Grave Consequences

by Dana Cameron

  “Well, like I said.” She waved around, indicating the interior. “Nothing special, in terms of the construction—not really my bag anyway—finished building around 1520, after the abbey was destroyed, lots of bits added on after that. I’m not sure how much of the original is still standing by now or covered by later additions. The stained glass over the altar was done by a local master—forget his name—in the 1700s or something, but it was all bombed out during the war. Fortunately, some clear thinking parishioner saved all the fragments, and while they weren’t able to repair the window, a very good copy was made.” Sabine looked around in approval at the windows, but then looked at me and frowned.

  “But I don’t think you’re interested in my small store of architectural knowledge, are you?”

  I protested feebly; Sabine shook her head. “Follow me.”

  She took a key ring out of her pocket and opened a heavy old-fashioned wooden door. We started climbing the stairs that twisted tightly; the steps were steep and badly spaced.

  “Speaking of which, a little more geometry would have been in order here,” the vicar said. “Watch that next step, it’s a little worn and slick.”

  Too late; I slipped a little but caught myself before I actually fell forward.

  “Here we are.” She opened another door and led the way out to a room that had once housed the bells. I looked above me and could see the place where they would have been. Now the tower was merely a room open to the elements, a haven for nesting birds, if the droppings and fallen twigs were anything to go by. I could hear the shuffling and throaty muttering of birds overhead.

  “Again, the bells were lost during the war. The tower was rebuilt, with the hope that the bells would be replaced someday. Not this year, the account books always tell us. Still, I’d be happy just to get these windows screened up. The birds do a tremendous amount of damage. But then I wouldn’t be able to hide out up here and enjoy my view.”

  I looked out from the tower and saw what she meant. Ahead of us, in the distance beyond the churchyard cemetery and the makeshift football field and the trees, I could see the site and the crew packing up for the evening. To our right was the business district and the center of town, to our left, the residential section.

  “Nice, isn’t it?” the vicar asked. I noticed that she wasn’t so besotted by the panorama that she couldn’t roll another cigarette. Presumably, no one could see—or cared—whether she smoked up here. I also noticed that there was a large can filled with sand and the ends of little rolled-up cigarettes.

  I stared out at the site a moment longer. “Far above it all,” I answered absently. “No racket, no people here.”

  Sabine guffawed loudly. “Just us chickens.” She picked a loose piece of tobacco from her teeth and grinned broadly.

  “I’m sorry.” I shrugged. “You know what I mean. You especially, I imagine. Up to your hip boots in them. People, I mean.”

  “Yes. That’s why I stuck with the C of E, because of the community work, the social action. It’s important to me.”

  I realized that she probably wouldn’t understand my antisocial feelings, so I decided to drop it.

  Sabine was watching me closely. “We’re in similar fields, really, you and I. We get a different perspective on things than most people.”

  “I suppose so.” I suppressed a flicker of annoyance. “Morag stopped by the site again today. Came right in and made herself at home.”

  “Oh, yes?”

  “Gave me some reading, about Mother Beatrice, I guess.”

  “Ah, yes, the supposed martyr for the pagan cause. I wonder why the idea of persecution automatically gives someone credibility. As far as local historians can tell, she died of natural causes, of old age or disease, at forty-five or so.”

  “Well, I told her I would read it.” I watched as the students on the site made a last sweep, checking for lost tools and notebooks. “There’s something about Morag, though. I mean, she really sort of batters one—the bells, the tattoos, the incense, her insistent questions—and yet—”

  “Yet?”

  “There’s something guarded about her. She’s protecting something, or…hiding something.”

  There was a pause while Sabine smoked thoughtfully. “In my experience,” she said, “loss leaves a void, a silence. Some people try to fill that up themselves. In this case, literally.”

  Which told me exactly nothing. I tried again. “She also made an interesting comment. A couple of them, really. She said that there were all sorts of lines on the site, by which I guess she meant the ley lines. She also said that there were triangles, and that’s what I didn’t understand. Was she talking about personal relationships? Was she talking about some other new-agey thing? Do you know?”

  Sabine’s face was blank. “Did you ask her?”

  “No, but we were talking about so many things that I could hardly keep up with her.” I ran my hands along the cool stone of the wall, then brushed the damp and crumbly mortar from my fingers. “I wonder if she wasn’t talking about some of the other things Jane seems to be tangled up in, whether it wasn’t something about Julia—”

  “I can’t imagine why you’re interested.”

  The words came so sharply, the tone so thoroughly meant to end a conversation, that for a moment I was shocked into speechlessness. What had I done? I turned; Sabine was looking away, smoking furiously.

  I spread my hands helplessly. “I…my friend’s being questioned by the police about a murder. She…she may even be accused of that murder. I want to help.”

  Reverend Jones stubbed out her poor little cigarette with far more violence than I thought necessary to do the job. “Well, that’s taken care of, isn’t it? The police are the ones to help. They’re paid to do it. They’re sanctioned to do it. They’re part of the community, they know people.”

  She let the implications settle upon me.

  What was going on here? “I need to do something. I need to help.”

  She waved toward the dig. “Isn’t working on the site a help? Isn’t being there for your friends a help?”

  “It’s not enough. I think…I can do more. If you’ll help me.”

  There was a long silence, so long that I thought that the conversation really was over. Fine, I thought, I’ll find out what I need to know from someone else.

  I looked out over the river, then toward the site, now abandoned. Everyone will be down in the pub now, I thought. I could see the lights of the businesses on one side of the river dimming down, those on the other side, in the houses, just starting to wink on. Not because it was dark yet, but more to keep the shadows at bay. Five hundred years ago, even two hundred years ago, there wouldn’t be this division between work and home, everything would have taken place at home. I could see shadows creeping across the churchyard cemetery and backlot, across to the dig, even, where the subtle changes in the surface of the site hinted at what might lie beneath. Weeds grew over soil that had been disturbed by plowing or by digging graves, mixed in with the long grass, so that up close, you might not notice the differences, but with a little distance, you could see these variations. All it took was a different perspective, a little removal, and you could almost imagine that you could see beneath the earth’s surface, just like Superman.

  Sabine had rolled up another cigarette while I was busy with my thoughts. I heard the match flare up and then smelled the acrid odor as she extinguished it. I heard her inhale impatiently, as though the cigarette wasn’t giving her the responses she wanted, either. I turned to look at her, and after three more puffs, she ground that cigarette out too. She’d come to some sort of decision. I waited, holding my breath.

  “I’m not going to tell you anything that isn’t common knowledge,” she said, as though she was trying to convince herself. “I’m not going to betray any trusts. I’m not going to let you in just because you’ve asked—I’m not at all certain you have an understanding of what you’re asking, of what you’re doing and why, and I certainly t
hink that you need to consider that. Confront that. But I’ll tell you a bit, and maybe this will give you something to think about. Maybe that will lead you in the right direction.”

  I mentally discarded all that dross about me confronting things—I mean, honestly! That seemed to be all I ever did, these days—and polished that little nugget that was buried in it. Sabine was going to tell me why the site seemed to be so bedeviled.

  Chapter 8

  WE SAT THERE AT THE TOP OF THE BELL TOWER, ARCHAEOLOGIST and vicar, staring at each other, each waiting for the other to start.

  “Well?” Sabine said impatiently. “What is it you want to know?”

  There was so much…“Let’s start with what Morag said about the lines and triangles. Was she talking about the ley lines?”

  “I assume so, yes, which is pretty straight forward. I suspect she could also have been referring to lines drawn within the community, or rather, between the town and the dig. Most people are very excited about the project, as you might expect. Lots of interest in local history, and many people even take an A level in archaeology, even if they have no intention of pursuing it as a career—”

  “A level?”

  “Advanced exams for teenagers; I guess you would call them high school-aged. Anyway, the problem is with those who want to modernize Marchester at a faster pace, you know, the developers, certain members of the city corporation, the most vocal of whom is George Whiting. He’s a sharp man, a hard man, maybe, with few social skills, so he manages to put the back up of almost everyone he meets, which is a shame, because he really tries to do a lot of good for the town, in his way.”

  She hesitated, trying to find the right words to explain. “I think he wants to make money, which he is good at, and that he may have a plan for Marchester, bringing it into the twenty-first century, is how it is so often put. Since we’ve only just barely made it into the twentieth, I prefer a slower pace, myself. He wants to make a name for himself, too, doesn’t he? But he doesn’t stop to think how people feel, just how to get things done most efficiently, and that’s where he and Jane have crossed swords.”

  “Oh?”

  “He hired her to evaluate a site that he was planning on developing, and he…well, he thought they had an understanding. That it would be very unfortunate to find anything important on that area, because a lot of people would be denied a shopping district. Well, Jane did find something, some pottery manufactory or something, and she wasn’t about to roll over and say she didn’t. Things got very ugly.”

  “What happened?”

  “The shops were put in—eventually. It took another two years, with a full mitigation of the site, and only after several very ugly council meetings. George lost a lot of money, though, of course, he’s made it all back now, I’m sure of it. Then later, after, Jane jumped in and actually did prevent him from putting in a launderette where he wanted, kept him from tearing down an old house that was important.”

  “Well, that’s part of her job,” I interjected, “looking after sites like that.”

  Sabine disagreed, shaking her head emphatically. “It was foolish on her part; she was just showing him that he couldn’t mess with her, and it was a bad battle to chose. So they’re at guns drawn, and it’s worse since Julia—George and Ellen’s daughter—started at university for archaeology. With Jane. That family’s got enough problems of their own—God knows I’ve spent enough time with—”

  Sabine stopped and pursed her lips. Then she began on what I knew was a completely different track than she had been about to go down. “At any rate, George has managed to put all of the blame for his problems with Julia on Jane. God knows what possessed her to do it—Julia, I mean. The rows at home must have been awful.”

  I worried my bottom lip. “You said it might be that. What else might it be?”

  “I think that Morag really feels like the archaeology is just another way of persecuting her people, pagans, Wiccans, what have you. She finds it terribly easy to feel conspired against, if you know what I mean, which isn’t made any easier by the fact that she approached the council trying to get the work stopped at one point, to make it a monument to Mother Beatrice’s supposed pagan persecution. They want it left alone so they can pick up on the ley lines, or something; it’s all very vague. I don’t see why the archaeology will bother the ley lines, and frankly, Jane is only going to do everything that Morag could want in terms of bringing Beatrice’s history to life, but Morag seems to think that anything not done precisely her way is a slap in her face. Too bad, really, she’s not a bad sort. Just a bit…out there.”

  I nodded slowly. “You said Morag’d been bereaved?”

  Sabine nodded. “Her parents died several years ago, within a year of each other, both from cancer. Morag’d always been a bit of a hippy, but she really started in on the pagan stuff about that time. I did what I could, of course, her people have been part of the parish for donkey’s years—her grandfather or great uncle or something was a deacon, I think, during the war, I think—but it wasn’t M’s cup of tea. There are far less benign things she could have turned to, and I’m glad her beliefs have helped her, but the way she goes about things now…well. I just think she’s putting up more walls between her and other people, when that needn’t be the case. She was very close to her parents and she felt the loss keenly. Still feels it; I’m not sure she’s thought about just how much that grief has done to her.”

  I digested that. “And the triangles?”

  Sabine gave me another one of her irritated looks. “You do know these are people we’re discussing? I’m really not interested in feeding some prurient instinct of yours to gossip.”

  And what was that she was telling me before, if not gossip? I worried the inside of my lip. “Why do you assume the worst of me?”

  She shrugged, crossed her arms. “I have to look out for people.”

  I was getting really irritated with the on-again, off-again British personality disconnect, unbelievably frank one moment, unbelievably distant the next. Was it because I was American? Why was she so changeable? I just didn’t understand it, I couldn’t follow what was going on.

  I sighed. “I can tell you this: When I heard that Jane was having some problems at the site and that there was a modern burial involved, I wanted to run and hide.” I tried to flatten the curled-up hem of my untucked shirt tail. “There’s…been too much of that in my life lately. But I couldn’t leave her in the lurch, and so I came. And now that she’s in trouble, I’m trying to help.” And that’s all there is to it; you can like it or lump it.

  The vicar stubbed out her cigarette with a jab. “Come back another time, when you really want to talk.”

  This time I didn’t bother with diplomacy; my feelings were a little hurt. “What is it you want from me? What is it you want me to talk about?”

  “I want to talk with you about why it is you’re really interested in all this.” There was another abrupt change in Sabine’s demeanor, but this was clearly recognizable as a shift of topic. She smoothed her hands down her sweatshirt. “Now, I’ve got a meeting I must get to. There’s been someone sleeping rough in the churchyard, but whoever it is hasn’t been around for a while and I’m starting to fear the worst.”

  I thought of the very recent burial in the abbey graveyard and swallowed. But the buttons were bakelite and struck me as decades old at least—did that preclude a much more recent death? I wasn’t at all certain of that.

  “I wanted to talk with the local shelters about it—to make sure one of their clients hasn’t run off and not brought his meds.” A thought struck her. “Although it’s possible it’s—” Sabine broke off and simply finished, “I’d hate to think someone slipped through our net here.”

  I realized that there was no way to tell the date of the bones until there was further study, so I didn’t bring it up. But I was starting to fear the worst as well.

  Sabine led the way back down to the ground floor. “I’m hoping that they’ve found some
place more hospitable, but it seldom ends up that well, unfortunately. Good-bye.”

  I heard a door behind me and found myself dismissed. Even if I’d had the energy to protest again my reasons for being interested, I wasn’t going to have the opportunity.

  I walked slowly back to the site along the river—it was strange to see it empty and abandoned. It surprises me to remember, sometimes, just how much fieldwork—and the past, for that matter—is made up of the people I’m working with. I navigated back to Liverpool Road from there. Any hopes I might have had that Jane was already home were dashed as soon as I opened the door and heard Greg’s voice call out, “Jane?”

  “No, it’s me, Emma.”

  “Oh.” The disappointment in his voice was profound, but there was something else that was a little more desperate. “Well, come downstairs and have your tea.”

  I was starving, a bad complement to the headache that had just returned. I dropped my backpack in the front hall. “Why don’t I take you out for dinner?” I called as I took off my coat, then quickly altered my proposal as I trotted through the hallway and down the stairs. “No, you’ll want to wait here if Jane should call or come back. How about if I get some take-out?”

  “No need for take-away,” Greg said. “I stopped by the chippy on my way from the pub with the crew; it was Gareth’s birthday, so there was a couple of rounds of whiskey tonight in honor of it. I brought you back a cod and large chips. How about a drink?”

  I emerged from the stairway into the kitchen, after hitting that creaky bottom stair dead on. “Water would be great, thanks. I’m parched; the wind really takes it out of you.”

  Greg sat at the kitchen table, still dressed in his dirty field clothing. The table was littered with white paper, the sort I usually associate with sub sandwiches, and the messy remains of a fish and chips dinner. A few of the chips had gotten away, and were mashed into greasy smears on the floor under the big country table. Two other white-wrapped packages sat on the table, still neatly taped together, along with a bottle of red wine, about two-thirds empty. But then I noticed that there were also two corks, both of which were freshly damp from the bottle. Apparently there was another recently emptied bottle somewhere nearby.