The Way, the Truth and the Dead

by Francis Pryor

  ‘And can we tell what kind of building?’

  ‘Most pre-Roman Iron Age buildings used roundwood or half-split timbers for posts and beams. A squared-off post suggests the use of heavy-duty saws, which were introduced to Britain by the Roman Army. So what we have here is …’ He paused briefly, as if he could not believe his own discovery. ‘A big Roman building.’

  The discovery of what immediately came to be called Jake’s Building was almost, but not quite, matched by the revelation of a third alluvium-filled grave in Trench 1. Alan had pointed to the spot during an interview on Day 2, and now, on camera, Craig accused him of being ‘an archaeological prophet’. Alan frowned, deadpan, assuming an air of false modesty and announced that predictive archaeology was his current ­specialism. At best, it was an obscure piss-take, aimed at ­theoretical archaeologists, but it seemed to go down quite well with the audience – God knows why. He finished by stressing that there was now no doubt: all three graves were closely aligned. They had discovered part of a hitherto unknown Christian cemetery.

  * * *

  When Alan got back home he felt exhausted. He was dis­covering that live television made massive demands on those who took part. He had filled his flask with hot coffee on-site and now sat at his kitchen table drinking it. The naked light bulb overhead cast a harsh, unwelcoming light. He knew the fridge was empty, no milk even, as he couldn’t face a repeat of that last visit to the village shop. Then he thought back on the previous three days: the discovery of the graves, Jake’s building, not to mention lots more pottery and metalwork fragments. Stan would have been proud of them. That made Alan feel better. He was dog-tired, but not unhappy. It had all been worth it. So far. And the hot coffee felt good.

  Alan glanced down at Stan’s notebook which lay on the kitchen table alongside his laptop. Over the previous few evenings he’d just finished going through the levels, one by one, and they were all internally consistent. Stan’s surveying had been spot on. But why hide them away? What were they telling him? Somehow he had to find the time to go down to the pumping station and take a reading off the Ordnance Survey benchmark on the wall there. Only then would he understand why Stan was so concerned to hide the notebook. But that must be done carefully, without telling the rest of the world – assuming, that is, that Stan’s fears were indeed justified. Now, though, it was time for a well-earned nightcap.

  Alan reached into the cupboard and pulled out a bottle of Islay malt he’d bought at Aldi two weeks ago. For a moment he considered sampling the remains of Stan’s bottle of 20-year-old Glen Hubris McTavish that lay hidden in his chest of drawers among his socks and pants. But the time wasn’t yet right. It would have to wait. He added a drop of water from the tap, then raised the glass of Islay to his dead friend. His brother Grahame had always sworn by coffee and whisky. And as usual, he was right.

  Ten minutes later, Alan tipped the coffee dregs down the sink and rinsed the flask in cold water. As he turned to head upstairs, he wondered what on earth the dig was going to find on Days 4 and 5. Would the Lidar survey be the big anticlimax he feared? After all, nothing was apparent to the naked eye when they flew over. But he knew it was stupid to try to ­second-guess the future – not with landscape, nor with people. He smiled: predictive archaeology, my arse.

  Ten

  Alan began Day 4 with a couple of phone calls to do with the dig, but he wasn’t in the mood for any more admin. It could wait. He wanted to get outdoors. He glanced down at his phone: 9.17. Time to get going.

  Clear, bright springtime mornings in the Fens were one of Alan’s favourite times: shadows are banished; light is everywhere and by early March the birdsong is starting to build. As he closed the back door behind him, Alan was greeted by an angry wren with machine-gun-like alarm calls, while high in a lime tree overhead, a blackbird sang joyously. Alan had always liked birdsong and what the various sounds really meant; that blackbird, he smiled, wasn’t proclaiming the joys of spring, but was telling all other blackbirds to get lost: this is my ter­ritory, so keep your distance. Even so, it was an uplifting sound, and as he headed down the path along the gable end of his cottage, he could hear the fierce call of the wren behind him easing off. Then another started close by the front door. Alan reckoned there were at least seven wren territories in his small garden.

  It was far too nice a day to drive to the site and Alan was looking forward to the twenty-minute walk. A tractor thundered past, towing a trailer of round bales down to the cattle farm on the Littleport Road. It had been wet lately and they’d be needing the straw, Alan thought, ever the farmer’s son. Behind the tractor was a mud-spattered Land Rover. Alan waited for it to pass, before he crossed the road. But instead it pulled up alongside him, and the front window slid back.

  ‘D’you want a lift down to the dig, Alan?’

  It was Sebastian Cripps. Alan hesitated: he could have used the village shop as an excuse. But he decided not to. He was starting to like Sebastian – and he needed to take his mind off work.

  As he climbed aboard, Alan nodded towards the trailer of bales, now fast heading around the corner. ‘They going to the cattle farm on the Littleport Road?’

  ‘Yes,’ Sebastian replied as they pulled away. ‘It’s wheat straw from our big barn down by the Delph there.’

  ‘Oh, I know the one – just outside the village, on the Ely Road?’

  ‘That’s right. Ellis’s have always taken their straw from us. And it’s a good trade right now, what with all the rain. We’re selling quite a lot to farms in the West Country who are crying out for it.’

  ‘Yes, poor devils,’ Alan replied. Everyone had heard about the recent floods. ‘I’m glad I’m not in their shoes.’

  ‘It’s difficult. None of us want to profit from their misfortune, but the prices are rising fast. And of course the dealers are loving it.’

  ‘I’ve heard some farmers hereabouts are actually giving straw away?’

  ‘Yes,’ Sebastian replied. ‘I’ve agreed to give twenty per cent of our wheat straw to the NFU’s hardship scheme. The first bales have already gone. I only wish we could do more.’

  Alan was about to say something, then he stopped. Too much probing made people suspicious and he felt Sebastian was going to talk anyhow.

  ‘The trouble is,’ Sebastian continued, ‘the estate isn’t as large as it was after the war.’

  ‘What, death duties and that sort of thing?’

  ‘Yes, they were crippling after grandfather’s death. He was very hands-on and didn’t want to lose control of anything.’

  ‘Which was natural, in a way, wasn’t it?’ Alan suggested.

  ‘Oh yes, but it meant we couldn’t claim anything under the seven-year rule. So we got hit for the full amount. And there were also some big bank debts that had to be repaid. So poor Barty had to sell off two small farms and Smiley’s Mill. That just left him Fursey, which he renamed Abbey Farm, and us at Woolpit Farm.’

  He had heard this before, but Alan was happy that Sebastian was now talking so freely.

  ‘But there’s a limit to what you can do with 400 hundred acres.’

  ‘Yes, I can imagine,’ Alan slowly replied. ‘My brother ­Grahame also farms 400 hundred acres, mostly rented or leased, and he finds it hard, especially last year, when wheat prices were down – although not as low as this year.’

  ‘It’s certainly getting harder to make a medium-sized farm profitable, especially with the house and park to maintain – which is why I do the council work. Between you and me, I don’t like it at all. I’d much, much rather be a farmer full-time. John and Candice love their diversification, which is what Barty called the Abbey Farm Shop when he set it up. And that’s fine’ – he slowed the Land Rover down to pass some early visitors – ‘for them. They both like that sort of thing. But it’s not for me. You know they say that farming’s in your blood, and in my case I think they might be right.’ He drew breath, then carried on, more reflectively. ‘Of all the land the family has sold off sinc
e the war, the one I regret most is Isle Farm, over there towards the pumping station.’ Sebastian nodded towards the middle distance to the right of the road.

  Alan knew it: an attractive mid-19th-century house, still just Georgian without the later Victorian heaviness.

  ‘Why’s that? Is it the land?’

  Sebastian sighed heavily. ‘Yes, it’s the best land for miles. It’ll grow anything: spuds, salads, even caulis and sprouts. And up towards the yard there’s good, dry pasture. So I could even run a proper, no-messing, mixed farm. And that’s what I call real farming.’

  ‘So you’re not too keen on all this modern specialisation, then?’

  ‘Absolutely not. It’s food production, not farming. Some of those blokes never leave the farm office. They’re always staring at their bloody screens. No, I’m never happier than when I’m out on the land. You become part of it, out there in the fen. That’s why I like shooting, although to be quite honest, I don’t enjoy the social side. That’s more Sarah’s country. I won’t say she likes them much, but she can get on with those rich Londoners and they do seem to have bottomless pockets.’ He shook his head. ‘I mean, would you pay nearly a thousand quid for a day’s shooting?’

  ‘Not when I can go out and shoot pigeons for free.’

  ‘Oh, I agree, Alan. I’d much rather shoot pigeons than French partridges and those Michigan Bluebacks that Joe was breeding for us last season. More like shooting poultry than pheasants. Still, the Londoners seem to like them.’

  Alan was tempted to ask directly if there was any news about Joe Thorey, but he didn’t want to arouse Sebastian’s suspicions. Instead he spotted an opportunity to see how Sebastian would react to something that was also much on his mind. ‘I would imagine Joe Thorey’s down-to-earth attitude isn’t much to their liking, is it?’

  It was as if Alan had jabbed him with a pin.

  ‘That man …’ He gave Alan an intense glance, before looking back at the road. ‘Sarah thinks he can do no wrong. She says the “clients” – as she insists on calling the guns on the shoot – love Thorey. They think he’s such a character.’

  ‘And do you?’

  ‘To be quite frank, Alan, I can’t stand the man. Still, we need him because the shoot’s what’s keeping the estate afloat right now. And Sarah’s doing an amazing job. So I bite my tongue.’

  He’d said what Alan needed to know. Time to end it. ‘As a matter of interest, do the guns take many birds back with them to London?’

  ‘They wouldn’t do that, Alan. I doubt if they’d know which end to start plucking.’

  ‘You’re right: they’re not pheasant pluckers!’

  An ancient joke and hardly hilarious, but it made them both smile.

  They were approaching the dig. There were people everywhere. Alan glanced across at Sebastian: he was looking at the visitors much in the way he’d be checking the ear-tags of his cattle as they filed into the yard. Alan paused for a moment before he got out. He’d phone Lane just as soon as he could.

  * * *

  Alan and Frank had another minor row during the day. Frank wanted him to do a scene with Tricia where she dressed him in replica Roman armour: ‘It would lighten the mood.’ Alan refused, point-blank. He detested re-enacting and hated coming across people dressed as monks in old monasteries, or as kitchen maids in country house kitchens. They always looked like what they were: 21st century office workers looking for something to liven up a boring weekend. He also knew his attitude was unfair and unreasonable – which of course made him even worse.

  The Roman armour spat took the best part of an hour to resolve, and by that time Weinstein in London had been involved. And all the while, Alan was desperate to get back to the trenches. That alluvium in the three graves was just starting to dry out, and if they left it for very much longer, it would set like bricks.

  Then at eleven, Clare Hughes arrived to discuss extending Trench 1 to reveal the three graves in their entirety. Normally this would have been a routine matter, and dealt with over the phone, but Clare, like everyone else, had been caught up by the ‘live’ and wanted to see things at Fursey for herself. And Alan was certainly not going to upset her, of all people. So that took another hour.

  As soon as Clare had given the OK, Jake had gone across from Trench 2 to help Kaylee and Jon dig the extensions by hand. Shifting a thick layer of alluvium was very heavy work, but they couldn’t use a mini-digger because of all the cables, the lighting stands and the rain shelter. By noon, when a rather weary Alan stepped into Trench 1, they’d already made good progress, so he and Kaylee began the smaller extension over Grave 2.

  At lunchtime, a mud-spattered Land Rover, its front doors discreetly marked with the university arms and the label: Sub-Department of Quaternary Geology, arrived in the site car park. Hell, Alan thought, bang goes lunch. He’d almost ­forgotten, but first thing that morning he’d arranged for Dr Alan Scott to take micromorph samples from the deposits directly over Grave 2. Alan himself was a great fan of soil micromorphology. Essentially it’s a technique that examines soils in very thin sections through high-power microscopes. A good soil micromorphologist – and Alan Scott was probably the best – could reveal all sorts of information in a soil’s de­­velopmental history: when trees covering it had been cut down, when grassland became established, and, of course, when ploughing began. Alan reckoned a few carefully positioned in situ samples might throw light on when the grave had been dug, relative, that is, to the start of the later Roman alluvial episodes. In other words, he wasn’t expecting the equivalent of a radiocarbon date, but it could provide them with other essential information.

  Dr Scott was a busy man, and he had agreed to fit Alan’s samples in between those of a much larger project he was doing for the ministry. An hour later, as people were returning from their lunch break, the two Alans were standing by the Cambridge Land Rover. Scott held a canvas bag with two full sample tins. He climbed into the driving seat and leant out of the window.

  ‘I’ll get straight down to these, Alan. Get them consolidated and ground down over the weekend. I might even be able to get back to you with some preliminary thoughts on Monday. But I’m not promising …’

  Alan couldn’t believe his ears. That was so fast.

  ‘And make sure we get a mention!’

  The power of television.

  ‘Don’t worry, I’ll see you’re given a knighthood!’

  And with that, Alan roared away.

  * * *

  Kaylee had seen that Alan had missed his lunch, and had ordered two extra rounds of sandwiches for him. Alan thanked her profusely and fell on them as they walked across the car park back to the trench shelter. By two o’clock Jake and Jon had exposed all of Grave 1 and had started clearing Grave 3. After a further 15 minutes Alan and Kaylee had finished Grave 2 and then they all worked together on Grave 3, taking it in turns to do the heavy mattock-swinging. By three o’clock they had finished the job and were drinking mugs of tea. They’d shifted a lot of earth, and even though it was only early March they were all sweating, but their spirits were up: the graves looked very impressive indeed. A rather subdued Frank was standing behind, supposedly directing Speed, who was filming the graves from above. These clips would be used as cut-aways during the evening’s ‘live’.

  When they’d finished their tea, Jake returned to Trench 2, leaving Alan, Jon and Kaylee to start removing the much thinner, capping layer of alluvium from each of the graves. They soon found that the stiff clay came away quite cleanly from the grave filling below, largely, Alan realised, because it hadn’t stuck to the gritty, gravelly material they had been cut into and filled with.

  About five minutes before they began the final run-throughs, the sound recordist Grump Edwards came into the shelter carrying a monitor screen, which he put on one of the lights’ carrying cases, which sat just back from the trench edge. He showed Alan how to work it, then hurried off. Shortly before the dressing-up incident, earlier in the day, Alan had asked Fra
nk for monitors to be set up in both trenches, because on Days 2 and 3 he’d found it very difficult to follow what had been going on in Trench 2 and the studio panel.

  * * *

  Craig began his opening PTC kneeling at the edge of Trench 1. ‘Welcome to Day 4 of Test Pit Challenge live at Fursey. Today Alan Cadbury and the team enlarged Trench 1 to reveal the full extent of the graves. Here they are earlier in the day. You can see the outline of the graves quite clearly because of the paler flood-clay that fills them.’

  Speed’s footage was screened and the outline of the graves was highlighted by graphics, for the benefit, Alan thought, of the near-blind and partially-sighted.

  As he waited for Craig to join him, Alan was air-trowelling a bit of the grave he had cleared of alluvium three hours previously.

  ‘So how’s it been going today, Alan?’

  ‘It’s been hard work, Craig,’ Alan replied, wiping his brow. ‘But well worth the effort.’

  He then took viewers on a rapid tour of the trench. Thanks to the new monitor, he knew they’d already screened Speed’s earlier footage. He finished with, ‘So we removed the flood-clay an hour or so ago – it was only three inches deep – and we’re all now trowelling down through the upper filling of each grave.’

  Craig’s next question was only to be expected. ‘So do you expect to find bodies?’

  This was a bit blatant. Why does TV always have to be so explicit and unsubtle? Surely sometimes some things are best left to the imagination, unsaid? Alan could barely contain his exasperation: why did Craig always have to be so ridiculously sensationalist? What else do you expect to find in a bloody grave? Woodpeckers? Mince pies? Tea cups?

  He took a deep breath before replying. ‘Bones, d’you mean?’

  ‘Yes, all right, bones.’

  Craig gave him a secret look off-camera, which said: fuck off, please don’t come the smart-arse with me; I’m only doing my job. Alan felt bad and tried to make amends.