“Boss,” he uttered breathlessly. “There's something here.”
Cutler quickly joined Fortune in digging out the remaining earth that covered whatever it was that Winston's spade had struck. Sally joined them, quickly abandoning her break, grasping the small hand shovel and doing her best to help uncover the hidden object.
“Sounded wooden, boss,” Winston said as the sweat continued to pour from his brow.
“I think you're right, Winston.”
“What is it?” asked the voice of Walter Graves, who had suddenly appeared at the top of the hole.
“We'll let you know when we've uncovered the thing,” Cutler replied.
“A bit of help wouldn't go amiss,” Sally rasped in the direction of Graves.
“That's really not my department at all, Miss Corbett,” was Graves's answer. “Advice, guidance and consultation, that's my remit on this job, as you well know.”
“Course it is,” said Winston. “We're just the donkeys remember, Sally girl?”
“Come on you two, we're almost there,” urged Joe Cutler as the last remnants of the earth covering the find were removed and the shape of a large and lengthy wooden box was gradually revealed.
“You said it would be in something resembling a grave, Mr. Graves,” Cutler said to the watching historian. “Could this be it, d'you think?”
“We won't know until you've uncovered enough of the thing to let us open the lid, if it has one.”
Ten minutes later, the three surveyors had dug down around the sides of what appeared to be an old wooden chest, or perhaps a coffin. There were metal hinges on the box, well rusted and decomposed, but still in place where they'd been bolted many years before. To those who'd unearthed it, it certainly looked like the type of container described in Gareth's Chronicle. Could this really be the hiding place of Excalibur? Had they really found the legendary sword of King Arthur, and so soon into their search?
“Here goes then,” said Cutler as he pried the lid of the box open a minute later. There was an ominous cracking as the aged wood began to splinter under the pressure of his crowbar, brought for the specific purpose of opening any stubbornly difficult containers they might find.
“Wait,” Graves shouted as he heard the sound of splintering wood. “Let me.” They were amazed to hear those words. Was Walter Graves at last going to get his hands dirty and join them in some good honest toil?
“Please, all of you step out of the hole,” he ordered. “I have something better to use than your rather cumbersome tool, Mr. Cutler. Far better I think to try to remove the hinges than to shatter the lid and possibly damage the contents.”
Cutler couldn't think how removing the lid could possibly damage a sword forged from steel if that was indeed what lay in the box, but when he saw Graves begin to reach into his inside pocket he quickly realised what the man may be reaching for.
“Quick, everyone, out,” he demanded, and he led the way out of the hole they'd spent so long excavating, followed by Winston, who then gave Sally Corbett a hand up and out of the grave-like hole.
As the three of them stood on the rim of the hole, Graves removed his hand from his pocket and revealed not the handgun that Cutler had half expected, but a screwdriver, a screwdriver with a pistol grip!
“I usually carry this with me when I'm in the field,” said Graves as he dropped down into the hole. “It comes in handy for all sorts of things. You never know when a good screwdriver will be useful.”
Cutler felt pretty foolish at that point. Little did he know that the day before, when he'd seen the other man's jacket swing open to reveal the handgrip that he'd taken to be a gun, Graves's intuition and professional training had told him that Cutler had seen the weapon, long enough to make it out for what it was. Graves knew he had to diffuse any suspicions that Cutler might have had as a result of his small but crucial slip-up and had spent some time in a local hardware shop that morning selecting the pistol-gripped screwdriver he now brandished in his hand for all to see. He hadn't thought that he'd get the chance to show it off quite so soon; the discovery of the box had come at a highly opportune moment and now he had the chance to assuage the fears of Cutler and the others, as he assumed that Joe would have confided his fears to them.
As Graves twisted the first of the screws holding the hinges on the lid of the box, Winston Fortune moved close to Cutler and whispered very softly into his employer's right ear: “A gun, huh, boss?”
“Alright, Winston. We can all make a mistake, can't we?” he whispered in return. “Sorry if I worried you, Sally,” he carried on by leaning towards Sally who was well aware of what they were discussing.
“Everything okay up there?” Graves shouted cheerily from the bottom of the hole, knowing only too well what they were probably discussing.
“Yes, Mr. Graves, everything's fine,” Sally shouted down to him. “We were just saying that we're a little surprised to see you down there doing manual labour to tell the truth.”
Impressed at Sally Corbett's quick thinking in giving an instant reply to his question, Graves smiled, looking up. “Ah, but you see, Miss Corbett, if this is really what we're looking for then it becomes my responsibility to verify the sword's existence and ensure it's safety. As the specialist on-site so to speak, any actual removal of historical artefacts from their place of internment rests solely on my shoulders, I'm sure you understand.”
“Yes, of course we understand.”
It was Joe Cutler who replied to Graves's slightly unbelievable statement. Having made a fool of himself already, he wasn't prepared to question Graves's slightly preposterous illogical reasoning. Instead, he urged the historian on in his quest.
“Please carry on, Mr. Graves. I'm sure we're all anxious to see if we've succeeded in what we set out to do. Let's see what's in the box.”
“Thank you, Mr. Cutler. That's what I intend to do if you'll allow me to get on.”
Five minutes later the last of the screws yielded to the urgings of the screwdriver and the lid was effectively free of the framework of the box.
“May I ask you to give me a hand, Mr. Fortune?” Graves asked, and Winston dropped down to join the historian in the hole. Together, they slowly lifted the lid from the box, moving it up and to the side as best they could in the narrow confines of the excavation.
As the lid finally fell to the side of the box to reveal the interior a layer of material was all they could see. Once white, the cloth was now a dirty grey, and showed a marked deterioration. It appeared to adhere to whatever it covered, and Graves took a deep breath as he slowly attempted to peel the shroud-like membrane from whatever lay beneath.
It took only seconds for Graves to reveal enough of the contents of the box for them to realise they had not found Excalibur, or anything remotely resembling it.
“Bloody Hell,” was the exclamation that broke from Winston Fortune's mouth as his eyes took in what Graves had seen a mere millisecond after the historian viewed it.
“Shit,” said Cutler.
“Oh my God, no.” was Sally Corbett's reaction to the sight of the aged and grinning skull that looked up at them from its last resting place. Far from discovering the whereabouts of King Arthur's Excalibur, they'd managed to find and unearth a grave, and the skeleton that inhabited that long-forgotten unmarked burial site now presented them with a new and complex problem, one that would take all of Walter Graves's ingenuity to solve if the search was to continue.
Chapter 16
The leering grin of the skull seemed to penetrate deep into the soul of young Sally Corbett as she tried with all her will to steer her gaze away from what was now all too apparently a grave. She'd never been close to the aftermath of death before, despite losing her twin sister she had certainly never come into the close proximity of a real skeleton before. The fixed stare of the sightless sockets unnerved Sally, as though even lacking the presence of the eyes that once sat within them, they were still capable of projecting a death-stare in her direction, a stare
that came close to causing her to run and flee from the graveside.
Worse still, and she later realised that it was probably her imagination that caused the feeling, she felt as though a cloud rose from within the grave, a cloud that carried the acrid stench of death, and as it rose to engulf her and Joe Cutler as they stood looking down at the remains within the grave, it was all she could do to hold on to whatever remained of her breakfast within her stomach. Much to her credit, Sally held on, the urge to retch passed, and she looked away from the skeletal remains long enough to inhale a deep breath of fresh air.
Sensing her feelings, Joe took a gentle reassuring hold of Sally's right arm and said quietly in her ear so as not to embarrass her in front of Graves: “You alright, Sally?”
“I'll be fine, Joe,” she replied. “Just came as a bit of a shock, that's all.”
“Yes, same for all of us I think. It certainly wasn't what we expected to find.”
“Who do you think it is?” she asked.
“It's unlikely we'll ever know the answer to that question, Miss Corbett,” said Graves from his position beside the casket. I fear that this poor devil has been down here for a very long time.”
Winston Fortune pulled himself out of the grave and stood beside the others. He'd had enough of his close proximity to the remains in the coffin, and needed to be up in the fresh air of the field.
“It smells bad down there, man,” he said in disgust. “I s'pose we'd better call the police, let them know what we've found.”
“That won't be necessary at this point,” Graves said very quickly. His mind had been racing to find a solution to the problem presented by the very suggestion that Winston had just put forward. No way could he allow the police to be involved. That would ruin the operation for good and Capshaw's wrath would be unforgiving.
“I think we'll find that this poor wretch has been down here for at least a hundred years or more. It's quite possible that this is a plague burial. There were numerous small sporadic outbreaks of the Black Death in this area towards the end of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth centuries. It may be that this poor devil lived in a settlement or a farm in the area, perhaps now long gone, and the body brought here to be buried away from the residences of others. That was usual with such cases at one time.”
“I thought they burned the remains of plague victims,” said Cutler, displaying a little of his own historical knowledge.
“You're quite right, they usually did, Mr Cutler, but in this part of the country it was still held to be something of a sacrilege to cremate the dead, and unless there was a local epidemic, if, for example, this was a sole victim, then it's probable that permission was given for the body to be buried here, as I said, away from any living inhabitants of the area, thus negating any chance of contamination among the local population. It may even have been that the spouse of this poor wretch buried the body without the knowledge of anyone else. They may have been hermits, travellers or whatever, we may never know.”
Graves paused for breath, impressed by is own ingenuity and improvisation in concocting this possible version of events. He hoped he'd sounded sufficiently plausible to sway the others' opinions in his direction.
“Even if that's the case,” Cutler continued, “Surely we still have a duty to inform the police of the discovery. It is a body after all.”
“I agree with you of course, Mr. Cutler. However, I'm sure you're aware that if we call the police now they'll probably cordon off the area and begin a search for other remains perhaps. They'll want to dig up the ground all around the burial site. Local historians could well become involved, and anything we hope to achieve here could be irretrievably lost. For all we know, Excalibur could be buried in this very field, and we've only scanned the first two grid lines so far. Do you really think the police will allow us to merrily go on working while they investigate what is in fact an old and irrelevant skeletal find? I don't think so. No, all I would ask of you, Mr. Cutler, and you two also, Mr. Fortune and Miss Corbett, is five days. Five days to try and find what we came here to look for. All we have to do is rebury the coffin for now, and once we've completed what we're here for, we simply open it up again and make the call to the local police. That way we get the chance to finish the job without interruption. Surely you can see that it won't make an ounce of difference to this poor wretch in the box?”
Cutler and the others looked at each other as though waiting for one or another to speak. At first it appeared that no-one wanted to be the first to voice their opinions. Graves wondered if he'd said enough to convince them. Finding the body had been an unexpected development and he hadn't exactly had long to come up with a convincing story. In the end it was Joe Cutler who spoke first.
“Speaking for myself, Mr. Graves, I have to say that I'm a little uneasy with this whole thing, but you're right. If we involve the police at this point in time we'll lose the privacy we currently have to get the search completed without interference. On the other hand, this poor sod in the box should be given a proper burial in consecrated ground. If the others agree, I'll go along with you for the five days you've asked for. After that, we unearth the box again and call the police, agreed?”
“You have my word on it,” Graves replied. “Now, Mr. Fortune, Miss Corbett, how do you stand on the matter?”
Winston and Sally were equally hesitant but eventually agreed that they would go along with his request. Graves and Cutler agreed that they should now fill in the grave and leave as little trace as they could of the day's excavations. It took an hour and a half of hard labour before they finished, and though the end result wasn't as perfect as they might have hoped, it was unlikely that anyone would suspect what may lie beneath the freshly disturbed earth, especially as the surveyors were known to be searching and digging for artefacts relating to Joseph of Arimithea.
The rest of that day's search was uneventful, the remainder of the field revealing nothing more to the radar. Cutler called a halt to the day's work just after five p.m. and the team quickly packed away their equipment. Graves made a hasty departure, heading back to his room at Meare Manor to make what he said were a few important phone calls.
Joe, Winston and Sally stowed away the last of their equipment and climbed wearily into the van. As Winston started the engine and engaged first gear he looked across at Joe Cutler who was sitting by the passenger window, Sally between the two of them.
“You've got something on your mind, Winston.”
“Well, boss, it's not much really, but, well, you know when I was down in the hole with Graves? When we found the skeleton and pulled the shroud back, he seemed a bit reluctant to uncover the whole of the body. He pulled it back just enough though.”
“Enough for what, Winston?”
“Enough for me to disagree with his `diagnosis' that the stiff was a plague victim from over a hundred years ago.”
“How come?” asked Sally, intrigued by Winston's statement.
“Easy,” said Winston, and his next sentence brought the conversation to a sudden and shattering conclusion, such was the shock that reverberated around the cab of Cutler's van. “How many nineteenth or early twentieth century plague victims would you expect to find buried in box in a field, wearing a Timex wristwatch?”
Chapter 17
“You're sure it was a wristwatch?” Sally asked as they sat around a low coffee table in The Rowan Tree's residents lounge a short while later. “No chance you could have been mistaken?”
“Hey, Sally girl,” he replied indignantly. “I know a bloody wristwatch when I see one, and that's what that skeleton had draped around its wrist bones. Like I said I saw enough of it to read the name on the dial, so don't ask me if I was mistaken.”
“Okay, Winston, don't get your knickers in a twist, I was only checking, that's all.”
“Listen,” Joe said, “we've got to think this through. We've just gone along with what I expect is a highly suspect, if not downright illegal arrangement with Graves. If we succ
eed in finding the sword and report the body to the police then okay, but something is beginning to smell with this job. I'm not sure yet what it is but it's not a good smell, that's for certain.”
“What I want to know,” said Winston “is why Graves would lie about the skeleton? If he really is a historian then it's certain he knows that the skeleton isn't a plague victim from a century ago. He moved so quick to stop me seeing the whole of the remains, it was as if he was trying to cover something up, or rather, not let something be revealed. If I hadn't had my eyes exactly on the spot where the wristwatch was revealed I could easily have missed it, man. It was only in sight for a couple of seconds. I'm wondering if there might have been something else there that he didn't want us to see.”
“I hope you realise what you've just said, Winston,” Cutler replied, as worry lines appeared from nowhere to crease his brow. “If Graves knew what was in that grave then he probably also knew who that poor sod was, and if that's the case and the body was buried quite recently, then we have to assume that something very fishy is happening here.”
“There's something else, as well,” Winston continued, getting into the flow now that he had everyone's full attention. “That shroud the body was wrapped in was no piece of nineteenth century linen. At one time it was a blanket, old, but not that old. I recognised the ticking on the edge of the blanket.”
“Ticking?”
“Ah. Well before your time, young Sally girl,” Winston replied to her query.
“He means the stitched edging along the blanket,” Cutler added.
“Ah, I see, I think,” said Sally, “and the significance of this ticking is…?”
“Sally girl, you know I was in the army once?”
She nodded in the affirmative.
“Well, let me tell you, girl, you never forget an army blanket. They haven't changed in years, and that thing in the grave was an army blanket, I'll stake my life on it. It was an old one for sure, maybe fifty years or more old, but an army blanket nonetheless.”
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