by Mark, David
‘Aren’t you going to examine it?’
Sara’s eyes shifted from Ash back to the pit in the mud and slid into the trench, kneeling down. She touched the blackened cloth, gently, then moved it over the blackened skin. It was tough but still supple. She moved her hand downwards reaching out and touching the edge of ribs torn and butchered, cut through at the sides along the length of the spine, the hack marks almost as clear and fresh as the day they had been delivered.
‘They called it the blood eagle.’
Daniel stood as if in a trance, eyes still bathing in the glory that was death. ‘I always thought that was a legend.’
The cadaver was in a better state of preservation than she could have hoped for. It was dressed in a woolen cloth, split down the middle; a back that was still caked in mud masking much of the mutilation. The body had been lucky to survive with only one arm severed, the stump still buried somewhere where the giant bucket had removed the forearm soaking in her tank from its host. She noted the pit opened by the excavator, curved edges marked with grooves where the edge of steel teeth had gauged, the mud perfectly smooth between, as if made of a fine black clay. If it hadn’t been for the swarm, Mr. Bogman here would have been severed in two, she was in no doubt about that.
‘Not legend.’ Sara looked up at Daniel mouth set in the firm line of conviction. ‘No one writes about Vikings hacking open someone’s ribs because of the ritual of a blood eagle. Why the hell did you start without me?’
‘You weren’t...’
‘Straps.’ Sara’s hand shot into the air, lingering until a pair of canvas straps appeared. Then sinking her knees forwards, trying to feed the straps under the body, pushing mud, working her hands forwards, feeling contact with the body, breathing hard, working the straps deeper, before finally breaking through to the other side, passing them upwards towards two pairs of waiting hands. ‘All right, let’s get a better look at him.’ She nodded to them.
Ash slid down into the pit, helping Sara remove mud so they could extract it from the ground. She thought about the next steps. After revealing the body they had to work quickly, measuring and taking pictures, keeping it wet to prevent it drying out. She remembered a time when the talk of bog bodies was believed to be invention, fabricated by the seekers of fame and fortune. Few believed the ground could preserve the flesh for thousands of years. It was the predominant view of a male-dominated profession still run by dusty, aging professors jealously guarding grossly inflated reputations. They being the same antiquated artifacts of a past they purported to represent, part of a snobbish, elitist world that had nothing to do with revealing the most spectacularly preserved remains of man.
‘Slowly,’ Sara breathed. ‘Gently, we pull together, towards me.’
Ash scrambled to his feet, pulling himself out of the pit, taking the ends of the straps in his hands, following her lead as Daniel raised the camera to his face taking a series of pictures. He moved to the side, taking a sequence from different angles.
Sara leaned forwards and raised her arm, indicating for them to take the strain. Pressure was applied, gentle pressure, the weight of the body relieved by the straps lifted from above. Then she was laying down, hands pulling mud. She reached for a small trowel, using the edge to scrape a space around the contours of the body, first one side, then the next. It was a slow process. She sat back panting. She looked up at Daniel and nodded as she stood up. Then Daniel was next to her, getting down with the camera glued to his eye. Clicking, winding the film forward and clicking again, then hauling himself out to make space for Sara, working as a team.
‘Male or female?’ Daniel asked.
‘How the hell should I know?’ Sara shot a look over at Ash who was taking the strain, as Daniel replaced the camera in its pouch, helping her apply more weight. Together, they lifted the body bit by bit pushing, then pulling. Covered in filth, muddy sweaty faces; expressions of pain and grunts of exertion rocking the body and the mud entombing it, until that waited-for sucking-sound, the body released. ‘Gently, turn it on its side. Easy – not too quickly!’ Sara said, panting from her efforts.
‘Sara.’
It wasn’t the ragged stump that made her open her mouth in surprise. She looked up, seeing the same reaction mirrored in Daniel while Ash just stood back and... gawped, that was the word she had heard him say. He was gawping. She followed the direction of his gaze, to where the mouth was wide open, caught as if in a silent scream. Then to the cut running across the top of the victims neck severing flesh, muscle and artery. To the victim’s eyes, one of them half-open so the preserved remains of an eye could be seen as black as oil. She shuddered, taking in the edge of the rib cage where it sank slightly into the mud. Surprisingly, she found herself breathing a sigh of relief. It was intact, a little more compressed on the downside but otherwise perfectly intact. Sara hoped beyond hope, thinking of the growing list of scientifically rich finds, human remains that all had one thing in common – products of the anaerobic acidic environment that preserved everything from a hair to a weave of cloth, providing the details they so desperately needed to bring the past alive in glorious and rich detail. Finally, she looked around at the site, towards the trench lines with the occasional bobbing head of people in action excavating the site of the finds.
Daniel stretched his back, looking down at the twisted head and tortured rib cage. ‘This is incredible,’ he said in a soft voice. ‘This has to be older than Viking...’
Two more assistants approached as Sara squatted down on her haunches, running fingers across the preserved fabric, clearing more and more of the mud away, her eyes constantly drawn to those preserved lines around the eyes; to the strands of hair. To the open mouth. There was something that just wasn’t right about that terrible mouth that was no mouth at all, more like a gaping hole...
‘Incredible. Apart from the arm, he’s completely intact.’ Daniel said. ‘Looks like he was in some pain as he died.’
Daniel and the art of the understatement, Sara thought, as she bent close to the ground, working her way slowly from the arms to the shoulders. She stopped, running a bare stained hand around and over the back of the head. Frowning, she worked back around to the front, running her fingertips underneath the surface where the forehead stopped and the hairline began.
She removed her hands.
‘How old do you think he is?’
Sara ignored the question. ‘Water.’
A bottle-plunger appearing before her. She applied a jet of water at the body, rinsing away more of the mud then continued her exploration, carefully prizing apart cloth and flesh, eyes intense, concentrating like a doctor at an operation, working in measured purposeful actions. She sprayed more water, more mud falling away; cleaning, scraping, pushing, holding the victim’s slightly deformed head with the other, revealing more of the clothing until she too stopped, staring as if hypnotized. Finally, she removed her hands and sat back on her heels, staring at a fixed point.
‘No way...’ Daniel crouched down on his haunches and looked across at Sara who was still staring, breathing heavily.
She was shocked and disappointed, the joy of discovery fading as a dream caught momentarily on film only to be exposed to daylight, the details of the past disappearing to grey recollection. She nodded in recognition, face set in stone. ‘Fuck,’ she whispered once, turning to meet Daniel’s gaze.
‘Sara, unless I’m mistaken, that there is not Viking.’
Without looking around at those whose attention were focused upon her, as if she was some prophet of fortune Sara cursed to herself and then cursed again, seeing the unmistakeable collar that belonged to a jacket of the nineteenth or twentieth century.
Harewood forest, Denmark August 17th 1986
‘We never killed him...’ the man kneeling said.
They used to be twelve. Now, they were five.
The pleading tone changed everything. He was lying, with just that sort of voice he detested the most, the type of voice laden with guilt bu
t tamed in an effort to mollify. If there was something he hated the most, it was liars who mollified, as if a bad lie could make any different to anything.
The man standing sighed, a weariness entering his voice. ‘This is going to be a problem.’ Problem didn’t even come close to it. ‘Who placed the body there?’ The kneeling man said, in some futile effort to make conversation.
‘Whose idea was it?’
‘Whose idea was what?’
‘No, not what.’
The second man kneeling spoke with confusion apparent in his failure to comprehend. ‘What?’
‘Whose idea was it!’ He shouted. He was used to lies, but not lies like this.
The kneeling man wavered, seeming weaker. ‘I don’t... I don’t know... know what you mean.’
So far they had no idea who the body was. It would only be a matter of time before they discovered it was his commander. His mentor. ‘Did you do that to him? Open his ribs like that?’ He had to give it to them. They had outdone even Valentian himself. ‘You have no idea how distressed this makes me,’ the voice added as he shook his head. ‘I thought it was bad enough in the beginning, when we went to war.’
The kneeling man whimpered.
‘But it really, it was what happened afterwards,’ he said with frustration, his voice muffled as if filtered by a piece of cloth.
Afterwards, they had been lied to. Perhaps that was why he hated lies, because he had been the victim of them.
‘What happened?’ The man kneeling replied, in a voice laced with confusion. ‘Afterwards, you said?’ He continued, with hope in his voice.
No, he wasn’t going to tell this miserable sack of shit they had been part of some secret army in a forgotten war no one gave a damn about any more. Or that they had joined together to fight the red threat. The man standing breathed in, deeply. ‘Depression.’ He spoke with a whimsical voice, as if he was acting on stage.
‘Depression?’
The poor bastard was still confused, rightly so. Of course. Who could blame him? Only later, did he truly realize the limitations of those who said they were in, when they were not. So he put it down to depression. He had probably forgotten who had done what, and why. All like little sheep following a list of who to kill and when. Baaaa. And they called it liquidation back then, not murder. Valentian had been liquidated, they would say, not murdered. The man who used to be Valentian’s Sergeant moved his head upwards, wearily. ‘Not depression. No, that’s too mundane.’ He shook his head, slowly. He swallowed, recalling. ‘I guess it was when I started feeling, well, just empty.’ He still did. He had lived with it for too long; he wanted to say it started with the remnants from the slaughter house, clogging the drains. Before someone washed them all away. They hadn’t killed him. The man kneeling had been speaking the truth. And little good it would do him.
He almost felt sorry for him.
‘Is it depression when you know you have lost something, when you feel like someone has taken your life away from you?’ And who could blame him?
His voice wavered, a little weaker than it had been a moment before. He was hoping to make an impression, obviously. ‘Empty is a sign of depression.’
‘No one to go to. No one to talk to.’ The man standing shook his head. ‘No. Depression is ... when all is nothing. That’s how it is.’ He raised a hand to his mouth, absently and thought of what they had done to him.
‘You’re talking to me.’
He laughed out loud at that, the man standing waving his free arm at the trees, as silent and dark as the night around them, the other holding the shotgun so it hung pointing at the sack before him. ‘This is different.’ The gag had cut into the soft flesh at the sides of his mouth, he remembered that now. It had hurt him. Terribly so. He sighed. ‘If you really want to know, it’s the keeping it inside that hurts the most.’ He tapped his heart. ‘A pain, right here. That never goes away.’ It never did go away.
‘I know how that feels. We all did. We all... do,’ the whimpering fool replied.
He had no idea how it felt. How it feels. No one did. The man standing moved his hand from his mouth upwards, touching his face. ‘Nothing here, always dead. No joy, all gone.’ He remembered laying on a raised steel operating table on thin round legs. ‘Sometimes it gets better. But yes, it still feels like that,’ he said softly, if soft could be used for a voice tortured into gravel and crushed glass, so little there was left resembling his old self. They had tied his arms and legs to his side. The gag had been tied on top of padding that had been inserted into his mouth, soaking the blood from the incisions at the corners of his mouth. Then there was the look in their eyes. He remembered that look and felt the sting of tears in his eyes. Except, he didn’t have any eyes. So he couldn’t see the man kneeling before him, he couldn’t see his hands tied behind his back, or the sack on his head. So he imagined it, though it was real before he had ordered it so. He didn’t need to see the man. He knew where he was. He could picture where he was, as clear as if drawn for him. There, right in front of him. Him. There. Useless, like so much refuse that was the waste of people, incestuous refuse to be discarded and treated with the contempt of a diseased mongrel dog.
‘And it hurts!’ He shouted. ‘It still hurts... here,’ the first man pointed to the place that used to contain his eyes. ‘And here.’ He pointed to the side of his head. ‘Here.’ The other side of his head. ‘Here.’ He punched his chest. ‘This is what you did to me. Doctor.’
‘Doctor? What are you talking about? I’m not a doctor...’
He didn’t feel like talking any more; he felt stupid for having talked at all. He turned and nodded, recalling white tiles, the mortar coming loose in dirty joints, except his memory wasn’t what it used to be. If it had been anything at all, it had been a long time ago.
When they were done, he had ordered the prisoner placed in the middle of the junction of roads at the centre point of intersection. Around him, five figures waited silently, all standing. He raised his head and nodded. Without a word, one of them walked briskly up to the prisoner and kicked him. He grunted. He placed the sound as he was kicked again, harder, so he heard his head hitting the damp ground. He heard the figure who kicked him walk back to the line; he would be dressed in black, like the others. He had the space he needed.
When they were done, they would form a circle. One of them would bend down, pulling one of the prisoners legs. Another figure would pull the other leg, out and to the side. Two others would arrange his arms in similar fashion, wasting no time. All figures would stand upright, forming the circle, more hands reaching for firearms well cared for but rarely used.
He raised the shotgun and moved his hand upwards. ‘Who killed Valentian?’
‘No one did!’
He pointed the shotgun at that pathetic voice and slid a finger inside the trigger guard. ‘Liar.’ He moved his thumb and pulled down the first trigger.
Finally, the old man gave in. ‘We did,’ he whispered.
‘Who did? I couldn’t hear you?’
‘We did!’
‘Who told you to?’
He shook his head.
‘Who!’ He commanded.
‘Eddie,’ he whispered.
So it was Eddie. ‘Eddie used the Nightingales?’
He nodded.
‘How?’
‘There was a list, a list of names.’ Eddie liked secrets. ‘Where is it?’
The man on the ground said nothing.
‘Where is it?’ The blind man said standing. ‘When someone was to be targeted...’ he took a step forward. ‘Where?’
And still he said nothing.
A man moved out of background and hit the man kneeling, causing him to grunt in pain.
‘It,’ he coughed, ‘it was an accounts ledger.’
‘Where?’
‘No.’ Then there was change in his voice, finding strength. ‘Do you know what we did to him, Valentian? You were on the list too.’
He moved his finger to
the trigger.
‘You should have died a long time ago. We killed him yes, we made him suffer for his crimes. You won’t get anything more out of me. I won’t tell you anything. You’re going to kill me. You’ll be next. You’re name is still on the...’
The sound was explosive and deafening followed by a flap of wings. Liar. He stood, smelling the shroud of gun smoke around him.
The man was still alive, his breath rasping.
He cocked and pulled the second trigger.
The rasping sound stopped.
He passed the shotgun to the man standing behind him, the stench of cordite filling the air. Then he pulled on brace lying dormant in his other hand and followed the dog back into the darkness, the doctor no more.
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