by Ruth Eastham
‘We are … the chosen ones!’ croaked Jon.
‘Well we are!’ said Emmi. ‘Aidan’s right.’ Her eyes glinted. ‘This is the most freaky, amazing thing that’s ever happened to me!’
‘Woah!’ Aidan blinked hard.
The centre of the muddy ball had fallen away in a clod, leaving a wide, round hole. He rubbed more cautiously.
A gold colour glinted under his fingers and he heard Emmi catch her breath.
He saw engravings appear: a horse … two horses, pulling a chariot – three figures riding inside.
‘Oh my god,’ Emmi whispered.
Aidan washed away the last of the earth and lifted the object up.
‘It’s amazing!’ she cried softly. ‘An arm bracelet. Just like the one Robbie drew!’
‘Hang on.’ Aidan quickly dried his hands, got the sketch from his pocket and smoothed out the damp piece of paper.
‘No.’ he inspected the torque closely, comparing it to the drawing. ‘It’s similar, but not exactly the same. Look! Both have the same chariot design, but see the hare? On the drawing it’s sprinting.’ He raised the golden armband. ‘Here the hare’s standing up on two legs.’
‘You’re right,’ nodded Emmi.
She gripped Aidan’s shoulder. ‘Do you remember the ghost girls’ jewellery? Weren’t their torques just like these?’
‘Yeah,’ said Jon slowly. ‘They were.’
‘Do you realise what this means?’ Emmi danced about the bathroom. ‘This bracelet could be enough! That’s what Robbie meant about miracles do happen. A hare is the symbol of Queen Boudicca. It totally proves that she had a connection with this area; and that the legend is true. Boudicca really is buried round here with all her treasures!’ Bottles of shampoo and shower gel went flying. ‘It’s bound to stop the fracking and spark a major archaeological survey! All we have to do is show this torque to Mr Williams and Miss Carter and …’
Aidan held on to her arm. ‘Wait, Em! Slow down!’
Emmi stopped moving and looked at him.
Aidan frowned. ‘If we tell anyone about this, the news will be round the village in no time’. His eyes darted to the window and he lowered his voice.
‘If someone did try to kill Robbie – they’re still out there. If they find out we’ve got a bracelet almost identical to the one they stole from the museum, they could come after us next.’
‘Ah. You’re right,’ Emmi said, fiddling with the corner of the hand towel. ‘Course you’re right.’
She put a hand to her mouth. ‘Do you think Robbie is safe in the hospital? I mean, we got into his room easily enough, and that means somebody else could. Maybe we should just go straight to the police and tell them everything we know; about Robbie drawing the sketch for us, and …’
‘Aidan’s in enough trouble with the police, don’t you think, Emmi?’ interrupted Jon. ‘He’s got a court case next week! And how’s it going to look if they find out he’s been trespassing inside a hospital ward?’
Jon shook his head. ‘No. We just have to hope the hospital have stepped up security after that nurse found us in there.’
The glass of the bathroom window rattled with the force of the rain. Aidan looked at their three worried faces reflected in it.
‘We have to find the tomb,’ he said determinedly. ‘By ourselves. In secret. Get to the truth of all this.’
His two friends nodded back at him from the glass. ‘Soon as the storm eases off,’ he said, ‘we go to search that clearing.’
‘Meanwhile …’ said Jon turning to Emmi. Delicious smells were wafting from the kitchen and Aidan’s stomach growled. ‘Tension makes me hungry. Do you think there’s any chance your dad’s got supper ready yet?’
‘I’ll ask,’ said Emmi. ‘And meanwhile, we need to do loads of research about Boudicca and Carrus and the battle with the Romans – see if it gives us any clues to what’s going on.’
She led the way from the bathroom to her room. ‘Can we please have our food up here, Dad?’ she called down the stairs. ‘We’ve vital homework to do and can’t be disturbed. It’s a matter of life and death!’
‘Sure, darling,’ came her dad’s cheery reply. ‘Happy to help avert disaster.’
Emmi flopped on to a beanbag with her laptop. ‘Get googling on your phones you two and let’s see what we can find out.’ She started to type. ‘I’ll go for will-o’-the-wisp sightings in this area.’
Jon rolled his eyes at Aidan. ‘Bossy,’ he mouthed, but got quickly to work, sitting cross-legged on the bottom bunk bed. Emmi’s dad came in with a trayful of food, smiled at the three, all absorbed in their screens, and left again.
Emmi tapped her computer screen. ‘It says here that will-o’-the-wisps date right back to Celtic times.’ She swallowed a forkful of pasta. ‘Ancient Britons worshipped the places they appeared.’ She shuddered. ‘There’s evidence that Romans might have used such dips in the ground as fire pits for human sacrifices. How horrible!’
‘There are several sites where it’s thought Boudicca’s last battle against the Romans could have taken place,’ said Aidan, absent-mindedly smearing pâté on a cracker.
‘I’ve got the British Museum archive up here,’ said Jon. He got a big spoonful of marmalade roll and custard as he read from the monitor. ‘An authenticated Roman account translated from the original Latin. Woah!’
‘What?’
‘Cool weapon!’ he munched. ‘Listen to this: “Foes fall back when the wild queen wields her sword; the formidable battle blade. A leaping hare on its hilt, its demonic scarlet eye, a huge ruby.”’
In his mind, Aidan imagined that sword. Its gleaming silver edge; the sleek, red-eyed hare.
Emmi took Jon’s phone and carried on reading. ‘The symbol of the hare was allowed to be carried and worn only by the Warrior Queen Boudicca herself and … oh!’
She looked at Aidan and Jon, wide-eyed.
‘What?’
‘… and her two royal daughters.’
Jon’s next spoon of pudding hovered in mid-air on the way to his mouth. ‘So what you’re saying is …’
‘Only Boudicca – and her daughters – were allowed to wear the hare as a symbol,’ repeated Aidan, his thoughts whirring.
Jon ran his fingers through his matted hair. ‘So those ghost girls we saw …’ he said slowly. ‘They have to be … had to be …’ His spoon clattered back into his bowl.
Emmi gave an excited nod.
Aidan’s heart thudded.
The realisation hit.
The two girls by the lake.
They were the daughters of Queen Boudicca.
The soldiers loom over them. The girls are hauled up by their hair, kicking, clawing at silver armour and red tunics, spitting words; dragged away from their mother and towards the marsh.
To the men, the words are little more than clipped screams. Only those who speak the Celtic tongue would understand their meaning.
You break our land;
But never our people, never their power.
Let our honour be restored at the chosen hour.
– CHAPTER 14 –
TO THE CLEARING
It took a very long time for Aidan to fall asleep that night. His mind was buzzing with a mix of excitement and dread.
Robbie, the stolen bracelet, Centurion and the chariot race tomorrow, the fracking … the criminal charges against him for arson seemed the least of his worries.
He lay on the bottom bunk and listened to the rain drumming on Emmi’s bedroom window, and Jon’s deep breathing from above.
As soon as it got light, the three of them had decided, no matter what the weather, they were going to search the clearing.
‘Meanwhile I’ll hide the arm bracelet.’ Emmi’s words came back to him. ‘We have to keep it a deadly secret!’
By itself the bracelet wasn’t enough to stop the fracking, they’d all agreed that. And who knew what would happen if the thief got to hear about what they’d found?
The
swirl of thrill and anxiety kept him awake for what seemed like hours, and when Aidan did finally fall asleep, he dreamt of his mum.
They were in the stables together.
Mum was stroking Centurion’s nose and the big horse nuzzled against her.
‘Look after him, Aidan, won’t you?’ she said. ‘Until I come back.’
‘But why do you have to go away?’ Aidan had replied.
‘Promise me, Aidan.’ Mum squeezed his hand. ‘Promise me you’ll look after him. Keep him safe.’
‘Stay,’ insisted Aidan. ‘Don’t go.’
Then somehow they were suddenly out in the open and a heavy rain was falling, and Mum was drenched and shivering, and he kept pleading with her not to go, but she was getting fainter and tinged with some kind of blueish light, and when he tried to catch hold of her, his hand went straight through her and there was nothing to hold on to …
‘Promise me, Aidan.’ Her voice was so faint now he could hardly hear it. And he was scrambling to see where she had gone, but there was nothing but rain and cold and shadow.
‘Aidan?’
Aidan opened his eyes and sat up.
‘You OK?’ Emmi was by his bed looking at him with a frown.
Jon was rubbing his eyes, head dangling over the top bunk, his hair in tufts. ‘You were mumbling in your sleep, Aide.’
Aidan blinked at them as the room came into focus. Daylight squeezed itself through a gap in the curtains. He scrambled out of bed, hurrying to get his thoughts straight. ‘What time is it?’ he said. ‘We need to get to the clearing!’
‘Early,’ said Jon. ‘But it’s still lashing it down.’
‘We can’t let that stop us,’ said Emmi. She was already dressed and heading for the door, gathering items into a small rucksack on her way: the three trowels, the head torches. ‘I’ve spare wellies for both of you.
‘Now let’s go!’
‘Boudicca’s daughters,’ said Jon as they picked up the pace over the rain-sodden fields towards Carrus Woods. He opened the flowery umbrella Emmi had given him. ‘I just can’t work them out. Why they would appear. Now. To us.’
‘Nobody knows what happened to them after the last Iceni-Roman battle,’ Emmi said as they skirted a flooded patch. ‘Historians don’t even know their names. Imagine that – we don’t even know the names of the daughters! We do know that Boudicca and the two of them were treated really badly by the Romans after the girls’ father, the Iceni king, died. They say it was this horrible treatment that sparked off the whole revolt.’
‘Yeah,’ agreed Jon. ‘It got the Celts really angry. And they’d had enough of being ruled over by the Romans and told what to do.’ For some reason Berryman’s arrogant face came into Aidan’s head. ‘But that doesn’t explain why now. Why us.’
‘I think the daughters want to help us,’ Emmi said as they squelched quickly over the marshy ground. ‘They’ve been disturbed by what’s going on in Carrus. I don’t think they like the fracking any more than we do!’
‘Come on!’ Jon rolled his eyes. He stumbled on a tussock in his oversized wellies, spraying Aidan with water. ‘Why weren’t the ghosts at the demo then?’
‘How do you know they weren’t?’ said Emmi. ‘Their land’s in danger!’ she added passionately. ‘That’s what I think. That’s why they’re appearing after all this time. Think of how they fought for this place, this land; the people they saw killed because of it – people on both sides. They led us to the arm bracelet. They wanted us to know who they are.’
‘Yes,’ agreed Aidan uncertainly. But he couldn’t help thinking there must be more to the story.
The conversation was interrupted by a buzz from Emmi’s phone, and she pulled it out to look at the message. Her face went pale.
‘It’s from my mum,’ she muttered. ‘News about Robbie …
‘He’s still not conscious,’ she swallowed. ‘He’s a whole lot worse.’
‘Oh, Robbie!’ she said as she read the flow of messages and hurriedly tapped back replies. She gripped Aidan’s arm, so hard that it hurt.
‘The doctors are saying he might not make it.’
They stopped by a low wall, standing in silence, catching their breath.
Aidan wanted to say something to Emmi, but he didn’t know what. Jon was silent too, staring at the end of his wellies.
Emmi wiped her eyes. ‘They’re going to let the family in to see him this evening if he hasn’t improved.’
On the other side of the wall was a small stone cottage, the house hemmed in on three sides by the edges of Carrus Woods. Miss Carter’s house.
‘Meadow Acres’ said a painted plaque on the gatepost, and Aidan recognised the distinctive style of Robbie’s artwork in its frame of flowers. He saw what he guessed were Robbie’s presents decorating the gateposts: a piece of slate painted with galloping ponies; the rib bone of something or other; and what looked like the skull of a fox, its sharp little teeth bared.
Emmi stopped suddenly. ‘Really we should go and see Miss while we’re passing,’ she said quietly. ‘Check she’s OK. You know how close she and Robbie are, being friends at school and all that. She knows how much Robbie liked her …
‘Likes her,’ she corrected herself. Aidan heard her swallow and go on rapidly. ‘And she’ll be so upset about the museum being destroyed, especially after all the help she gave Mr Williams with the campaign and getting more artefacts and everything.’ Emmi swung open the gate. ‘We shouldn’t stay long though.’
Jon filed through after her, but Aidan hung back.
Might Miss Carter believe the police and think he had started the fire? She was bound to have heard about the arson charges by now. He hated the thought of his teacher thinking badly of him. She’d lost her mum when she was younger, just like he had. And her dad shortly after. Aidan couldn’t imagine what it was like to lose both parents.
‘Just no one say anything about any of the tomb or ghost or bracelet stuff,’ he told the others.
‘No, not even to Miss Carter,’ said Emmi over her shoulder. ‘We have to keep all this secret. Remember what we agreed? Think of the danger we could put her in with Robbie’s attacker still on the loose!’
Aidan followed his friends past the flower beds of foxgloves and hollyhocks, a cheery burst of colour on that wet, grey morning.
Emmi lifted the horseshoe knocker and gave three taps, and they waited for the door to be answered. There was the movement of a curtain, then the sound of footsteps inside. The door opened a chink, then swung wider.
‘What a lovely surprise!’ said Miss Carter. She was dressed in jeans and a white T-shirt, her blonde hair tumbling over her shoulders. She was putting on a smile, but Aidan saw that her eyes were a bit red round the edges, as if she’d been crying.
‘Hullo Miss.’ Jon pulled his umbrella closed, flapping the drops off and accidentally spraying everyone with flecks of water.
‘Come on in.’ Their teacher ushered them in and they piled their wellington boots and Jon’s crumpled umbrella by the door and went into the kitchen.
There was the smell of flowers and baking bread, and the big pine table in the centre of the room was crammed with costumes and props.
‘Excuse the chaos,’ Miss Carter said, clearing Roman helmets and Celtic cloaks from chairs so they could all sit down. Aidan saw Iceni brooches made of silver-sprayed cardboard, eagle-decorated shields; realistic-looking bows and arrows and swords.
A painted banner was hanging across the room drying:
This afternoon. Aidan’s stomach did a somersault as he thought about Centurion and his injured leg. About Berryman expecting the horse to compete.
‘All this looks great, Miss!’ said Emmi. ‘You always do amazing stuff for the festival.’
Miss Carter returned a smile. ‘You’re a sweetheart for saying so. I’m a bit behind schedule, but getting back on top of things now.’ She went over to the sink and filled the kettle.
‘Have you seen Robbie, Miss?’ Emmi asked tentatively.
‘Since the accident, I mean?’
Miss Carter shook her head and lit the gas with a match so that a little ring of blue flames flared up. ‘The hospital is being very strict about letting people into his room.’
‘Oh, really?’ muttered Jon, catching Aidan’s eye. ‘I wonder why.’
Miss Carter turned to Emmi. ‘Is there any more news?’ she said worriedly. ‘It’s family only for visiting, I expect, but it’s so difficult not knowing anything.’
‘He’s …’ Emmi glanced at Aidan. ‘He’s fighting,’ she said quietly.
Miss Carter bit her lip and nodded. ‘If your family hears anything more, you will tell me straight away, won’t you?’
‘Course I will,’ Emmi assured her. She sniffed.
Miss Carter handed Emmi a tissue, and Aidan saw Jon looking as awkward as he felt.
‘Er, we saw the ambulance arrived really fast at least,’ blurted Jon. ‘I guess things could have been a lot worse if it hadn’t.’
Miss Carter took a biscuit tin from a shelf. ‘You saw the accident?’
Aidan exchanged glances with Emmi and Jon.
What were they supposed to say to that? Aidan felt his heartbeat quicken. Maybe they should tell Miss Carter everything after all. Glancing at Emmi’s face, he guessed she was thinking the same thing.
‘Er … we were messing around with my drone,’ said Jon quickly, getting a chocolate digestive from the tin and practically putting the whole of it in his mouth in one bite with nerves. ‘We didn’t see much. Just got a bit of a view on the laptop of where it happened, and the police and that arriving.’
But Miss Carter didn’t seem to have heard him. The kettle had started a high-pitched whistling as it boiled, and she absent-mindedly filled four mugs from the kettle, scooping spoonfuls of sugar into each one.
‘No sugar for me, thanks, Miss,’ said Emmi hastily. ‘Leave it,’ she mouthed at the boys. ‘She’s got enough to worry about.’
Suddenly Miss Carter stopped stirring, the teaspoon in mid-air. Her head drooped so that her long hair fell forward over her face.