The Dig

by John Preston

  Again, I marked off a six-inch gap in the same widening line and scraped away. Sure enough, I hadn’t been going long when another smudge of brownish-pink sand started to appear. There beneath it was another piece of metal. This time, though, I left it where it was.

  I looked up. The three of them were crowded round, staring down. I could see the boy was bursting to ask another question. Before he could open his mouth, I said, “I think it’s a ship.”

  John Jacobs was the first to say anything. “A ship?” he said. “How do you mean a ship?”

  “A ship that’s been buried in the mound.”

  He started to laugh. “What would anyone want to bury a ship for?”

  “Probably because it’s a grave.”

  “Whose grave?”

  “I don’t know that, not yet. But someone important, I’d say. It must be. They wouldn’t have gone to all this trouble for any little squirt. Think of all the work for a start.

  “They’d have had to drag the ship all the way up the slope from the river. That piece of metal you found there, John — that’s a rivet. These pink patches show where the other rivets are. See how they’ve rusted and colored up the soil.”

  “But, Baz, if it’s a ship, what’s happened to the hull?” asked Will.

  “All rotted away,” I said. “But look here –” and I pointed to where a ridge of hard sand ran from one rivet to the next. “You can see where the strakes were. They’ve left this imprint. That’s all that’s left. That and the rivets.”

  All of them wanted to know how old this ship might be. I told them that I couldn’t be sure about that either. It might be Viking, I said. Or maybe older still, I added.

  “Well, I’ll be —” said Will, and pulled himself up short.

  I looked up at him and grinned. “Quite.”

  I’d been intending to let Mrs. Pretty know what I had found, of course. But Robert must have run back to tell her before I had a chance to do so. One moment he’d been jumping up and down, waving his arms about. The next he was walking along with his mother, tugging away at her sleeve.

  When she reached the mound, I showed Mrs. Pretty the rivets and the patches of sand. Then I told her about finding the other rivet in Aldeburgh, as well as the note explaining how it had come from the ship-burial at Snape.

  She inspected the rivet for some time.

  Then to my surprise she stuck out her hand. “Congratulations, Mr. Brown,” she said. She paused and, as she did so, the corners of her mouth seemed to drift upwards. “I always told you I thought there was something in there, didn’t I?”

  “You certainly did, Mrs. Pretty. You certainly did …”

  She also shook John’s hand and Will’s. We all stood around for a while, grinning like halfwits. By now it was past seven o’clock and we decided to pack it in for the day. Mrs. Pretty and Robert went back to the house. When we had finished covering over the trench with tarpaulins and pieces of hessian, John and Will suggested we go for a drink to celebrate. But I was too fired up to be able to take any company.

  Instead, I walked down to the estuary. The cow parsley already came up to my shoulders, while the row of railings that marked out the path was all but buried under brambles. Beating my way through to the water’s edge, I sat on the bank with only a few squabbling ducks for company. There were clumps of hairy-stalked nettles, as well as a great expanse of docks with ragged holes torn in them.

  A fishing boat with dark red sails made its way upriver. The only sound was the popping of wild broom pods. When I turned round I could see Sutton Hoo House up on the bluff. The light was blazing in its windows. Behind the house a few spindly pines stood out on the horizon. It reminded me of an illustration from one of the Bible Reading Fellowship books I’d had at school.

  I wished May could have been sitting there beside me. Then I could have told her what had happened. I would have liked that. As it was, I just had to imagine her being there. I knew she’d be proud, although she probably wouldn’t make too much of it. That’s not her way. Even so, she’s always hoped I might make something of myself.

  I stayed on the bank until I was feeling more or less straightened out. Then I went to the Lyonses’ cottage and shared some cold lamb and purple sprouting with Billy and his wife, Vera. Before going to bed, I wrote a letter to May — as well as a longer one to Maynard, giving him as detailed an account as possible of what I’d found. I also wrote to the Reverend Harris at Thornden. I felt sure that he’d be interested. By the time I signed off, I was already half-asleep.

  Fortunately, the rain held off and the ground soon dried out. While the men shoveled and sieved, I crept along from one patch of pink sand to the next. Rather than carry on driving a trench into the middle of the mound, I decided to go up and over the rivets, coming down on each one from above. That way I should actually be inside the ship, rather than tunneling through the middle of it. By scooping the earth out of the inside, I hoped to keep the sandy crust of the hull intact.

  That was the plan anyway. Not that I didn’t have my doubts about it. But to my relief the outline of the ribs was still there, etched into the sand. All I had to do was brush away the loose sand until I reached the hard crust where the wood had been — and then follow the lines along from one rivet to the next.

  As I did so, a number of things became more clear. For a start, the ship is lying at a slant. One end is pointing downwards. Perhaps it was put in like this, or else it just sank down at one end over the years. There’s no way of telling. From the way the rivets are spreading out — they’re in lines of about seven to every three feet — I think we must have hit one end of the ship almost head-on. I still don’t know if this is the stern or the bow. I can’t say why exactly, but I’ve an inkling it’s the stern.

  The deeper I go, the wider the ship becomes. It’s plain now that we’re up against a far larger thing than anyone suspected. In reply to my letter, Maynard sent me some useful details about the Snape ship-burial. That ship was forty-six feet long, nine feet nine inches in width and four feet in depth. Judging by the width so far, I reckon this one could easily be of similar size. Perhaps even bigger. However, I have kept quiet about this. I haven’t even told Mrs. Pretty. There doesn’t seem any point raising anybody’s hopes. Not at this stage.

  I’ve taken to starting work at five in the morning, as soon as there’s enough light to see by. First, I smoke a pipe, pace around and have a think before climbing down the ladder into the trench. Due to the dewfall, the stratification in the soil is clearest then. Also, there’s nothing to beat the sense of having stolen a march on the day.

  At eight o’clock, John and Will arrive. Soon afterwards, depending on the weather, Mrs. Pretty and Robert come to watch our progress. As I go along, I point out the rivets and pass up anything I’ve uncovered. So far, I’ve found five small pieces of turquoise-blue glass and one glazed ceramic bead, also blue.

  It’s not much, I know. Less than I would have expected, even at this stage. I can’t rule out the possibility that the mound has been robbed. Although the robbers might have started digging in the wrong place, they could have changed direction as they went along. Or they might simply have struck lucky. Still, there’s no suggestion yet that the rivets have been disturbed. That must be a good sign, I keep telling myself.

  When John and Will have left for the day, I work on alone for another couple of hours. Due to the angle of the light, the discolored sand shows up especially well at sunset. I can now stand at the entrance of the trench and see lines of pink patches sweeping away before me and then disappearing into the depths of the mound.

  Whenever Mrs. Pretty stays inside or is driven into Woodbridge, her son comes out on his own. Robert’s a nice enough boy, eager as anything and grateful for the company, I suspect. He and Will Spooner have devised a game which they play during our tea breaks. Will has pieces of shrapnel beneath his skin — he picked them up in France when a soldier standing next to him blew himself up with a grenade. Apparently they’r
e not worth the bother of digging out. You can see them in his wrist and on the back of his right hand, dark blue shapes like squashed flies.

  For reasons that Will is convinced have to do with the amount of moisture in the air, these pieces of metal move about. Sometimes they’re down by his knuckles. An hour later they might have crawled up under his watch strap. Their game involves the boy shutting his eyes and pointing to where he thinks one of the pieces of metal might be. Then he opens them to see if he’s right. They can go on like this for ages. He never seems to tire of it.

  In order to make him feel useful, I’ve taught him how to brush the earth away from the rivets. I told him — truthfully enough — that he was being trusted with a very great responsibility and that it was vital he stopped brushing the moment the earth changed color from yellow to pink. At first, he was so nervous that he could hardly hold the brush. But after just a few days he’s become quite a dab hand at it. By way of a reward, I’ve given him his own trowel. He hangs it on the peg in the hut along with the others.

  In order to deter any trespassers, Mrs. Pretty suggested we should cordon off the site. She asked me what I thought and I agreed it was a good idea. One evening, Billy Lyons brought stakes, ropes and a sledgehammer. The four of us erected a rough fence around the mound.

  When we had finished, Billy hung a sign that he’d written in big white letters from the rope: DANGER! LIVE BOMBS!

  “There,” he said. “That should keep the buggers away.”

  All the time I’ve been waiting for the rivets to spread out to their furthest point, then start narrowing again. But they just keep on getting wider. I’m now twenty-five feet in from the first rivets, as well as nine feet below the original ground level. In order to give ourselves enough room, we’ve also had to widen the trench. This is now fully forty feet from one side to the other.

  There’s no doubt now that this ship is bigger than the one at Snape. And by a good way too. The only ship that can compare to it — the only one I’m aware of anyway — is the one found at Oseberg in Norway in 1906. That was more than seventy feet long. Without wanting to jump ahead of myself, ours could end up that big. Which of course would make it the largest ship-burial ever found on English soil.

  Whenever I allow myself to think about it, I feel hot and cold at the same time. The hot part’s all right — that’s just excitement. But for some reason I can’t shake this sense of dread that it might all go wrong.

  Then, midway through yesterday afternoon, a letter came from Maynard that changed everything. “I have been doing some research into the objects found in the Snape burial,” he wrote. “As you know, Basil, the chamber itself was looted. However, a mass of auburn-colored hair was discovered at one end of it. This was believed to have come from some sort of ceremonial cloak. In addition to the mass of hair, they found fragments of a green glass goblet. This goblet was later identified as being early Anglo-Saxon in style.” He’d underlined the words “early Anglo-Saxon.”

  That really did it, of course. All this time I’d been assuming the Sutton Hoo ship was Viking. I hadn’t even allowed myself to go back any further. But if it was Anglo-Saxon? And not just any old Anglo-Saxon, but early Anglo-Saxon? Obviously that threw all my ideas right into the air. Threw them about as high as it was possible to go. Apart from anything else, it made the ship much older than I thought. Up to 300 years older — early Anglo-Saxon meaning anything between the fifth and sixth centuries. That would put it slap bang in the middle of the Dark Ages.

  I’d hardly finished taking all this in when Mrs. Pretty came to see how we were getting along. In the six weeks I’ve been at Sutton Hoo, she seems to have become thinner, more gaunt. And to move more stiffly too. That said, though, there’s been a bit more of a spring in her step since we found the ship. I told her all about Maynard’s letter and about the likely length of her ship.

  While I was explaining about the goblet, I thought I saw her starting to sway. I reached out to steady her, but she held up her hand to stop me.

  “Shall I go on?” I asked.

  “Please, Mr. Brown.”

  When I had finished, I fetched two chairs from the hut. Then we sat down under the yew trees. Partly to stop my own head from becoming too mazy, I talked about the Oseberg dig. As I recall, the burial chamber there was in the center of the ship. From the outside, it had appeared intact. Inside, though, beds, carts and even a sleigh had been found, all jumbled together.

  It turned out that grave-robbers had looted the valuables by cutting a hole in the chamber roof and then lowering someone — a child most probably — down on a rope. I told Mrs. Pretty that I’d write back to Maynard to see if there was any other information he could find.

  She was about to leave when she said there was something that she’d been meaning to tell me. Something that had slipped her mind in all the excitement. Apparently a lot of people had said how they would like to see the ship. Word having got round, as it does. She’d decided that the best way to accommodate them all would be to hold a sherry party one evening and invite anyone who was interested.

  Perhaps I might give a brief talk, Mrs. Pretty wondered. Explain what was going on and so forth. How would I feel about that?

  I need hardly say it was just about the last thing I wanted. Having people clumping about, churning up the ground and asking a lot of damn-fool questions. On the other hand, of course, I was in no position to object.

  “That sounds a very good idea,” I said.

  “Excellent. In which case I shall have the invitations printed.” Then she said, “I also wanted to thank you, Mr. Brown.”

  “Thank me Mrs. Pretty?”

  “For being so patient with Robert.”

  “Oh, we don’t mind him a bit. Keeps us on our toes, it does, having him around.”

  “I know it means a great deal to him. He can hardly wait to come out and see you every morning. Do you and your wife have any children, Mr. Brown?”

  “No,” I said. “No, we don’t. We would have liked to have done — May especially. Somehow it just never happened, though.”

  “I’m sorry. I had no wish to pry.”

  “No, no. That’s quite all right.”

  “And how are you finding the work, Mr. Brown? Are you sure you can manage on your own? I would not want you overdoing it.”

  “Don’t you worry about me, Mrs. Pretty,” I told her. “I’m a tough old bird. Takes a lot to ruffle my feathers.”

  She looked at me from under the brim of her hat. “Yes,” she said. “I would imagine that it does.”

  There was a letter from May waiting for me at the cottage. Her writing was even more of a scramble than usual. It was also spattered with trails of ink blots.

  My dear Basil,

  I had a great shock last night. Mr. Potter was staying at Diss and came over. I think he was after putting rent up as he said the rates had gone up another 6d a week and he wondered if I could help I told him I could not afford any more. I told him lot wanted doing I had never had anything done copper and cooking stove were no good. I expect I shall get a letter before rent day more rent or notice. We have been here just 4 years and only had a lavatory pail. I was quite nice to him and polite. We had dreadful thunder storms in the night one of the apple trees was struck by lightning. The branches are still smoking I can see them from the bedroom window. I hope you get a good job after this but I don’t suppose you will. Best love my dear best of luck in your digging you take care of your dear self looking forward to seeing you.

  Yours always May

  I put her letter in the bedside drawer, along with all the others she’d sent. I’d been intending to write back to her, to tell her what had happened. However, I was so tired I fell fast asleep in my clothes.

  I sat up in the middle of the night, unable at first to work out what had woken me. It didn’t take long, though. Rain was drumming against the window, coming down so hard it sounded as if someone was chucking pebbles at the glass. Fetching a torch, I made my way
downstairs. There was an oilskin hanging by the door. I pulled it over my head.

  Outside, the rain was blowing near horizontal. As I ran towards the mounds, gusts battered against my chest. Pushing me back. Once there, I saw it was just as I had feared. The wind had uprooted the tarpaulins. They were cracking and flapping about like untethered sails.

  Rain was pouring into the ship. I fetched a mallet from the shepherd’s hut, knocking over the kettle in the process, then slipping on the steps as I came down. It was hard to know where to start. When I grabbed hold of one of the tarpaulins, immediately it pulled me over. I tried again, but the same thing happened.

  But this time I was able to thrash about with my feet and elbows and gain some purchase. From there, it was possible to pull the tarpaulin towards me. With one hand I kept it taut while stretching out the ropes and hammering in the pegs. Once I had this secure, I tried to throw the ropes from one side of the ship to the other — only to have the rope come slapping back into my face.

  The only solution was to tie two pieces of rope together. Then I dragged them round the exposed end of the ship — this before stretching out the tarpaulin and securing the other side. I managed to secure the first two pegs. But on the third I lost my footing again and began sliding down the bank, right into the innards of the ship.

  I dug my fingers in. I could feel wet sand raking through them, bending my nails back. Finally I came to a halt. First, I threw one arm forward, then the other. Hand over hand, I began to haul myself up the bank, not daring to use my feet in case I caused any more damage. When I reached the top of the bank I could see the treetops tossing about above my head. For a moment or two I just lay there with the rain falling on my face. Quickly, I pulled myself together. Still on all fours, I scuttled from one tarpaulin to the next, tugging and hammering away until I had secured them all.

  Even when all the tarpaulins were pegged back down, ripples of air swept back and forth beneath them, puffing out the material. I had no idea how much water had got in. It was impossible to tell until morning came and the sand started to dry out. My biggest worry — I could hardly even bear to think of it — was that a large section of the ship might have been completely washed away.