He had been reading John Knowles’ ‘A Separate Peace’ on a bench in the warm sunshine of the playground when the looming of long shadows came from over his shoulder, blotting the sun from the pages of his book; a rough nudge to his shoulder. “Simple Simon, Simple Simon,” he heard from behind him; then another harsher voice, “Magnet bait.”
When he didn’t react and tried to draw away, one of the boys pushed him hard and he tumbled off the bench, his brace getting caught in the table legs as he fell, twisting his ankle. He’d skinned an elbow and the palm of one hand trying to break his fall.
Covering his face with his other hand, he didn’t see the foot come swinging at him, landing in the small of his back so hard all he saw was blackness. He just stayed down trying to absorb the pain until it went away and they left him alone, calling back over their shoulders to him, “Freakazoid!” and laughing
Back in England, he wiped his eyes as they passed more hedgerow-lined fields, some with cows, some with more hay rolls, the pain remembered forcing him to drift back again into safety, eyes still open to the rolling fields in front of them, imagining a dashing, handsome, masculine Alan Bates in a long green MacIntosh duster like Mitch’s with matching green Wellington muck boots, striding across the green field to meet Julie Christie, luminous and ethereal in a wide-brimmed sun hat and flowing white gossamer gown; gazing at each other languidly as they touched hands in the sunlight; believing in his heart that if he looked closely he would see them behind every farmhouse with hand painted signs reading, ‘Fresh Devon Cream, tea served daily.’
“Earth to Simon,” Mitch called back from the driver’s seat. His physical ears heard him, but somehow his mind heard words from an earlier time, at a lunch table at Holy Family. You have my word, I will never let anyone hurt you ever again, Mitch’s voice echoed in his memory, and he came back to the present.
“Earth to Simon! You alright back there, bud?” Mitch called out again.
“Yes, sir…” Simon said, smiling shyly and blushing, relieved to be back again where he was and who he was with, safe and cared for. “…just daydreaming, I guess.”
When they finally arrived at the entrance to what used to be the Crane Estate, they saw what was left of it and knew that the fish company and the other purchasers meant business. Lord Cotswold had gotten to Jack just in the nick of time.
What had once been a lavish, ancient baronial estate lay in ruins before them. There were bull dozers everywhere working their way through a maze of dirt mounds and the deep gullies they left in their wake in their attempt to level the area.
As the company of diggers turned into the access road, they could see parcels of land on both their left and right, divided into huge tracts by barbed wire and caution tape, each tract bearing a different sign; ‘Johnstone Land Development Company’, or ‘Coming Soon a New Tesco To Go’, and the largest of all, ‘New Home of the King Neptune Fish & Seafood Company, Ltd.’
Once past all of the signs of modern progress, the group came upon a still wild area that they assumed was theirs. It was fenced off, not by their own doing, but by the fencing put up by their nearest neighbors. They continued to drive down the access road deep into a wooded area until they came to what looked like a small, very crude parking area, little more than packed down weeds and mud.
It was Mitch’s idea that when the new owners of the surrounding tracts were surveying the area, they flattened this small area for their own trucks and brush clearing tractors. The road stopped there for them, but they could see a narrow footpath that led ahead from where the parking area ended.
Mitch’s first thought was for Simon. Neither Mitch nor Lady Cotswold had any idea how far down the footpath they would have to walk before they’d come to the ruin and he worried about how well and how long Simon could navigate the underbrush and the path before it got to be too much for him.
The idea of Simon falling nagged at him the whole time he was unloading the bags from the car. Finally, he concluded that, for the time being, it might be best for Simon if he didn’t treat him like a cripple, so he might not feel like one. In the end he decided that if it did get too much for Simon to navigate, the worst that could happen would be that Mitch might have to carry him back to the car at the end of the day and then pay one of the dozer men to clear a path overnight to make it wide enough to drive the car through to the site; a small price to pay for Simon’s security.
They entered the knee-high bracken and ferns of the path entrance; the atmosphere darkening with each step they took as the sun was increasingly blocked out by the enormous boughs outstretched overhead from trees hundreds of years old, if not more. And then there was the silence, no birds, no movement, nothing but the cool shadowy dampness of the deepening forest that surrounded them, like a cool dark womb of nature.
Mitch kept an eye on Simon, shortening his gait to make sure he was never more than arm’s length from Simon’s shoulder, just in case he had to act quickly. Simon kept an eye on his Walk-O-Meter so he could record the distance from the entrance to the path until they reached their final destination, fifty feet, one hundred feet, five hundred feet.
Just as his meter hit one thousand feet, Mitch called out excitedly, “I can see it ahead, an entrance to another clearing,” Everyone looked where he pointed, craning their necks to get a glimpse of their quarry; an opening another two hundred or so feet ahead of them. They could see part of a large stone structure illuminated by long beams of light coming through the gaps in the tree branches over head.
Like a hound dog who’d just spotted a partridge in the brush, Mitch broke into a trot, quickly moving ahead of the others. What he saw when he got there astonished him, a pure, unspoiled ruin; structured in the motte-and-bailey style of the early Middle Ages; more like a compound than the single dwelling the aerial shots he had seen led him to believe.
Although most of what might be called outer buildings had been reduced to little more than rubble over the centuries, walls fallen, or knocked over, becoming almost indefinable under centuries of moss and underbrush, the remaining entry gate took his breath away, making his pulse quicken as he stood there, his mouth gaping open; two once magnificent stone towers stood before him, dwarfing him in their shadows.
Set about thirty feet apart, they had clearly formed what was the entrance to the outer security wall, having once had a bridge between the two, around twenty feet above ground level to connect them.
The tower on his right was the most intact, having lost only what he estimated to be a quarter of its height to damage; originally giving it a height of two hundred feet, he estimated. The tower on his left had suffered the ravages of time more significantly, with only a half or less of it still standing.
As he stood looking at it with childlike fascination, it reminded him of a sandcastle just after it had been hit by a low wave of mostly sea spray and foam. The way the rays of light hit it threw him into a visualization of its former glory, smoothed with a thick coating of limestone paste and painted to a brilliant, blinding sheen with whitewash, richly colored flags bearing the crests of its noble house adorning the outer walls, rippling in the summer breeze.
He could almost hear the sound of horses’ hooves and the clamor of armor as its defenders passed through the gates. He could smell the mixture of scents, horse and cattle, hay, fire and roasting meats. Within seconds his mind had taken him farther than it ever had before because, not only was he visualizing it abstractly in his mind, he began to visualize himself in it, part of that scene.
He could feel his long hair blowing in the breeze, the weight of the armor on his body. He touched his face and could feel the coarseness of a week’s growth of beard. He looked down at his hands; they were rough and dirty with small cuts. Then realized he was on a horse, waiting for the iron-bound, spiked wooden gate to raise itself, allowing him to enter.
He looked up again and saw a gathering of people lining up along the front of the wall, waving and cheering for him, the women with elaborate h
airstyles and veils, colorful string drawn bodices and full, long skirts; the men in rough cloth tunics with thick leather belts; and the gate began to move. His chest filled with pride as he anticipated the greeting he knew would be waiting for him beyond that gate. I’m home, he thought. A voice spoke and he was returned.
“Wow!” Simon was staring up at it, his mouth wide open. Lady Madeline was next to him and Sandrine next to her.
“It’s beautiful,” Lady Madeline, said breathlessly with her hand on her chest, staring up at the towers.
Simon stepped back about twenty-five feet, took out his camera and started clicking away. “Dr. Bramson,” he said, “Stand by the big tower so I can get a shot. Lady Cotswold, you can be next, then all of you, please.”
Mitch did as he was asked, as did Lady Madeline and Sandrine, all of them more than happy to be pictured with their discovery. Then Simon took out his camcorder. This was an event to be captured as they walked between the two towers into the main area.
“What about you?” Sandrine asked Simon. He just shrugged and blushed.
“I’m not much for having my picture taken,” he said shyly.
“Nonsense. You’re as much a part of this as any of us, Dr. Holly,” Mitch said looking him straight in the eye, taking the camcorder from him and backtracking to get a shot of Simon; but waiting until he was almost under the towers before he began shooting so Simon wouldn’t have to watch himself limp in later viewings.
When he was done, Mitch walked over to him. “And it’s your entry into the real world of what we do. Be proud of yourself, my Simon. I am, and Jack would be, too. You’ve earned it,” Mitch said quietly, smiling at Simon as he handed him back his camcorder and giving him a good squeeze on the shoulder.
The area inside the tower entrance was about five hundred square feet, an entry courtyard; the remains of the main structure behind it. The perimeter being laid out by the foundation stones ranging from five feet high to barely visible beneath the various heights of grass. Mitch counted at least ten distinct rooms carved out of the interior, also with their remaining walls ranging from nearly three feet to almost indistinguishable from the ground around them.
As they each surveyed the area in their own ways, they seemed to gravitate and wander in separate directions. Simon and Sandrine seemed to like looking up, Lady Madeline looking down and Mitch, as was his way, scanning around for a panoramic view.
Suddenly, there was a loud thud and an UUUmmmpphhh mixed with the sound of rustling grass. Mitch, Lady Madeline and Sandrine all looked toward the sound and saw Simon on the ground, face down. Mitch ran to him. “Simon, are you alright?” he shouted, helping him back up to his feet.
“Yes, sir,” Simon replied sounding like he’d just had the wind knocked out of him.
Mitch started dusting him off quickly, like a parent who’d just picked his kid up off the playground after he’d fallen off the monkey bars. “What happened?”
“I just tripped over something. That’s all,” Simon said quietly, an almost ‘Aww, Dad, I can do it myself’ inflection in his voice, but inside not really sorry for the attention. He could never be sorry for that.
Lady Madeline’s voice came from behind them. “I think this might be the culprit,” she said, a regular Miss Marple, pointing down to the area not far from Simon’s feet. Mitch looked down closely. It looked to him like a granite block ninety percent buried under the ground with the remaining ten percent obscured by weeds.
It was a completely different kind of block from the rest of the structure. He pulled out a few clumps of the grass and weeds surrounding it exposing a few more inches of its surface. Lady Madeline got down on her knees to get a closer look. “Definitely man-made and geometric,” she said in a professional sounding pronouncement, looking up at Mitch, then produced a small spade from her bag and began digging gingerly around the block. “It’s carved,” she said as she removed a few inches of dirt. By then Mitch was down on his knees next to her.
“Whatever it is, the carving is stylized, not written. It’s a statue of some sort,” Mitch said and looked up to Simon. “My boy, you are a natural born divining rod,” and he laughed. Simon just shrugged, blushing.
“If you say so, Dr. Bramson,” he said and smiled bashfully.
“Well, don’t just stand there. This is your first discovery. Get down here and dig it,” Mitch said, waving him down. A few seconds later, Simon was on his hands and knees next to Mitch and Lady Cotswold pulling dirt away from the object. Sandrine took Simon’s camcorder and called out to them to get their attention.
“Say cheese,” she said laughingly, and hit the button as soon as they all looked up, each of them covered in earth up to their elbows; Simon with some on his nose.
An half an hour later they had uncovered about a three square foot patch of dirt about a foot deep, revealing what appeared to be the top of some sort of statue. From the angle it laid, they all agreed that whatever kind of statue it was, the position indicated that it had been tipped over and was resting at a thirty degree angle.
By then, both Mitch and Lady Madeline agreed that the carving was not only Celtic in style but also very, very old. Lady Cotswold put it at about six to seven hundred years, Mitch thought it was older, over a thousand years old and, ‘Not for nothing’, to use an old New York phrase; this was his area of expertise.”
Once they gauged the approximate size of the thing, they could then approximate that when it was set upright, the floor of the building was probably not much deeper than what they’d uncovered. They stopped there, agreeing that it was best to have the proper equipment with them, and lengths of rope, before going any further.
The next plan was for Sandrine and Mitch to go on a walking expedition in opposite directions to see if there were any outlying structures or edifices beyond what were once the walls of the courtyard around a larger main building, while Lady Cotswold and Simon stayed in the clearer area to measure the statue, record it with the camcorder and take still photos to plot out their future plan of approach.
As they headed in opposite directions Mitch and Sandrine each checked their watches and agreed to return to the main site in no more than an half an hour. Mitch went west; Sandrine east.
Sandrine, although her upbringing wouldn’t allow her to exhibit too much emotion in public, was privately as thrilled as she’d ever been. It was her first real field work, too, and she planned on making the most of it, so she set out with her mind geared not to come back until she had something to show for it.
As she walked through the woods, she couldn’t help but think how incredibly beautiful nature was, the trees, the ferns, the small brook she had to jump over to continue on, all of it seemed so unspoiled, so unreal, primordial. But she found nothing. The land was flat with no sign of any remains of building activity. She supposed that maybe with a thorough raking, she might turn up some small artifacts, but not the extraordinary find she was hoping for.
After a while, she started to get warm and tired from the strong sun rays that seemed to dance before her eyes, indiscriminately washing over her through the gaps in the branches as she walked, creating a light show that reminded her of a program she once saw at a planetarium, hypnotizing.
She saw the remains of a large log from an old fallen tree, long decayed, and decided to sit on it and rest for a while, not noticing the small white patch of skull bone exposed through the moss growing out of the end of the log by her hand, or the small, stained foot bones coming out of the other end of the log, mixing with the twigs of the long dead tree.
She felt so comfortably warm and free she took off her shoes and sweatshirt, leaving only her tee shirt on to get some sun on her neck and arms. She just wanted to sit for a while and rest there in the coolness of the surrounding trees with just the long wands of sun to warm her.
It made her sleepy, the lids of her eyes beginning to close slowly. When she couldn’t keep them open any longer, she laid back against the standing tree behind the log where she
sat, closed her eyes and started to drift off, lulled by the warmth of the sun overlaid by the coolness of the light breeze.
“Sandrine…Bienvenue, Sandrine. Comment ça va?” a soft, smooth voice whispered to her as she laid dozing, lost somewhere between consciousness and sleep.
“Tres bien,” Sandrine murmured, licking her lips as her head lolled to one side, comforted further by speaking in her own language. Her hands went to the front of her tee shirt, pulling it out of her jeans.
“Tu es tres belle,” the voice whispered as she pulled the rest of her tee shirt up and started caressing her breasts.
“Ummmmmercie,” she thanked the voice, letting one hand slide down to the button at the top of her jeans, undoing it. Once undone, she felt a pair of invisible hands gently tug at the waist of her jeans, slowly pulling them down, exposing her delicate pink lace panties. She reached her hand down into them and felt herself.
“Tres bon, Sandrine,” the voice whispered in her ear as she touched the soft mound she found beneath the pink lace.
Suddenly, there was the sharp sound of a branch snapping, and another sound, a dull thud like something heavy hitting a tree followed by another voice, not far way, drawing her out of her trance-like sleep.
“Ouch! Damn!” Simon whined loudly, then called out, “Sandrine, are you there?” Sandrine jumped up not realizing that she was naked from her neck to her knees until she felt her breasts bounce freely against each other; her tee shirt gathered around her neck.
Overcome by a rush of embarrassment at being caught that way, she kept quiet, working nervously until she had pulled her jeans back up and had tucked her tee shirt back in before anyone could see her.
“I’m over here, Simon,” she called out, frantically searching her mind for how her shirt could have come off without her knowing it. By the time he could see her, she’d already managed to get her sweatshirt back on and at least give the appearance of calm.
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