The Way, the Truth and the Dead

by Francis Pryor

  Alan didn’t feel quite so angry. Craig did have a point: Frank had been working almost exclusively with actors, many of them out of work, on his so-called reality shows in the States. They’d do anything – and more – that he asked. And Craig should know, his background was in children’s television, but he’d been to drama school and still appeared from time to time in films and dramas.

  ‘I just hope I haven’t upset him too much. It never does to have a row with the director.’

  Craig smiled. ‘Oh, I wouldn’t worry about that, Alan, the show needs you far more than it needs him. And anyhow, you’ve got Lew behind you and he’s the one who pulls the strings.’

  Their conversation was interrupted by Terri Griffiths, the auburn-haired assistant producer. Alan was glad to see her smiley face back on set.

  ‘Alan, Frank wants you to walk with Craig as he does the opening PTC.’

  Ah, Alan thought, so that’s what Lew must have suggested. ‘Then he’ll ask you about the new grave. OK?’

  Alan could see Terri was listening to something on her earpiece. She scurried off.

  Together Craig and Alan walked to the presenter’s starting position. Alan wasn’t entirely clear what was to happen next.

  ‘So we’ll have our chat, then what? I return to the trench?’

  ‘Yes, you could. But why not take me over to see the new find. That’s what you’d normally do, isn’t it?’

  ‘OK, that’s fine.’

  Alan always felt relaxed when working with Craig.

  * * *

  Despite the pre-shoot disagreement – row would be too strong a word – live Day 2 went very well and Alan had a trick up his sleeve, for when the camera came to Trench 1 for the second time. In the previous, opening, scene that followed their walk-up to camera, Alan had shown what he thought was going to be a second grave. Then for the ten or so minutes it took to film Trench 2 and the studio panel, he trowelled a band along the side of the grave down to the end, where it made a right-angled turn. Had a student done this, he’d have been furious with them – it was the worst sort of ‘wall-chasing’ and a common mistake made by first-year undergraduates. When you ‘chase’ something like a wall, you can easily remove it from its setting, for example by damaging its junction with other walls. But this was different. He had to show Frank that there are other ways of achieving what you need.

  Craig arrived for the second interview. ‘And how’s it going, Alan?’

  ‘I’ve taken a few naughty shortcuts, the sort of thing I wouldn’t allow students to do, but look: can you see, I’ve scraped a band about a foot wide that follows the edge of the grave until here’ – he scraped some more – ‘where it ends in a neat right-angled corner.’

  ‘So you’re certain it’s a grave?’ Craig asked.

  ‘Well,’ Alan stood up. ‘What d’you think?’

  Before filming began, Frank had told them that he didn’t want the interviews to be question-and-answer sessions. He was after a more conversational, informal feel to the show. That word again, Alan thought, but he had to concede, he did have a point.

  ‘I agree, it’s certainly the right size and shape.’

  ‘And look, Craig, the two features are laid out on precisely the same alignment. And if I’m not mistaken …’ Alan reached into the back pocket of his jeans and produced a folding compass, which the second camera focused down on. ‘Yes, they’re aligned a few degrees off east-west. And that, of course, suggests they are probably Christian – like churches, they’re pointing towards Jerusalem.’

  ‘Does it matter that they’re not precisely east-west?’

  ‘Not at all,’ Alan replied. ‘In medieval times rural grave­diggers, even architects and stonemasons, didn’t routinely carry compasses, so the east-west alignment is never precise. In fact, the layout of tombs and graves in the Bronze Age was a lot more accurate.’

  ‘You always stick up for prehistory, don’t you, Alan?’

  But instead of smiling, Alan was frowning. He needed to change the mood. In his ear, the countdown to the end credits had just begun.

  ‘The thing is, Craig, there’s still space for another grave in this trench and I wouldn’t be at all surprised if we didn’t find it tomorrow. Graves 1 and 2 are set quite close together and parallel. This suggests to me that we’ve found a graveyard. And that’s exciting, because somewhere near here must lie the buried remains of a long-lost Saxon church.’ He only just had time to draw breath. ‘And if I’m right, we could have one of the earliest churches in England – and possibly, too, a direct link to Roman times.’

  The Test Pit Challenge signature tune faded-up as soon as he delivered the last words.

  Weinstein’s voice cut in. ‘That was fantastic, Alan. What a fabulous ending! Well done. But make sure you get some sleep tonight. We’ve still got four days to go and I thought you were looking a little weary on the run-throughs.’

  ‘Thanks, Lew, and you’re right, I’m knackered.’ He lowered his voice and tried to direct his words at the mike pinned inside his shirt. ‘I’ll nip off now. Make my excuses to Frank, Tricia and the others.’

  ‘Will do. And again, well done. Sleep well.’

  Grump Edwards must have read his mind, or listened-in to their conversation, as he was standing alongside when Alan finished speaking to Weinstein. Quickly he unpinned the radio mike, while Alan unplugged the lead from the transmitter in his back pocket. Then he headed back to his Fourtrak, which he had left in the park nearby. It was a clear night and he had to scrape a light frost off the windscreen. As he waited for the de-mister to warm up he texted Jake to tell him that he’d be on-site at ten tomorrow. And when he got home, he didn’t set his alarm and slept for a full eight, dreamless hours.

  * * *

  The next morning a refreshed Alan left the Fourtrak in the park and headed over to the coffee stall, while munching an aged cereal bar he’d just found in a long-forgotten pocket in his rucksack. The place was deserted. Alan asked the lady dispensing the coffee where everyone had gone and she pointed across to the large tent where people ate their meals. It was packed. Sipping his latte and wiping the last crumbs of cereal bar from his beard, he went round to the back of the crowd where there was still some space. At the front of the tent he could just catch glimpses of the Cripps family: Barty, Candice, John and Sebastian, with Frank standing beside them. They were sitting most graciously; very much the obliging county family. Alan tried hard to read their body language, but it was impenetrably rigid. Too rigid, perhaps. Did they realise?

  Frank introduced them. ‘Thank you all for coming here and I know you’ve all got a lot to do, so I’ll cut to the chase, as we say in television.’ That got a polite titter. ‘The Cripps family would like to say a few words. And Candice, I think you’re going first?’

  Candice smiled and stepped forward. She was plainly used to speaking in public and her words were clear and confident. She thanked everyone for their collective efforts that had made the live shoot such a resounding success – so far. And as she said, she was being careful not to count chickens before they were hatched, but in the event that no disaster intervened, the estate was going to provide Champagne after the final shoot. This went down very well. Barty followed with a broad smile and very few words, but his presence made all the difference: he transformed a rather blatant PR exercise into something more like a genuine, old-fashioned, family gathering.

  The two brothers spoke last. John apologised for the rather poor crowd control on Day 2, but everyone had been taken aback by the massive increase in visitor numbers following the success of ‘the Itsagrave shoot’. Alan noted that he used the term casually. It was now part of the language, certainly locally, if not nationally. He went on to say that he hoped things would improve today. They had called on professional guidance from staff and colleagues at the nearby White Delphs visitor attraction, some of whom were already on-site. They would be bringing in new crowd-control bar­riers, improved walkway surfaces and better signage and super
vision in the parking areas. With luck, they would not have to turn anyone away, as they had had to do on Tuesday. He finished by saying that if the closer co-operation with ‘our friends’ at White Delphs did indeed prove to be successful, the two attractions would be working more closely together in the future. He made this final announcement with some satisfaction.

  Alan studied him closely: Sebastian must have conceded defeat. Yes, John was now in control.

  Then Sebastian stepped to the front. His height should have given him a big advantage, but if anything, he made less of an impression than his far more confident and assured younger brother, who was completely at ease when surrounded by television crews and media types. By contrast, Sebastian seemed rather remote, as if he’d be far more comfortable out on a tractor, drilling spring barley. Alan could sympathise. On the other hand, Sebastian was also a local councillor, so he’d have thought he’d know a little bit about public speaking. And his first two sentences were ­reasonably clear.

  Even though he was standing right at the back, for a brief moment, Alan thought he had met the big man’s gaze, but it proved fleeting. Soon Sebastian was mumbling from a set of notes, towards the first two rows of his audience. So far as Alan could make out, Councillor Cripps was giving advance warning that he would be escorting an all-party group of county and district councillors around the site and the excavations on Saturday morning. Alan’s heart sank: the last day of the shoot. That was all he needed.

  Finally, John Cripps stood forward for a second time. There was a respectful hush.

  ‘My friends,’ he began. The tone of his voice was very distinctive, and Alan was immediately transported back to the final moments of Stan’s wake. He couldn’t help it, but he found his eyes were filling with tears.

  John continued. ‘This live shoot has been a very moving occasion for all of us, and I firmly believe we must never forget the efforts of past generations who created this special place. So if I may, I would like us all to observe a few moments’ silence, while we pray for the lives and souls not just of the monks of Fursey Abbey, but of the many ordinary people who looked after and protected them, and whose remains lie buried here.’

  But no mention of Stan. Just the big-bellied bloody monks. Alan was livid. For him, at least, this glib piece of pious PR had gone badly wrong.

  * * *

  When the gathering had dispersed, Alan and Jake Williamson did a detailed feature-by-feature tour through the two trenches. They’d established a good working relationship and were both clear about what had to happen next. That done, Alan drove to Sybsey Airfield where the English Commission on Ancient Monuments (ECAM) housed their leased aircraft. Sybsey had been an aircrew training establishment during the war and there was a substantial War Memorial by the main gates with dozens and dozens of names. Alan always nodded respectfully towards it as he passed: there was something so sad about those many hopeful young men whose ambitions had come to nothing.

  Alan knew Dennis, the ECAM eastern region archaeologist, well and they’d done many Lidar surveys together. Lidar was a remote sensing technology that essentially combined the principles of photography and radar through the use of a reflected laser beam. Lidar surveys couldn’t capture the differences in vegetation growth that gave rise to the dark crop marks of conventional aerial photographs. Instead, the laser beam penetrated vegetation and was able to reveal the tiniest undulations in the ground surface. Lidar had proved a huge success in the Fens, where very often ancient features had been largely covered, or filled in, by peats or flood-clays. So the top few inches of once-huge Bronze Age burial mounds could clearly be detected. Alan knew of a group of five such barrows in the Nene Washes about half a mile away from Richard Lane’s new house.

  During the planning stage of the live project, Alan had insisted that they couldn’t just dig. They had to put more into the project than that. Weinstein didn’t need persuading, but Charles at T2 proved less enthusiastic and it took Alan a full two hours in the T2 offices at Southwark to persuade him. In the end it was the new technology of Lidar that proved ir­­resistible. Alan was also aware that ECAM were doing a detailed survey of the southern Fens, so they welcomed the unexpected extra cash and were able to re-jig their schedule. As Frank so unmemorably described it later: ‘a win-win for all concerned’.

  The breeze at Sybsey Airfield was surprisingly chilly as Alan, Dennis and the pilot walked briskly towards the light aircraft that was waiting on the tarmac apron outside one of the wartime hangars. The pilot opened the door and the two archaeologists climbed aboard. Alan watched as he did a quick check of the plane’s exterior, then he joined them. First he rapidly checked their seat belts, but he could see they’d both done this before, then he put on his headset and started the engine. Soon they were airborne and climbing to 500 metres.

  Alan looked down from his window directly below the wing. They were following a pre-arranged flight path. Sites and landscapes always look different from the air and Fursey was no exception. Somehow, in Alan’s vivid imagination, the slight changes in level between the abbey on its low island and the surrounding, low-lying flat fields, seemed monumental – almost cliff-like. From the air you could see, quite literally, the wood from the trees: the smaller islands that fringed the main Isle of Ely were more thickly spread with trees, woodland and even hedges and there were fields with livestock. But out in the open, peaty landscape of the fens the hedges and trees vanished, as did grassland: the fields were much larger and the dykes deeper and straighter. Alan loved flying and not just for the view. Aircraft removed you from everything: from ambitious people and human frailty. Below him, down there, lay the truth.

  * * *

  At the end of the scheduled Lidar runs, the pilot asked if there was anything they’d like to look at more closely. Alan and Dennis knew this was his way of asking whether they’d like to be given a bit of a fairground ride: not exactly aerobatics, but a few swoops, dives and steep turns. In actual fact, Alan wanted to take a closer look at the orchard and copse along the northern side of the lime tree avenue leading up to Fursey Hall. If the pilot followed the line of trees to the west, they’d get a good transect out into the open fen. They all agreed this was an excellent idea.

  Earlier, Alan had warned Frank that he planned to make a low pass or two along the avenue and he had positioned three cameramen between the trees. They were treated to a very low tree-top ‘recce’ fly-past, followed by others at increasing altitudes. The crowds, of course, loved it all and cheered and waved enthusiastically.

  When they had landed, Alan arranged to see the initial Lidar results at Fursey on Saturday, around midday. It would be something they could film then and there, or maybe retain for the final ‘live’. Either way, he thought, it would give me an excuse to get away from the massed ranks of councillors on their dreaded visit that Sebastian had just announced. He was also very aware that ECAM were going out of their way to help the project and he made a mental note to make sure he credited them live, on screen. Sadly, nobody these days looked at the end credits when they flashed by, drowned out by strident voice-overs proclaiming what’s ‘coming up later’.

  * * *

  Day 3 live kicked off with pre-recorded footage of Alan climbing into the plane and taking off. Then the screen cut to the low fly-past, while Craig’s urgent voice-over proclaimed, ‘The results of this survey could be very exciting indeed. The ­powerful lasers used in Lidar can reveal the earth’s most closely held secrets and on Friday we will discover why this quiet corner of the Fens is capturing the imagination of people right across Britain …’

  Or far more likely, Alan thought, it’ll reveal sweet FA. He’d taken part in many aerial surveys around the Fens and he usually spotted some hint of what was to come when he looked out of the plane’s window. Lidar wasn’t magic: it didn’t create; it had to work on something – and this time he’d spotted nothing. He’d said as much to Frank, but to no avail.

  The live sequences began with the studio panel who ­d
iscussed what the Lidar might discover. Being clever academics they came up with wonderfully learned and unusual ideas which made them look and sound like imaginative pundits, but which Alan reckoned bore precious little resemblance to the sort of things that might actually turn up. Alan also reckoned that the members of the panel (aside from Michael Smiley their chairman) seemed somehow remote; none of them appeared to have been affected by what was increasingly becoming a wave of national enthusiasm for this previously obscure corner of Fenland.

  Then Craig delivered his opening piece to camera in Trench 2 with Tricia and Jake Williamson. Although not a television natural, and a bit hesitant at first, Jake did very well and Tricia was good, too, Alan thought; she didn’t try to overshadow Jake and was quietly encouraging.

  It was when they’d finished the opening three-way discussion and Tricia and Craig were looking through the day’s finds, that Jake, who had resumed trowelling for a few minutes, made his big discovery. He looked up.

  ‘Trish,’ he called out. ‘I think I’ve got something here!’

  Cameras 2 and 3 of the second unit hurried round to the other side of the trench to get close-ups. Camera 1 instantly tilted down, just in time to catch Jake’s ‘ …something here!’.

  ‘You know that small pit or large post hole we were working on this morning?’ Jake continued.

  Tricia was leaning forward, her excited eyes wide and catching gleams from the surrounding floodlights. ‘Yes?’

  ‘I think I’ve got a packing stone for a large post.’

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘Yes, quite certain. It’s right up against the sides of the hole and the ghost of the post is much clearer at this level. It looks squared-off.’

  The post ‘ghost’ was a dark stain, the final trace of organic matter left by a long-rotted timber.

  ‘Oh really? And it’s in that dark area, which we thought might be a ditch of some sort?’

  ‘Yes, it is,’ Jake replied. ‘But don’t you see, that means it can’t be a ditch? The dark staining may have been left by rotted timbers. I think we’ve found the footing for the wall of a big building.’