Relics, Wrecks and Ruins

by Aiki Flinthart

  Mari blinked. A creature of darkness that could be sent off by stabbing it with a fountain pen did not sound very likely. Anything summoned or released by a real malediction would have had the vicar’s thumb entirely off in a second, and her head a moment later.

  “A creature of darkness? Did you feel the Goddess react to this, or sense Her presence?”

  “No…” replied the vicar. “One doesn’t, most of the time.”

  The central tenet of the Church was that the Goddess was asleep, and Her few interactions with the living world came about from the deity’s occasional dreams. As this also applied to Her Antagonist, it was considered in the world’s best interests if the sleeping continued and the dreams were sparse. This could be assured, the First and Second Testament said, by doing good works, which kept the Goddess happily slumbering, and refraining from doing bad things, which might wake the Antagonist.

  Despite her somnolent state, the Goddess was known to make Her presence felt if real evil intruded upon her consecrated servants, even though She rarely did anything useful about it. Her lack of interest tended to suggest that whatever had gripped the vicar’s thumb was not a truly malignant creature of darkness.

  “You did not see anything, or perhaps feel the shape of the intruder?”

  “No. Only it was cold. Like ice water.”

  “Did it feel like a hand gripping your thumb? Could you feel individual fingers?”

  The vicar shook her head slowly. “It was so cold…”

  Mari looked at the others. “You all had a similar experience?”

  Everyone started to talk at once. Mari quietened them again, and listened carefully to their stories. They were much the same as the vicar’s. Each had been ‘attacked’ in the night, their left thumbs gripped and held up, but it was clear to Mari that the otherworldly assailant had not actually tried to pull the thumbs off. Nor had it been driven away by poking with a fountain pen, an uppercut from the sergeant—like punching a snow drift, he said—or any of the other defensive reactions. The reason that Rawson’s thumb had not been pulled was also clear: she lived in another village, several miles away.

  “I do not think this has been caused by a malediction,” said Mari. “It has the classic signs of a shade of some sort seeking a part of its body that has been removed, in this case the thumb bone. Have you had any recent burials? No? Your graveyard is by the church? Perhaps I might have a look?”

  “Certainly,” replied the vicar. “But there has been no disturbance. The most recent burial was old Jaggers, and that’s six months—”

  “Eight months ago,” interrupted her husband. He was still carrying the plate, but the pile of rock cakes had diminished and every shirt but Mari’s and the vicar’s was adorned with crumbs. The russet Labrador had left the war memorial steps and was following along to collect the fallen remnants and the odd sultana with judicious licks of her tongue.

  “Eight months ago,” continued the vicar smoothly. She pointed to the lych-gate in the low wall on the far side of the green, next to the church.

  “I think we can let these good folk go about their business,” said Mari, as it seemed clear the full entourage hoped to dog her steps. “Perhaps we can meet later to discuss whatever I have found. Oh, could someone put my broom and valise somewhere safe?”

  “I’ll take it to my police house, Dr. Garridge,” said Sergeant Breckon quickly, for once, getting in before the vicar. “Sixth house down the street. The blue lamp is outside, but hard to see; it’s a little overgrown with the passionfruit.”

  “You can grow passionfruit here?” asked Mari with interest. “Through the winter and all?”

  “Year-round. It’s the only passionfruit for two hundred miles,” replied the sergeant proudly. “It is said a Roman wizard planted it, in ancient times, when they first drained the fens. That’s why we never cut it back.”

  “I must take a look at it,” said Mari.

  “You don’t think it has something to—” the sergeant began, a look of absolute horror forming on his face.

  “No! No,” Mari hastily reassured him. “I am sure it doesn’t. I’m curious, that’s all. And I like passionfruit.”

  “Oh, good,” said the sergeant. “I’ll take your broom and bag, Miss. I mean, Doctor.”

  He did a smart about-face, almost ruined by the others not getting out of his way, and marched off. After a few moments of hesitation, Dr. Ware, the steward Robe, and the solicitor Rawson muttered largely inaudible pleasantries and followed him.

  Only the dog remained, eyeing the single remaining rock cake.

  “Go home, Bella,” said Lawrence, pointing to the imposing vicarage that could be glimpsed behind the church. The dog looked at him and set off across the green in the opposite direction. Lawrence sighed and shook his head.

  “Oh, do come on, Lawrence,” urged the vicar, though her husband was already moving towards her. “I have a great deal to get through today, after all this disturbance.”

  The graveyard did not provide Mari with any clues. It was undisturbed, and there was no sign any of the inhabitants had been roaming. In fact, it was quite peaceful, and when Mari leaned her hand against one of the hawthorns that lined the southern side of the cemetery, the tree confirmed that nothing untoward had occurred in all its long life, extending back a century or more.

  “Have any of the other villages nearby reported any…er…thumb attacks or anything similar?” asked Mari.

  “No,” replied the vicar. “Not even Upper Warnstow. Are you sure it’s not a curse, centered in the village?”

  “I am confident it is not,” said Mari. She thought for a moment. “It must be a shade seeking a missing bone. But that means a recently disturbed grave, or a death, somewhere close to the village.”

  “I don’t think there’s been anything like that,” said the vicar, her husband nodding confirmation.

  “I should have asked Sergeant Breckon if there are any current missing persons,” said Mari. “Or a tramp perhaps, dying somewhere nearby.”

  “Neither one,” said the vicar firmly. “It would have come up in the meeting of the parish council this morning, when we decided we needed your assistance.”

  Mari thought for a moment. A thumb bone separated from a skeleton had to come from somewhere…

  “Do you have a local museum?”

  The vicar and Lawrence shook their heads.

  “What about archaeological excavations? Are there any taking place nearby?”

  “No,” replied the vicar, but as she spoke, her husband cleared his throat. She looked at him crossly, as if he had interrupted her.

  “Not nearby, as such,” said Lawrence, with an apologetic glance at his wife. “But I believe there is a dig going on at the upper end of the northernmost arm of Castwell Creek.”

  “Is there really?” asked the vicar, as Mari said, “How far away is that?”

  “A good seven miles as the crow—you might fly,” replied Lawrence. “But at least nine miles by road, because you have to go along the New Cut for such a way before the crossing at Bridge. Would you like a rock cake? There is only one left.”

  Mari took the cake and ate it slowly. It lived up to its name, being very hard indeed. Seven miles was a long way for a shade to go, but it was not impossible. So far, the spirit was not malevolent. But it might become more urgent in its searching, and serious thumb injuries could result. Or become annoyed and take even more drastic action.

  One puzzling aspect was that the shade should already have found the thumb bone and taken it back. It ought to be able to sense where it was, unless there was interference of some kind, or it was being moved about. The testing of people’s thumbs was also curious, as if the shade hoped to find its own member attached to a living person.

  She wondered if she should try to find the thumb bone herself, by divination or augury. But the fact the shade itself was having difficulty suggested this would not be easy. Locating the skeleton the thumb came from should be more straightforwa
rd.

  “I had better go and have a look at this archaeological dig,” she said when the last crumbs of rock cake had cleared her throat. “Though I’d rather not fly. My broom is rather old and needs a rest. Does Sergeant Breckon have a car?”

  “He does not,” replied the vicar. “But I do. Lawrence shall drive you over immediately.”

  “Oh yes,” said Lawrence mechanically. “Delighted.”

  The vicar’s car turned out to be a well-used but apparently entirely unsprung two-seat roadster of considerable vintage. It was even more uncomfortable than Mari’s broom. The rock cake also sat uncomfortably in her stomach, and several times threatened to rise as they hit a pothole or bounced over a flurry of flood-scoured ridges in the road.

  It seemed considerably further than nine miles, much of it beetling along the raised road alongside the New Cut before crossing the iron bridge at Bridge, only to go back up the Cut on the other side. From there they took a road between two long, thin arms of the estuary, the narrow strip of bitumen often lower than the water on either side, protected from inundation only by turfed-over banks that did not seem sufficiently high or thick.

  The dig itself turned out to be in a creek that joined the left-hand arm of the estuary. Several cars, a motorcycle and a lorry were drawn up on a hummock of raised ground at this conjunction of the waters.

  When Lawrence parked the two-seater, Mari stood up on her seat and saw that the tidal creek was dry, the sea kept back by a coffer dam made of sandbags and heavy beams of timber. Behind the dam, silt and mud had been carefully dug away down at least a dozen feet to reveal a buried longboat, its timbers still solid but dark as pitch from their long submergence.

  Several people were digging in various corners of the boat, all of them quite young. Undergraduate archaeologists. Mari was familiar with the breed.

  More importantly, from Mari’s point of view, were the tall, rune-carved willow wands topped with silver lamps that surrounded the lip of the excavation, one every seven paces, in the orthodox pattern. These were ghost-wards, deployed to prevent any shade or revenant from rising from the burial ship—as this had to be—to terrorize the surrounding countryside.

  The willow wands were twinned with shorter rods of spell-engraved iron, thief-wards designed to keep people out, save for those mentioned by name in the warding spells.

  Mari nodded to herself and climbed out of the car, pausing to push out and don her pointy hat. Lawrence followed, falling a few steps behind, his accustomed spot behind his wife, the vicar.

  They had just reached the creek-side when one of the archaeologists in the boat saw them and called out.

  “Hello! Stop there, please! The wards won’t let you past. I’ll come up.”

  He was older than the others. Although he wore the same colorful cravat, untidy shirt, loose bags and tennis shoes as the students, male and female, he also wore an iron necklace tucked under the cravat, plus a tweed coat with heavily overloaded pockets, a symbol of authority and absentmindedness. Mari knew he would be roughly her equivalent, a junior fellow or something similar, recently awarded his doctorate, and here in charge for the first time on his own dig.

  “Hello, hello,” he called again as he nimbly made his way up a ladder to the creek bed and then scrambled up the bank. “What brings a witch and…er…here?”

  “I’m temporarily the district witch,” replied Mari. She liked this man for his cheerful countenance and greeting. “Dr. Mari Garridge, usually a junior fellow of Ermine College, Hallowsbridge. This is Mr. Lawrence Evenholme, the husband of the vicar at Nether Warnstow, who kindly drove me here.”

  “Oh yes,” replied the man. He offered his hand, apologized for its filthy state, and quickly withdrew it. “I’m Dr. Robert Jacoby. Bob. Or Jac to some folks, take your pick. I’m a treasure-vigile from the museum. Friend’s College, originally, though I expect I was up at Hallowsbridge somewhat before your time, Dr. Garridge… Garridge…um, are you here on official business?”

  “I’m afraid so,” replied Mari. She paused and tried to frame what she had to say as kindly as possible. A treasure-vigile was a kind of archaeologist who was also something of a wizard, which might mean not much of one at all or the full magic, so this cheerful chap had probably placed the ghost-wards himself. And there was a problem with them.

  “Last night a shade haunted Nether Warnstow, I think trying to find its missing thumb bone. I suspect the shade’s skeleton is here.”

  “But…but that’s not possible!” exclaimed Jac. He turned and gestured to the willow wands. “I placed the wards before we even started the dig.”

  “Yes, I see,” said Mari. “But I’m afraid you haven’t taken something into account.”

  Jac stared at her, an expression of intense puzzlement screwing up his plain but quite appealing face.

  Mari pointed at the coffer dam. The tide was on the ebb, but the muddy, roiling water still came more than halfway up the dam. At the flood tide, it would be only a few feet from the crest—putting the water well above the height of the wands.

  It took Jac a long, epiphany-dawning moment to work out what she meant.

  “Oh Goddess,” he groaned. “Proximity of salt and the action of the sea! How high should I have made the wands?”

  “At six-yards distance, one and three quarter times the height of highest water,” recited Mari from memory.

  “Garridge,” said Jac and he groaned again. “You’re the sizar who saved Ermine and re-established the bounds…I feel so stupid.”

  “Wards and binding are my specific area of research,” said Mari. “I am sure wizardry is only an adjunct to your archaeological expertise. Can you let us in to take a look at your skeleton?”

  “If I’ve stuffed up the wards, you don’t need—”

  “Only the ghost-wards are ineffective, the thief-wards are active. Iron-based wards are more resistant to the action of the sea,” said Mari. “And…I hate to rub salt in the wound, but you’ve erred in the opposite direction there, they’re almost double the size required, particularly since you’ve used wrought iron when most people these days use cast, which lessens the efficacy of the spell.”

  Jac nodded ruefully and ran down the bank to the closest iron thief-ward. Bending over the iron rod he whispered the spell and the visitors’ names, and beckoned them to follow him.

  The skeleton, when it was finally revealed from under several layers of tarpaulin, was a surprise to Mari, and not a welcome one. The presence of Jac as a treasure-vigile was immediately explained by the great weight of gold and silver and amber and ivory that adorned the skeleton. There was even a jeweled crown upon the skull. The only item that wasn’t loaded with gemstones was the axe by the skeleton’s side. It looked completely utilitarian.

  The quantity of treasure was surprising, but not as much as the fact that the skeleton possessed all its appendages.

  “It’s got both thumbs,” said Lawrence, unnecessarily.

  “She,” said Jac quickly. “She’s a Norse warrior princess. Possibly Inga the Head-Gatherer.”

  Mari stared down at the skeleton, thinking hard. Her working hypothesis that the thumb bone had to come from this site was shaken, particularly since she also had a strong suspicion of how it had got to Nether Warnstow.

  Could there be some other explanation? If the shade wasn’t looking for its finger bone, could it be searching for something else?

  She knelt down, drew her athame and held it horizontally over the skeleton’s hands, concentrating her witchy senses. Some of the skeleton’s treasures had once contained mighty magics, but there were only echoes and whispers now. Yet there had been something else present, something stronger, she could feel its absence.

  “Jac,” she said, standing up and sheathing her knife. “May I call you Jac? Princess Inga has rings on each finger, except her left thumb. Was there something there when you first dug her…when you first excavated the skeleton?”

  “Gosh,” said Jac. “Yes.”

  He s
tared at the princess. His four students crept closer and gazed down. One muffled a worried cough, her neighbor looked like he was about to cry, and the other two simultaneously took out their notebooks. Jac produced his notebook as well and frantically searched through it.

  “I’ll be defrocked,” he moaned as he turned the pages. “Losing a relic is practically a capital crime for a treasure-vigile.”

  “Defrocked?” asked Mari.

  “We have a ceremonial uniform,” replied Jac despairingly. “They cut your buttons off and break your trowel in a defrocking.” He jabbed a finger at his notebook, leaving a dirt smudge on the paper. “Here it is. Left thumb. A relic ring of red dragon bone, one-quarter-inch width, three-quarter-inch diameter, one sixteenth thick, carved with a depiction of serpents entwined…er…possibly mating. Here’s a drawing.”

  He held up his notebook to Mari.

  “I suppose one of my team must have taken it,” he said gloomily, turning so his back was to his young students. “Or you think I stole it?”

  “No, I don’t think so,” replied Mari encouragingly.

  There was a general lessening of anxiety and a couple of sighs of relief, but also general signs of bafflement, particularly from Jac.

  “But you said yourself the thief-wards are working,” he said. “Loathe as I am to say it, it has to be one of us.”

  “Then why would the shade be looking for it in Nether Warnstow?” asked Mari. “It is certainly searching for the ring. I think I know where it might be, and how it got there, despite the thief-wards. We’ll have to work fast to get it back to the princess before nightfall though. Can you take me back to the village, Lawrence?”

  “Certainly,” replied the vicar’s husband. “This is all terribly interesting.”

  “Can I come too?” asked Jac. “It is my responsibility.”

  “You’ll have to sit behind on the dicky seat,” warned Lawrence. “It won’t be comfortable.”