by Jason Foss
Lugnasadh was a night to be forgotten. Tyrone and Flint stayed the night at Vikki’s house, then left in the morning, with Vikki’s temper still as black and brittle as her toast. After the farce at the stone, Flint would not see Tyrone again for six weeks, and envied him the carefree jaunt to Italy. More, he envied his ability to shut off any emotional or moral involvement without notice. Flint made a resolve to make the summer vacation pay, to stop brooding over his ill-fated love life, to achieve things on his excavation and to make progress with the third-century paper.
Once back in his office, he took down Lucy’s photograph and removed all the wall-mounted evidence into box files. The desk had its annual clearance, then with satisfaction, he unrolled a plan of the Burkes Warren villa upon its clutter-free surface. It was time to think about archaeology again. Whole days of bliss followed, in which no students demanded his attention, no meetings disrupted research, librarians were smiling and co-operative and even the third century began to make sense at last. Sasha had flown back to do some fieldwork in Turkey, allowing Flint to take over the cooking for the bachelor flat whilst Jules paid attention to the wine list. Stuart Shapstone, the site supervisor for Flint’s excavation, stayed for a few days and they ran through the logistics of spades, buckets, finds trays and tea urns. Life was looking good. Then the call came through from Vikki.
*
‘Hello Doc, it’s me, sorry I called you a twat the other night.’
He gave her a moment’s distant contemplation. ‘That’s okay, people call me a twat all the time.’
‘So you’ll forgive me? Just this once? Well, you had the right idea, but chose the wrong spot.’
Was his mind going dim or what? Wheels clicked, then he issued an exclamation of delight. ‘What?’
‘My editor wasn’t happy when he found out I’d spent my sick leave chasing your daft ideas. He said we would have been better off covering the illegal rave at Caesar’s Camp.’
Caesar’s Camp; Flint knew the name vaguely, it had sat at the bottom end of Tyrone’s list of Pagan sites. Grey cells started to work on the possibilities.
‘There’s this couple, right? They retired from London – he was something in the City – but they bought a converted farm close to this Caesar’s Camp. It happens all the time these days. Anyway, they complained to the police that a pretty rowdy party was going on.’
‘August eve?’
‘While we were freezing our bottoms off, there was a party on the opposite side of the valley. Anyway, the police did nothing, so this snooty couple complains in all directions. So I rang them next day to get a story. They didn’t want to talk about it, said I was to forget it. They said they heard just a few cars – but raves have thousands of people, hundreds of cars and loud music, so I thinks “midnight mass”.’
Flint weighed up the evidence.
‘Am I smart or am I smart?’ Vikki demanded.
‘Brilliant.’
‘After these townies kicked up a stink, someone must have leaned on them, put them in their place and told them what living in the country really meant. This is one for you, Prof.’
‘Loo Vikki, can you hold on a second?’
His arm swept the desk clear of archaeology, and the O.S. map of the Darkewater Valley took its place. Caesar’s Camp was an Iron Age hill fort, and probably nothing to do with Caesar at all. The fort embraced a wooded hill, guarding a spine of high ground along the valley’s northern wall a good fifteen miles from Harriet’s Stone, and about as far away from the Darkewater megaliths as one could get without leaving the county.
A muffled voice complained from the telephone. He picked it up, pacified the excitable reporter, then arranged to meet her at four that afternoon.
Before he left Central College, Flint had found all the published references to the fort, which had been excavated twice in the first half of the century. Photocopied plans, sections and grainy photographs were stuffed into his briefcase by the time British Rail made more money at Barbara’s expense, shaking him down to Durring on a line that badly needed upgrading.
Vikki bounded up to him and pecked him on the cheek, taking his arm whilst he was still startled. ‘This is my daft idea now, if I’m wrong, we’re quits, okay?’
‘Okay.’
Once again he was captive to Vikki’s driving habits as she dodged out of Durring just before the evening rush. The summer continued to be glorious; it was the sort of summer Flint’s grandmother always could remember, it was the summer we didn’t have any more. Apart from 1976, that was, when schoolboy Flint had sweated through his A-levels.
They crossed the Darkewater at Twinbridge. Flint had picked up an obscure treatise of very peculiar folk-tales about the valley. One thing it had taught him was that odd moonlight activities had a long tradition in the farming community.
‘I spoke to them incomers again,’ Vikki said as she drove along the lanes. ‘But they said all they wanted was peace and quiet.’
Peace and quiet. This part of the valley carried an ancient charm: cornfields being harvested, green spinneys bursting from their midst to throw a colour contrast across the golden landscape. Deep in rural England, with poppies in the hedgerows and kestrels hovering overhead, the window was down and Flint’s arm trailed out into the slipstream. Warm, wheat-rich air blew in, reminding him of one of whatsit-Temple-whatsit’s poems. The thought was anarchic, but deliciously seductive.
Caesar’s Camp was invisible from a distance and invisible from close-to, a fortress created by only slight modifications of the topography. One ditch encircled the hill, and within it, the upcast earth formed a rampart. All this lay screened by birch, beech, oak and bracken and was reached from a sunken lane that cut through its lower slopes. The Metro bumped upwards over stones and potholes, then the slope began to lessen. A layman could pass within the ancient stronghold almost without noticing. Flint glimpsed just a trace of the ditch-and-bank system as they passed through the gateway. Then the trees ended abruptly.
The centre of the fort was a flat, oval field of ten acres, with a coppice growing in one corner. Over to the left lay a low mound, which according to the records possibly pre-dated the fort itself.
‘Is this it?’ Vikki asked. ‘Where do I go? It’s huge, and my gearbox is about to fall out.’
Flint told her to stop anywhere she liked. The car was abandoned, heeled to one side on the rutted track’s end and Flint took a few things from his satchel before they walked towards the mound.
‘It’s not much of a fort.’ Vikki turned and walked backwards, shielding her eyes to see whether she was missing anything.
‘It’s too big to see,’ the archaeologist commented, ‘you only get the true effect of these places from the air.’
‘Where are the walls?’
‘It never had any; it’s not really a fortress, it’s more a refuge. The local tribesmen would have brought their families and cattle here in times of trouble. Iron Age warfare didn’t include sieges.’
An evening breeze ruffled two T-shirts as their owners moved into the open. His, tight and white, bore the Radio Caroline logo, hers hung baggy around her slender frame. Over the suggestion of a left breast was emblazoned a designer label. He found something alluring in her fragile elfin figure. His eyes came away, back to archaeology; a good passion-killer.
‘Of course, the Romans spoiled all the fun, brought up the siege engines, hopped over the bank and killed anyone they took a dislike to. Methodical people, the Romans.’
Vikki looked around, turning up her nose at the idea of mass slaughter. Flint had meanwhile spotted something.
‘Look at this,’ he went down on his knees. ‘See the flattened grass, all about this mound?’
Two days of heat had punished the bruised stems, as the worn grass browned under the sun.
‘Just like the other place?’ she asked. ‘They dance around this little hill; what is it anyway?’
‘A tumulus: burial mound, late Bronze Age. All its goodies were robbed centuries ago.’
She took out her notepad. ‘Right, you’re going to have to tell me about this hill again. I need all the facts so I get it right.’
‘Later...’ he was walking around, looking for clues, ‘…it’s a long and boring story.’
A circular burnt patch had been neatly scraped clear of debris.
‘This is new.’ He bent down and put a hand to it. ‘Anyone circling this mound would have scuffed this ash into the grass.’
The grass contained wind-blown wood ash and charcoal, not crushed by prancing feet. Over towards the trees was a suggestion of a track betrayed by lightly crushed grass and the odd dash of ash. It happened on site: diggers never carried buckets without a little dribble of soil betraying their trail.
Crouching like a Mohican, he was on the trail of spillage; across a chicken-wire fence and into trees. Here, the bracken was crisp and betrayed the slightest disturbance. Vikki followed slowly, asking questions which he hardly heard. He told her what to look for, and in ten minutes she had found a patch of newly broken earth.
From the rear pocket of his jeans, Flint plucked a trowel. ‘Be prepared!’
Her surprise was met with a flourish of his trusted digging tool.
‘Pointing trowel, four inch, cast blade and tang, work-hardened steel. Never leave home without one.’
He began to scrape away at the soil. Once four inches, his trowel had been reduced to three, with a useful curve worn into each edge.
‘Standard issue posing equipment for veteran site-wise archaeologists, and the best all-purpose implement known to man.’ Flint chattered as he dug, totally within his element, swapping the tool from hand to hand, flicking away the soil with forensic care.
‘You can dig with it, point walls, screw screws, peg section lines, knock in nails, cut cake and stir tea.’
He glanced up at Vikki. The reporter seemed in a trance, standing with arms across her waist, face set in amused wonder. Five minutes saw the topsoil removed, revealing a patch of dispersed ash and charred wood. It still held an imagined whiff of warmth. The trowel point flicked upward to pick out a bone.
‘Is that human?’ Vikki knelt down close, breathing a shared fear.
‘Animal. Ribcage, sheep or goat, immature. Could you nip back to the car and get my satchel. There’s a dozen polygrip bags; bring the lot.’
He continued to dig, and by the time Vikki returned with his satchel six ribs, a few vertebra, the top of a skull and a horn lay on the grass beside the excavation. All were heavily charred and partly calcined.
‘The smart money is on goat.’ The excavator continued to disperse the ash, picking out more fragments. ‘I’ll take these back to Jules for an expert opinion; he’s our bones man.’
Flint pointed out the key features and she eagerly began to scribble notes. He stayed her writing hand. ‘No shock horror headlines on this one.’
‘What?’
‘Let’s see what it tells us first. We can’t keep on giving the game away. Next time you publish a feature, you might just get us killed.’
‘It’s my job! It’s my living!’
‘Well, if you want to keep living, no article, not yet. Promise?’
She pursed both her lips into a kissing pose and thought about it, then promised. The bones went into zip-lock bags which were bundled together in Vikki’s carrier bag. Both took a film of photographs of the site, then walked back along the path to identify other areas of evidence: a place cars might have parked, a torn shred of white cloth on a branch. Vikki wanted to drive straight for London to meet Jules, then stay the night with her mother.
*
The kitchen table in the north London flat became an impromptu laboratory.
‘Goat,’ Jules Torpevitch announced after on a few minutes’ post-mortem. ‘Mature male. Is this a ritual sacrifice by your Satanists?’
‘My guess,’ Flint said. ‘Can you tell anything else about it?’
‘The breed is unusual; it looks like one of the ancient breeds. See how the horn is flat and twists outwards part way up.’
‘An ancient breed would be about what we expected. These people like to get the detail right.’
Jules laid on his mock Frankenstein voice. ‘Come to my laboratory, in ze morning.’ He began to pack away the evidence. ‘Tomorrow I’ll have a root through the textbooks, see what I can find.’
Vikki stayed for burgers and Budweiser’s, then left for her mother’s.
‘Nice brawd,’ Jules said, sinking back on to the sofa.
‘Sexist remark; ten pence in the box.’
‘Sasha’s not here, sexism box is closed,’ Jules responded, tugging off a Budweiser cap.
‘Vikki and I don’t quite see eye to eye,’ Flint confessed.
‘You’re eight inches taller than she is.’
‘Ha ha. You’ll be analysing her bone structure next.’
Jules pointed the bottle at Flint. ‘She has excellent bone structure.’
‘Boorman’s Emerald Forest is on tonight. When does it start?’ Flint suddenly switched tack. He was not going to be drawn on the subject of Vikki, Chrissie, Lucy Gray or any other member of the female sex. It was time to relax.
By the next afternoon, Jules came up to Flint’s office bearing a heap of textbooks. On top of the plan of Burkes Warren he displayed an open page bearing a photograph of an ugly-looking short-haired animal. Flint had expected something hairier, more dignified.
‘Your goat has to be an Old English; a popular medieval breed, but almost extinct earlier this century.’
‘Jules, this is perfect, what do I owe you?’
‘Just stack up those beers,’ the expert said with a grin.
‘How common are goat breeders these days?’
‘In England? I couldn’t tell you.’
‘Where do you get your samples for demonstrating?’
‘I know this butcher in Covent Garden, but he just does the usual domestic herd beasts. You could try the Rare Breeds Society.’
Getting hold of the Society magazine took a few hours, then finding a local member in the phone book took until the evening. Flint asked about Old English goats and whether there were any breeders resident in the Durring-Kingshaven area. The call was returned next morning. Amelia Winter, Forest Farm, Oulwich; some nine miles from Durring in the Forest of Axley. Flint thanked the caller, with a voice inside his head saying ‘Winter’.
He put down his phone and walked to the empty computer room. Flint keyed into Tyrone’s data base and searched on ‘Winter’.
Plant, Shirley Elisabeth, nee: Winter.
Plant’s mother had once been a Winter. Amelia Winter was the aunt the police had interviewed several weeks previously and who had denied all involvement. She bred goats, those goats were used in the sacrifices, she was involved after all. This was a gift.
Chapter 15
Jeffrey Flint commuted along the increasingly familiar line from London to Durring that Sunday in early August, watching England slip by. It was the season of gathering, the wheat was coming in and the farmer at Burkes Warren had telephoned to confirm he had harvested the crop over the villa. Stuart Shapstone had been sent on ahead to set up camp, clear the ground and organise the diggers, but for Flint, there was one more distraction. A bluebottle buzzed around the dusty carriage window. An expressionless youth gave his mind to the incessant tsst-tsst of a Walkman headset. Mandatory engineering works on the line saw the train arrive twenty minutes late. He was coming to loathe this journey.
At the station, Vikki hooted him from the short-stay parking bay and he walked across to her car.
‘I brought a map,’ he said as he climbed inside.
‘Oh, I know where we’re going,’ Vikki chirped, ‘I went there last night.’
‘Forest Farm?’
‘Just to have a quick look.’
‘Alone?’ He pulled the door closed a little too firmly. ‘Wasn’t that a little stupid – suppose you had been seen?’
Vikki turned and faced the road. She
may have coloured beneath the deep tan and the ubiquitous sunglasses. She started the car and moved off with a jerk.
He let her sulk for a minute then curiosity overcame anger. ‘Okay, what did you see?’
‘Just some goats and a dog barking its head off, nothing else. Nobody mugged me, am I forgiven?’ Her last note was heavily ironic. He let it pass.
‘The old aunt is away – I asked in the village.’
‘Who feeds the goats?’
‘One of the yokels usually looks after the goats and lets the dog out.’
‘Usually?’
Her smile split her suntan ear to ear. ‘But not this year. So who is at the farm?’
Beyond Durring, the forest of Axley runs in a broad sweep into the valley, broken by fields into clumps of open woodland. Oulwich lies away from the main roads and consists of five houses plus satellite farms. Forest Farm was one, lying half-a-mile from the hamlet down a single track lane.
Vikki turned into the lane, then squashed her car into a passing place to allow a tractor to come by. Abundant vegetation scraped against the paintwork, her radio aerial catching in the foliage, then whipping back into position as she moved off again. A mixed deciduous wood lay on the right, a thinner screen of trees on the left. Beyond were more cornfields, ripe for harvesting. In the hedgerow, green berries prepared for the date they would turn black.
Just before the farm came a denser area of woodland, mainly of silver birch. Vikki pulled into a gateway she had used the night before and they climbed out, closing the car doors quietly.
‘It’s not far now,’ Vikki said, ‘I keep thinking we should have told the police, but then, I don’t think I’m flavour of the month with them.’
A dog could be heard barking before the farm came into view, and a padlocked gate barred a short rutted track beside the signpost reading ‘Forest Farm’. They skipped over the gate and dodged right, into the woodland. Moving as quietly as possible through tangled brambles and a carpet of fallen twigs, they arrived at a vantage point behind a young birch. An off-white, single-storey building could be seen through the edge of the trees.
‘The witch’s cottage,’ Vikki breathed.