They made their way on foot through the woods to the burial mound. It was strange walking through the landscape that Sarah had examined so closely on the aerial photographs. When they emerged from the small wooded area, it was to see the grass-covered mound rising up in front of them. It looked just like a small hill, the regular shape visible in the photographs indiscernible at ground level.
As they approached. Sarah could hear a low rumble, like a badly tuned engine. A generator, she realized, seeing thick cables running to a dark maw at the side of the mound. To the side, just where the trees started again, freshly dug earth was banked up in huge piles.
“She’ll have a fit if she sees this,” Davenport said.
No one needed to ask who he meant. There was a deep trench cut into the ground on one side of the “hill.” It formed a tunnel, leading down into darkness. Wooden posts and lintels held the ground back, and electric lamps were strung between them casting a pale yellow glow through the tunnel.
“Abandon hope and all that,” Davenport said, leading them into the tunnel. “Mind your heads, it gets a bit low further along. Oh, and there’s a pit we have to get across, no idea how deep it is. Would rather not find out.”
Sarah had visions of having to jump. But the soldiers had laid long wooden boards. They had to cross one at a time so their weight didn’t break the planks. Even so, they creaked and bent alarmingly in the middle as Sarah made her way quickly across.
The air grew musty and heavy, cloying in the heat and ever-present dust. They seemed to be burrowing deep into the ground. Sarah couldn’t help thinking of the fate of the narrator of The Coming Race—his journey underground and what he found there …
“Nearly there,” Davenport assured them at last.
Ahead, Sarah could hear the sound of laughter. The tunnel had been rising for a while, so they were walking uphill. Finally it opened out into a wider area, hollowed out from the earth. How far beneath the burial mound they were, Sarah had no idea. Tools were piled up around the edge of the area—pickaxes and shovels, wheelbarrows and buckets. A group of half a dozen soldiers stood or sat in the middle of the open space. Sergeant Green came to greet them.
“Just got a brew on if you fancy a cup of tea.”
One of the soldiers was pumping the small plunger at the side of a primus stove to build pressure in the metal canister. Once he had done that, he struck a match on the heel of his boot and lit the stove. Water was already starting to boil in a billycan resting on the top of another stove.
“Come to make the tea, love?” one of them called across to Sarah.
She forced a smile. “In your dreams.”
“You don’t want to know about my dreams, darling.”
“Oi!” Green barked. “Show some respect for the lady.”
The soldiers suddenly leaped to their feet—not in response to Green’s words, but seeing the uniformed Guy emerge into the dim light.
“As you were,” he said. “But the sergeant’s right. Miss Diamond may be a civilian, but you can behave as if she outranks you. Any order she gives—jump to it. You and your team have done a splendid job,” he went on, turning to Green. “Well done.”
“Thank you, sir.”
Davenport motioned to Green, and the two of them withdrew to the edge of the area where another, wider passageway entered. They spoke in hushed voices for a few moments before Green returned to the soldiers.
“I’ve told him to send the men back to their base when they’ve had their tea,” Davenport explained. “We can take it from here.” He pointed to where the opening ended in a smooth wall caked with dust and dirt. “The lads widened this whole area. It was just a passageway, leading to that. Through there is what we are after. Assuming it follows the same design as in France, and so far that has been the case.”
“You don’t want their help getting through?” Guy asked.
“The fewer people here the better. Both for safety, and security.”
“Security?” Sarah asked.
“We’ll break through on our own, well away from gossiping squaddies and interfering landowners,” Davenport said. His eyes gleamed as they caught the light from a nearby bulb. “We’ll do it tonight.”
CHAPTER 27
The only way to tell that the evening was drawing in outside was that it got colder. Green returned after seeing the group of Royal Engineers back to their base. Davenport insisted they wear their gas masks before breaking into the main burial chamber.
“Whatever that mist was at the French burial site, it was certainly toxic,” he told them.
“And we’re hoping gas masks will be effective against it,” Guy said.
“German ones were. The troops who went in afterward suffered no obvious ill effects.”
“Fingers crossed then,” Green said. He handed them flashlights. “Obviously the lights only come this far.”
What had looked like a smooth wall was actually a door. It was made of rusted metal, dust and earth clinging to its etched surface. Davenport brushed it away with the back of his gloved hand.
“Through here, there is a small antechamber. We break through the wall, and into the burial chamber. There are other chambers too, but I don’t know much about them. After the gas was released, Streicher was a little reticent about letting me see much more.”
“We’re assuming this follows the same layout,” Sarah said.
“So far, it has. But I suggest we put our gas masks on before opening this door, in case the internal wall has been breached.”
Green levered the end of a pickaxe between the door and its frame, forcing open a gap wide enough for Guy to get his hand inside. Between them, Green and Guy heaved the metal door open. Sarah and Davenport shone their flashlights into the gloom the other side. The opening was wreathed with cobwebs. Davenport brushed them aside, revealing the small chamber he has described, and the stone wall.
“So far, so good,” Davenport’s voice was muffled by the gas mask. He gestured for the others to stand back while Green picked up the pickaxe again and swung at the wall.
The blade of the pickaxe bit into the wall, finding a point between two of the stone blocks. Again, Green worked the tool like a lever, forcing the handle sideways to ease out the stone block. It crunched out of the wall, standing proud of the other blocks. Green removed the pickaxe and leaned it against the side wall. He gripped the block tight in his hands, looking up at the others.
“Ready?”
Green pulled the block. It scraped forward a little, then stopped. Guy bent to help, gripping the other end of the block. Together they heaved and the stone block came clear of the wall in a shower of dust and disintegrating mortar. Except the dust didn’t stop. It became a fine, white mist, drifting out from the gap left by the stone.
“Is that it?” Sarah asked indistinctly through the gas mask.
Davenport nodded. “Doesn’t look like there’s so much this time.”
The gas curled like smoke, thickening the air in the small anteroom. Davenport motioned for Green and Guy to return to work on the wall. They set about enlarging the hole, and the gas was thinning by the time it was big enough to climb through into the main burial chamber.
Sarah’s flashlight picked out a large circular area with a low, vaulted roof. The tattered and rotted remains of some heavy material—tapestries perhaps—hung from the walls like ancient curtains. Further in, cobwebs hung like swathes of decaying silk. Several dark doorways lead off to other areas, and in the center of the chamber stood a large casket. It was crude, roughly hewn from a single piece of rock. A slab of stone lay across the top, sealing it.
Davenport made his way warily to the casket, walking slowly round it. He beckoned them over.
“I think the gas has dissipated, but best keep our masks on for a while longer.”
They gathered round the casket, examining the stone lid. As the light of one of the flashlights caught it, they could see a design etched into the surface.
“Is that a Swastika
?” Green asked, amazed and appalled in equal measure.
“Not quite,” Davenport told him. “The Swastika is itself an ancient symbol. This is similar, but see how the ‘legs’ are jointed. A bit like the Manx symbol used by the Isle of Man.”
“Celtic, do you think?” Guy asked. “The Celtic cross is not dissimilar.”
“Nothing Christian about this,” Davenport said. “Too early for one thing.”
“You an expert?” Guy asked.
“Hardly an expert, but a well-informed amateur. Elizabeth Archer helped me learn a bit more about the Bronze Age to bluff my way with Streicher. Being blessed with a good memory has its uses. But I must confess I’ve always had an interest in ancient history, myths and legends, that sort of thing.”
“Do you think we can get the top off?” Green asked.
“Do we want to?” Sarah wondered. “God knows what’s inside, or what state it’s in.”
As the men discussed the best way to remove the heavy lid without damaging anything, Sarah examined the rest of the chamber. In among the dust and cobwebs, there were urns and jars. They seemed to have been dumped without any order to them, sometimes grouped together sometimes individually. Several were broken—collapsed in on themselves through age.
She shone her flashlight to the roof. It was difficult to make out the details of the structure, but it seemed to be composed of slabs of stone resting on long ribs, also of stone. She hoped whoever built it knew what they were doing—how many tons of earth must the structure be holding up?
Sarah turned her flashlight back toward the casket, where Davenport was miming sliding the lid to one side while Guy shook his head. As she moved the flashlight, the light caught something. A movement. At the edge of the beam, in among a pile of jars. Cobwebs shimmered as something passed underneath. A draft? Or …
A dark shadow scuttled across the floor.
“Did you see that?” Sarah said. Her voice was tight with nerves. Muffled by the gas mask, it didn’t carry. No one answered.
Probably a trick of the light, she thought. Or one of the others had moved their flashlight, dispelling the shadows in an illusion of movement. Probably. She made her way cautiously over to where she had seen the movement. Sure enough, there was nothing there. Just a few broken jars made of dark pottery. Dust and cobwebs.
And a sound. A scraping rattle from behind her. She spun round—and again, nothing but shadows. She was staring into the dark opening of a doorway. Sarah shone her flashlight into it, and saw a stone-walled passageway leading off. The sound came again—was it her imagination? Was it the gas-mask strap catching on something as she moved her head?
She glanced back, and saw the others were still busy at the casket. Guy and Sergeant Green were pushing at one side of the stone lid as Davenport pulled from the other side. They obviously hadn’t seen anything. She called out to them again. But her words coincided with a loud grunt of effort from Green and the scrape of stone on stone as the lid shifted slightly.
Sarah shook her head, and turned to the passageway. She’d just go down it a few yards, and see where it led. Just a few yards—no farther.
Behind her, the others focused all their attention on the stone slab covering the sarcophagus. Another effort from Guy and Green, and the lid slid back, revealing the dark space beneath. Davenport made sure that the stone lid was not about to slip off the casket, then satisfied that its own weight was holding it securely angled across the top, he shone his flashlight inside.
The three of them stared down at the figure inside.
“My God,” Green breathed. “What is that?”
* * *
The Y Station at Felixstowe picked up a signal less than three seconds after the lid was pushed aside. Several amateur radio hams also detected it, and made notes. These “voluntary interceptors” sent in their reports along with the official interception stations. None of them had any way of knowing that the signal they were receiving had been triggered by events taking place deep within an ancient burial mound.
The data from Felixstowe was given more urgency than the radio ham reports. The signal was like nothing they had intercepted before, and the direction-finding experts were pretty sure it came from inland. An approximation of the warbling screech of sound was recorded in Morse code, along with a handwritten description from the Signals Intelligence Officer.
It was despatched by motorcycle, along with several other intercepts collected that evening, to Arkley View. The house on the edge of Barnet, north of London, was where all signals intercepts were collated before being passed on to Station X—the Government Code and Cypher School at Bletchley Park.
“One for Dr. Wiles, by the look of it,” the young female analyst decided. She stamped it “HUT A” and put it in the out-tray. It would be with Wiles and his team before dawn …
* * *
The floor was made up of rough stones laid unevenly. It sloped down slightly from the main chamber. Just a few yards, Sarah had decided. But she found herself going farther than that, picking her way carefully in the pale glow of her flashlight. The passageway began to narrow, until she felt her shoulders brushing against the sides. If it got any narrower she would have to go back.
But she couldn’t shake off the feeling that she was following something. Something that kept just ahead of the flashlight beam, hugging the shadows and scuttling through the darkness. She could barely see as it was—her field of view restricted by the scratched and smeared lenses of the gasmask. Tunnel vision in every sense. A few more yards …
Just as she was about to turn back and fetch the others, the passageway opened out. The area was not as large as the main burial chamber, but every bit as dusty and cobweb-strung. More of the rotting material clung to the walls where it had once hung in, Sarah guessed, colorful splendor. Now it had faded to a dull uniform gray, hanging in ancient tatters. There was no other doorway that Sarah could see as she swept the flashlight round the area. Her foot connected with shards of broken pottery and she stumbled. The flashlight beam danced across the walls and ceiling—coming to rest as she regained her balance.
Another light shone back at her.
Sarah blinked, moving her hand instinctively to shield her eyes, and the other flashlight disappeared. She stood for a moment, uncertain.
“Hello?” Her voice was a nervous rumble in her ears, echoing inside the gas mask. She felt suddenly very hot. Couldn’t breathe. The smell of the rubber seal round the edge of the mask almost made her retch. She fumbled with the strap, trying to loosen it slightly, flashlight beam bouncing round the enclosed space.
The other flashlight shone out again, blinding her for a moment before disappearing. Something glinted in the darkness ahead of her. Movement—she was sure of it. A shadow moving across in front of her. She tried to follow it, but the glass eyepieces were steaming up. Her chest heaved, breathing became ragged. She would suffocate if she didn’t get the mask off.
But if she did—the gas …
Never mind the gas. Davenport had said it was probably all gone. Anything—even choking on the pale mist—was better than the clammy feel of the mask, the stuffy, claustrophobic heat of it against her face. Sarah tore it off.
The seal stuck to her skin, and she was afraid for a moment that she was tearing her own flesh away with the mask, that it had fused to her—she’d heard that could happen if your plane caught fire. Head down, hands on her knees, she gulped in the stale, musty air of the tomb. How long would it take her to die if there was still gas around, she wondered? From what Davenport had said it was fairly quick.
Her breathing settled into a more normal rhythm and she was still alive. Sarah straightened up. Swallowed, told herself to stay calm. Stay. Calm.
She pushed the gas mask back into its small satchel which she carried over her shoulder. As she began to feel better, Sarah slowly raised the flashlight, shining it at where she had seen something moving.
There was something there—a figure, staring back at her. A figure
holding a flashlight. Distorted, misshapen … A reflection, she realized. She had scared herself, and she laughed out loud, a pathetic, nervous, dry laugh.
A stone shelf jutted out from the back wall of the chamber. Something on the shelf had reflected back the flashlight beam. Sarah brushed away the hanging cobwebs. The light intensified, reflected back from a row of glass containers. Cylinders with open tops—like huge jars. There were five of them, in a row along the shelf. A sixth was a pile of shattered fragments at the end.
There was something else, in among the fragments of broken glass. Sarah carefully lifted it clear—a bracelet, caked with dust and discolored with age. She was surprised how heavy it was. She rubbed it gently, and the dust and grime fell away—revealing the sparkle of silver tracery beneath.
Looking along the shelf, Sarah could see now that there was a bracelet in front on each of the containers. She slipped the bracelet into the small satchel with her gas mask, and reached for another. It seemed identical—just as heavy, and when she rubbed off the dust it sparkled in the flashlight beam as if it was new.
Closer to the jars now, the beam of flashlight beam penetrated the dusty surface. There was something inside the jars. Liquid. That and the curvature of the glass distorted Sarah’s reflection as she put down the bracelet and wiped at the side of one of the jars with the back of her hand. The jar was heavy, but shifted as she pressed on the glass. Did they have glass back in the Bronze Age? Something stirred inside, disturbed by the movement.
She couldn’t tell if the content of the glass jar was animal or plant matter. It was dark, almost black, as if it had been burned. A bulbous main body the size of a small football, with six legs or branches extending beneath it. Branches or possibly roots, they were gnarled and twisted, textured like the bark of an ancient tree, but segmented and jointed. The creature was a dry husk, brittle and desiccated, like a giant curled-up spider. Dead for centuries.
Sarah peered closer at the other jars, and saw that they held similar contents. It was difficult to make out the details through the discolored, stained glass. There was a scum of green liquid in one of the jars, like brackish water. The liquid stirred. Movement. The vague image of her reflection was like a ghost in front of her. Staring back at her. But the eyes were not her own.
The Suicide Exhibition Page 20
