Fear Of Broken Glass: The Elements: Prologue

by Mark, David

  She spoke from inside the hut that was her office. ‘Historically speaking this could be very, very important.’ She balanced the telephone between her chin and shoulder as she flicked impatiently from page to page in her journal, the lack of finds a constant source of irritation. She found what she was looking for, stopping at a sketch of a plan of the lake and the trees surrounding it. ‘The conditions here make it impossible to dig. There is no firm ground...’ She tapped the middle of the lake with her fingertip and delivered the punchline she had meant to build up to, but didn’t have the inclination to deliver in any other way than getting to the point. ‘We need to drain all of it.’

  Even taking the limited numbers at her disposal into consideration, she’d be at this the rest of the year. Six laborers and an archaeological staff of five including the assistants wasn’t going to cut it. She bit her lip and waited, eyeing her mud-stained waders hanging from a clothes hanger drip-drying onto an open newspaper. To the left, a large simple square window in front of her desk. To the right, an office chair on wheels next to her litter of files, journals and the daily newspaper.

  ‘I can’t do that,’ came the reply.

  Sara was dressed in an oversized shirt hanging open, outside of a pair of cotton shorts reaching to her knees, her shoulder-length hair damp from exertion, blonde and unkempt. She frowned as she spoke, giving her a determined look, ‘The excavation boundary is simply not large enough. I have applied for permission for extension...’

  ‘... And I’ve informed you, we’d be going beyond the limits set by the agreements. We just can’t drain the whole lake.’

  ‘We have to,’ she insisted, raising her voice. ‘Otherwise all of this is just a waste of bloody time. Or,’ she inhaled deeply, unsure what to say, feeling like she was getting out of her depth.

  ‘Or what?’ Ringberg had an unemotional voice, guarded by the coolest and bluest eyes she had ever seen in a man or any person.

  Or what? Her team was composed of assistants, students mostly, of universities from remote corners of the world. What would happen to them? It was the policy of the Institute to make any major excavation an international study whenever they could. But that was the exception, not the rule. She exhaled deeply, ‘we have to drain the whole lake. I don’t know, we just don’t have the equipment or personnel to continue like this. If we can make a dam around old Viking ships and drain the sea around to excavate them, it shouldn’t be so difficult to drain a whole bog and see what else lays down there.’

  ‘Security is still an issue.’

  Home personnel meant local talk – and Lethragard had to be kept tight, very tight she had been informed, followed by stiff handshakes with stiffer men. Lots of hands, all of them civil servants, some in uniform, some not. Everyone interested in that name Lethragard, a name as old as the country it was a part of, from a time when people killed each other for no other reason than allegiance to the family. A time of horses, shields, swords and spears. A time of sacrifice.

  ‘Yes I know - but we’re digging in the dark.’ She paused, noticing the staccato of static on the line and turned to look out of her hut window at the edge of trees and a glimpse of yellow that was the excavator. Where had the information come from she wondered? ‘Or – I’m wasting my time.’ Normally an archaeologist had a context to work within. Here, there was nothing. Nothing to go on. Dig and see. That was what he had said.

  She had regarded his desk, littered with old photographs of old trenches, of old finds littering the ground: Twisted ancient swords and an occasional pommel, a cup from shields long since turned to rot. And here there would be more she had been told, the statement framed by the temptation of finds no archaeologist could resist. And so she had agreed, her need to know outweighing her reticence concerning context, or lack of it. Despite the fact the person who had made the discoveries had been the infamous Swedish archaeologist Karl Oskar Eklund. It was his name in the end that had made her mind up. Her arrival here had been followed by a week of rain and excavation, draining water and stinking mud. Five days was what it took for spirits to sag. There had to be something, somewhere. ‘Can’t you pull a few strings?’ She stood up, pacing around the table interrupted by a knock at the door.

  The door opened. She raised a finger as a young bald-heading man entered the site hut with short, receding red hair, seeing she was occupied he stood a little to one side.

  ‘If you find anything, let me know. I’ll see what I can do.’

  Her heart leapt. ‘Is that a yes?’

  ‘I’ll see what I can do.’

  The line went dead.

  Goodbye Chrilles.

  She replaced the phone back in its cradle, eyes lingering for a moment on the excavation permit. It had been a surprise, the offer of a new project coming out of the blue. She was used to new finds. What she wasn’t used to was the air of secrecy. All because section Chief Chrilles Ringberg expected her to follow in Eklund’s footprints.

  ‘You found something?’ She said to the waiting American.

  ‘Not me,’ he replied. ‘One of the workers did. You won’t believe this...’

  She looked up at the tone in his voice. Only then did she see the shine in his eyes. ‘What is it?’

  ‘Come and see...’ he said with excitement as he turned and opened the door.

  She stared at him for a moment. ‘What?’

  ‘Something old,’ he teased, tossing her a glance over his shoulder with a boyish smile as he exited the hut.

  She leapt from her chair, strode to the door and slid dirt-stained socks into a pair of black leather clogs. She barely registered the tramp of impatient feet on the boardwalk of wooden planks, knowing someone had found something. All thoughts concerning Chrilles Ringberg faded to dust, the letter of appointment bearing the logo of Danish Defense Intelligence already forgotten as she hurried after Daniel.

  The sound of a solitary swallow. It was the sound of summer. It wasn’t the warble or song of other birds; the swallow had something special, the exclamation of excitement. Of joy. Sara looked up to watch the swallow dive, turning on a wing-edge accompanied by a brother or sister displaying the same effortless aerobatics. And neither were they on their own, finding others smaller, fainter, flying above them and others above those higher still.

  ‘They went up to the house and told him. He told them to stop digging.’

  ‘What is it Daniel?’

  He didn’t answer her question, playing out the suspense as they left the shade of the trees for the bake in the mire, Daniel’s purposeful strides on wooden boards tramping, feet marching in syncopation with the regular beat of pumps keeping waters at bay. The boardwalk split into two halves, one followed the edge of the wood, the other continued out into the trenches, sections filling with water though the workers had yet to return. They followed hastily laid planks and loose pieces of warped plywood, terminating at a large yellow excavation machine laying out in the open.

  Daniel stopped and looked down into the pit. It wasn’t the fresh earth of the garden but heavier, saturated. Sara joined him, blonde hair falling in strings around her shoulders. She followed the direction of his gaze to where the excavator had laid the earth bare, the yellow machine covered in drying mud, laying dormant next to the ditch.

  Why Danish Defense Intelligence was interested in an old excavation field had been bothering her. She had been informed they had a lead, that was all she had to go on.

  ‘This was the place?’ Sara looked down at the marks at the bottom of the trench filling with water.

  ‘That’s it.’ Daniel replied, in a friendly tone.

  Daniel stood with his arms crossed, freckles covering his bare skin turning red in the sun. Slim, above average in height, Daniel has unofficially risen through the ranks of the assembled assistants to become her RHM, the Right Hand Man, as he called himself; all working for a pittance, all willing to work for less.

  Sara stood for a while, scanning the ground, the lay of the land, keeping her thoughts to her
self. Eventually she said, ‘Okay. Let’s take a look at what we’ve got.’ She looked across at Daniel who nodded, a smile of expectation curling his lip as he turned to march off back down the boardwalk. They took a right, until she arrived at a canvas-covered work tent. She passed two curious workers as she entered, following Daniel who walked across until he was standing at the side of a large black plastic container. He looked down and she joined him. Her eyes penetrated the darkness, finding the vague form of the arm. It was laying at the bottom hidden in shadow, twisted grotesquely by the optical distortion of the water.

  She quelled the anger at not being consulted, annoyed he’d taken it upon himself to put it to soak, freeing the body part from the caked-in mud. What could be seen was a hand, fingernails; the remnants of half-rotted cloth with mud-cloaked details enshrouded in a deeper suspension of dirty water, all of it diffuse and opaque so it was hard to make out any details.

  She had to ask. ‘Who dug it out?’

  ‘I did.’

  She turned on him, eyes blazing.

  Daniel raised a hand, ‘I had to get it out fast. Before he turned up.’

  ‘Did he, turn up?’

  Daniel nodded. ‘When there was nothing to see he left again. What do you think?’

  ‘I don’t know what to think,’ she replied with bated breath. Then closing her mind to thought and reason, she placed her hand within, submerging it under the water and mud, cool to the touch, taking hold of the arm, lifting it, gently.

  She let it drip before placing it delicately upon a stainless steel work top, eyes drawn to the jagged line that was severed bone, the end black and ancient. If there had been any clothing, it had been left behind in the mud, if there was anything left at all. She looked up as two assistants entered. She regarded them as if they were her children; admiringly. ‘So. What have we got?’

  One of the assistants shook his head. ‘Nothing. Nothing more than just wishful thinking.’

  Sara tried to contain her disappointment as she walked around to the other side taking a small red plastic tray within which were metallic objects, the relics of their excavation could be seen under a thin layer of water. Daniel and the two others gathered around her, all four of them looking down at the remnants of a tin can, a pair of rotten clogs and a half-broken bottle of coca-cola. Junk of the mid-twentieth century; a far cry from the iron-age battlefield she had been lead to believe she would find here; the reason for them being here at all, at this place, within the grounds of past nobility – all turned to mud and yet more junk.

  2 days later

  ‘There I was.’ The voice said.

  Daniel ignored the voice, leaning forwards. He wore a wide-brimmed cotton hat that had once been white, a stained t-shirt clinging to his back and filthy waterproof nylon pants coated in stinking mud. Layer by layer, working in fast, practiced movements, surrounded by a wall of muddy ground as high as he was tall, hoping and waiting for the day when he could work in dry conditions.

  ‘Where?’ Daniel nodded, pearls of sweat beading across a filthy forehead. He was unable to see his companion who was working inside his pit in similar fashion, two men each in their own pit in the ground working for as long as possible, cramped conditions and heat allowing. ‘Care to explain?’

  ‘The other night. Having it off with this right minger...’

  Daniel turned his head to look up at the sun. It beat down upon them, mercilessly, hour after hour so his t-shirt was glued to his back. ‘What’s a minger?’

  Ash stood up, his head emerging out of a field of mud. He wiped his forehead, leaving a trail of dirt and sweat across his forehead. Daniel regarded him for a moment then turned and regarded the site devoid of anything resembling vegetation; a no-mans land of some forgotten war, before kneeling on his hands and knees as his Ash kept on talking.

  ‘You don’t know what a minger is?’

  ‘Nope,’ came the reply from the pit.

  ‘Well, it’s female. Of the variety you wouldn’t exactly want to invite home,’ Ash continued in a broad London accent. ‘You know, the sort of girl who looks like the rear-end of a boxer. Not the punching kind mind, but those ones with those little squiggly tails in air. So you can see all those funny-looking fleshy arse-bits.’

  Daniel chuckled.

  ‘Well, she was one big fat constipated boxer-arse this one...’

  Daniel’s hat bobbed as it emerged from the ground, his head rising above the level of the earth. ‘And you invited her home?’

  Ash laughed. ‘Yeah, something like that. But that’s not the point though, is it?’ He didn’t have any hat on, or anything else. Ash chose to work barebacked, long black hair hanging in sweaty folds around broad shoulders almost as deep a shade as the earth they worked within. He held a hand out, in front of him, as if shielding his eyes. ‘I just couldn’t remember how the hell she’d got there in the first place.’

  ‘In your bed?’

  Ash grinned. Reciprocated by Daniel who grinned back, so his face split into a grin, revealing a mouth of perfect white teeth.

  ‘Shag anyone that one, talk about desperate. Do anything...’

  Daniel lifted his head back, erupting into loud, heartfelt laughter. He took off his hat and wiped his forehead. He replaced it and continued laughing, his laughs erupting from his hole in the ground as he vanished within, getting back down on his knees to continue with his routined scraping movements.

  Ash talked and Daniel scraped, getting down on his hands, moving in an increasing radius; working outwards. He stopped when he felt the edge of his trowel find something, discarding it. He slid his fingers forward, letting them penetrate the moist clammy ooze. He stopped when he felt something. It was hard and unyielding and slid back for a moment.

  ‘Hate people like that...’

  He removed his hands, pushing more mud to the side revealing a blackened stump of... something. Not fleshy, like the arm. This was different. He used his hands to remove more mud then sat back to look at what he had found, frowning. Whatever they were, there was more than one of them, blunt-ended and black.

  ‘And I mean do anything.’

  Daniel leaned forwards, hands submerging, pushing through slime until he met resistance again. Then moving them back, moving his head to the side, avoiding the worst of the mud-stench, pushing it aside into a viscous, stinking pool away from him. He enjoyed the pleasant cooling sensation around his fingers as they slid, hidden but feeling everything and ignored Ash, repeating the actions until he had revealed a line of stump-ended objects.

  ‘Had this copious minge’n’all, if I remember right...’

  Daniel pushed his hands deeper still, finding a space between the two rows of objects. Something larger it was. He stopped, sitting up, breathing heavily now from his exertions and stared at the ground before him.

  ‘But that ain’t the story, honestly, you’ll love this one...’

  He probed with his fingertips, finding the edge of the softness. Forms revealed, yet unrecognizable. Objects, organic objects, all in a row like the remnants of... restless fingers, furtive fingers moving left, probing right, finding some prehistoric creature of an apocalyptic underworld.

  ‘The next morning, after the shag...’

  He stopped and felt a flutter, a feeling within he didn’t know was excitement, fear or something in-between. The sound of Ash’s voice was all but forgotten as he leaned in closer. A bead of perspiration dropped off the end of his brow absorbed by the mud now only inches from his face.

  ‘And then, I just...’

  He stopped. Slowly, he sat upright. Somewhere he felt sweat running down his lower recesses to places hot and uncomfortable. The sound of a petrol-powered pump from the direction of the woods.

  ‘And then...’ Ash started laughing.

  He removed his hands to hang loosely at his sides.

  ‘You getting this or what?’

  But Daniel only heard the sound of his own breath, felt the pulse of his heart, suddenly feeling dizzy, feeling
faint. Then nauseous, a cold feeling cascading over his head, from the crown of his head, light, white, draining, seeking to find a place unseen where his thoughts could find clarity, refusing to accept what the thinking part of him was screaming at him, a buzz building in his ears.

  ‘Hey Dan. Still in there?’

  That these rows of objects belonged not to something but someone. That his hands had been immersed, embedded within the deformed cavity of a human body, a body in a lot worse shape than he could ever have imagined.

  The stench of the mud overbearing, the impulse proving greater than his will, Daniel turned his head to the side to vomit.

  You could smell the rain, even before it started – the before-rain that pervaded the air, heavy and oppressive, like a hammer waiting to fall. Sara followed Daniel and his camera in its pouch around his neck, Ash next to him both dressed alike in green rubber waders held up by straps over the shoulders, making for the boardwalk. They followed it, walking in beat to each other’s tramping feet, then wading across the mud until they came to the pit. Ash wore a stained white t-shirt and had his hair tied in his customary ponytail, glistening dark in the sun, his heavy-set not unattractive face framed in a look of studied concentration.

  ‘Oh my god.’ She couldn’t understand what she was looking at. Something regular, dark. ‘...is this it?’

  Daniel raised the camera and snapped a picture then nodded to Sara who was already down on her knees peering closely.

  ‘What do you think?’ Ash said, breathless.

  ‘Tollund Man was in a much worse state of preservation than this one.’ She looked back at the body. ‘Perfectly anorexic compared to this fellow.’

  Daniel got down on the ground kneeling next to Sara. ‘I can’t believe I actually had my hands inside it...’

  Sara nodded, her thoughts drifting away from Daniel’s response to the macabre body towards the reasons for the nature of the injury. To the person or people who could have been responsible for such an act; to the reasons for their actions; to their beliefs. And to the nature of the person whose remains lay exposed before them tortured and torn. Tollund man was over two thousand years old. Northern Europe had so many bodies of old in remarkable states of bog-made preservation even the ancient Egyptians would have been impressed.