding on the front of her chest suggested she’d broken something, collarbone maybe, on the same side.

  ‘Help. Help!’ she managed to shout, but nothing came back. God, she was under tons of soil and who knows how deep underground. This must be what happened to Lara. She died here, probably drowned or hit her head, died of shock.

  It was already starting to spit rain when Sage had run from Chorleigh, it could fill up. Was there even a way out? She thought about the slot at the top, where the water trickled out.

  She tried to remember how wide and deep it was – it was shrinking in her mind. No, she had seen it from the ground and thought she could get her head and shoulders in, so it must be reasonably big, but she couldn’t even see it. She started to feel down her legs with her good hand, checking for injuries. She was standing on a tiny patch of flat stone, on her left foot. She staggered around to find another footrest ninety degrees to the right. She could push up but only gained a few inches. She stepped back onto her left foot, feeling the cold water sloshing around her chest. Cold. She could die of hypothermia or pass out and drown. At least the water had broken her fall; she could have smashed both ankles.

  She leaned her head back to look up into the darkness, the pain in her shoulder making her catch her breath, stopping her reaching any higher. She could fee
l something warm trickling down her head, tickling around her ear; she must have cut her scalp. She dared not try and use her injured arm in case the dizziness returned; she was terrified she would pass out and drown. Instead, she tried to calm down, concentrate on looking around.

  The darkness was so intense it felt like it was pressing against her eyes. But tipping her head back further, ouch, ouch, her shoulder screaming at her not to move her neck – up there was a tiny hint of light. Just a triangle of grey, slowly brightening as she stared. It wasn’t quite overhead, there was something in the way, like the shaft wasn’t quite upright. She rested her bad arm at her waist and reached out with her other hand. The rock wasn’t carved out; she could feel how rough it was, it felt like a natural surface. This was the nightmare that woke her shaking and sweating: falling into a well in the dark. She swallowed the panic down.

  Was it a well? She could feel rubble around her ankles, she only had room to stand on one foot and the muscles in her other leg were cramping. She used her other foot to feel about. There were what she thought were rounded rocks, but they were lighter; they moved away when her toe nudged them. Bones, maybe, of animals that had fallen in the top as she had done. God, maybe Lara’s remains, maybe even Edwin’s. She was able to push her foot up the wall enough to get her other foot to the ground, a relief immediately. Her muscles were stiff from the cold.

  ‘Help! Alistair?’

  Nothing. Her voice echoed around her, suffocating her with sound. She could hear something feeble in her tone, something weakened by the cold. Shock, maybe. She didn’t know how much of her message the 999 operator had received. Maybe none, maybe they would think it was a prank call.

  She took a deep breath and screamed. It was more of a croak at first, but a sip of water helped. It was cold and tasted very clean, like spring water. Like the water in Lara’s camera case, maybe, which made her feel even more sick. She found her voice and managed three banshee screeches. I’ll scream every minute. Someone will come.

  Did Lara fall in the same way? Sage was aware of the clunking rounded shapes beneath her feet. Maybe they were skulls – it was impossible to tell through her boots. Did Chorleigh know, did he watch Lara fall and not get help?

  He was terrified of his father. So frightened that he didn’t tell people what had happened. Perhaps she had been stuck here too, waiting to be rescued, waiting for Alistair to tell people where she had last been seen. Chorleigh had chased Sage up the barrow, and it swallowed her up.

  Thoughts spun around her head as she tried to get a better balance on the uneven stone. Stay positive, keep motivated, don’t give up. She could feel the shock and cold starting to drain away her energy. She thought of Nick and Max teasing her, laughing over bubbles in the bath, asleep together on her ridiculous sofa. She looked up again, even though it pulled horribly on her chest muscles and stabbed through her injured shoulder. The pain, at least, kept her awake. There was a ray of faint light coming in, in strips. The moss, the overhang. The letterbox slot that might be the only way out. Maybe Lara’s camera case had been washed out, the film case full of water, after she died.

  A band of stinging pain around her shoulder blades made her pull up again. The water was rising. Shit, the cold was already numbing her legs and now it was going to drown her. Her heart clunked in her chest like a machine winding down, and she took a few breaths to control it. At least the trickling from her head had stopped. Calm, relax, prevent shock. Then scream. She tried again, except the sound came out more like a wheeze.

  She couldn’t climb up to the top of the shaft, her arm was agony already and she couldn’t feel footholds. Except one, the first one she had felt. She moved her foot around, scraping it up the rock face. There, a tiny ledge under the toe of her boot. She was lighter now, the water was holding a lot of her weight, she realised, more than before. She pushed herself up a foot, the weight dragging on her injured shoulder and collarbone, flashing stars in her vision.

  ‘Help!’ It was a croak. She cleared her throat and went for a scream. Her voice was rusty, small, but after a few breaths she got a bit of a screech going.

  The water didn’t make any sound as it rose up. It must be over an artesian spring or something charged by the water table. She remembered Trent suggesting it, that maybe it was some sort of water tank. It was lifting her, slowly, even as it sapped her strength away. She remembered reading somewhere that when a person stopped shivering they were in trouble.

  I’m going to die before I get to the top.

  For a moment she rested her head against the cool rock. She just needed one free arm. She lowered the damaged arm into the water, feeling first the agony then a welcome coolness as the water rolled over her collarbone. The fingers on the injured side didn’t work properly, perhaps she had damaged a nerve somewhere. She fumbled in her pocket with the other hand. Her phone would be drowned and wouldn’t get a signal here anyway. A handful of evidence bags, let go into the black water. Car keys, a pen, a couple of soaked tissues. There, the scarf she usually carried stuffed into her pocket. She dragged it out, grateful it wasn’t on the other side, and with a little help from her slow fingers on the bad arm managed to tie a rough knot in it. Pulling it over her head was difficult; she didn’t see an outcrop of rock by her head and whacked her elbow on it, but having put the sling around her neck she could lift her arm into it. The pain made her scream, and she added a few extra swear words to help. Maybe someone would hear her cursing if they didn’t hear the shrieks.

  One hand free, one foot on the foothold, she shuffled about for another. There was a tiny ledge a little behind her. She could see the glimpses of the greyness above, obscured by another rock formation. She flailed around with her dangling foot, trying to find the ledge. One end of the ridge was bigger and higher, and with some effort and pulling up with her good hand she managed to get half out of the water. It was difficult standing on a few frozen toes, braced against the side with her other foot. She started to shiver again and realised she would last longer out of the water.

  She pushed up again, scraping the other foot around until she found a projection, just a few inches deep. Pulling with her good arm made her scream with pain and effort as the muscles contracted around her chest. Her wet coat was dragging on her injured side. Balancing on toes that were going numb, she managed to slide her bad arm out of the sling, using the pain to scream for help. Then she could slide that side of her jacket down, now saturated, and let it hang free from her other shoulder. It gave her a little padding as she leaned against the rough stone, trying to conserve some heat in it. The shivering was coming in painful spasms, her muscles locking up. She dropped the heavy coat and hauled herself up by her uninjured arm, pushing her legs to stretch her up a little more. The water was now just above her waist, but she could feel it creeping up again. She must be a couple of feet off the bottom, and another hard-won step up helped her find a handhold over her head.

  The slot, a wedge of dull light above, seemed too small to get through. She wasn’t sure how long she’d been in the water but it was getting dark outside. Overhead she could see an area of missing vegetation where the stone had pivoted, dropping her through the chimney at the back. She was clinging to the rock slab between the two shafts.

  It took several more minutes of panting and struggling to find another handhold and one sharply inclined foothold. It dug into the ball of her foot and the other foot had nowhere to go so she shuffled the toe beside the other foot, fighting not to slip. Despite having crept up another couple of feet, the water was catching her up, she could feel it around her thighs. She thought of dropping into the water and letting it carry her up but it was so cold she knew she’d die of hypothermia long before she got to the top. The stone slot had been about twelve feet above her head, but she’d narrowed the distance to half that.

  She bellowed as loud as she could but now her voice seemed to be swallowed up by the sides of the chamber, echoing inside her head rather than up to the top. She could feel the ape
x of the dividing wall and started to inch up towards it, the water dragging her back. She fumbled along the top of the sliver of rock, finding somewhere to grasp and pull up, feet scrambling for new footholds on the rough surface. Finally, she managed to get her good elbow onto the top and heaved until she was half lying on a piece of rock with a flattish edge maybe a foot wide. When she managed to get a good foothold she could kick herself further onto it, the bones in her broken arm grating together in a way that made her gasp and see sparkles in front of her eyes. Don’t faint, you’ll fall back.

  She rolled onto the good side of her chest, pushing away from the rocky blackness of the chimney she had climbed, and rested. As her eyes adjusted and the lightshow subsided, she could see the faint greying of the wall above. She screeched again, wordless, but still no one came. How long had she been here? She tried to slow her breathing a little, let her heart catch up and stop knocking in her throat. They would look for her, maybe they had received the garbled call.

  It took another few minutes to drag, wiggle and push herself further onto the narrow, slanting ledge. It was only about twelve inches deep, just enough to sit on precariously, while she examined her dangling arm. It felt like it had burning skewers shot through it, and her fingers were numb and limp. She tightened the sling and lifted her wrist up. Her fingers came back to life abruptly, with burning pins and needles.

  ‘Help!’ She was only four or five feet below the slit of grey light now. She screamed again, then caught her breath. Both legs were in the water, and a line of cold was working its way up her hip. The water was chasing her up; it would soon fill the whole cavity. She would have to try and stand on the sliver of rock and attempt to slide out.

  The angle of the ledge was difficult to climb onto: one false move and she would drop back into the water. Her eyes could pick out the ragged feature behind her, a lump of rock sticking out, pushing her back towards the water. She tried to shuffle around to get one knee onto the rock but the pain made her head swim and the rocks shiver in front of her eyes. Don’t faint, you’ll drown. Nick, Nick, Maxie, oh God…