The Way, the Truth and the Dead

by Francis Pryor

  ‘Yes, it’s that cluster of buildings over towards the pumping station. It’s not a very large holding – maybe the same size as Woolpit Farm, about four hundred acres, but none of the land’s as wet as Woolpit. Dad always said he was gutted when they sold it. He thought they’d somehow betrayed the family—’

  ‘But his father had no option. The Inland Revenue wouldn’t go away, would they?’

  ‘No, he didn’t. But it was such a shame. And it’s a fabulous house. I know it’s not huge, like the hall, but it’s well built and warm.’

  ‘Who lives there now?’

  ‘My father sold it to the Greatfords in the ’70s. Anyhow, they retired to Spain in 2003 and it came back on the market early in 2004: the second week in January, to be more ­precise.’ He shook his head. ‘I remember it well.’ He sighed, he was gazing out across the fen. ‘Yes, very well.’

  Alan didn’t rush the next question. ‘And who owns it now?’

  ‘It didn’t sell – at least not at the price they were looking for. So the Greatfords still own the land, which is run by their agents. The house was rented until recently by distant cousins of ours who eventually retired to somewhere smaller in the south. Now it’s taken by a series of rich entrepreneurs from Cambridge. I can’t keep up with them. Sarah usually invites them along to the hall for a meal, but to be honest I can’t understand what any of them actually do for a living.’

  There was a loud bell. Sebastian’s phone had received a text. He glanced down at the screen and frowned. The mood had been broken. ‘It’s my agent: wheat futures down again.’ He sighed again, heavily. ‘Still, I must be going. It was good to chat, and I hope you won’t mind if I take quite a close interest in your work here, will you?’

  ‘Of course not. I’d be delighted.’

  They shook hands.

  ‘And if I do become a nuisance, you’ll just have to blame Stan. He shouldn’t have been such an inspiring teacher.’

  As if that last remark wasn’t enough, Alan was beginning to warm to the man. Unlike many visitors, he chose his questions carefully and listened closely to what Alan had to say. He was clearly fascinated not just by the results of their research, but by the way they achieved them. In the past Alan had found some landowners could be very patronising, as if they were the ones doing the ‘real’ work, while Alan and his like were indulging in a pet hobby. It could be very ­frustrating.

  Without being asked, Sebastian carefully placed the two small sherds back on the ground alongside their white marker label. As he was straightening up Alan took another rapid step towards the bucket, which was halfway through its pull-back. This time he picked-up a ten-pence-sized green-coloured coin, which he showed to Sebastian.

  ‘Gosh. I suppose that’s Roman, too. But it’s incredibly heavily worn. I’m surprised they could see what it was. If I were given a coin like that in a shop, I’d hand it back.’

  ‘Yes,’ Alan agreed. ‘It’s almost smooth, isn’t it? But from its size I’d guess it was a sestertius …’ He trailed off as he carefully cleaned damp soil off the coin’s underside. By now Davey had joined them. Suddenly Alan went rigid and stared intently at the coin. The others craned forward as Alan deftly removed a few more crumbs of soil to reveal that the worn surface of the coin had been cut into by a rectangular punch, which had been inscribed with five letters: the first three ­weren’t very easy to read, but the last two were a clear ‘PR’.

  ‘Is it a coin, Alan?’ Sebastian asked. ‘It looks like somebody has stamped it. Isn’t that the sort of thing that happened to tokens very much later? It’s a way of claiming ownership, isn’t it?’

  Alan smiled. It was a very intelligent suggestion. ‘Yes, you’re right, but I’m also quite sure this is a fairly standard Roman coin and not anything later. I’d expect something like an eighteen century token to be far thinner, lighter weight and with sharper edges. Also, if you look here’ – Alan held the coin in the slowly growing morning light – ‘you can see the letters AESAR behind and above the very worn profile of a man’s head.’

  Sebastian peered closely. ‘Presumably that’s CAESAR, but they’ve gone and put the stamp right across the emperor’s name …’ He trailed off.

  ‘I wouldn’t worry about that, Sebastian,’ Alan said. ‘We learnt about these coins as students. They’re countermarked. That’s the word. I can’t remember the precise details, but for various political reasons the Roman mints didn’t produce many new coins during the mid–first century AD.’

  ‘But that was the time of the Roman Conquest?’

  ‘Precisely. So the authorities stamped older, worn-down coins with these official countermarks. They’re very distinctive and can’t be anything else.’

  ‘So what does the stamp say?’

  ‘I honestly can’t remember, but it’s an abbreviation. In essence it’s official approval of old coins, giving them an extended life. Anyhow, I’m sure Tricia will know.’

  ‘Tricia?’

  ‘Yes,’ Alan replied, slightly surprised he hadn’t been told. ‘Dr Tricia Neave, the expert on Roman small towns.’

  ‘Oh, really, I didn’t know. Is she part of the TV show, or does she come with you, as it were?’

  ‘She’s part of the programme, but she’s also somebody I’d have chosen myself …’

  ‘Good-looking, you mean?’

  Sebastian was indulging, slightly awkwardly, in man-to-man banter. Alan tried to keep his reply factual.

  ‘I’ve only met her once and, yes, she was very pleasant. More importantly, she obviously knew her stuff, as she hasn’t long finished her PhD at Cambridge.’

  ‘Presumably one of that man what’s-his-name’s students?’

  ‘Peter Flower?’ Alan suggested.

  ‘Yes, Flower. Can’t say I took to him myself. A bit ­Cambridgey, a bit know-it-all, if you get my drift. Still, John and Candice seem to think very highly of him.’

  ‘Yes,’ Alan replied. ‘He can be a bit … A bit remote.’

  Sebastian handed the coin back to Alan. ‘I’ll never get the hang of history. We learnt at school that the Romans were damn near perfect. They had everything organised. And yet they couldn’t arrange for a few extra coins to be minted when they needed them.’

  Then Alan remembered. It had been a long time ago when he attended Dr Cartwright’s introductory lectures on life in Roman Britain, but he had been a good lecturer and a lot of what he said had stuck. He had used the example of the Romans’ ability to improvise when the need arose – and that’s what the countermarked coins were all about. For various reasons new coins were in short supply, so the authorities issued the countermarked ones to the army in the legionaries’ pay packets. That way, it was all official and above board. But it set Alan thinking: maybe this site wasn’t quite as straightforward as he had believed yesterday afternoon. You don’t expect to find countermarked coins on a simple domestic site, no matter how high its status. No, he thought, something else was also going on. Nothing about Fursey, ancient or modern, was ever quite what it seemed.

  * * *

  The pale-blue sunlight of mid-January lit the scene. To Alan’s relief, Davey had turned off Radio 1 and he could concentrate. The machine scraped away and Alan focused on the bucket. As it pulled back, he spotted another sherd of NVGW and close by it some fragments of shell-tempered Iron Age or ‘native’ Roman period pots. Damn and hell, Alan thought, why isn’t Stan here now? He’d have loved this: he was red hot when it came to late Iron Age/RB coarse pottery. Knew more about the local stuff than anyone else – even in ­Cambridge. He had been building up a card-based archive, complete with hundreds of pencil sketches of pot rims and profiles that he had been in the process of digitising when he died. Alan had been working through that same card index before the car park excavation got going so unexpectedly. Well, he thought, if ever there was a time to put Stan’s work to good use …

  For an instant Alan went very still. It was weird, almost as if his old friend was standing beside him. Stan ha
d put a lot of work into that pottery archive – in fact, far more research than a collection of fairly ordinary, if upmarket, Roman pottery would normally require. So what was going on? It can’t have been the finds themselves, but what they meant – what they signified. Would that news have been welcome to everyone? Archaeologists and history buffs would be delighted, but sadly they were a minority. Things were getting more complex. Alan straightened up, his eyes were staring towards the abbey, but they saw nothing. The present had intruded on the past again.

  But this time it wasn’t the fault of a film crew.

  * * *

  Midday. Davey was taking his lunch break and two local metal detectorists were doing their regular sweep of the spoil heaps. Alan had set up the GPS while Candice, who had volunteered to help out until the three people from White Delphs arrived on Monday, stood holding the staff over one of the white labels that marked the pottery find spots. Candice called out finds numbers, which Alan entered into the machine as he recorded each level and co-ordinates. It was boring work, but essential, and Alan was amazed that Candice had chosen to do it herself. She could easily have nominated somebody junior from the farm office, but she didn’t. Although he was aware that he was using her to learn more about the internal workings of the Cripps family, he found himself warming to her. She seemed different from the others: less remote, more engaged. He realised that she possessed great PR skills, but do people always have to act by the book? Maybe she was genuinely intrigued by what Alan was doing – and the way he did it? It had occurred to him that she might be interested in him as a person. But he had his doubts about her: what was her agenda – specifically with him, Alan Cadbury? He wasn’t aware, as he tweaked the GPS, but he was showing his trademark frown. But she could see it – and she smiled.

  After half an hour they had finished, and by now Davey was checking the main bearings of the slightly elderly digger, which needed plenty of grease to work smoothly. He was just climbing back into his cab when John Cripps appeared from behind the spoil heaps. He obviously knew enough about archaeology to hesitate before stepping into the trench. As soon as Alan beckoned him across, he joined them. At the same time Reg, one of the metal detectorists, appeared at Alan’s side with the morning’s haul.

  Alan gave John and Candice the coin they’d found earlier to look at, while he quickly sorted through the detectorists’ finds. Quickly he rejected a few scraps of modern rubbish – rusty nails, a tin milk bottle top, that sort of thing – that had fallen down the wide cracks through the alluvium, which are such a feature of modern, hot, dry summers. Aside from those, it was quite an interesting set of metalwork. Several rings and strange bronze fittings that Alan didn’t recognise immediately. Again, he wished that Stan could have been there to help him. He was keen to see if any of the coins could have been Iron Age, so he looked at them more closely. One in particular caught his attention, made of copper alloy and a bit smaller than the sestertius they’d found earlier.

  John had noticed his interest and was looking at the coin in Alan’s left hand.

  ‘That’s quite well preserved. I can read BRITANNIA quite clearly and the seated figure is just like the one we used to see on old pennies …’ He paused in some doubt. ‘Except that she isn’t quite like her. A bit fat and sloppy, if you know what I mean.’

  ‘John, you’re being impossible,’ Candice interjected with cod seriousness. ‘Yes, she is a little generously proportioned, but it’s … it’s … it’s very old.’

  ‘Yes,’ Alan agreed. ‘And you’re both right. To be frank, it’s a terrible likeness of Britannia. That left leg is ludicrous and her right arm appears to have two elbows. I’d have said it was inept.’

  ‘But does that matter?’ John asked

  ‘I think it might. Let me explain,’ Alan took a swig from his water bottle, while he frantically thought back to those fact-filled lectures by Dr Cartwright. ‘The Romans were very methodical …’ Slowly the facts were swimming into his memory. ‘They rarely did things by chance, or without good cause, so there was probably a reason why the drawing of ­Britannia is so ham-fisted.’

  ‘Which was?’

  ‘I’m fairly sure this coin is an as.’

  ‘A what?’ Candice asked.

  ‘An as, sometimes known as an assarius. As I remember, they were an early form of cast coin. And I think you’d have got two, maybe three of these for that sestertius we found earlier. Anyhow, pictures of Britannia are generally rare on coins, with the exception of this particular issue, which is found quite widely across Roman Britain, but not on the continent. I’m no expert, but most numismatists seem to think it was a one-off coin made, and made rapidly, to be distributed to the garrison troops in Britain.’

  Both John and Candice were listening closely. ‘And the date?’ John asked.

  ‘I think it was issued by Antoninus Pius in the mid-second century – I’d guess around AD150.’

  ‘Forgive me, Alan.’ John was puzzled. ‘I still don’t get it. That story is very interesting, but it’s still just a coin, isn’t it?’

  ‘I’m sorry, neither of you were around when we found that countermarked sestertius I just showed you.’

  He retrieved the earlier coin, showed them the countermark and explained the story. When Alan finished John was still looking puzzled.

  ‘So, the connection seems to be the Roman Army, am I right?’

  ‘I think you might be. I’d expect to find both these coins on military sites.’

  ‘D’you think there was a battle here?’ Candice asked, clearly quite excited.

  ‘Oh no. You don’t find coins and pottery on battle sites. No, I suspect the military presence here – if there was one – was longer-lived and more permanent. After all, soldiers were spending money and eating and drinking – if the pottery is any guide.’

  ‘So a barracks, or something like that?’ John suggested.

  ‘Possibly. Or, more likely, a fort.’

  ‘But shouldn’t that have stone walls?’ John said. ‘Like the one at Brancaster on the Norfolk coast. I used to go there in the summer as a child.’

  ‘Not necessarily, and not if there isn’t good stone in the area. But we mustn’t count our chickens.’ Alan paused to put the sestertius back in its bag. ‘Having said that, I’m quite suspicious about some of these other bits and pieces of bronze. They do look a bit military to me.’

  ‘How do you mean?’ Candice asked.

  ‘I haven’t seen things like these on any of the domestic sites I’ve dug, and the Roman legionaries wore armour and uniforms that were made from various strips of leather with numerous belts and straps. And they were very effective, too, but they also required a variety of links, clips and buckles to hold them together. I could probably identify some of them with a text book, but there’s no need, as Tricia’s arriving later this afternoon.’

  Alan wondered whether she would come to the same conclusion as him. He hoped so, as he was growing increasingly certain he was right. And if his suspicions were to prove correct, then this would be a major discovery. National news, even. He looked up. Candice was standing wide-eyed with excitement. John’s face betrayed no emotion whatsoever.

  What, Alan wondered, is he thinking about: the Roman Army or the Fursey Estate?

  * * *

  The afternoon session went well, but by half past three the cloud cover had grown, and Alan decided the mid-January light was too poor to continue. He knew from experience that headlights and floodlights were no use for seeing subtle changes in soil colour; you could spot stone and brick walls, that sort of thing, but not the slight tone and texture differences he was interested in. Frank had just phoned from the car to say they were approaching Royston and should be with them by four. He’d suggested to Alan that there should still be just enough light to film a quick scene outdoors, before moving into the Portakabin to shoot a discussion about the finds. When he’d finished talking, Alan pocketed his phone and headed for the temporary abbey offices where he knew Candi
ce would be working. Five minutes later she was out on-site helping him set up the GPS to plot the afternoon’s finds.

  He had to admire her discipline: she had been deeply immersed in the intricacies of a detailed stock-take – all part of the setting-up process for the new farm shop and restaurant – when he called in. She didn’t hesitate. He’d have finished the column, or whatever it was, but not her. She just got up, slipped on a pair of wellies and abandoned the computer. It was as if the archaeology was more important than the book-keeping. Or was there more to it than that? Had he become the new Stan? That thought sent a slight chill through him.

  Hiding his suspicion, Alan thanked her profusely.

  ‘Well,’ she said, as they removed the GPS from its case, ‘it’s the least I can do. I know you’re short-staffed till Monday. No, Alan, don’t be silly, I can always add up figures and you can’t leave these finds out here to be damaged by the frost.’

  ‘Yes,’ Alan replied. ‘And there’s talk of a sharp one tonight, although the way the cloud cover is building up makes me think they might have got it wrong.’

  Candice smiled. ‘You are funny, Alan. You’re always talking about the weather. You and Sebastian should get together one day. Have a trip to the Met Office for a boys’ day out. He’s always talking about the weather, too.’

  ‘Well he’s a farmer so it’s hardly surprising. You don’t start making hay when there’s a cold front approaching from off the Atlantic. And that’s where I got interested in the weather.’

  By now the GPS was set up and ready to go. Candice watched while Alan rapidly sorted out his notes and finds bags.

  ‘That was one thing I noticed about Stan,’ she said.

  ‘Oh yes, what’s that?’

  ‘He had no eye whatsoever for the weather. I’m not much good, but John has always been interested – I guess because he was also brought up in the country – and he could never understand why Stan was always being surprised by rain. It was as if he never looked at a forecast.’

  Alan smiled. ‘Come to think of it, dear old Stan wasn’t unusual. Most archaeologists are hopeless when it comes to the weather. It must cost the profession thousands every year. If I had my way, I’d make meteorology a minor option in degree courses.’