‘You make such assumptions.’ She smiled at him, her eyes half-closed and slanting. ‘But then, you always did presume too much.’
‘I hope not, my lady.’ He stroked her high, white forehead, then he let his hand rest on her neck, and massaged the bruises there. ‘Today, God gave us a great victory. The minstrels in the hall will sing of it tonight and for the next five thousand years.’
‘Maybe.’ The lady looked at him and frowned. ‘But do the hearth companions know you’re here?’
‘I suppose they must.’
‘But there’s no complaining? The priests do not denounce us, or call upon the bishop?’
‘My lady, after what you did today, the men would follow you across the deserts that lie beyond the sun. Any priest who hinted disapproval of you would be quickly silenced.’
So the lady closed her eyes and slept. The fighting men were getting very drunk, but they were in great good humour, for the lady had already granted land and treasure, and she’d promised more.
Provided no old quarrels, feuds or squabbles were revived, the hearth companions would brag of that day’s exploits until they fell asleep. Then they’d snore the rest of the night away.
* * * *
‘Come on, Susie!’ For a moment, Gavin had forgotten where he was, but now he tried to gather up their sodden, scattered clothing. ‘We can’t stay here all night!’
Susannah stared at him as if she didn’t understand. But finally she struggled to her feet, and to his relief she followed him.
They ran back to the car, heads bowed against the sheeting rain, arms full of clothes, shoes, boots, Susannah’s handbag, Gavin’s Filofax. Everything was covered in orange mud.
Inside the 2CV, it was so warm – at least comparatively – that they began defrosting straight away. By some happy accident, Gavin found a cotton teeshirt lying under his seat. He began to rub Susannah down.
‘You’re mad,’ he told her, as he rubbed. ‘You’re crazy. No, that’s not fair, we’re both insane.’
Susannah frowned at him, but didn’t comment.
Gavin switched on the car’s internal light. ‘You’re so bloody beautiful,’ he whispered. ‘I always thought you were such a little mouse. But you’re a cat, a tigress, you’re – ‘
‘I’m cold,’ complained Susannah. ‘I’m absolutely freezing. Where’s my jumper?’
‘Here.’ Gavin found it, then helped her put it on. ‘But darling, coming here was your idea, so you – ‘
‘What?’ Susannah stared at him.
‘Don’t worry, it was wonderful.’ He kissed her on the mouth. ‘I love you,’ he whispered.
‘We must go.’ Susannah’s teeth were rattling like marbles dropped on cobblestones. ‘Gavin, we can’t stay here, we’ll freeze to death.’
* * * *
The following morning, Gavin woke up in a narrow iron bed. At first he couldn’t work out where he was, but then he remembered, and he grinned.
Although it was only eight o’clock, the minster bells were making such a racket that he knew he wouldn’t get back to sleep. Looking round, he saw his clothes lying in a tangled heap, in a corner of the little room. Getting out of bed, he padded over to the pile, disinterred his jeans and pulled them on.
Glancing in a mirror, he saw mud striped on his face, mud in his hair, mud cracked into mosaics on his chest. Susannah must be filthy too, he thought.
But he couldn’t check, because Susannah wasn’t there.
Just as he began to panic, he heard footsteps on the stairs. He opened the door to let her in. She carried the Sunday Times, a loaf of bread and a pint of milk. ‘You surely haven’t been out like that?’ he teased.
‘Like what?’ She frowned at him.
‘Never mind, come here.’ He kissed her, then unzipped her jeans and started to push them down.
But this time, it was normal. Ordinary. It was very nice, of course, but the earth didn’t move or even tremble. Well, he thought, you can’t have everything. So now he hugged her, kissed her, thought how lovely women were, and wondered how a man could ever fancy other men.
‘It was great last night,’ he murmured, into her mud-caked hair. ‘I thought you were mad at first, but when the rain came down like that, it really turned me on.’
‘What rain?’ Susannah stared at him. Her eyes were clear and candid as a child’s, her brow was furrowed. ‘Gavin, are you all right?’
He looked at her, and suddenly it all clicked into place. ‘Christ, I’ll murder that old sod!’ he cried. ‘Let him wait, just let him bloody wait!’
‘What do you mean?’ Susannah asked, still frowning.
‘Julius Greenwood!’ Gavin glared. ‘He must have put something in your food, or wine. In any case, by six o’clock last night, you were well out of it. Don’t you remember anything at all?’
‘Yes, of course I do. We were in Oxford. We had lunch, then Julius went out.’
‘What happened next?’
‘We were on the sofa in the sitting room, and you kissed me. You wanted to go to bed with me, and so we drove back here. You stayed the night.’
‘You don’t remember going to the site?’
‘The site?’
‘Of the excavation.’
‘Why should we go there?’ Susannah smiled. ‘You must have had a lot to drink!’
‘What do you make of this, then?’ Gavin reached for her jacket. He found her jeans and jumper lying crumpled on the bed. ‘Look,’ he said, ‘our clothes are bloody filthy! Look at you, look at your nails, your hair! All up your legs, great streaks of mud.’
Susannah stared, appalled. ‘It was still dark when I got dressed,’ she whispered. ‘I didn’t think to check my hair, because I was only going to the shop.’ She swallowed hard. ‘You’re saying we went to Little Wellesley?’
‘Yes, my love, that’s right.’
‘We did – what we did just now? But at the excavation, in the open?’ Susannah shook her head. ‘Gavin, don’t be silly. There are guards. They would have seen us.’
‘I dare say they were down the pub.’
‘But it was tipping down last night! You had the wipers on. I do remember that, because one of them needs replacing, and it scrapes across the glass. Gavin, it was cold, it was wet, it would have been so dirty – horrible, in fact.’
‘Yes, it should have been disgusting, but it was fantastic.’
‘But I don’t understand! When we came back here last night, I thought it was the first time.’
‘No, it was the second – or the second occasion, anyway.’
‘My God.’ Susannah bit her lip. ‘Whatever must you think of me?’
‘I think you’re amazing, wonderful, astonishing.’ Gavin stroked her tangled hair. ‘God, we’ve wasted so much time! I’ve known you, what is it – three years?
‘Why didn’t you ask me out before?’
‘I didn’t dare, you’d just have laughed at me.’
‘I wouldn’t!’ cried Susannah.
‘Of course you would,’ said Gavin. ‘You and your clever friends, you never had any time for me. Sweetheart, I would love to lick you clean, but you might prefer to have a shower.’
‘Explain again what happened,’ said Susannah. ‘Take it slowly, tell me everything. I need to understand.’
* * * *
‘I suppose I’ll have to go to work,’ said Gavin, on Monday morning. ‘But first I’ll need to go and buy some trousers and a tie. I can’t turn up in jeans.’
‘I must go to work as well.’ Susannah gave him one last hug. ‘Mind you ring tonight.’
‘You mind you’re here to take the call.’
‘I shall be.’
‘I love you, Susannah.’
‘I – I love you, too.’
‘So don’t look so sad.’
‘I’m not.’ Susannah forced a smile. But although she was happy, she was scared. She’d given Gavin a loaded gun. She’d given far too much away.
She watched him drive off in Jemima, the
n walked across the Close to the library. David was already there, chatting with the dowser.
‘Hello, Mrs Fleming,’ said Susannah. ‘Going to the site today?’
‘Yes, indeed I am.’ Mrs Fleming rose, her chins a-wobble, and all her bangles rattling musically. ‘Dr Linton has agreed to take me.’
Susannah sat down at her desk. ‘What would you like me to do this morning?’ she asked David. ‘Some more millennium stuff?’
‘I think you’ll be needed at the site.’ David picked up Mrs Fleming’s basket. ‘Dora can hold the fort today. So you go and get your stuff, why don’t you, while I fetch the car.’
As they drove to Little Wellesley, Mrs Fleming chattered like a magpie, boasting about her triumphs as a dowser and saying she was going to write a book.
Susannah spent the journey worrying. Gavin had said he loved her, but she didn’t think he’d meant it. Soon, he would leave her and move on to someone else, that was what men like Gavin did. How was she going to deal with it, with having a broken heart?
‘I’ll see you two at lunch time,’ David said, as he parked the Peugeot. ‘Susannah, spend the morning here, then come back to Marbury with me this afternoon. Susannah, are you listening?’
‘What?’ Susannah frowned at him.
‘I’ll see you later, right?’
‘Oh, yes – okay.’
As Susannah walked towards the grave, she glanced across the field to the spot where Gavin said it happened.
This was where the men had parked their lorries and JCBs, where the grass was all churned up and muddy, greasy with leaking engine oil and foul with diesel fuel.
She’d found some streaks of oil along one leg.
‘I’m just going to look for something,’ she told Mike and Anna. ‘I shan’t be a minute.’
‘Okay.’ Anna was far too busy to ask questions. She’d planned to lift the skeleton piece by piece the previous Wednesday, but the bones were proving very fragile, and it was taking longer than expected.
Susannah climbed a barbed-wire fence. How had she and Gavin managed to climb it in the dark? Then she hopped and skipped over the furrows, bumps and ruts.
Soon, she came to a place where the grass was flattened, rolled on or trampled by some animal, perhaps. Except that there were several human footprints in the mud, of two small and two much larger feet, with shoes and without them.
They hadn’t bothered to take their shoes off, surely? But it seemed they had. In any case, she’d found lumps of red mud between her toes. She tried her boot against one of the smaller prints. It was a perfect match.
She stared down at the flattened grass. This was a bad dream, of course – it must be! But now, she found she could recall the noise. There had been lots of men here, they’d been drinking, shouting, laughing. There’d been smells of wood smoke, of beer and dogs, of people and roasting meat.
She shook herself. Surely she couldn’t be that suggestible? She wasn’t a fool, she didn’t believe in magic, in regression. That was just for people who didn’t have anything in their real lives.
Slowly, she walked back to the Saxon’s grave.
* * * *
‘Janet?’ she began, when the diggers stopped for a break, ‘I want to ask you something.’
‘I want to ask you something, too,’ said Janet. ‘What were you doing on the supermarket site? It’s out of bounds to us.’
‘Last week, I lost my fountain pen, it used to be my Dad’s. I thought I might have dropped it when I came back from the farm.’
‘Did you find it there?’
‘No. Listen, Jan, do you do drugs?’
‘You mean, do I turn on?’ asked Janet. ‘Well, I know I look quite rough some mornings. But I didn’t think – ‘
‘I was only asking!’ Susannah felt a blush creep up her neck. ‘I just want to know – ‘
‘No, I don’t do drugs. But if you want some stuff, then Mike’s your man. He knows a guy in Marbury who can lay his hands on anything. Mike?’
‘What is it now, you bossy baggage, can’t a man have just five minutes peace?’ Mike came slouching over, slopping coffee from a plastic cup. ‘Hi, Suke, how’s it going?’
‘Susannah wants some drugs,’ said Janet.
‘Do you?’ Mike looked doubtful. ‘What did you have in mind?’
‘I only want some information!’ Susannah looked from Mike to Janet. ‘I just need to know if there’s anything you could give a person, without the person realising they had taken it. If the person might then act so strangely – ‘
‘What might this person do, then?’ Mike enquired, and grinned.
‘I suppose it could be anything. Pinch stuff from a shop, perhaps? Take off all their clothes in public, jump off a high building maybe, thinking they could fly?’
‘That sounds like someone tripping on LSD or magic mushrooms.’ Mike was frowning now. ‘I’ve never done any LSD myself. But I know some guys who’ve had bad trips – been out of it for days or weeks, in fact. You don’t want to try it.’
‘No, I don’t. But I – ‘
‘That stuff fucks up your life. But if you ever want some decent hash, you come to me. I know this guy in Marbury, and I often meet him in the Lamb. Look out, here’s the prophetess,’ he added. ‘God, what does she look like?’
In her purple turban, scarlet cloak and flowing robes, Mrs Fleming looked as if she’d just come from a fairground. All she needed was a crystal ball. ‘The gentlemen of the press are here,’ she said.
Across the wasteland stumbled the reporter and photographer from the Marbury Times. ‘How are you getting on today?’ asked the reporter, while the snapper took a dramatic shot of Mrs Fleming, her profile outlined against the December sky. ‘What else have you found?’
‘Nothing yet, but we’re going to open a few more test pits.’ Janet smiled. ‘Why don’t you wander round the site, and look at what we’re doing? You never know, you might get a scoop today.’
Mike got back into the Saxon’s grave and started trowelling. Janet and the reporter walked away. Susannah and Mrs Fleming were left standing in the middle of the field.
Susannah felt her gaze drawn back to where the lorries and JCBs had been. No, she thought, it didn’t happen. Honestly, how could it? She was chilly enough today, even though it was a sunny morning, even though she wore thick boots, two pairs of socks, two jumpers, jeans and all the rest of it.
‘Do you wish to know?’ Mrs Fleming’s eyes were bright as newly-minted pennies. ‘Do you wish to find her, to gaze upon the ruin of her face?’
‘What do you mean?’ Susannah felt a sudden shiver ripple down her spine.
The dowser merely smiled and tapped her foot upon the sward. ‘Maybe the time has come at last,’ she said.
‘The time has come for what?’ Janet had left the reporter talking to a group of diggers who were working near the wall, and now she pushed between them. ‘Sukey, what’s the matter? You look as if you’ve seen a ghost.’
‘Mrs Fleming’s found another grave.’ Susannah shrugged. ‘Or so she seems to think.’
‘Young woman, I don’t assume these things, I know!’ The dowser looked at Janet. ‘I can sense it, feel it.’
‘Shall we have a look, then?’ Janet beckoned Mike. ‘Over here!’ she shouted. ‘Five or six of you, and bring your spades!’
* * * *
Mike and half a dozen other diggers made light work of peeling off the turf, taking off the topsoil, and then removing all the lower layers one by one.
‘Suke, you can record for us,’ said Janet, so Susannah watched the diggers’ progress carefully, taking notes and looking out for any trace of backfill. She didn’t believe there’d be any today. After all, how could the dowser know, how could she feel – unless she knew what was down there already?
‘I think it’s time for trowels now,’ said Janet, as a stroke of Anna’s mattock peeled off a fine sliver of red clay to reveal a darker, brown deposit underneath.
‘Suke, I want some photogra
phs of this.’ Janet looked up from the trench. ‘Yes, of course in colour! Hang on, let me spray it first, then we’ll get the best degree of contrast. Susannah, what’s the matter? Have you gone deaf or something?’
‘Sorry, Jan.’ Susannah shook herself. She raised the camera, tried to control the tremor in her hands, and started taking photographs.
Mike stood up and stretched. ‘All this stuff is definitely organic,’ he began, ‘so we can assume – ‘
‘I know, I know!’ cried Janet. ‘You don’t have to say it. We probably have a fine example of a late Victorian midden here.’
‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ grinned Mike. ‘It’s far too deep to be a rubbish pit, and why would one be here anyway, in the middle of a bloody field?’
‘So what’s all this brown stuff?’ Janet asked him.
‘Wood?’ suggested Mike.
‘No, it’s from the flowers,’ whispered Susannah. ‘The thanes stood weeping, casting flowers. The common people bowed their heads.’
‘I beg your pardon?’ Janet frowned.
‘It’s in the poem we found,’ explained Susannah, hardly able to believe it. ‘They put flowers in her grave.’
‘But did the Saxons put flowers in their graves?’ demanded Mike.
‘I don’t know.’ Janet picked up a handful of deposit and trickled it into a plastic bag. ‘We’ll have to send this for analysis. Okay, if Suke has finished taking pictures, let’s get on.’
‘What have you found now?’ The reporter and the snapper came to stare into the pit. They stood there all expectant, grinning and knocking clods of grass and earth into the hole.
‘You had another inspiration, love?’ the snapper asked, taking a frame or two of Mrs Fleming, who was looking down into the pit.
Janet hunkered down again, and then began to trowel. ‘Yes, there,’ she told Anna, pointing to a spot where the earth changed colour yet again. ‘We’ll take off half this layer. That’ll be enough see what’s underneath, and then – ‘
‘Janet!’ cried Susannah suddenly, ‘Janet, stop! Look over there!’
‘Oh my God,’ said Janet, and shook her head. ‘Mrs Fleming, how did you do it? You’re amazing.’
Elegy for a Queen Page 15
