Bad Moon Rising
………As performed by Credence Clearwater Revival
“Okay, Malcolm…Deck, you take the big green bags. I’ll take the tent. Simon, you and Lady Madeline take the breakables and the gadgets. Let’s get this party started,” Mitch said as he got out of the car in the makeshift parking lot. Simon seemed to manage the walk well enough the first time, and in one of their few moments in private, Lady Madeline had told Mitch he wasn’t really doing Simon any favors by babying him so much and made him promise to try and let Simon be more independent, and so he did, or at least he tried anyway.
It wasn’t going to be easy, but Mitch understood her point and decided not to have the path widened after all. Maybe a little roughing it would toughen Simon up some. He would need it if he was going to stick to his favorite periods of the ancient world. But although he did promise, it didn’t mean he couldn’t watch Simon like a hawk, just in case.
The newbies—Simon, Malcolm and Deck—were as excited as children on a day at the circus while Mitch and Lady Madeline were more circumspect about the magnitude of the work that lay ahead of them. By the time they got to the clearing on the other side of the path, they were already ankle deep in mud. Mitch chose a clear grassy spot under an overhang of trees off to the side for everyone to dump their bags.
As English weather would have it, the day before had been a big mess of rain then fog, but as he stood there, the weather was glorious. The sun was shining, the sky was blue and there wasn’t a rain cloud to be seen anywhere. But for the mud, it was as perfect an early spring day as they could have wanted, so as he always did before starting any kind of physical work, Mitch did a number of stretching exercises and encouraged everyone else to follow suit, and to no one’s surprise, Simon was the first to join him.
Not to be outdone by a couple of Americans, Mal and Deck joined in, vigorously taking to the deep knee bends and by the end were showing off with jumping jacks. Lady Madeline just stood by amused. Men! she thought as she watched the four good-looking young men doing their exercises. As trying as they can be sometimes, but what a boring world it would be without them.
With the exercises done, Mitch started doling out the duties for the day. “Who’s good with numbers and measurements?” he asked the assembled company. Simon raised his hand. Mal and Deck looked at each other comically. Mal got off the first shot.
“He is,” he said pointing to Deck and giving him a playful brotherly shove, almost tipping him over.
“Okay then; Simon and Deck. I want you guys to measure and tape off the perimeter. Simon, you know how far we need to go to capture the lion’s share of the area that might hold anything. You get the compass and the tripod. Deck you do the walking and tape off the area,” Mitch ordered like a beneficent general, handing him three rolls of CAUTION tape, a bag full of wooden stakes and a mallet.
Mitch was glad it was Deck who was the one who was good with numbers. He could tell he liked Simon and would keep an eye out for him without making it seem too obvious. He had what Mitch might have called a ‘good ol’ boy’ nature. “Mal, you and I’ll grid off the inner foundation of the main building,” Mitch said, handing him a large spool of red string, another bag of wooden stakes and another mallet. “Lady Madeline, how about you direct the action here with Mal and me and maybe set up the tent as much as you can. When you need us we’ll come over and do the man’s work.”
Indeed, you will not! Lady Madeline thought to herself. I was throwing up bigger tents than that on the banks of the Nile while you, Dr. Mitchell ‘I’m the man’ Bramson, were still learning your way around a bra hook. And she laughed to herself. But before she even got to that, she had to get them started on the gridding. She was really dying to find out what that granite statue was.
She pondered it at length, Granite. It certainly wasn’t part of the building itself. The building was red sandstone. It was old. She knew that, and she didn’t disagree with Mitch’s opinion that the carving on it was early Celtic in style and design. It intrigued her.
As she was following behind them, barking instructions as to how to lay the grid, she remembered that she’d completely forgotten to tell him about what she’d learned from the Crane family Estate papers. “Oh, and by the way, Mitchell. I can, with certainty, date this structure to at least 1323 and can with some authority say that it’s much older, at least dating back to our William,” she said matter-of-factly, not above blowing her own horn when necessary. He stopped what he was doing.
“Really? And pray tell, Lady Madeline. How did we determine this?” he asked her in a stagely false English accent to pull her leg a little.
“Well, my boy…” she said, deciding to have a go at yanking one of the Yank’s peacock feathers for him by calling him, my boy. “I did my homework; I went to the local archives. You remember I did tell you I was going, didn’t I? And guess what I found in the Crane family papers? Letters between the first Crane to own this land and his cousin. It was a grant to him from King Edward II dated 1323 and the substance of those letters was that he was complaining that Edward had done him no real favors by the grant because the castle, called Revelstoke by the way, was already a ruin,” Lady Madeline said, flexing her own brand of muscles and leaving them hanging.
“And?” Mitch asked, waiting for the upshot and giving her his undivided attention, knowing that she really did have him by the seat of the pants.
“And…” she continued, “…now follow this closely. I didn’t get it the first time I read it. It’s really a logic question. His cousin responded that there had been no need to build another fortified castle in the area since the days of William and recommended that Crane build a manor house instead. Get it? Revelstoke was a fortified castle and a ruin by 1323, no need to build another one since the days of William?” she led him by the nose and did a good job of it. She could see the light go off in his head.
“Lady Madeline! I could kiss you. As a matter of fact I think I will,” Mitch said and walked over to her and kissed her on the cheek.
“Thank you, my boy. I’ll take that as a compliment, American Style,” she said proudly. “So now we have not one date to work with, but two.”
“Wow!” was all Malcolm could muster, nodding to them, very impressed. “This place is almost a thousand years old, crazy cool.”
“Well, ‘men,’ don’t just stand there like a couple of prize dodos. We have digging to do and I’d like to see what that piece of granite is,” she said with her hands on her hips. Now who was giving orders? she thought to herself proudly. She still had it.
From there she decided that they would set Malcolm to poking around with a thin rod to determine how deep the soil would be before they hit what might be left of the floor. Once it was determined to be eight inches deep or less, she set him to digging in the far west corner of the grid with a small shovel and a hand spade while she and Mitch tried to clear some of the mud away from the granite piece in the center of the room a hundred feet away, and they set to it.
Malcolm, being an amateur, took his time, not wanting to destroy anything he might come across by being too enthusiastic, a good quality in a young archaeologist, so he thought it best to only loosen the thick claylike mud with the shovel rather than actually dig with it.
Once it was loosened, he got down on his hands and knees and used the garden spade to gently sort through the clumps of grassy mud until he was sure he was close to floor level, but he had trouble concentrating. There were too many noises around him for him to concentrate properly. At first he couldn’t seem to get rid of some damn fly buzzing around his ears, irritating him to no end.
It seemed no matter how much or how hard he swatted at it, the stubborn bastard still came back and was buzzing around his head in seconds. Then he started hearing a sound in the trees above his head, like an owl, but not being much of a country boy, it was hard to be certain, but it sure made him angry.
“It really must be great living in New York City. I’ve never
been anywhere further than London and a few camping trips with Mal and Jed to Scotland when we were in our teens,” Deck said as he walked in a straight line away from where Simon was looking through the gadget on the tripod and waving to him with his hand. Simon looked up.
“Then I guess we’re not all that different because I’ve never been anywhere outside of Manhattan until now,” Simon smiled, shrugging and then bent down again to look through the eye. “To the left, to the left,” he waved.
Once Deck hammered in the stake and tied the caution tape to it, Simon came toward him carrying the tripod to set it down over the second stake, pointing it in the next direction. “Dr. Bramson seems to be a good sort to work for. I like him. So how did you get your job with him?” Deck asked, walking with his tape in another straight line according to Simon’s waving direction. Simon didn’t know what to say; too innately honest to make up a suitable lie on the spot, he just decided to tell the truth.
“Dr. Bramson gave a lecture at my high school. I wrote him a thank you note and he came to see me,” Simon said, letting himself drift again back to that day.
“Nice! Your family must be very proud of you,” Deck said, unaware. Simon stopped waving but didn’t stand up.
“I don’t have any family, Deck. He found me in Catholic foster home,” Simon said, then realized he was embarrassed. Deck stopped and turned around.
“I’m sorry, Simon, I didn’t mean to pry.”
“It’s okay,” Simon replied standing up. “It is what it is. Dr. Bramson came and took me out of the home and put me through college, then got me a job with him at the museum.”
Deck couldn’t help but look down at Simon’s leg brace then. Simon followed his eyes. “It was broken when I was a baby and didn’t heal right,” Simon said in advance, rather than waiting to be asked and bent over to look through the glass again.
“I’m sorry, Simon,” Deck said, an expression of genuine compassion washing over his face, not needing a map to figure out that Simon’s leg wasn’t just…‘simply broken’ and that he hadn’t just ‘simply’ ended up in alone in a charity home. It explained a lot of his behavior, his nervousness, his skittishness around strangers. Deck’s fondness for Simon and respect for Dr. Bramson immediately increased ten-fold, but he also knew it was time to change the subject. “Well, I’m glad you came. This dig is the most exciting thing to happen to me since I got to see the Queen when she came to Exeter,” he smiled and shrugged, “Yes, sad, I know,” he laughed.
It took them about two hours of taping while chatting about everything from Gwen Stefani and the Statue of Liberty to gangsta rap and MySpace before finishing off the entire perimeter, not finding anything in particular from an archaeological standpoint. By then they were both getting hungry and Simon’s leg was starting to ache from all the walking on uneven ground, so they decided to take a shortcut through the forest back to the camp, using the towers as a guide.
Deck deliberately reduced his gait and slowed his pace noticing that Simon’s limp had gotten worse over the course of the morning, doing his best to stay close without seeming to hover. They chatted more as they walked, dodging fallen logs and clumps of brush as they went; Jerry Springer and CSI.
Simon couldn’t help but notice how beautiful the light shining through the trees was as he walked, and the breeze seemed to make him feel sleepy. More jet lag? he thought to himself as he struggled to keep his eyes open; his leg seeming as heavy as…lead, moving slower.
He looked up towards the sky, at the sun shining through the trees, trying to stay focused on the towers for direction. Neither of them noticed the thick strands of ivy working their way through the underbrush close to Simon’s braced leg; quickly wrapping themselves around it like a snake, alive and striking.
Without warning his leg jerked out from underneath him. The next thing he knew he was falling with the force of having been pushed, but he wasn’t in the forest, or in England, and the tug wasn’t the vine on his leg: it was the wet towel from around his waist. He was fifteen and back at Holy Family, just come out of the shower. It was pitch black, night. He showered late at night so no one would see his leg.
The force of the tug on the towel had left him naked. He felt his wet foot slip and his body tumbling into the blackness of the stairwell toward the basement. He heard the booming voice coming from behind him in the dark as he hit the floor at the bottom with a crashing thud, shaking with cold, humiliated beyond all imagination. “Hey, let’s see if ya got a club dick to go with that club foot,” it laughed as he laid there in the dark, afraid, but even more terrified that they’d turn on the light and see him that way.
Then he was back, breathless, the ground coming closer to his face like he was falling down a tunnel; another sharp jerk, the achy pain he’d had in his upper body all morning making him wince. He was hanging, suspended in air, his throat only inches above the sharp pointed end of a jagged, broken branch from a fallen tree.
“Whoa, laddie, not so fast,” he heard Deck’s voice come laughing from behind him as he felt himself being pulled back to standing. “It wouldn’t do a’tall for me to bring you back to Dr. Bramson damaged, now would it?” Deck said, his big, strong hand still holding firmly onto the collar of Simon’s jacket and shirt.
Helplessly trembling with physical insecurity, Simon looked up to see Deck’s eyes, warm, friendly and…protective.
“Thanks, Deck,” he said, looking back down at his leg, crimson with embarrassment at trembling like a frightened child and being so clumsy, seeming so helpless. “I really should know by now to pay more attention to where I’m going.”
“No sweat, mate,” Deck smiled kindly, “that’s what friends are for,” and put his hand on Simon’s shoulder. Simon wanted to cry. He didn’t know what to say. He’d never had many friends before.
***
It wasn’t long before Malcolm gave up swatting at the fly and just let it have its way, the buzz around his head becoming more of a soothing hum; then from a hum to being like a flea in his ear, talking to him, whispering to him. “No,” he said to it, quietly at first, but it insisted. “No,” he said again. It was upsetting him now. “No! No! No! No!” he repeated, getting louder and more upset as he dug until he was almost shouting.
“What’s going on, Malcolm?” Mitch said to him, startling him by standing over him. “Did you find something?”
“No, sir. It’s just this bloody fly keeps buzzing around my head and I can’t seem to get rid of it,” Mal answered, swatting around his head again, looking annoyed. By then Lady Madeline was standing behind Mitch.
“Gnats bothering you there, my dear?” she asked, then without waiting for him to answer went about spraying the area around him with a can of bug spray. “That ought to get the little buggers,” she said proudly at being able to come to the rescue again.
Mitch and Lady Madeline went back to the granite statue. They had determined by then that it wasn’t really a statue at all but a monument. As far as they could tell, it had been toppled over and stood between six and eight feet tall when erect, but had only managed to uncover its length, not its depth.
They determined that it was a monument rather than a statue because, from the six or so inches of depth they had uncovered before they were interrupted by Malcolm’s gnats, they could tell it wasn’t a human figure but more an early Christian Celtic cross; a squared knob on the top of a circle with another knob protruding from the side of the circle facing them. They figured that circular part was about eighteen inches in diameter and each knob was six inches in length; the remaining base that had been uncovered was at that point seven feet long.
After another half hour of digging and pushing away mud, they concluded that it was indeed an early Christian Celtic cross. But that didn’t explain what it was doing in the center of what was, in essence, a receiving hall. Had the area they’d been digging in been a chapel or a burial ground one might have expected to find it where it was, but in the center of what would have been the mai
n dining area or reception hall? It didn’t make sense to either of them.
The next test would be to put a date to it. That might give them something to go on and certainly gave them much to think about and research. But before they could go further they heard Malcolm again. “No, no, no, no!” Lady Madeline was the first to reach him.
“Are you alright, my boy?” He turned suddenly covered in mud up to his elbows, a dazed look in his eyes, his face all smudged. He’d thrown down the spade and had begun digging in the mud with his hands; drenched in sweat. “Here, here, my boy. There’s no need to rush. We’ve only just begun,” Lady Madeline said and held her hand out to help pull him up off his knees. Mitch came up to them from behind.
“Mal, you’re getting overheated; shoulda warned you about that. Come out of the sun for a while and have a cool drink. It’s lunchtime anyway,” he said taking him by his other hand to help pull him up out of the ditch he’d dug for himself. “You really have been at it, haven’t you?” Mitch said when he got a good look at the depth of the pit.
Just then they heard Deck call, “We’re done!” from outside the compound and come trotting up to them, Simon not far behind. “Look at you!” Deck said when he saw his brother covered in mud. “Mud cakes, Mal? I thought you’d outgrown that,” Deck said and laughed.
Malcolm stood there looking at his arms covered in mud to the elbows and began laughing himself. “I guess I’ll always be young at heart,” he said, flicking the mud off his fingers at his bother.
Mitch looked to Simon smiling. “Simon, would ya take Mal to the stream so he can wash up. It’s lunchtime and I’m hungry. How about you?”
“Starved,” Simon said smiling back, “Come on, Mal. Let’s get you cleaned up so we can eat.”
After lunch, they set about putting up the tent. Lady Madeline, not content to let the men do it, only let them sort and organize. She was going to prove her point if it was the last thing she did, and she did.
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