Shadows

by Thorne Moore

  *

  Ronnie’s students were going to map the bog. I couldn’t stop them, but mapping wouldn’t be so bad, would it? It wouldn’t stir the waters? I’d keep calm and hope that the professor’s embarrassment over Michael’s sculptures would be the only source of discomfort during the dig.

  It wasn’t. Two days later, there was a knock on the front door. The front door that nobody used. I wrenched it open to find Hannah Quigley standing there, chin raised and jaw set.

  ‘Hello, Hannah, what can I do for you?’

  ‘There are men.’ She didn’t bother with the niceties. But plenty of things did bother her. She was no teenager; late twenties I guessed, and fretfulness hung upon her, like her limp, pale hair. What could have been a pretty face was grooved by anxious disapproval. ‘They’re in the trees, lurking.’

  ‘In the orchard, you mean?’ The orchard separated the cottages and paddock from the walled garden by the Great Hall. ‘I expect it’s our builders. They often take their break there when it’s hot.’

  ‘They look at us. I’ve seen them. Trying to look in the windows.’

  ‘The cottage windows? I don’t think they’d see much from the orchard.’

  ‘They shouldn’t be there! This is our site.’

  ‘No, I’m sorry, Hannah, this is our site. You archaeologists have the cottages and the paddock, the builders have the garden, and the orchard is common ground, for everyone. I’m sure we can all learn to live and work together.’

  She was not pleased.

  The next evening she was back. ‘Professor Pryce-Roberts wishes to speak with you. If you could come, please.’

  ‘What’s this about?’

  ‘You’ll have to ask him that.’ She was a hair’s breadth from rudeness so blatant that I’d be obliged to shout at her. ‘Now, if you don’t mind.’

  I glanced at my watch. ‘I’ll see if I can find a moment later on.’

  I did stroll over, a few minutes after she departed in high dudgeon. There might, after all, be a genuine crisis. Ronnie looked up in surprise when I arrived.

  ‘I’ve been summoned,’ I said.

  ‘Ah. Oh, oh dear, Hannah, yes, I said I would speak to you.’

  ‘If it’s about the builders using the orchard —’

  ‘Orchard? Er, no, but we are encountering a little difficulty, up at the secondary dig. I did understand we would be permitted to survey the site.’

  ‘So Mrs Callister agreed.’

  ‘Without hindrance. From the beatniks?’

  ‘Oh Lord. What have they been doing?’

  ‘They seem determined to undermine our activities, with acts of sabotage.’

  ‘Sabotage! That sounds a bit extreme.’

  ‘Well… Tramping through while we’re trying to work. Cutting our guide lines. I did consider calling the police.’

  ‘No need for that. I’m sure we can work things out.’

  ‘It’s that very odd woman,’ said Ronnie. ‘She does seem bent on disrupting us.’

  ‘I’ll have a word, see if we can come to some sort of a compromise. We don’t want the police called in, and everything stopped, do we? Much better to keep the summer school going.’

  ‘Oh! Yes, absolutely,’ said Ronnie.

  *

  I found Al tidying up in the walled garden. Sylvia’s pots and herb beds occupied one sunny corner, but the rest was an open-air builder’s workshop.

  ‘How’s it going?’

  ‘Good.’ He stooped for the last of the tools. ‘Looking good.’

  With the day’s work over, a drowsy silence descended, as the exquisite radiance of the summer evening washed over us. The deep blue-green of the wooded valley was hazed with gold. The horizon rang with the reflected blaze of the sea. It was the wrong time for territorial negotiations.

  ‘Do you have to rush back to your tofu stew?’ I asked.

  Al smiled. ‘I fancied a steak at the pub. The others are off to a gig. I’m giving it a miss, so Kim doesn’t think I’m crowding her.’

  ‘Do you fancy a walk? Up onto the hills?’

  ‘Sure.’ Al fell in beside me, as I headed for the gate into the woods.

  ‘You take care of your sister, don’t you? Not like some brothers.’

  Al winced. ‘I take care because I’m – I was her guardian. We lost our parents when she was twelve.’

  ‘Oh God, I’m sorry. What happened?’

  ‘A car crash.’ He held the gate open for me and we passed into the cathedral hush of the trees. ‘Just a Sunday drive with the dog. A maniac, coming home from the pub, smashed into them. The dog died too.’ He shrugged, painfully. ‘Not so bad for me. I’m nine years older.’

  ‘Did that really make it any better?’

  ‘Better able to cope. Kim couldn’t. She went a bit crazy.’

  ‘Is that why you dropped your course, took up building? To look after her?’

  ‘No, I liked the work, that’s all. Maybe too much. Maybe I’d have made a better guardian if I’d spent more time at home.’

  ‘No one watching you with her could think you were a bad guardian.’

  ‘Guilt-ridden possessiveness? Not always a recipe for success. But I’m learning to let go.’ He smiled at me, his eyes narrow. ‘At least as long as the likes of Christian Callister keep away. They’re like sharks scenting blood. They can sense vulnerability.’

  ‘I’m sure we won’t see him again for months. He’s got the money he wanted and after what he did to Tamsin—’

  ‘She’s recovered?’

  ‘Oh yes, India rubber, she bounces back. Coming home soon.’

  ‘She’s okay. I like her.’

  ‘I’ll tell her you said that.’

  Al laughed, then glanced at me sidelong. Still interested. Very forgiving of him, considering that I had paraded my husband before him and made it plain that I was still annoyingly confused on the subject.

  So confused that I side-stepped to business. ‘I’ve had Professor Ronnie chewing my ear, about you. You’re beatniks, by the way.’

  ‘Love it!’

  ‘Thought you might. Anyway, he’s worried about his dig.’

  ‘I’m worried about his dig,’ said Al.

  ‘I assume Molly’s upset that they’re messing up the bog.’

  ‘Pretty upset, yes. But you’ve given them permission to be there, and it is your land. You’d like us to keep away, I suppose. Are we banned from it?’

  ‘I really don’t want to set up demarcation lines round the place. You’re not banned – but neither are the archaeologists. Can we live and let live? Ask Molly for a bit of forbearance. They’ll only be here for a few weeks.’

  Al nodded. ‘We might be moving our camp on before then.’

  ‘What! You can’t! What about the hall?’

  ‘Don’t worry. We don’t have to camp here to get the job done.’

  ‘But the round house – you’ve got everything settled there.’

  ‘Except that our water’s being fouled up.’

  ‘Oh hell, of course, the stream. You don’t actually drink it, do you?’

  He shrugged. ‘No, mostly we use your well. That’s still clean. All right, you want me to calm things down? Just as long as the professor does the same. The aggravation isn’t all from our side, you know. He’s got a mad woman, constantly haranguing us.’

  ‘Hannah!’ I laughed. Hannah and Molly; we certainly had our share of mad women. ‘Haranguing is her thing. She harangues me whenever she sees me – I’ve started hiding when I see her coming. But she’ll be gone in a fortnight. Can we keep things calm till then?’

  Al grinned. ‘You’re in the middle here, aren’t you?’

  ‘Yip. Poor Sylvia. She had no idea letting them work on the bog would cause trouble. I wish she’d asked me. I’d have put it completely off limits.’

  ‘So it wasn’t your idea?’

  ‘No it certainly was not! God, no!’

  ‘Ah. I assumed, seeing as your professor was told about it by a co
lleague, Peter Lawrence—’

  ‘What!’

  ‘Mr Lawrence advised him to investigate the bog.’

  ‘No!’

  ‘This is what I was told.’

  ‘I…,’ I was spitting. Peter had told Ronnie to investigate the bog? Had my reactions sparked off a curiosity that was so much more important to him than my feelings? ‘How could he!’

  ‘You didn’t suggest it then?’

  ‘No! Never. Believe me!’ Peter knew exactly how I felt about it. He knew how I felt about the discovery of the bones in the hall and yet – and yet – ‘I’ll kill him!’

  ‘Don’t worry about it,’ said Al. ‘I don’t suppose he realised it would create problems.’

  ‘He’s not stupid. Anything but. Oh, how could he!’

  Al slipped an arm round me. ‘Don’t get worked up.’

  ‘And I actually asked him to come back!’

  ‘For a reconciliation?’

  ‘Reconciliation? After this? Ha! What’s the point of deep and meaningful talks, if he just sneaks off behind my back and—’

  ‘Shhh.’ I felt Al’s arm enclosing me, his body absorbing my anger and frustration. Slight stubble against my brow. The smell of plaster dust and faint male sweat.

  Peter really wasn’t stupid. He was quite capable of calculating that the bog excavation would create friction with the camp below. Could it have been a sideswipe at my rough-trade builder friend? My anger doubled, and with it came the lightness of liberation. Had I really been hanging back all these months because I still felt too married to Peter?

  Suddenly I felt very much divorced. ‘Yes, let’s forget all about my bloody husband.’

  *

  Annwfyn. A mystical Otherworld. A place to pass in and out of reality, just as the stars glinted, in and out of the fluttering shimmer of leaves over us, and the red glow of embers on the hearth set phantoms dancing in the creaking undergrowth. A vast sheepskin rug, wide enough to cradle the Celtic knot of entwined limbs, owls bearing our gasps into an echoing void.

  Al kissed the hair from my cheek. ‘Still hungry?’ he asked.

  ‘Ravenous,’ I said.

  ‘Well, you took your time coming to the table, but now that you’re here…,’

  There really is nothing like furious sex for sorting out the grims.

  Chapter 13

  ‘How are you, Taz?’ Al climbed down from a ladder to take a mug from Tamsin. ‘No lasting damage, I see.’

  She’d arrived from college barely an hour before, unmarked by the fox incident. Her first demand had been to see the priest hole, since she’d missed the bones. Her second, unspoken but equally obvious, was to see Al, and as he was working in the Great Hall, she was able to do both, by helping me with the tea duty.

  ‘I’m fine. I hope my pig of a brother rots. But I’m so glad you found me, that day, Al. I don’t know what I’d have done.’ She’d have coped perfectly well, but if she wanted to play the helpless damsel card, who was I to deter her?

  Al gave her a playful hug. ‘Couldn’t have you lost in the wilderness, Taz.’ His eyes met mine, over the rim of his mug.

  ‘Show me where the skeleton was, please, please?’

  I let Al do the honours while I continued passing the tray round for six sweaty men to help themselves to mugs and cake. All right. That was more than enough time for my niece to relish the horror.

  I raised my voice to reclaim their attention. ‘Taz is leaving us in a week or so, Al. Off to Spain, tickets booked.’

  ‘Oh – yeah.’ Al’s magnetism complicated Tamsin’s holiday enthusiasm. ‘It won’t be for long. I’m meeting up with friends at Heathrow. Just friends. No one special.’

  ‘Heathrow? In a week or so, you say?’

  ‘Yeah, next Thursday.’

  ‘Well, I need to go to London sometime in the next few weeks. You fancy a lift to the airport?’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Mega!’ Tamsin gave him a hugely physical hug. ‘Michael said he’d take me, but this would be, you know…,’

  Al grinned at me over her head, keeping his balance with difficulty. ‘How about you, Kate? Fancy a trip to London, to chaperone your niece?’

  ‘You kidding?’ Tamsin was appalled.

  ‘Hey, I just thought your mother would want someone with you, at the airport.’

  ‘I don’t need anyone. Tell him, Kate.’

  ‘I think it’s a clever idea. Listen.’ I drew her aside. ‘You know Sylvia will worry. She still tries to hold your hand, crossing the road. Once she starts thinking about your flight, she’ll probably want to come herself, make a big fuss, dig out a nice old biddy to sit with you on the plane.’

  Tamsin groaned.

  ‘If I tell her I’m going, she’ll stop fretting and you can trust me to stand clear and leave you to it.’

  ‘I suppose.’ Tamsin heaved an exasperated sigh. ‘But you won’t—’

  ‘Oh, er, Mrs Lawrence, hello?’ With much flapping and panting, an archaeology student burst into the hall.

  ‘Yes, what is it?’

  The boy ground to a halt, stooping to recover his breath. ‘We’ve found something. RPR says to let you know at once, so you can see.’

  ‘Found what?’

  ‘A body! At least, I dunno. I think it’s a body. I was on the other site. They just said to run down and tell you. They’re getting equipment and stuff. So—’

  ‘Right. Where have they found it?’

  ‘It’s in the bog.’

  Of course it was in the bog. The blood turned sluggish in my veins, as I stood staring at the secret panel Al had left ajar. It was all as inevitable as a Greek tragedy. The dead of past centuries were going to keep rising from their unsuspected tombs, because I had arrived on the scene, a magnet for death, drawing them inexorably to me.

  ‘Yes. That’s very interesting. I see.’ My automaton calmness was an island in a chaotic sea. Uproar. Tools and mugs were dropped. Al, Tamsin, the boy, everyone was speaking.

  ‘What is it? Is this for real? Ooh, another one! You mean they’ve dug up a body? Let’s go!’ Everyone was excited, keen to see. In the general exodus from the hall I found myself left behind. Switched off.

  ‘Kate. You okay?’ Al returned, with Tamsin, torn two ways, in tow.

  ‘Yes.’ Switch on, Kate. ‘We’d better go and take a look, hadn’t we.’

  ‘No rush,’ said Al. ‘Would you prefer not to come? I can go and see what this fuss is about.’

  ‘No. I’m coming.’ I pulled myself together and marched out, up into the woods, accompanied by Tamsin’s excited babble.

  And then I stopped. Ahead of us, Hannah Quigley was advancing, a hand raised. ‘I’m sorry, I can’t let you go any further. Turn back please.’

  ‘Have they pulled it out?’ asked Tamsin eagerly.

  ‘I’m afraid I can’t discuss it,’ said Hannah, her self-importance so ridiculous that, in other circumstances, it would have had me laughing. ‘It’s a very important find and you must leave it to Professor Pryce-Roberts. He mustn’t be disturbed. There have already been people making trouble. I am going to call the police, have them arrested.’

  ‘No, you are not calling the police, Hannah. If anyone does that on this property, it will be me, do you understand that? Now, what sort of trouble?’

  ‘That woman! She needs to be arrested. I told her—’

  I wasn’t going to learn anything by listening to Hannah’s diatribes, so I side-stepped her.

  She thrust out her arm to stop me, thumping into my chest. I could feel her quivering. Was she seriously going to fight me?

  ‘Off you go!’ Before I could react, Al had hold of her wrist and spun her round like a doll. ‘Come on, Kate.’

  Hannah was left staring after us, near to tears and nursing her wrist.

  ‘You didn’t hurt her, did you?’ I asked.

  ‘Did she hurt you?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘That’s all right then. Look, i
f there’s trouble, I’d better get to Molly. You don’t mind?’

  ‘Yes, go.’ I let him bound on, at a run, Tamsin eager on his heels.

  Around me, students were running around through the woods as if they’d found the holy grail. Did anyone understand that this wasn’t just some academic artefact? They were dealing with someone’s horrific death. They had no right to go dragging it up into cruel daylight as some fascinating exhibit. Leave the dead where they had come to rest.

  I followed at my own pace, which was slow whenever I thought of what lay ahead, and faster whenever I thought of Hannah, left to her own devices, calling in the riot squad. I was just within sight of the milling crowd that had gathered around the excavation, when Al emerged from it and waved.

  We met half way. ‘Don’t worry,’ he said. ‘Nothing really to see and the riot’s over. I’ve persuaded Molly to walk away. She’s gone up to the stones, to appease the spirits.’

  ‘Screaming curses?’

  ‘Almost. She thinks we shouldn’t be taking something back, once it’s been given to the Goddess. Even a human sacrifice.’

  ‘Tell the archaeologists that.’

  ‘Archaeologists! Call this an excavation?’ Al shook his head. ‘One of the stupid prats fell in. Left a boot under a submerged log, so they decided to rig up a hoist, drag the log out and retrieve the boot. Of course they managed to stir up the whole soup and up it bobbed. Your friend Ronnie can’t decide whether to crucify them for unscientific procedure or give them medals.’

  I stared up towards the dark hollow. ‘Have they got it out yet?’

  ‘No. I don’t think the Professor would have the first idea how. He doesn’t know any more idea about excavating bogs than his students.’

  ‘How would you do it?’

  ‘I wouldn’t do it.’

  ‘Nor I.’

  ‘Because we knew there was something there, didn’t we?’

  ‘What on earth are you talking about?’

  ‘Come on.’ Al linked his arm in mine. ‘I’ve seen your eyes fix and your fists clench, up there. You’ve sensed it.’ He swept his hair back, frowning. ‘Me too, definitely—’