“But think of it!” said Katie. “There – where Nigel’s digging – that could be the island where the castle used to stand, where the Lady of Shalott weaved her tapestries. And these were the fields where the reapers heard her singing! And that ditch was the river, where she floated down to Camelot in her boat, singing her last lament before she died!”
“If any of that is true, sweetheart, then this is the hill where you and I and Historic Site Assessment Plc went instantly bankrupt.”
“But we’d be famous, wouldn’t we?”
“No, we wouldn’t. You don’t think for one moment that we’d be allowed to dig it up, do you? Every medieval archeologist from every university in the western hemisphere would be crawling all over this site like bluebottles over a dead hedgehog.”
“We’re perfectly well qualified.”
“No, darling, we’re not, and I think you’re forgetting what we do. We don’t get paid to find sites of outstanding archeological significance interest, we get paid not to find them. Bronze Age buckle? Shove it in your pocket and rediscover it five miles away, well away from the proposed new supermarket site. An Iron Age sheep pen, fine. We can call in aJCB and have it shifted to the Ancient Britain display at Frome. But not Shalott, Katie. Shalott would bloody sink us.”
They struggled down the hill and across the meadow. The rain began to ease off, but the wind was still blustery. As they clambered down the ditch, and up the other side, Nigel stood up and took off his helmet. He was very tall, Nigel, with tight curly hair, a large complicated nose, and a hesitant, disconnected way of walking and talking. But Mark hadn’t employed him for his looks or his physical co-ordination or his people skills. He had employed him because of his MA Hist and his Dip Arch & Landscape, which were prominently displayed on the top of the company notepaper.
“Nigel! How’s it going? Katie tells me you’ve found Shalott.”
“Well – no – Mark! I don’tlike to jump to – you know – hah! – hasty conclusions! Not when we could be dealing with – pff! I don’t know! – the most exciting archeological find ever! But these stones, look!”
Mark turned to Katie and rolled up his eyes in exaggerated weariness. But Katie said, “Go on, Mark. Look.”
Nigel was circling around the rough grassy tussocks, flapping his hands. “I’ve cut back some of the turf, d’you see – and – underneath – well, see?” He had already exposed six or seven rectangular stones, the color of well-matured Cheddar cheese. Every stone bore a dense pattern of chisel-marks, as if it had been gnawed by a giant stone-eating rat.
“Bath stone,” said Nigel. “Quarried from Hazlebury most likely, and look at that jadding . . . late thirteenth century, in my humble opinion. Certainly not cut by the old method.”
Mark peered at the stones and couldn’t really see anything but stones. “The old method?”
Nigel let out a honk of laughter. “Silly, isn’t it? The old method is what quarrymen used to call the new method – cutting the stone with saws, instead of breaking it away with bars.”
“What wags they were. But what makes you think this could be Shalott?”
Nigel shielded his eyes with his hand and looked around the meadow, blinking. “The location suggests it, more than anything else. You can see by the way these foundation-stones are arranged that there was certainly a tower here. You don’t use stones five feet thick to build a single-story pigsty, do you? But then you have to ask yourself why would you build a tower here?”
“Do you? Oh yes, I suppose you do.”
“You wouldn’t have picked the middle of a valley to build a fort,” said Nigel. “You would only build a tower here as a folly, or to keep somebody imprisoned, perhaps.”
“Like the Lady of Shalott?”
“Well, exactly.”
“So, if there was a tower here, where’s the rest of it?”
“Oh, pilfered, most likely. As soon its owners left it empty, most of the stones would have been carried off by local smallholders, for building walls and stables and farmhouses. I’ll bet you could still find them if you went looking for them.”
“Well, I’ll betyou could,” said Mark, blowing his nose. “Pity they didn’t take the lot.”
Nigel blinked at him through rain-speckled glasses. “If they’d done that, hah! we never would have known that this was Shalott, would we?”
“Precisely.”
Nigel said, “I don’t think the tower was standing here for very long. At a very rough estimate it was built just before 1275, and most likely abandoned during the Black Death, around 1340.”
“Oh, yes?” Mark was already trying to work out what equipment they were going to need to shift these stones and where they could dump them. Back at Hazelbury quarry, maybe, where they originally came from. Nobody would ever find them there. Or maybe they could sell them as garden benches. He had a friend in Chelsea who ran a profitable sideline in ancient stones and 18th century garden ornaments, for wealthy customers who weren’t too fussy where they came from.
Nigel took hold of Mark’s sleeve and pointed to a stone that was still half-buried in grass. There were some deep marks chiseled into it. “Look-you can just make out a cross, and part of a skull, and the letters DSPM. That’s an acronym for medieval Latin, meaning ‘God save us from the pestilence within these walls.’”
“So whoever lived in this tower was infected with the Black Death?”
“That’s the most obvious assumption, yes.”
Mark nodded. “Okay, then . . .” he said, and kept on nodding.
“This is very, very exciting,” said Nigel. “I mean, it’s – well! – it could be stupefying, when you come to think of it!”
“Yes,” said Mark. He looked around the site, still nodding. “Katie told me you’d found some metal thing.”
“Well! Hah! That’s the clincher, so far as I’m concerned! At least it will be, if it turns out to be what I think it is!”
He strode back to the place where he had been digging, and Mark reluctantly followed him. Barely visible in the mud was a length of blackened metal, about a metre-and-a-half long and curved at both ends.
“It’s a fireguard, isn’t it?” said Mark. Nigel had cleaned a part of it, and he could see that there were flowers embossed on it, and bunches of grapes, and vine-tendrils. In the center of it was a lump that looked like a human face, although it was so encrusted with mud that it was impossible to tell if it was a man or a woman.
Mark peered at it closely. “An old Victorian fireguard, that’s all.”
“I don’t think so,” said Nigel. “I think it’s the top edge of a mirror. And a thirteenth century mirror, at that.”
“Nigel . . . a mirror, as big as that, in 1275? They didn’t have glass mirrors in those days, remember. This would have to be solid silver, or silver-plated, at least.”
“Exactly!” said Nigel. “A solid silver mirror – five feet across.”
“That’s practically unheard of.”
“Not if The Lady of Shalott was true. She had a mirror, didn’t she, not for looking at herself, but for looking at the world outside, so that she could weave a tapestry of life in Camelot, without having to look at it directly!
“‘There she weaves by night and day
A magic web with colors gay.
She has heard a whisper say
A curse is on her if she stay
To look down to Camelot.
“But moving through a mirror clear
That hangs before her all the year,
Shadows of the world appear . . .’”
Katie joined in.
“And in her web she still delights
To weave the mirror’s magic sights
For often thro’ the silent nights
A funeral, with plumes and lights
And music, went to Camelot.”
“Top of the class,” said Mark. “Now, how long do you think it’s going to take to dig this out?”
“Oh . . . several weeks,” said
Nigel. “Months, even.”
“I hope that’s one of your University of Essex jokes.”
“No, well, it has to be excavated properly. We don’t want to damage it, do we? And there could well be other valuable artifacts hidden in the soil all around it. Combs, buttons, necklaces, who knows? We need to fence this area off, don’t we, and inform the police, and the British Museum?”
Mark said, “No, Nigel, we don’t.”
Nigel slowly stood up, blinking with perplexity. “Mark – we have to! This tower, this mirror – they could change the entire concept of Arthurian legend! They’re archeological proof that the Lady of Shalott wasn’t just a story, and that Camelot was really here!”
“Nigel, that’s a wonderful notion, but it’s not going to pay off our overdraft, is it?”
Katie said, “I don’t understand. If this is the Lady of Shalott’s mirror, and it’s genuine, it could be worth millions!”
“It could, yes. But not to us. Treasure trove belongs to HM Government. Not only that, this isn’t our land, and we’re working under contract for the county council. So our chances of getting a share of it are just about zero.”
“So what are you suggesting?” said Nigel. “You want us to bury it again, and forget we ever found it? We can’t do that!”
“Oh, no,” Mark told him, “I’m not suggesting that for a moment.” He pointed to the perforated vines in the top of the frame. “We could run a couple of chains through here, though, couldn’t we, and use the Range Rover to pull it out?”
“What? That could cause irreparable damage!”
“Nigel – everything that happens in this world causes irreparable damage. That’s the whole definition of history.”
The rain had stopped completely now and Katie pushed back her hood. “I hate to say it, Mark, but I think you’re right. We found this tower, we found this mirror. If we report it, we’ll get nothing at all. No money, no credit. Not even a mention in the papers.”
Nigel stood over the metal frame for a long time, his hand thoughtfully covering the lower part of his face.
“Well?” Mark asked him, at last. It was already growing dark, and a chilly mist was rising between the knobbly-topped willow-trees.
“All right, then, bugger it,” said Nigel. “Let’s pull the bugger out.”
Mark drove the Range Rover down the hill and jostled along the banks of the ditch until he reached the island of Shalott. He switched on all the floodlights, front and rear, and then he and Nigel fastened towing-chains to the metal frame, wrapping them in torn T-shirts to protect the mouldings as much as they could. Mark slowly revved the Range Rover forward, its tires spinning in the fibrous brown mud. Nigel screamed, “Steady! Steady!” like a panicky hockey-mistress.
At first the metal frame wouldn’t move, but Mark tried pulling it, and then easing off the throttle, and then pulling it again. Gradually, it began to emerge from the peaty soil which covered it, and even before it was halfway out, he could see that Nigel was right, and that it was a mirror – or a large sheet of metal, anyway. He pulled it completely free, and Nigel screamed, “Stop!”
They hunkered down beside it and shone their flashlights on it. The decorative vine-tendrils had been badly bent by the towing-chains, but there was no other obvious damage. The surface of the mirror was black and mottled, like a serious bruise, but otherwise it seemed to have survived its seven hundred years with very little corrosion. It was over an inch thick and it was so heavy that they could barely lift it.
“What do we do now?” asked Katie.
“We take it back to the house, we clean it up, and we try to check out its provenance – where it was made, who made it, and what its history was. We have it assayed. Then we talk to one or two dealers who are interested in this kind of thing, and see how much we can get for it.”
“And what about Shalott?” asked Nigel. In the upward beam of his flashlight, his face had become a theatrical mask.
“You can finish off your survey, Nigel. I think you ought to. But give me two versions. One for the county council, and one for posterity. As soon as you’re done, I’ll arrange for somebody to take all the stones away, and store them. Don’t worry. You’ll be able to publish your story in five or ten years’ time, and you’ll probably make a fortune out of it.”
“But the island – it’s all going to be lost.”
“That’s the story of Britain, Nigel. Nothing you can do can change it.”
They heaved the mirror into the back of the Range Rover and drove back into Wincanton. Mark had rented a small end-of-terrace house on the outskirts, because it was much cheaper than staying in a hotel for seven weeks. The house was plain, flat-fronted, with a scrubby front garden and a dilapidated wooden garage. In the back garden stood a single naked cherry-tree. Inside, the ground-level rooms had been knocked together to make a living-room with a dining area at one end. The carpet was yellow with green Paisley swirls on it, and the furniture was reproduction, all chintz and dark varnish.
Between them, grunting, they maneuvered the mirror into the living-room and propped it against the wall. Katie folded up two bath-towels and they wedged it underneath the frame to stop it from marking the carpet.
“I feel like a criminal,” said Nigel.
Mark lit the gas fire and briskly chafed his hands. “You shouldn’t. You should feel like an Englishman, protecting his heritage.”
Katie said, “I still don’t know if we’ve done the right thing. I mean, there’s still time to declare it as a treasure trove.”
“Well, go ahead, if you want Historical Site Assessment to go out of business and you don’t want a third share of whatever we can sell it for.”
Katie went up to the mirror, licked the tip of her finger and cleaned some of the mud off it. As she did so, she suddenly recoiled, as if she had been stung. “Ow,” she said, and stared at her fingertip. “It gave me a shock.”
“A shock? What kind of a shock?”
“Like static, you know, when you get out of a car.”
Mark approached the mirror and touched it with all five fingers of his left hand. “I can’t feel anything.” He licked his fingers and tried again, and this time he lifted his hand away and said, “Ouch! You’re right! It’s like it’s charged.”
“Silver’s very conductive,” said Nigel, as if that explained everything. “Sir John Raseburne wore a silver helmet at Agin-court, and he was struck by lightning. He was thrown so far into the air that the French thought he could fly.”
He touched the mirror himself. After a while, he said, “No, nothing. You must have earthed it, you two.”
Mark looked at the black, diseased surface of the mirror and said nothing.
That evening, Mark ordered a takeaway curry from the Win-canton Tandoori in the High Street, and they ate chicken Madras and mushroom bhaji while they took it in turns to clean away seven centuries of tarnish.
Neil played The Best of Matt Monro on his CD player. “I’m sorry . . . I didn’t bring any of my madrigals.”
“Don’t apologize. This is almost medieval.”
First of all, they washed down the mirror with warm soapy water and cellulose carsponges, until all of the peaty soil was sluiced off it. Katie stood on a kitchen chair and cleaned all of the decorative detail at the top of the frame with a toothbrush and Q-tips. As she worried the mud out of the human head in the center of the mirror, it gradually emerged as a woman, with high cheekbones and slanted eyes and her hair looped up in elaborate braids. Underneath her chin there was a scroll with the single word Lamia.
“Lamia?” said Mark. “Is that Latin, or what?”
“No, no, Greek,” said Nigel. “It’s the Greek name for Lilith, who was Adam’s first companion, before Eve. She insisted on having the same rights as Adam and so God threw her out of Eden. She married a demon and became the queen of demons.”
He stepped closer to the mirror and touched the woman’s faintly-smiling lips. “Lamia was supposed to be the most incredibly
beautiful woman you could imagine. She had white skin and black eyes and breasts that no man could resist fondling. Just one night with Lamia and pfff! – you would never look at a human woman again.”
“What was the catch?”
“She sucked all of the blood out of you, that’s all.”
“You’re talking about my ex again.”
Katie said, “I seem to remember that John Keats wrote a poem called Lamia, didn’t he?”
“That’s right,” said Nigel. “A chap called Lycius met Lamia and fell madly in love with her. The trouble is, he didn’t realize that she was a blood-sucker and that she was cursed by God.”
“Cursed?” said Katie.
“Yes, God had condemned her for her disobedience for ever. ’some penanced lady-elf . . . some demon’s mistress, or the demon’s self.’”
“Like the Lady of Shalott.”
“Well, I suppose so, yes.”
“Perhaps they were one and the same person . . . Lamia, and the Lady of Shalott.”
They all looked at the woman’s face on top of the mirror. There was no question that she was beautiful; and even though the casting had a simplified, medieval style, the sculptor had managed to convey a sense of slyness, and of secrecy.
“She was a bit of a mystery, really,” said Nigel. “She was supposed to be a virgin, d’you see, ‘yet in the lore of love deep learned to the red heart’s core.’ She was a blood-sucking enchantress, but at the same time she was capable of deep and genuine love. Men couldn’t resist her. Lycius said she gave him ‘a hundred thirsts.’”
“Just like this bloody Madras chicken,” said Mark. “Is there any more beer in the fridge?”
Katie carried on cleaning the mirror long after Mark and Nigel had grown tired of it. They sat in two reproduction armchairs drinking Stella Artois and eating cheese-and-onion crisps and heckling Question Time, while Katie applied 3M’s Tarni-Shield with a soft blue cloth and gradually exposed a circle of shining silver, large enough to see her own face.
The Mammoth Book of Terror Page 16
