Midwinterblood

by Marcus Sedgwick

  And then there’s the sun being up when it should be in bed. That would really mess with his sleep, and presumably it means in the winter it’s perpetually dark, in return. That, he knows, he would not like.

  They’ve been given permission to dig in the far end of the meadow, but only for two weeks; they have used half their time.

  “Council of war,” Edward says, as they push away their plates. “We need to find something, and quickly, or this dig will be written off and me with it.”

  He smiles grimly.

  “So, what do we do?”

  Edward sighs. He’s getting too old for long days in trenches with nothing to show for it. Once, he would have been excited anyway, just to have the trowel in his hands and the dirt under his fingernails. He looks at his three young keen accomplices.

  “What do you guys think? Nancy, Isabella, how’s life in trench one? Anything giving you cause for hope?”

  Nancy shakes her head. Languidly.

  “Nope. I know we found some resistance when Mat did the geophysics, but I’m dubious. No offense, Mat.”

  Mat raises a hand.

  “None taken. The equipment is…”

  He stops, realizing it’s an implied criticism of Edward.

  “… is rubbish,” Edward finishes. “Don’t worry, I apologize. It’s all we could afford to transport.”

  “I know this is not how you’re supposed to do it,” Isabella says, “but I’d love to have a go at some of the mounds round the edge of the field.”

  Edward smiles inwardly at her excellent English idiom. Have a go.

  “No, Isabella, that is not how we’re supposed to do it. Real archaeologists do not just have a go…”

  Edward takes another drink of beer.

  “Listen, I’m the boss. I’ll think about it overnight and decide on a new plan for tomorrow, okay? At least we’ve had great weather. We can all go home with no artifacts, but lovely suntans. Even you, Isabella.”

  They laugh.

  Isabella pretends to glare at Edward, then smiles, too.

  “Yes, but you know, even if it was raining, I would bet that boy would still be standing there, watching us.”

  They all agree.

  “I think he’s a bit creepy,” Nancy says.

  “No. Don’t be mean,” Mat says. “He’s okay. He’s just interested.”

  “But that toy. He must be fifteen, sixteen? That’s a bit weird, isn’t it?”

  Edward nods, but says nothing.

  “Yes,” says Isabella, “but there is something about him. His eyes.”

  “His eyes?” asks Nancy.

  “Yes, his eyes,” Isabella says. “His eyes … it seems like he knows everything, but is saying nothing.”

  It is a remark that Edward finds disconcerting, because he had been about to say the very same thing.

  Four

  Next morning, Edward rises early, and helps himself to breakfast. He leaves a note for the others to join him at the site, and makes his way from the Wardhouse along the lane that runs beside the meadow, to the far end, where they have been digging.

  He wants to stand at the site.

  He has spent all night half awake, wrestling with what decision to make. To abandon their two trenches, and to start new ones, or to persevere. It’s a hard call, because there’s no good reason to take one over the other.

  And he has come early to the site, without the others, because he is too ashamed to confess that all he wants to do is stand there, and pray to the gods of archaeology for a sign of what to do.

  It’s a slightly damp morning, but the sun is already up, of course, and the dew is starting to steam off the meadow. It will be another hot day.

  Edward surveys the dig, and the meadow in general. He marvels at it, because if he had been God (though he’s very glad he’s not) and he were designing an island, Blessed is just what he would have drawn. It has two large natural harbors, one at each end of the island, and many other smaller ones around its shoreline. It has a high ridge of hills to the west, a lower one to the east, between them is a valley, which flattens out into the meadow where they are digging—a natural safe haven, and one that the Vikings used in the wintertime. A dig in 1902 found evidence of what is written in the old sagas, that after a long season of raiding to the south and west, they would hurry back to the island, and draw their longboats up onto the meadow, to overwinter in safety. He pictures the scene, imagines the men and women and the horses straining to drag their proud ships out of the water and into the meadow. Knarrs were big boats, but light enough to be carried short distances if need be. Nonetheless, it must have been quite a sight.

  His attention snaps back to the present, and he thinks how far the world has come in a thousand years, how the island has changed in that time. And what will it be like in another thousand years? People, most people, always assume that civilization steadily increases, that the world improves, becomes more peaceful, and it very often does. But if there’s one thing he’s learned in his days as an archaeologist, it’s that this is not always the case. Sometimes, when civilization falters, sometimes, things become more primitive again. More primitive, and more violent.

  He stands with his hands on his hips, looking around at what they have done so far, and shakes his head.

  “You should dig here,” says a voice behind him.

  He turns to see the boy, Eric, in his usual spot. Edward suddenly wonders if he’s been there all along, watching. He’s so preoccupied that it’s possible. He imagines the boy standing out all night, on the mound, bathing in silver moonlight.

  Eric’s pointing at his feet, his hare in his hand, as always.

  “Sorry. Sorry, what did you say?”

  But Eric does not answer, and though Edward tries gently to coax more out of him, he won’t be drawn.

  “Here?” says Edward, quietly. “Here?”

  He hears the others approaching, come out early to find him, and he backs away from Eric, as if he’s feeling guilty about talking to him.

  As the others arrive, he notices Eric move from the mound he always stands on, to another nearby.

  “Well, boss?” says Nancy.

  Edward pauses, wonders if he’s about to say what he thinks he’s about to say.

  “Well. This is the decision. Mat and I are going to continue in trench two. But I would like, in fact, I would love, for you and Isabella to have a go at that mound. That one. Right there.”

  There is a moment’s silence in which no one says anything.

  “There is good methodology for this?” Isabella asks. There’s a twinkle in her eye.

  Mat and Nancy both look at the grass.

  Edward hesitates again, then smiles quickly.

  “Absolutely! But we don’t have time to discuss it. So let’s dig people, yes? Dig!”

  Five

  There are moments in everyone’s life, Edward thinks, when you just have to go with gut instinct. Especially at those times when you are faced with a fifty-fifty call, if there’s even the slightest feeling tugging you one way, you’d better do what that feeling tells you.

  That’s what Edward convinces himself, and keeps repeating.

  Time and again, Mat has to draw his attention back to the pit they’re in, because Edward keeps stopping and looking across to where the girls are working, desperate to see something come up in the mound. Anything.

  The morning wears on.

  The mood worsens.

  The only word they hear is spoken by the voice behind the hedge.

  “Eric!”

  Edward sighs.

  “Let’s take lunch, too. We had an earlier start than normal.”

  No one speaks.

  * * *

  Eric is back on his new mound sooner after lunch today. They’re still chewing sandwiches and munching chips when he reappears. It doesn’t seem to bother him that they’re not working, he stands watching, as interested as ever.

  Finally Edward can stand it no longer.

  �
��Come on,” he says. “Let’s give the boy something to be proud of.”

  Nancy winks at Isabella and taps the side of her head, twice. Languidly.

  * * *

  In half an hour, Isabella shrieks.

  She actually shrieks.

  “Oh God! I think I found something.”

  She has.

  * * *

  The afternoon goes by quickly, as the two girls begin to uncover their remarkable find. Edward and Mat cannot fit in the trench to help, too, but they have abandoned their own dig; it is too exciting not to watch.

  They have found a pile of stones, the sort of thing that does not seem very exciting to anyone but an archaeologist.

  A pile of stones, but a particular sort of pile, a cairn, and Edward knows that it is very likely that there is a find underneath the cairn.

  He has seen one before, and he is impatient. But these things have to be done properly. First the last of the soil must be removed from around the stones, and then the stones must be photographed, and drawn on grid paper, and only then will they be able to lift them, and find out for sure if what they have found is what Edward thinks it is: a Viking burial.

  He has a doubt. He has a doubt because the cairn is small, much smaller than the burial sites he has seen before. He worked on one once that was vast. Beneath the stones lay the remains of a Viking longboat, most of the wood long rotted away, but obvious to the expert eye, nevertheless.

  This one is small, and will barely have room for a single body, but something convinces Edward that he is right.

  He paces up and down behind the girls, trying to stop himself from telling them what to do every five minutes. They know what to do, because he taught them himself. Mat is being more sensible, sitting on the grass by the girls’ trench, helping them when he can, and sifting through the spoil when he can’t.

  Eric watches, wordlessly, though sometimes he lifts the hare to his lips.

  Finally, they begin to raise the stones. Edward holds his breath, and as they lever away enough of the stones, he turns and actually punches the air, silently.

  “Yes,” he mutters under his breath.

  Under the cairn is a cist; exactly what he had been hoping for, a box in the ground, with slabs of stone for walls. Essentially a primitive coffin.

  A stone box, with a stone lid.

  Edward steps into the trench.

  “Okay now, people, this is going to take all of us.”

  They cramp into the trench, at each side of the lid.

  Their fingers curl under what lips of the lid they can feel. Their flesh touches stone, which has not seen light for eleven centuries.

  They are silent, but they catch each other’s eyes, and see the suppressed excitement in each other.

  Edward is wrong, however, even with all four of them, they cannot lift the lid.

  Edward straightens his back, curses.

  Then a shadow is cast over the trench, and he looks up to see Eric.

  Edward considers the situation. He looks at the boy, young, but strong-looking.

  “Do you want to help us, Eric?” he says.

  Eric doesn’t say anything, but he places his hare gently on the grass, and climbs down into the trench with the others.

  Now it’s even more of a squeeze, but they just manage to find a place to stand.

  “On three,” says Edward. “One…”

  But Eric is already lifting.

  My God, thinks Edward, but the boy is strong. He can feel Eric doing most of the lifting, and they follow his lead, as they shift the stone up and then to one side, and slide it onto the grass.

  They look.

  “Oh my…” says Isabella.

  “… God,” says Nancy.

  There are bones in the cist. They are long human bones.

  They are somewhat jumbled however, and it takes each of them a moment to realize there is more than one set of bones in the coffin, but it is true, for there below them in the stone box are two skulls.

  They start to decode what they are seeing. There is a larger skull, and larger skeleton, and a smaller.

  “Are you thinking what I’m thinking?” Nancy asks.

  Edward says nothing.

  “Yes,” says Mat, simply. “The larger one is holding the smaller one. That is how it seems to me.”

  * * *

  Eric steps back, picks up his hare, and goes to stand on his new mound again.

  He shakes his head, gently.

  “Well, so it is,” he says, though no one hears him.

  Six

  That evening, when they finish work, Edward sends the others back to the Wardhouse without him.

  There is something he wants to do.

  As they pack up, he notices that Eric has already gone, but he knows where he lives, and he takes a slightly different path out of the meadow, into the lane, and up the steps to Eric’s front door.

  He knocks and waits.

  It’s quiet inside, and he wonders if he has made a mistake, but then he hears soft footsteps and the door opens.

  A woman stands in front of him. She is about his own age, and has an open, kind face.

  “Yes?” she says. Then, “Oh, I know who you are. You’re the archaeologist, aren’t you? Speak of the Devil! Eric has been telling me all about you. Won’t you come in and have some tea?”

  Edward is a little thrown. He can’t imagine Eric saying much at all, for one thing.

  “I … that’s very kind. I just wanted to come and thank Eric for his help today. We couldn’t have managed without him.”

  The woman laughs.

  “Think nothing of it. It is I who should be thanking you. Please, come in and have some tea. We don’t get so many visitors.”

  Edward finds that surprising, because the woman is lovely. Yes, she’s middle aged, as he is, but the lines around her eyes only seem to highlight their elegance. But maybe Eric keeps people away, maybe some people aren’t comfortable with someone like …

  Someone like what?

  Edward tells himself off. He’s just another human being, he’s different, in his own way. Just like everyone.

  Though he’s still surprised that Eric’s mother says he’s been chatting away about the dig.

  “I’m Edward,” he says, holding out his hand.

  She shakes it firmly.

  “I’m Merle,” she says.

  Seven

  Eric sits at the table across from the kitchen, playing with his hare. Close up, Edward sees that it is very old; the boy has probably had it since he was a baby. It is tattered and torn, and has obviously been repaired many, many times.

  Eric hops the hare across the table one way, then back again, his lips moving wordlessly, as if speaking magic to the toy.

  “Yes, I mean it,” Merle says, as she makes tea. “I can’t remember when he was so interested in something. When something made him so happy.”

  Happy? thinks Edward.

  He doesn’t seem particularly happy, but then, maybe he has his own way of showing it. Doesn’t everyone?

  “He said he helped you lift a big stone…?”

  “He practically lifted it all by himself. But yes, that’s right.”

  “He’s a strong boy, that’s for sure,” she says. “Well, Eric and I accept your thanks, don’t we Eric?” she calls through to the dining room where Eric sits.

  He looks up, briefly, and nods. Then he carries on playing with his hare.

  “But that’s not really what I came to thank him for.”

  “Oh?”

  Edward pauses. This is the tricky part. Where he admits he threw away twenty-six years of professional training because an idiot told him where to dig.

  Idiot? He hates himself for even thinking the word. Castigates himself.

  He looks through at Eric.

  Coughs.

  “The thing is … the thing is, Merle, that Eric told us where to dig, and we found something amazing. We were having no luck, nothing. Finding nothing, and then Eric tol
d me where to dig this morning, and presto! We’ve hit this incredible find.”

  Maybe Merle doesn’t understand what he’s saying, doesn’t get how archaeology works, because she doesn’t seem interested in Eric’s tip-off.

  “What did you find?”

  “Viking burial. Not uncommon in itself, but this one is very unusual. I’ve never seen anything like it before. In fact, I might be going to make my career here. Finally. I don’t think anyone’s seen anything like it. Ever.”

  “Well, then,” says Merle. “You’ll have to thank Eric for that, too. Eric? Did you hear that? You’ve made this nice man famous! Isn’t that good?”

  “Thanks, Eric!” Edward calls, laughing, but Eric frowns. He gets up from the table, and hurries upstairs.

  “Did I upset him?” Edward asks. “I’m sorry. I…”

  Merle shakes her head.

  “He’s hard to understand. Don’t worry, he’s fine. He’s like that sometimes. He’s very shy, you see. Very shy.”

  Edward wants to ask something, but doesn’t know how to say it. But he is genuinely interested in the boy, he likes him, though he barely knows him.

  “What … I mean,” he says, fumbling for the words. “Was he…?”

  “You mean why is he like this?” Merle says. She is not offended. “Don’t worry. I’m actually glad that you asked straight out. Most people beat around the bush, or avoid us altogether.”

  “Which is their loss,” Edward says, aloud, before he knows what he’s saying.

  Merle hesitates. A little light comes into her eyes.

  “You’re right, Edward, it’s their loss.”

  She touches his forearm, very gently, very briefly.

  “He wasn’t born like this. He was born what those other kind of people would call normal. It happened when he was two.”

  She hesitates again for a moment, remembering.

  “It was this time of year. The hay moon. They had started to cut the hay in the meadow, and Eric … Eric … I couldn’t find him. He was here one minute, and I was putting washing out in the garden, and then he was gone. I couldn’t find him. I got really desperate, you know. As a parent there’s … Well, anyway, the next thing was that I heard shouts from the meadow. I ran outside.