Ravensborough

by Christine Murray

  After a while Nick pulled into a service station.

  ‘I need to get some petrol. Do you guys want anything?’ he asked.

  ‘A cup of coffee would be nice’, said Aradia. ‘It might help wake me up.’

  ‘What about you, Scarlett?’

  ‘A black coffee would be great, thanks’.

  ‘Coming up.’ Nick swung himself out of the truck and slammed the door. There was an awkward silence.’

  Aradia turned to me, her eyes a dark violet. ‘So why have you been ignoring me?’

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘You’re sorry? We meet up, become friends, and then one day you decide to run away from Gethan in a rainstorm and cut us both out from your life? Why would you do that?’

  ‘I saw a stabbing the night before.’

  ‘Geth mentioned that. Said you got hurt too. Did the knock to the head make you realise that you no longer wanted to talk to dangerous Pagans?’

  The sarcastic, flippant attitude was a side of her that I’d never seen before.

  I tried to explain. ‘The gang that stabbed the man, they were part of a group called the FPL.’

  Aradia looked at me expectantly.

  ‘When I was in Gethan’s car, I saw the same gang mark on the inside of his arm. I got scared and ran.’

  Aradia didn’t say anything, but I could sense some of the fight going out of her.

  ‘Why didn’t you talk to me?’ she asked quietly. ‘Because I knew you’d take his side,’ I answered simply. ‘You’re his best friend.’

  She nodded grudgingly, acknowledging the truth in what I said. Nick was walking across the forecourt, balancing three cups of coffee in his hands.

  ‘It’s not a gang mark. There’s a straight-forward explanation, really. It’s not what you think,’ she said in a small voice, before Nick got into the car, ending our conversation.

  He passed us both a cardboard takeaway cup. ‘Here, that should wake you girls up. It’s dark now but it’ll be getting light soon. When you’re digging in winter you need to make the most of the daylight hours.’

  The drive up to the excavation site took the best part of an hour. It was beautiful seeing the rugged mountain landscape gradually come into view as the light of dawn softened the night time shadows. We passed the stone circle where Aradia and Gethan had taken me and continued to wind higher still.

  ‘Is there anything of interest at this site, or is it just a field where you have training excavations?’ I asked Nick.

  ‘It’s a real archaeological site. It holds the remains of a sixteenth century Pagan temple. Because it isn’t listed as a priority site, the government won’t give money to excavate it. So the University decided to excavate it with students under strict supervision. There are still costs involved but we get sponsorship from some local businesses. That pays for the digger, safety gear, that kind of thing. It’s unlikely that you’ll find anything of interest this week, but you’ll get a decent crash course in the basics at least.’

  When we finally pulled into the excavation site, the field was already a hive of activity. Everyone was dressed in the same outdoor uniform of heavy boots, jeans, jumpers and waterproof coats. I saw a group of young people standing at the edge of an existing trench and comparing it to a photograph that they held in their hand. They looked a couple of years older than me, so I presumed that they were the college students who were going to teach the rest of us how to dig. The majority of the kids in the field looked like they were still in school though. I scanned the field and saw Gethan standing in the corner of the field talking to a girl who looked around my age. Aradia took a few steps towards them. She looked back at where I stood, frozen to the spot.

  ‘Come on, he’s not going to hurt you’, she said mockingly, raising an eyebrow at me. ‘Not right here, anyway. There are far too many people around.’

  She obviously meant the comment as a joke, but I didn’t find it funny. I still had no real reason to believe that what Mei had said was untrue. Nevertheless, Aradia was right. I wasn’t in danger with this amount of people milling around. I followed her over reluctantly, and could see Gethan staring at me from across the field. I avoided eye contact with him, stumbling slightly as I made my way across the rough terrain of the field. Though I wasn’t looking at him I could feel his eyes still on me as I walked towards him.

  He was standing with a girl around my age. Her skin was creamy and smooth and a cloud of wild golden curls tumbled way past her shoulders. She had a variety of lockets around her neck, each with a different talisman on it. She was dressed in the same protective clothing as the rest of us, but she managed to make them look stylish instead of merely practical. Her heavy outdoor jacket and boots seemed to enhance her femininity and small frame, instead of bulking her up like it did the rest of us. Her eyes were a chocolate brown colour, and the cold air had left her cheeks with a rosy glow. She was wholesome and absolutely beautiful.

  ‘Hi, Scarlett,’ Gethan said in a low, guarded voice. He was testing me with the tone of his voice. I just gave him a small nod. I wanted him to know that while I wouldn’t make a scene in front of a stranger, everything wasn’t ok between us. I mustn’t have been as discrete as I thought, because the girl picked up on the connection between the two of us, looking from one to the other of us with a curious look on her face.

  Aradia decided to give the introductions. ‘Scarlett, this is Liv. She goes to school with me. Liv, meet Scarlett.’

  Liv’s eyes were piercing and cold as she turned to look at me. She acknowledged my presence with a curt nod.

  ‘Did you have to come far today?’ I asked, trying to make conversation.

  ‘No.’ The one word answer came out cold and unfriendly. I was stung, surprised that she was being so rude towards me. I’d only been trying to make conversation.

  Gethan struggled to fill in the awkward silence. ‘Liv lives near here, at the bottom of the mountain.’

  ‘That must be handy for you,’ I smiled. This time she was even ruder; she turned her back and walked away. I was stunned.

  ‘What was that all about?’ I asked Gethan.

  He looked as bewildered as I did. ‘I have no idea...But then, I never really know why women run off on me,’ he added pointedly.

  I was saved from answering by the sound of a digger roaring to life. It carefully pulled off about a foot or so of soil away from a patch of ground that looked about ten feet squared. I felt a hand on my shoulder. I turned around and saw that it was Nick. He gestured over to a trench that was already established. There was a little bit of exposed masonry on view, but little else.

  ‘You’ll be working on this. It’s an outhouse of some description, but we haven’t worked out exactly what it was used for yet. Liv and Gethan have been on digs before, they know the ropes. They’ll be able to show you how to get started.’

  This day just kept getting better. Not only had I gotten up at an ungodly hour in the morning, but I was going to spend the day kneeling in the mud with a member of a terrorist gang and a girl who had obviously taken an instant dislike to me. Great. I was relieved when another dig novice named Declan was assigned to our trench too. At least his presence might dilute the atmosphere a little bit.

  Declan seemed very quiet, but I sensed that it was due to him feeling nervous and uneasy rather than Liv-style rudeness.

  ‘I’m kind of nervous about this,’ I confessed to him, hoping to bring him out of his shell a bit. Liv and Gethan had gone off to get some tools. ‘The nearest I’ve ever been to a dig was building sandcastles on the beach when I was a kid.’

  The boy turned to me, an anxious expression in his eyes. He looked scared and panicked. ‘I don’t want to work in this trench. Do you think Professor Nighthawk will move me?’

  ‘I...I don’t know’, I said confused. I didn’t really think that it made a difference what particular trench we worked on. We were so new to this that we were unlikely to make an amazing discovery. ‘Do you want to work on the main temple?�
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  ‘I don’t mind what I’m digging, I just don’t want to work with him,’ Declan said bitterly. He nodded towards Gethan who was wheeling a loaded wheelbarrow towards where we were standing. He turned on his heel and walked over in the direction of Nick.

  ‘What’s his problem?’ Gethan asked pulling shovels, buckets and trowels from the barrow.

  ‘He said that he feels uncomfortable working with you,’ I answered honestly.

  ‘I suppose he’s not the only one who feels like that,’ Gethan said handing me a small trowel.

  ‘Do people often feel like that around you?’ I asked, ignoring his comment.

  ‘Let’s just say it’s no coincidence that Nick put me working on a side project,’ he said grimly.

  So that was a yes then.

  Liv came back then, and we finally got down to the business of digging. Excavations had always seemed really exciting to me when I’d watched programmes on television or read books on famous digs, but I discovered in those first couple of hours that it was really hard work. You couldn’t just dig down until you hit something interesting. Archaeologists date items partly from the soil context. The level of soil that an item is found in can help date the object and it can also shed light on what it was used for. We had to scrape layer after layer of soil off the surface of the trench, millimetre by millimetre, putting the dirt into buckets which we periodically emptied into a wheelbarrow. Whenever the barrow looked dangerously full Gethan would wheel it off and empty it into the big pile of earth at the end of the field.

  It was hard work. Kneeling on the cold ground was difficult, and I had to keep shifting position as my legs fell asleep. After a few hours had passed, we had removed an entire soil layer, but found absolutely nothing except stones and some small pieces of animal bone. Eventually, Nick came over and took photos of the trench from a variety of different angles.

  ‘Good work guys, go for lunch now. When you come back later, try to move the trench down to the next level.’

  We had an hour for lunch, and the prospect of sitting down cheered me up immensely. The activity had kept me warm as I dug, but as soon as I stopped working my body registered just how cold it was. The weather here was harsh anyway, and our altitude meant that the temperatures were even lower. Aradia invited me to eat lunch with her and Gethan in his jeep. With slight reservations I agreed. I didn’t know anyone else here, apart from Declan and Liv, and I didn’t particularly want to eat with either of them. Besides, there were plenty of people around. What harm could come to me? The cold air was a clincher: I desperately wanted to shelter from the harsh Avalonian winds.

  I unpacked my sandwiches, and Aradia poured me some bitter lukewarm coffee from a flask.

  Gethan shot me an unfriendly look as I climbed into his jeep. ‘Oh, so my car is good enough for you now is it?’

  ‘Gethan, stop it. The whole thing was a complete misunderstanding. I would have done the same thing in her situation,’ Aradia said sharply. I was surprised that she was coming to my defence.

  ‘Oh yeah?’ asked Gethan disbelievingly. ‘And why is that?’

  ‘Because her face wasn’t just injured during a stabbing, and she didn’t just witness a murder. She witnessed a murder carried out by the FPL,’ said Aradia. ‘And you know what? The main assailant had a certain mark along the inside of his left arm.’

  ‘Ah...’ said Gethan. His face was still closed off and serious, but there was understanding there too. ‘You saw my mark.’

  ‘And are you a part of that gang?’ I asked. He hesitated for a second. ‘Oh my God, you are, aren’t you?!’

  ‘That mark doesn’t mean that he’s in a gang, Scarlett’, Aradia argued. ‘All it means is that they practice the same type of magic.’

  ‘I don’t do what they do’, Gethan explained earnestly. ‘I would never hurt you, never hurt anyone. But if you’re asking whether I’m linked with them, well, then the answer is I am. But it’s by birth only. I’ve no involvement with the Federation for Pagan Liberation. I just have the same powers as some of its members.’

  ‘But...my friend said that it was a gang mark,’ I argued back confusedly.

  Aradia rolled her eyes. ‘Well, then your friend was wrong.’

  ‘You could have asked me to explain’, Gethan said, a note of anger in his voice. ‘You didn’t have to just run off like that.’

  ‘What, you expected me to stay in the car with you?’ I asked heatedly. ‘They killed a man, and I saw it happen. I’ve had nightmares ever since. I was told they were all part of a gang, that they all had tattoos like yours, and then I see you with one?’ My voice was rising with emotion. ‘I was scared! I thought you were part of that and that you might hurt me. Maybe I should have explained. But all I could think of was the blood and the look on that man’s face as the knife went in. Don’t tell me that in my situation you wouldn’t have done the exact same thing.’

  Gethan gave me a grim nod, like he understood. I still wasn’t completely sure what was going on here, but I believed that it was a misunderstanding. Maybe I was a fool, but now that I was with him again, I couldn’t believe that Gethan could be capable of the type of evil I’d witnessed.

  ‘Ok, that’s cleared up,’ said Aradia pouring herself another coffee from her thermos. Then with her unique ability to flit from topic to topic she moved on. ‘So Scarlett, what have you been up to since we saw you last?’

  The next day I was paired with Gethan as we worked to extend the trench a couple of feet to get more of the building in. A day earlier, being that close to him would have bothered me, but I was starting to feel comfortable around him again. His sleeves were rolled up and I couldn’t help but notice the way that the muscles in his arms worked as we scraped away the dirt with our trowels. His tattoo was visible, and I got a better look at it. Instead of the broad black strokes I’d seen on the attackers tattoo, the lines on Gethan’s tattoo were a light grey colour. The pale blue section was so light it was almost white. Come to think of it, his tattoo looked like a watered down version of theirs.

  Nick walked over to the edge of the trench. ‘You’re doing well Scarlett. Are your muscles starting to hurt yet?’

  They were, actually. Kneeling on damp soil and the repetitive motion of scraping up the soil meant that my back, legs and arms ached. When I said this to Nick, he just laughed. ‘It’s always the second day that’s the worst. You may think that you feel bad today, but you’ll be much worse tomorrow. That’s when the cramps will really kick in.’ He walked away.

  ‘Well he’s a ray of sunshine isn’t he?’ I complained, scraping at the soil with more vigour than was strictly necessary.

  Gethan laughed.

  ‘So, what is this connection with the FPL then? If you’re not part of the – what did Aradia call it – the liberation movement?’

  He knelt up and looked at me thoughtfully. ‘Well there’s a change of subject.’

  ‘I’m starting to get blisters on my hands from the trowel,’ I held my hands out to him to prove it. ‘I need some distraction.’

  ‘Oh, and my life story is going to fill that need? Wow, I’m flattered!’ he teased.

  ‘You should be, so stop stalling,’ I retorted as I got back to digging. ‘We’re friends, aren’t we? So you should be able to tell me.’

  ‘But what if I thought that telling you something like that may lead to us not being friends?’ he asked, a serious expression on his face.

  I rolled my eyes at him. ‘I thought you were part of a gang who kill people, Gethan. There’s not much that you could tell me that would top that is there?'

  ‘Probably not, no,’ he admitted.

  ‘Well then! If I were you I’d just tell me and get it over with,’ I said, pouring some earth into a plastic bucket. If we’re going to be friends I’m going to find out sooner or later.’

  He thought about that for a few seconds. Eventually he said ‘I will tell you Scarlett, I promise. Just not here. Ok?’

  ‘Where then?’
r />   ‘What are you doing tonight?’

  ‘After I finish here? I’ve nothing planned.’

  ‘Ok. Well, how about we go get something to eat and then I can tell you everything?’

  ‘Everything?’

  He grinned. ‘Well maybe not everything. But pretty close.’

  Liv walked towards us. She’d been helping out at the finds table, where everything that was found in the ground was photographed and catalogued. ‘Have you found anything interesting?’ she asked.

  ‘Not yet’, I answered shaking my hair out of my eyes. My hands were too covered in dirt to use them. ‘Some animal bones, a couple of pieces of glass, but no more than that.’

  A large black bird landed on the bank of the trench. Most birds that I’d seen seemed to be wary of people, but this bird didn’t look at all bothered to be standing so close to us. It was beautiful, its feathers a glossy black and its eyes darker than that still. It put its head to one side and looked in our direction.

  ‘Damn, that means that we’re going to have an unlucky week’, said Gethan as he looked at it. ‘We might as well just close the trench up right now.’

  ‘I didn’t know crows were bad luck’ I said.

  Liv smirked. ‘That’s not just a crow Scarlett. It’s a raven.’

  She seemed to find my lack of knowledge amusing. ‘Well I wouldn’t know,’ I said. ‘I don’t know much about birds.’

  Liv laughed.

  ‘Why is that so funny?’ I asked defensively.

  My tone must have registered because she stopped laughing immediately. She looked at me strangely. ‘Seriously? You know nothing about ravens?’

  ‘Nothing. I grew up in Ireland, and live in a Rationalist area now. So I don’t know very much about bird superstition,’ I said defensively. I’d no idea why I was getting so riled up over an off the cuff comment.

  ‘Of course not. I’m sorry for laughing,’ she replied. She shot me another strange look and walked off.