Living in the Past

by Jane Lovering

  ‘Mmmm.’ Tabs had a mouth full of bacon.

  ‘Any word when she’s going to arrive? I could do with her down on site.’

  I sat cautiously opposite Tabitha, which put me angled across the table from Duncan. From here I could see that his cheeks were unshaven and sunken and there were lines and creases under his eyes as though he didn’t sleep much, but then I wasn’t about to get all judgy about that, given that my eyebags were down to my shoulders. He had very dark, very long eyelashes and I found myself wondering for a second if he was wearing eyeliner, until I remembered where I was and how utterly pointless it would be. He did, however, look a bit cleaner than he had yesterday, which was probably why I could see his general unshaven tiredness.

  ‘’Nother few days,’ Tab said indistinctly, around food. ‘I’ll call later, get an update.’

  ‘Wonderful.’ He looked as though he meant anything but. Then his eyes flickered up to me. ‘Better get used to the food. Going to be a long day.’

  ‘I’m just not very hungry.’ My egg was congealing around the bacon fat, embedding everything on my plate in a greyish wash.

  He gave a half-shrug. ‘A morning on wet sieves, you will be.’

  There was a bit of a pause while we all ate. Well, everyone else ate, I shoved my food around and tried not to dread what was coming. Wet Sieves seemed to be synonymous with Salt Mines from what I was hearing but I couldn’t force the food down my throat. I breathed deeply and told myself it was just my control issues. When I couldn’t control my surroundings, I could control what I put into my body, and since Jamie died, sometimes I had taken that to unhealthy levels. I knew it, knew what I was doing and why, but it didn’t make it any easier to stop. But here and now it was just ridiculous to try to be in control. Everything about this place felt one short hop away from complete anarchy, even the weather was switching from rain to sun and back again, and clothing was a kind of meteorological riot gear. Control was impossible. I should let it go. I lifted a forkful of bacon and nibbled at the edge.

  ‘Sorry about yesterday.’ Duncan wasn’t looking at me. In fact, his face was largely hidden behind toast. ‘The whole “who are you” thing. Was rude.’

  Across the table Tabitha widened her eyes at me and mouthed, ‘Oooh! Apology!’ followed by an inclination of her head towards Duncan.

  ‘Well, it was, a bit, yes,’ I replied, Tabs’s implication that apologising came as naturally to Duncan as making spun-sugar flowers making me blush hotly enough to practically rewarm my breakfast.

  ‘Hmph.’ And with no further acknowledgement, or even explanation, he’d picked up his plate and vacated his place to a dreadlocked blonde girl, then swept off to be lost to my annoyed sight between the bunches of diggers lining up for breakfast.

  Tab pulled a face and the blonde girl who’d just sat down gave us both a grin. ‘You kinda get used to him,’ she said.

  ‘Seriously? How? By immersing yourself in The Jeremy Kyle Show until you’re immune to rudeness?’ I poked at my bacon and the fat waved back.

  ‘He’s a great dig director though.’ Her plate was practically clear already. ‘Hey, I’m Katrin, I’m up on wet sieves with you this morning. D’you want to come up with me and I’ll show you the ropes?’ She was up out of her seat already, dreadlocks swinging with enthusiasm onto her shoulders, which jutted from beneath a silage-coloured vest top. Her appearance gave me a brief flashback to the woman this morning, standing there like an outtake from a grunge band video. Actually, maybe that was a point, maybe there was some kind of recording going on down there. Maybe the BBC was doing one of their historical recreation programmes? Poor sods, given the weather and the mud and the irrepressibly wayward children, they would be regretting ever volunteering.

  I sighed. I was beginning to feel like a Victorian rector’s daughter beamed down into the midst of debauchery and cotton mills, a bit prissy and very out of place. It was not a feeling I liked. ‘Yes, please.’

  Katrin looked at my plate. ‘You want to get them to put that in a bun for you? ’S gonna be a long day.’

  Oh God. This was sounding worse and worse. Maybe I should have just moved in with my mother.

  Chapter Five

  2000 BC

  ‘Over here.’ Tor beckoned Hen on across the newly cleared strip of land that lay between the trees. Boulders lay scattered around the ground surface here, and the soil was thinner than the web of skin between a man’s fingers. ‘He fell over a rock and his leg is twisted.’

  Hen came on slowly, almost reluctantly. She could already see where the boy lay, his face screwed up, caught as he was between the bawling tears of a child and the stoic acceptance of pain of an adult, and she felt her heart move sideways in her chest. Now was not the time, and here was not the place. This must be dealt with.

  ‘Ah, Drustan, what have you done to yourself?’

  The boy pulled himself up to sitting as his father arrived. ‘I freed my foot, Father. But it looks … wrong.’ A nod of the head towards Hen. ‘Good morning, lady.’

  ‘I brought Hen to help you.’ Tor bent over the boy’s leg. ‘There is no blood, that is a good thing.’

  Hen looked out over the high hills as the father soothed his son, not wanting to see, not wanting to feel that connection between them all that lay beneath blood, beneath bone. She took a deep breath, settled her heart and her stomach. Things needed doing, and doing things was what Hen was here for. Medicine and magic were her tools, and what bought her her impermanent place on the fringes of their lives; the way she could stop bleeding, set a bone. But she couldn’t stop herself from looking out of the corner of her eye at Tor, at his comforting hands running gently up the child’s leg, at the commanding bulk of his presence that told of his ability to keep them all safe and fed when the earth seemed almost to want them dead.

  ‘What do you think, Lady Hen?’ Tor pulled her back from her reverie. There was a half-laugh in his voice now he was with his son, although the undercurrent of knowing that any kind of injury could be fatal still ran in his tone.

  Hen came closer. She bent over the swollen ankle joint and cautiously reached out a hand to touch Drustan’s sun-darkened flesh. So gently. She didn’t want to cause him pain, this half-grown man-boy that she had known since his birth. Ten summers ago. She had counted every one. Knowing, but always at a distance. Always kept away by the superstition of the others, who feared her knowledge, even though it came from the much-admired ancestors.

  ‘You will live. It is an injury that will mend.’ Still gentle she probed up and down the joint. ‘A sprain, not a break.’ She felt the boy relax, saw the light creep back into those hazel eyes, so much like his father’s. ‘We will help you down to the water, and you must keep your foot in it for at least the next few days.’

  Tor nodded wisely. ‘That the ancestor-spirits might help him heal.’

  Hen rolled her eyes. ‘And the cool water relieve the swelling.’

  ‘That too, of course.’ Tor nodded again.

  Hen’s eyes found the skyline again, the huge hump of the barrow where all those living nearby brought their worthy dead to lie. ‘Were you up at the sleeping place, Drustan?’

  The boy flushed pink and tipped his chin towards his chest. He mumbled something that made Tor raise his eyebrows and make a tight mouth, so like an impatient mother that Hen almost laughed. Then he lifted his son effortlessly into his arms and, still with the pursed mouth, began to carry him back towards the houses and the river.

  Hen panted to keep up; even though they were heading downhill the ground was rough where the grass had been broken to allow more useful plants to grow. ‘Why were you up there?’

  ‘He wanted to ask his grandfather’s advice about a girl,’ Tor said tightly, while Drustan hid his increasingly red face against his father’s tunic.

  ‘Ah.’

  Tor gave the
boy a small shake as they continued on their way. ‘Midsummer only just gone and he’s already thinking about the Midwinter meeting … Plenty of time, boy, plenty of time!’

  We didn’t take time, Hen wanted to say. Wanted so much to remind him. We met and knew straight away that we were meant. No meetings of the greater family for us, no negotiations, no careful trading of goods to buy one another … just a meeting one misty morning and a love that was deeper than ages.

  They reached the edge of the river that ran sandy-banked past the higher ground on which the houses stood, and Tor put Drustan down carefully at the point where the sacred walk met the land. ‘Can you manage him?’ he asked her.

  Drustan hopped a few, obviously-painful steps. ‘Lady Hen does not need to carry me,’ he said, in a wobbly sort of way that belied his words. ‘I can walk.’

  Hen closed her eyes. Remembered him as a baby, taking those first steps, holding his mother’s hands as she watched. ‘Yes. Yes you can. Now just sit here and dip your feet into the water.’ Watched him hesitate. ‘Don’t worry. If it helps, your grandfather’s axe is in there.’ She pointed into the river on the sheltered side of the causeway. ‘And I know how much he loved it, so perhaps you could ask his advice while you are here. So close to his things, I am sure he will hear you.’

  Drustan gave her a small grin. It had elements of pain, splinters of conspiracy and a hint of fear about it, and she turned away, choosing to remember the collusion between them rather than the trepidation in his eyes.

  Just a child. And yet old enough to hunt, old enough for the families to consider a joining.

  Chapter Six

  Duncan bent over the black stalks that lay at the bottom of the hole like a handful of dead sticks. ‘Looking good, Kyle.’ He reached a hand in and used a fingertip to probe the material. ‘Definitely wood. Clear back a bit more, will you? Let’s see how far it goes.’

  He felt the excitement rising, a little column inside his chest, like champagne swallowed too quickly. Bit it down. Knew better than to provide his own confirmation bias – you’re a scientist, for God’s sake. It could be nothing. But, almost without his knowledge, his hands were curling into fists, ready to punch the air. Or it could be something …

  Richard, standing at the edge of the pit with a group of students, nodded approvingly. ‘A bit more worth looking at than those flint chips, anyway. You thinking it’s good stuff?’

  Duncan stretched his back out and gazed up across the site. Everyone was busy, involved, working as a team. It was only him that felt outside of it all. Wrong, somehow, in a way he didn’t want to think about. ‘Won’t really know until Millie gets here. It’s her area. But, yeah, could be something.’

  ‘Trackway?’

  Duncan had to smile at Richard’s enthusiasm. ‘Never know your luck, do you? We’re going to have to wait a couple of days, apparently, for Millie to come and give us the nod. In the meantime we’ll treat it as a possible and carry on opening the trench out.’

  Up on the wet sieves, where earth was washed-through in search of fragments that the diggers might have missed, he could see the woman who’d come with Tabitha – what had they said her name was? Grace. Yes. I had a Great Aunt Grace, think it’s a family name. Mum said I would have been Grace, if I’d been a girl, but I was me so they called me after Grandad’s dog. Family joke, ha ha.

  He watched her for a second. Over breakfast he’d dismissed her as one of those people who think archaeology is all like the TV shows, treasure every other spadeful, with her neat hair and her ironed clothes. As out of place on the dig as – well, as he felt himself, sometimes, and God knew he had enough mud under his nails to fit in, but that didn’t stop the feeling that he was a fraud. But there she was, working with as much enthusiasm as the archaeology students Richard had brought from York University and the volunteer diggers, up to her elbows in cold water and liquid mud.

  Shouldn’t judge by appearance, man. You, of all people, should know that. The echo of years rang in his head, not helped by the location, the familiar lines of these hills, the way his brain filled in the details of hidden corners.

  ‘You okay?’ Richard clapped him on the shoulder, pulling him hard and fast out of the memories with a splash of mud and cold fingers through his T-shirt. ‘This could be it, y’know, Dunc. First real evidence.’

  ‘Maybe. Maybe not.’ Again Duncan felt himself push down any potential excitement. Wishing he could let himself rejoice, wishing that he could lose this awful caution. But better life on the downside than getting my hopes up for something that will never be anything. Jeez, I’m an advert for aversion therapy here … ‘Get Kyle to clean it up and record, will you?’

  Richard took half a step back, almost as if he’d been slapped. ‘Well, yeah. They’re uni students, Dunc, not treasure hunters.’

  He shook his head. Felt hair he’d been too busy, too uncaring, to get cut move in the rising breeze. ‘I’m just being careful, Rich. Want it all done right.’

  A pause, then he felt Richard’s hand on his shoulder again. Lingering this time. ‘Yeah. I know.’

  A moment whilst they both stared out over the site. Duncan knew Richard wanted to say something else, something sympathetic, just as he himself wanted to apologise. To explain how hard he was finding it being back here.

  ‘Coffee?’

  ‘Sounds good.’

  The words stayed unspoken, but the intent was enough. Duncan followed Richard up the slope to the catering tent, from where the smell of coffee and bacon sandwiches was wafting on the gusty wind.

  Wet sieves involved … well, yes, getting wet and sieving. But Katrin was good company, telling me about her boyfriend who was digging on the site below us, and being generally scandalous about other members of the team. I found myself laughing, properly laughing, for the first time in – what – two years? Somehow it was easy to forget myself here. To get lost in the rhythm of the swinging sieves, the excitement about the odd large lump that would sit, resistant to the water washing over it, hopes building that we’d found something definitive, until one of the more experienced people came over and broke up the clod of earth in their fingers to reveal nothing more than a small lump of clay or a rock.

  ‘That’s Richard Duggleby.’ Katrin nodded her head towards a small, bearded man wandering between the teams of diggers. ‘He’s my boyfriend’s tutor at York.’ She had taken it upon herself to familiarise me with every member of the team, unnecessarily in my view; I was only here for the fortnight, but then, wet sieving needed some kind of antidote. ‘Sorry, all these names and stuff. It’s hard to remember who’s who.’

  ‘I’m a teacher. I have a hundred and twenty new Year Seven entry every year to memorise.’

  Katrin emptied her sieve, stared into the header tank for a second, checking the water level. ‘Really? And can you?’

  I wiped my wet, muddy hands down my jeans. ‘Mostly. But I have a photosheet in my drawer, so that helps.’

  ‘That’s better.’ She nodded towards the smears now down both my thighs, the splashes of mud up my legs and my reddening hands. ‘You look like one of us now. Oh, and there’s Duncan, talking to Kyle. You’ve met Duncan? He’s in charge of this whole gig.’

  I looked at the shaggy, dark man, who was peering into a hole as though he’d just opened Pandora’s Box and was expecting the evils of the world to come and bite his nose off. ‘The really rude guy?’

  Katrin started rocking the sieve again and I picked up her rhythm; it was strangely soothing. ‘He’s not so much rude, he’s just not very socially aware, says what he thinks kinda thing.’ She stared out for a moment across the valley. ‘But if I wasn’t with Kyle, I’d give him a go. He looks like one of those mean moody actory types that you see being all broody against a landscape in a big black coat.’ Then she laughed, flicked her dreadlocks away from her face and went back to sluicing mud. ‘If
he weren’t, like, really old and everything.’

  Duncan was about my age, at a guess, so we sieved in silence for a bit.

  ‘So, why here?’ I asked, after a bit more therapeutic mud had passed. ‘What’s special about this bit of the moors?’

  ‘Dunno. Kyle says Duncan reckons there should be some sign of a Bronze Age settlement or something. Apparently his family have got a holiday place up over there,’ she said, a skinny shoulder shrugging at some point further down the valley, ‘and he spent time up here years ago. Now he’s a dig director, he’s brought everyone up to do a proper investigation.’ She scrubbed a hand under her nose, scratching an itch. ‘Look, they’re heading out for a coffee. D’you want to break off a minute and get one? You didn’t get much breakfast …’

  That momentary concern for my welfare, from someone I’d been half-dismissing as a young fly-by-night girl, brought me up short. ‘I’m fine.’

  Katrin gave me the same look as I’d seen from Tabs. ‘You look like you need one. Go on, go, I’ll put the next lot through. One thing I’ve learned being here the last three weeks, you don’t pass up the chance of a brew if someone’s offering.’ She kicked my ankle gently, around the edge of the tank. ‘You can sub me next time round.’

  ‘Well. All right then. As long as you promise not to enjoy yourself too much while I’m gone. No finding big ritual swords or anything.’

  She eyed up the cloddy lumps of earth we were sieving. ‘Not a hope. Plus, you know, Bronze Age? Not so much on the metal things, I don’t think.’

  I gave her a grin and headed along the now well-trodden muddy track, which led to the catering tent.

  ‘Hey, Gray! How’s it going?’ Tabitha had her hair up in a bandana and was pouring water into cups from a big steaming boiler. She looked as though she was auditioning for NAAFI waitress in a wartime movie.