Dust to Dust

by Lillian Stewart Carl

  “Lived there all my life. My family owns half the city. Servants, country club, exclusive girl’s school, the works.”

  Hilary bent over the sink, her expression hidden. She didn’t seem to be bragging. Did she think everyone lived like that? “How’d you get interested in art history?” Rebecca asked.

  “I always liked museums—so peaceful. Drawing and reading were things I could do alone.” Hilary unconcernedly piled the dishes in the drainer.

  Poor little rich girl? wondered Rebecca. She wrote “Dear Mrs. Campbell, thank you for the lovely sweater.” She couldn’t think of any way to thank Michael’s mum for the man himself.

  Michael slammed the front door, and with Mark and Dennis in tow walked past the dining room windows. Adele came down the steps and went out the back door. Hilary draped the dish towel over the bar on the front of the cooker. Rebecca sealed her letter, put on her wellies and jacket, and headed up the driveway to the village.

  The low clouds were like silver wool. The outline of the Eildon hills was blotted by mist, ground diffusing into sky. A fine rain kissed Rebecca’s face, and she parted her lips to catch the cool, elusive taste of earth and stone. She really had it bad, she thought. A week ago she’d trudged to the University clutching her umbrella, cursing the gloomy day and the puddles spewed onto her feet by passing cars.

  Winnie Johnston was just opening the front door of the shop with its red and gold “Post Office” sign. “You must be Rebecca. Come in.” She removed Lancelot and Guinevere from the counter and straightened a rack of candy. “A letter for Inverness? Here you go.” She pulled a 20p stamp out of the drawer and waited patiently while Rebecca read the denomination of each coin in her pocket, finally producing a tenpence and two fivepences.

  Winnie had the rosy-cheeked complexion Rebecca had long admired in Michael’s masculine version, fair skin nurtured by the damp dimness of Britain. It was enough to make Rebecca resolve never to get a suntan again. Of course, if she stayed here, she might never again have that opportunity.

  She petted the cats, thanked Winnie for tidying up the cottage, and went back out onto the street. The rain had stopped. Elaine Vavra was coming out of the hotel, a drawing board under one arm and a satchel in her hand. “May I help?” Rebecca asked, and took the plastic-covered board.

  “We’ll be starting in the rain, won’t we?” said Elaine. “Sodding climate. Had to leave the computer in the room.”

  “You’re from London, you said? I guess you’ve had your fill of rain.”

  “I can’t wait to get far away. Jerry says Virginia is nice and sunny.”

  Rebecca’s ears pricked. “I heard Jerry directed a dig in Virginia. Was it successful?”

  “There was some god-awful sloppy assistant who caused trouble. He says you have to watch out for assistants.” Elaine was blissfully unaware she’d just rammed her foot down her throat. Rebecca smothered a snort.

  Across the Gowan the lawn before the priory shimmered the same green that must surround the pearly gates. The dusty rose buildings stood still and silent, almost leaning forward for a better view. Jerry paced across the cloister, gesticulating with a roll of papers, Dennis trotting behind. “… datum point,” his voice boomed into the damp quiet. “Mike—over there!”

  Michael’s slender form stood storklike over a surveyor’s theodolite set up by the well. He waved, indicating movement to the right. Mark, holding a staff painted with lines, dutifully took two paces to the right and ended up at the base of the cross. Michael entered the measurements in a notebook.

  Adele and Hilary were perfectly explicable shapes inside the church, laying out supplies under the overhang of the roof. “Pretty church,” Rebecca commented as she and Elaine stepped onto the bridge.

  “It’s all right. The new cathedral at Coventry is much more posh. But Jerry says we might find important relics here, enough to be going on with.”

  To be going where with? Rebecca wanted to ask.

  “Nice of you to join us, ladies,” Jerry called, tucking the papers inside his coat. “Rebecca, give Hilary that board. Elaine, get my trowels.”

  Rebecca quelled an impulse to shout, “Aye, aye, sir,” and squished on across the grass. Elaine did an about face and went back across the bridge. Surely it was premature to be calling for trowels, Rebecca thought. It would be pick and shovel work today, at least, cutting down the weeds, peeling back the turf, evaluating the unoccupied layers.

  Between them Michael and Mark pulled a string taut and jammed pegs into the turf to hold it, defining the western boundary of the excavation. So Jerry was using some of the theoretically undisturbed land outside the precincts of the convent as a control. He knew his business. But then, his business wasn’t what Rebecca doubted about him.

  Inside the church, Adele was sorting an array of boxes and plastic bags onto a plywood table. A cold draft blew through the nave and the bags fluttered. She bent, picked up a rock to weight them down, then stared. It was a carved bit of an angel’s wing. “Label it,” Rebecca told her.

  She helped Hilary stretch a length of permatrace film down the board and clip it over a sheet of graph paper. “Got your pencils sharp?”

  “Shouldn’t the records be drawn in ink?” asked Hilary.

  “Ink will run in the rain. You can trace the pencil lines tonight, inside. Besides… .” She stopped.

  Hilary laughed. “You’re right. I’m not good enough to do it in ink.”

  They walked out the south transept door into the hollowed shell of the convent’s chapter house. The stone piers supporting the walls looked like battered tree trunks, the branching tracery at their tops amputated and their roots overgrown by grass and nettles.

  Jerry was in the cloister just outside the chapter house, stabbing the greensward with Mark’s staff while Mark himself whittled busily at a peg with a Swiss Army knife. Michael swung the theodolite around. Dennis picked up a shovel and leaned on it. “Here,” said Jerry to Hilary. He pulled a tape measure from his pocket and handed it to her. “Plot the four fixed points and the aboveground structures.” He waved toward the well, the cross, the chapter house and a tumbled patch of ground to the east, indicating an imaginary rectangle over the site. “When you get done with, that I’ll plot out the trenches for you. Get Adele to help you measure.”

  Hilary nodded and walked back into the church, almost tripping over Dennis. The mist thickened into rain, then thinned again.

  Michael stood beside the theodolite whittling his own peg with his sgian dubh. Scots Army knife, Rebecca thought. Maybe not as versatile as Mark’s, but prettier, with its carved ebony hilt and a serrated edge like the window molding of the church.

  “Anyone home?” The voice was a woman’s, carried on the damp breeze like the lick of a large, wet tongue.

  Jerry dropped the staff and strode toward the road. “Over here!”

  A shock ran from Rebecca’s crown to the bottom of her feet. She looked across the cloister at Michael. For a moment he stood braced, peg in one hand, sgian dubh in the other, chin up and out so that his profile took on an edge as keen as the knife’s. Then, in one smooth movement, he thrust the peg into the ground, the dagger into its sheath, and the sheath into the top of his boot. He picked up the theodolite and set it up in the cloister.

  Rebecca picked up the fallen staff and stepped into Michael’s line of sight. He waved. She edged to the left and collided with Dennis’s back. He and Mark were both pointed, as intent as labradors sighting a duck, at the vision wafting around the west front of the church.

  For someone who’d bulked so large in Rebecca’s imagination, Sheila turned out to be small and slim. She wore a red jumpsuit, storm trooper boots with high heels, and a coat of some fuzzy material that looked like sheep’s fleece and mink. Her hair was tormented into bits of fluff that stood out from her head in an aggressive blond corona. Rebecca became acutely aware of what a grotty group they all were, hair either frizzing or hanging lankly in the rain, vinyl boots muddy, jackets and sweater
s—except for Hilary’s mohair—looking like Salvation Army rejects.

  Adele and Hilary stopped in the passage between church and chapter house. One of them emitted a sniff audible to Rebecca’s ears several paces away, either from sinus trouble or disapproval, she couldn’t tell.

  Sheila’s heels kept sinking into the turf, giving her walk a provocative wiggle. Gallantly, Jerry extended a hand to help her. Rebecca wondered why he didn’t whisk off his coat and lay it down for her to step on. “Sheila Fitzgerald,” he announced. “Plantagenet Productions. May I present my staff and the volunteers?”

  The lush red mouth smiled. The dark eyes, artistically enhanced by mauve liner and shadow, didn’t. “My, you are brave souls to be out in such foul weather. Would you be so kind as to help unload the van?”

  Jerry, Mark, and Dennis stampeded toward the road. Hilary and Adele trudged away behind the ruined walls. A raindrop ran down the back of Rebecca’s neck, and she shivered.

  Sheila shook back her hair. “Hello, Michael. Dr. Kleinfelter told me you were the Museum wallah here. How’re you keeping?”

  Michael straightened. The expression on his face was that of a child contemplating spinach on his dinner plate. “Quite well, thank you kindly.”

  “I heard you spent some time in the States last winter. New York? Florida? Those are the only places there worth the effort.”

  “Ohio. A couthy wee town called Putnam. I quite liked it.”

  Thank you, Rebecca said silently.

  Sheila licked her lips. Her voice was a coo channeled through a sharp beak. “What a gormless place this is. Not like London, is it?”

  “No. Thank goodness.” Michael’s mouth tightened to a fissure. He gestured to Rebecca, who stepped closer to the chapter house wall, and bent again over the theodolite.

  Sheila’s eyes narrowed. She glanced over at Rebecca. One of her brows arched upward, and the corner of her mouth tucked itself into a supercilious expression. Had she hoped he’d go all hot and bothered at her arrival? Rebecca wondered. And she told herself, Sheila doesn’t know who I am—yet. By the edge of the staff, where Michael would see it through the scope, Rebecca’s hand formed a thumbs-up encouragement signal. His hand directed at Sheila’s back the old peasant gesture warding off the evil eye.

  Around the corner of the church came the men carrying various bags and boxes. They were followed by another man—a thin, dark-haired individual dressed in the same poor-but-honest uniform of jeans and coat everyone else was wearing. “Tony Wright,” he said in introduction. Since he was festooned with camera equipment, Jerry’s, “The cameraman,” was a typically unnecessary comment.

  Muttered greetings mingled with Sheila’s orders. Her long lacquered fingernails were evidence that she didn’t do her own manual labor. Tony laid his bags along the stunted remains of the cloister wall and started pulling out sleek, shiny instruments apparently time-warped in from 2001.

  Elaine appeared, carrying a leather case. “There!” Jerry said, snapping his fingers, and Elaine carried the case into the church, but not before shooting a glance of pure venom in Sheila’s direction.

  Rebecca caught herself digging the end of the staff into the soft ground. She tried smoothing out the divot with the toe of her boot. Was that why Jerry had sent Elaine away, to make sure she wasn’t here when Sheila arrived? Despite Sheila’s careful “Dr. Kleinfelter” Rebecca was willing to bet she and Jerry had met before—and Elaine knew it.

  Obviously, she told herself; Jerry had to hire Sheila for the dig, didn’t he? And that archivist at the British Museum had already told Michael Jerry had been there in the spring… .

  “Rebecca!” Jerry yelled. “Mike!” Michael glanced up from the peg he was whittling and laid down the staff. Tony threw the end of a cord to Mark, who plugged it into a battery pack. Dennis rearranged the bags on the lichen-covered stones. Sheila drifted toward the east side of the excavation rectangle, where Adele was calling out measurements to Hilary.

  Jerry asked Michael, “Have you ever taught before, Mike?”

  “I’ve taken tour groups round the Museum.”

  “Working with student volunteers is an entirely different matter. Their enthusiasm is offset by their unreliability.”

  As if to punctuate his remarks, Dennis knocked over a box of film. “No problem,” Tony said tolerantly, and picked it up.

  Jerry groaned. “You see? I expect you two to keep a close eye on them, check their work. I had a student once who thought pottery meant Grecian vases and spent an entire afternoon tossing some very nice beaker ware into the rubbish tip. I wasn’t in charge on that dig, unfortunately.”

  “We’ve both been on digs before,” Rebecca offered. “Although mine were Indian mounds and nineteenth century log cabins.”

  “The Orkneys,” said Michael. “Bamburgh Castle. Fishbourne.”

  But Jerry’s eyes were following Sheila’s undulating progress across the lawn. Michael slipped his dagger into his boot. Rebecca wiped the damp hair off her forehead. She didn’t look at Michael—she knew his expression mirrored hers, disbelief lit by a slow fuse of anger. But too much was riding on this dig to let that fuse burn any faster.

  Sheila stopped where Mark knelt laying out a row of film canisters. She propped a boot on a stone so that the length of her leg was presented for his enjoyment. His hands stopped moving and his eyes crossed slightly. “Where are you from?” she asked.

  “Fort Worth, Texas, ma’am,” he said to her thigh.

  “Then where’re your horse and your gun?”

  With a flash of white teeth he laughed. His gaze traveled up her leg to her face. “Don’t have either, sorry. I’m just a city kid.”

  Sheila really was lovely, Rebecca thought with a sigh. Like a glossy advertisement, airbrushed into artificial perfection. No wonder she so insistently asserted her existence.

  “All right!” called Jerry. “Everyone! Over here!” As his disciples gathered, Jerry wiped off his glasses and lit a cigar. He pulled the sheaf of papers, Colin’s geophysical printouts, out of his coat. “All these monasteries were built more or less to the same plan. Church north, cloister south. The dormitory for the nuns south of the chapter house, the refectory at right angles to it, and the lay sister’s dormitory on the west. If there was an infirmary it would be out of the main range, on the east. Rudesburn did have an infirmary, right? Relics and miracles and all that good stuff.”

  Like ducklings following their mother, the students, Sheila, and Tony trailed behind as Jerry paced out the as yet imaginary grid of the dig. Michael and Rebecca brought up the rear.

  “If the soil has only a little resistivity, that indicates a drain or ditch,” Jerry lectured. “Over there, between the stream and the buildings, is a conduit, and a drain runs back to the water further south. Foundations have high resistivity. So the vaults of the undercroft, the cellars beneath the kitchens, are beyond that corner of the cloister. Third trench.”

  He led them past the cross, dismissing it as out of context, but Adele stopped and gazed up at it. “I went to see the Ruthwell Cross Saturday. ‘The Dream of the Rood’ is written in runes on its sides. A synthesis of pagan and Christian cultures, transmitting its cosmic energies through the ages.”

  Mark muttered to Hilary, “She’s very intelligent, it’s just that not all her brain cells are in the same space-time continuum.” Hilary grinned at him and glanced with—envy? Rebecca wondered—at Adele’s serene expression, worthy of a woodcut in a book of martyrs.

  In the church, Elaine was arranging a series of well-worn trowels next to the sculptured wing. Aha, Rebecca thought. The ceremonial laying out of the trowels, like a soldier showing off his campaign medals. Jerry didn’t need to actually use them—they just needed to know he had them.

  Jerry explained about shovels and heavy work, trowels, brushes and dental picks and delicate work. He picked up the chemical kit and described some simple conservation techniques. “Boggy soil like this is murder on bones,” he said. “Let’s ho
pe any we find are above the water table.”

  “Can I get up into the tower for an aerial shot?” asked Tony.

  “The tower’s none too…” Michael began.

  “I’m sure we can get you up there,” Jerry said quickly. He walked out the transept door, delivering them all back into the cloister where they’d started. “Trial trenches here, here, and here. Then we’ll see what we can do about the crypt and the ruins of the infirmary.”

  “You haven’t turned any dirt yet,” Sheila said accusingly. “Start them on that, and then do your orientation again, for the camera, so the viewers will feel like they’re participating in the dig.”

  “Maybe you could arrange for their tellies to get damp-rot,” suggested Elaine.

  Sheila ignored her. She was putting Jerry through his paces, while Michael and Mark went on about their surveying, when Nora Baird and a young, red-haired and freckled version of herself—Bridget, Rebecca assumed—appeared with steaming pots of tea and trays of hot scones. Tony and his camera would have been trampled in the ensuing rush except he was at the head of the line.

  Even Adele accepted a cuppa. Rebecca was grateful for the scalding tea; it took off the chill so effectively that her cheeks flushed. She and Michael found a patch of tile beside the chancel arch, quite dry except for the occasional drip from the roof, and sat down a little way apart from the others. “Now I see,” she said under her breath, “just why you once called Sheila a proper little bitch.”

  “Wi’ a capital ‘B’.” Michael looked balefully at Sheila, who was sipping at her tea and hanging on Jerry’s every word. Mark, Dennis, and Tony were ranged around them like planets around a binary star, while Hilary and Adele joined Elaine, insignificant bits of debris to one side. Nora and Bridget handed out refills and listened to Jerry’s war stories.

  “I was digging at Colchester,” he was saying. “Just a rank kid, wet behind the ears. But I knew we’d found Boadicea destruction level. I kept telling Hargrave, the dig director. Obvious to anyone with half an eye. He insisted it was charcoal from a Danish raid. Went round and round. Then I uncovered a Roman sestertius from the exact year. Old Hargrave had to eat his hat. The next dig I was director—no more mistakes like that one.”