Skendleby

by Nick Brown

  “Just think, boys, if this is a Neolithic burial it will be the biggest prehistoric find in this region since Lindow Man, then you’ll really have something to show your media friends.”

  Giles nodded but seemed pensive.

  “Yeah, Jim Gibson from the Journal is bringing a photographer on site tomorrow but he thinks we may have problems.”

  “Such as?”

  Rose asked suddenly anxious.

  “According to Jim the guy who’s bought Skendleby Manor has plans for it.”

  “What plans?” She snapped back, becoming angry: no one was going to stop her mound from getting the recognition it deserved.

  “Rumour is he’s plans to develop it as housing with a multipurpose leisure complex and one of the big supermarkets as anchor tenant.”

  Steve, who had just returned from the bar with a rum chaser for himself, snorted in disbelief.

  “No chance with the planning laws round here, Gi; a petty bureaucrat like you should know that better than anyone.”

  Normally Rose would have loved this dig at Giles to lead to a heated argument but now she wanted reassuring about the dig so looked at Giles with her most admiring gaze and asked,

  “But surely with all your expertise in planning matters, Giles, nothing could come of it.”

  “Yeah, normally, but, according to Jim, who gets most things right, this guy Carver in the hall is a nasty piece of work and used to getting his own way. He made his money on short selling and generally screwing up other people. He has contacts and he’s put together the usual seductive proposal, you know how it goes, promises loads of local benefits and jobs; total con of course, he just wants the money, but they got away with something similar on the bypass remember.”

  “But even so he could never get it through any planning committee: this is designated land.”

  “If he had the bent councillor who chairs the committee in his pocket he might. Our finding a monument of national interest on there is the last thing he needs. Remember the trouble we had getting access in the first place?”

  They were interrupted by the barmaid, a formidable lady who ruled the pub with a rod of iron. She stared at Giles and said with some asperity,

  “I don’t normally interrupt but I couldn’t help overhearing; nothing will ever be built on that land, nothing that will come to any good anyhow, and if it was built there’s no one from round here who’d be daft enough to go to it. It’s surprised us you’ve not had any problems over there. They’re running a book behind the bar on what’s going to happen to you first. Still plenty of time for that: not that it’s any of my business.”

  She cleared the glasses from the table and moved off without waiting for a reply. Steve threw back his head and laughed.

  “Well, you’ve made a good impression on her, Gi.”

  But Rose didn’t feel like laughing when Giles continued,

  “Listen; better not mention what I just said because the photographer Jim’s bringing tomorrow is the bent councillor’s daughter.”

  They finished their drinks and got up to leave, as they passed the bar heading towards the door Rose overheard a snatch of conversation.

  “And when I went downstairs the back doors was wide open and both the dogs was dead. I hadn’t heard anything; it scared the life out of us and now the wife won’t be left in the house alone.”

  Outside it was dark and turning chilly, a gibbous moon was rising over the woods on the estate behind the dig.

  “Strange isn’t it,” Steve said as they walked across the car park, “the locals reckon that the site is a place to be avoided. Legend says it brings bad luck yet we’ve had this incredible weather and now we might have uncovered something mega. If that’s bad luck, bring it on!”

  Rose, walking just behind the two men, suddenly experienced an intuition of what might be in her mound. She hurried to catch them up trying to put the thought out of her mind.

  ***

  Next day the excavation of Devil’s Mound started promisingly under Rose’s direction. The perimeter of the stone structure was quickly established. The weather that week was even more perfect. The early morning mist quickly burnt off as the sun rose in a deep blue sky. The stubble in the field still a parched faded yellow contrasting with the leaves of the trees of the estate boundary turning to copper and gold as the year grew old. The days were warm but not hot, the sunsets deep red and the nights crisp with the promise of frost. The team worked quickly and in harmony, relishing this rare extension of the heat of late summer, keen to finish the dig but reluctant somehow that it should all end and they go their separate ways. For the core team of archaeologists, Giles, Steve and the three women, the beginning of this final phase of the excavation was enhanced by the rare potential of the mound.

  Rose and Leonie were marking out the estimated entrance to the chamber when Jan pointed to Giles striding towards them leading a heavily built man with greying hair, wearing a smart suit, totally out of place on the site. Behind him was a nondescript, young woman with dirty blond scraped back hair. She was festooned with camera bags and wearing a camouflage anorak and beige combat pants.

  “Rose, this is my mate Jim Gibson, the editor of the Journal, and his photographer, Lisa.”

  Rose looked carefully at Lisa, who avoided her gaze and didn’t reply to her greeting. There was something sullen and closed off about the photographer, something impossible to engage with, it was like talking to someone who wasn’t really there. But Rose noted that the girl was strangely attracted to the mound. She climbed onto it and after taking a few shots was running her hands over its grassy surface and gazing at it with a strange, sly smile when she thought no one was looking.

  Rose didn’t want her on the mound touching it like that and was about to tell her she shouldn’t be climbing on part of an excavation. But she didn’t need to, Lisa scrambled down smiling to herself. Then, as she walked past Rose she turned and looked her in the eyes with an expression Rose couldn’t interpret and whispered just loud enough for her to hear,

  “Feeling jealous? You should be.”

  Lisa walked off following Giles and Jim. Rose watched them go; she was feeling jealous but she was also trying to work out why she found the presence of the girl so threatening: she was shaken out of this by Leonie calling out from the trench.

  “Look over there: months of no interest at all and we’ve suddenly become the centre of attention.”

  “If you think that two visitors making a prearranged visit makes you the centre of attention you’re easily satisfied love,” Rose sneered, trying to recover self confidence.

  “Doesn’t say much for Steve, eh Jan?”

  As she and Jan were laughing at this Leonie said more urgently,

  “Not just them, whoever it is over in the woods near the estate wall. He’s been watching us ever since we started working on this mound. He turned up the day we started the trench. I’d never seen anyone over there before. He’s started to creep me out.”

  Rose snapped back,

  “No one’s going to be in there, its estate land, owned by some spiv who fiddled a fortune in the city. You can bet he’s no interest in us or lets anyone onto his land.”

  However, she and Jan turned to look at the dense clump of trees over by the shoulder high stone wall that girdled the estate, but before they were able to see anyone, they were disturbed by Giles.

  “You’ve got until next Thursday evening to finish this exploration and come up with something good. I’m meeting Jim next Friday to report on our progress and I’ve told him we’re onto something newsworthy. We’ve got extension funding for two maybe three more weeks then that’s it. He’s coming back the week after next to take some more footage and the Journal’s going to devote four pages to us, so try and make it good.”

  With that he was off back to his car and the Unit’s offices at the university.

  That afternoon Steve worked with them on the mound. Although a much better and more experienced archaeologist than G
iles he hated the business of sponsorship funding and administration. In fact he hated responsibility of any kind but he and Giles had been students together and whenever Steve returned from his excavations abroad Giles always found him work. He was an excellent excavator but his passion was for the archaeology of the Early Neolithic and to him a dig like this was a way of making a living until something more exciting came along, or his private life made it necessary to move on rapidly. Devil’s Mound, however, was beginning to intrigue him and he was almost as determined as Rose to open it. He and Jan were fine towelling round a feature they suspected might be some type of pit connected with the mound when a student from the site shouted him over. Getting to his feet and dusting himself off irritably he noticed a florid shiny faced man with longish hair, spectacles and a clerical collar striding towards him hand outstretched.

  “Excuse me for disturbing you, Dr Watkins, but your colleague informed me that as the director of this site it’s you to whom I need to talk. I’m the Reverend Edmund Joyce, call me Ed. I’m the priest of the parish; in fact I’m the priest of the parishes on either side of your excavation. Some of my parishioners thought it might be a good idea, not to mention neighbourly, if I were to conduct a little service of blessing for your site and I was wondering if tomorrow would do.”

  “Why, have we been cursed?”

  “No, not at all. Ah, I see you’re being humorous. No, it is a little unusual, but since you have been digging here some of the older, and I might say more set in their ways, parishioners have become quite anxious that I offer a blessing.”

  “Why?”

  “Well, you’re probably aware of the local superstition concerning this spot, not that I attach any credibility to such foolishness of course, but I did feel compelled.”

  He paused nervously.

  “That is, rather I agreed to make the offer.”

  “Wel,l that’s really kind of them but we don’t really have the time, the dig finishes in two weeks. Anyway, we’ve been here all summer, why wait so long to be neighbourly?”

  “Yes, quite so, however, it’s only been this last week you’ve turned your attention to what the elderly members of the congregation refer to as Devil’s Mound. Yes, I am afraid that we haven’t quite modernised sufficiently to have got across to many believers that the devil is merely a metaphor for social injustice.”

  “Well, we agree about superstitious mumbo jumbo at least.”

  Steve noticed the look of hurt or rejection flicker across the vicar’s face and modified his tone but couldn’t disguise the mockery.

  “Thanks for the kind offer, Vicar. Please tell your congregation that we appreciate it, but it will interrupt the work. However, if any of my digging community feel the need of a personal blessing or exorcism I’ll contact you.”

  The Reverend Joyce knew that beneath the thin veneer of politeness he was being mocked; he felt the familiar flush of humiliation begin to colour his face so said goodbye and turned to go. He felt angry and hurt by the dismissive treatment but also relieved not to have to conduct the blessing. Well, relieved and ashamed, his lack of moral courage confirmed; still he had done as he had promised.

  Steve watched him go, gingerly picking his way across the trenches and piles of rubble. He noticed that despite his long hair the Reverend Ed was balding at the crown and wearing supermarket jeans. He returned to Rose, laughing at the experience, and spent ten minutes working up the exchange into a comedy routine. Rose and Leonie laughed with him but Jan told him it had been a kind offer and even if it was, as Steve had said, pompous mumbo jumbo, there had been no need to be rude and hurtful.

  The heavy sun was beginning to sink red below the Edge to the west; it was time to pack up. They cleared up the excavated area round the mound and piled the tools into the wheelbarrow while the shadows gathered and lengthened.

  “Come on, time to get cleaned up, and then off to the pub.”

  Leonie picked up her coat and prepared to follow Rose, who was pushing the wheelbarrow back towards the site hut. She stood for a moment watching the last of the sunlight turning the woods by the estate boundary a golden brown. Then she saw movement and something seemed to jerk out of the tree line, something that she was sure wanted to be seen. She shouted to Rose,

  “Look, Rose, look, he’s there again in the woods, like a spidery black figure: see there, a white face between the trees.”

  There was no reply; Rose was out of earshot halfway to the huts. Leonie decided it was best to catch up with her.

  ***

  Woken by her own scream Claire Vanarvi sat up in bed fumbling for the light switch. The dream again, she looked at the clock – early morning, always the same. This time no sacrifice, just the mound covering the burial. But it wasn’t the grass covered surface of the mound that concerned her; something inside it was awake and shifting around looking for something it could invade and corrupt.

  CHAPTER 2

  THE RECTORY

  The Reverend Edmund Joyce returned to the Rectory feeling pathetic and empty as usual. He was relieved not to have had to perform the blessing, which he regarded as a superstitious hang-over from less enlightened times, but humiliated that he’d been ridiculed by the facetious archaeologist. He walked morosely through the crumbling graveyard of the ancient church towards the huge but sparsely furnished Rectory. This massive Georgian edifice, always empty and cold, seemed to cry out for the children he’d never been able to father.

  He hated it here. He wanted an urban parish, a modern house and a young, diverse and cosmopolitan congregation; instead he was stuck in a rural hamlet with an aging flock whose mindset hadn’t changed since the Middle Ages. These attitudes were best exemplified by Sir Nigel Davenport, who chaired the parish council and over-ruled any modernisation that Ed proposed.

  The Davenports had been the leading family in the village since the fourteenth century. Although they no longer inhabited the Hall, too expensive to maintain and recently sold to a money man in the City, their influence hadn’t diminished. Davenport, usually the most balanced of men, had become quite agitated about the archaeologists interfering with the mound in the field and both he and the parish council had insisted that Ed offer the blessing. This in fact was the only thing they’d insisted on since he’d assumed his incumbency and, for that matter, the nearest the committee had come to discussing matters of a spiritual nature.

  But they approved of the inexplicable mistake he had made in last Sunday’s service when, instead of reading Matt. 18:12-14, the parable of the lost sheep, he’d read Matt.12:43-5, the parable of the demon returning to his former home. This had forced him to abandon his prepared sermon and to extemporise on a theme of care for the mentally ill with the demon as a metaphor for cuts in public spending. But of course the congregation knew that this was not what the parable intended to say and so, in his heart of hearts, did he. The mistake perturbed him; it was not a parable he ever used or was comfortable with, demons, exorcism and all that other medieval stuff had no place in the modern church; so why had he read it?

  He was still trying to puzzle this out as he opened the front door and entered the large and gloomy stone flagged hall. The small threadbare tapestry rug in the centre of the floor emphasised the vast area of uncovered stone as he walked across it into his study. He had a deadline for the parish newsletter to meet and Sunday’s sermon to complete.

  Apart from when he was asleep or in the church, the study was where he spent most of his time. Here he’d made the strongest efforts to modernise the house. He’d had the large draughty open fireplace covered over and replaced with a flame effect gas fire, installed bright spot lighting and covered the walls with posters and prints from his university days. The effects, he had to admit to himself, had not been quite what he’d hoped for and, in fact, the makeover lent the room a dispiriting ambience. At his desk he turned his attention to neither the newsletter nor the sermon, but to the project that he felt kept him sane in this parish, his editing, for publication, of
the letters and notebooks of the Reverend Montague Heatly Smythe.

  Heatly Smythe had been the priest of this parish in the 1770s until his mysterious departure in 1776 and subsequent disappearance from the written record. During his incumbency of Skendleby Heatly Smythe maintained a correspondence with Gilbert White, the vicar of Farringdon on the borders of Hampshire and Sussex, whose letters and notes were published and celebrated as the Natural History and Antiquities of Selborne. Heatly Smythe had been a fellow student and friend of White’s at Oriel College, Oxford, where a collection of his writings between 1772 and 1776 had been lodged on the death of his last surviving relative at the beginning of the nineteenth century.

  As an antidote to boredom and frustration during his early days in Skendleby, Ed had researched the history of his predecessor. The fact that he was himself an Oriel man seemed fortuitous as it gave him access to the Heatly Smythe collection. From the manuscripts it seemed that Heatly Smythe was no more enamoured of the parish than he was, and his letters, rather than possessing the freshness and directness of White’s, conveyed an accusatory and self pitying tone. It seemed the parish had tried to exclude Heatly Smythe the way it seemed to exclude him; his request to be called Ed had been ignored and he was beginning to suspect that they called him Vicar at every opportunity deliberately to annoy him.

  However, Ed was nothing if not persevering and had decided to add his own modern perspective to Heatly Smythe and produce a volume that recorded the changes in the parish environment over two centuries. One of Heatly Smythe’s most irritating literary habits was to load his narrative with long classical quotes and by six thirty Ed was getting particularly fed up with translating a passage from Virgil’s Eclogues where ‘Willow blossom was being rifled by Hyblaean Bees’, when his wife Mary entered the room.

  “Ed, dear, you haven’t forgotten that Councillor Richardson and his daughter are coming to see you this evening; I’m going out so you’ll have to listen for the doorbell. Oh, and I forgot to tell you; when I was clearing junk out of the cellar I found a packet of old documents wrapped up in some horrible stained greaseproof paper. I’ve put them to one side in a box for you. Don’t wait up I’ll be late.”