by John Preston
We all helped to put the covers back on and then took shelter beneath the trees. The rain grew heavier, clattering on the leaves and sending brown rivulets running down the spoil heaps. In the wood, Robert amused himself by jumping from one mossy hummock to another. By six it was plain that we were not going to be able to continue. Phillips told the men they could go, as soon as they had made sure the tarpaulins were securely fastened.
We drove back to Woodbridge with Phillips following. I sat beside Stuart with the window open and the thundery breeze buffeting against my face. My limbs were so heavy I felt I had molasses flowing through my veins. As we drew up outside the Bull, the street lights were already being turned on due to the weather. Orange balls of light stood out against the dark gray sky.
“Oh, Lord,” said Stuart as he was putting the car keys into his pocket.
“What’s the matter?”
He withdrew his hand and unfolded his fingers. Under the street lights, the gold pyramid gave off a soft oystery glow.
“I had been intending to give it to Mrs. Pretty, but it must have completely slipped my mind. What do you think I should do, darling?”
“Don’t do anything,” I said.
“But shouldn’t I tell Phillips?”
“Not now — not tonight. Just remember to give it to Mrs. Pretty in the morning.”
When we walked through the front door, I could hear the sound of laughter coming from the bar. Clouds of smoke billowed into the corridor. We waited for Phillips to come in. I had assumed he would march straight past the bar and head for his room. To my surprise, though, he rubbed his hands together and said, “I think this calls for a celebration, don’t you?”
“I should say so,” agreed Stuart.
The bar was crowded, with no spare seats. Even Phillips was unable to make much headway against the throng of drinkers. Stuart and I attempted to reach the bar by another route. But we hadn’t gone far when our path was blocked by a small round man.
“I know who you are,” said the man, rocking confidently back and forth. “I’ve seen you in here before.”
“Have you now?” said Stuart.
“You’re one of those archaeologists working over at Sutton Hoo.”
“That’s right.”
“How are you getting on then?”
“Oh, not too bad. Not too bad at all.”
“Found any gold, have you, old boy?”
Stuart leaned towards him. “As a matter of fact,” he said in a confidential sort of manner, “my pockets are full of it.”
The man laughed so hard at this that he might have overbalanced if it hadn’t been for the press of people. “Marvelous, marvelous. You must have a drink, then.”
“Thank you,” said Stuart. “I think I could do with one.”
“Here,” said the man to the occupants of one of the nearby tables. “Mind your manners, lads. There’s a young lady here with nowhere to sit.”
The men stood up with no sign of resentment. Drinks were fetched and set before us. Before we drank, we all hoisted our glasses at our benefactor, who lifted his in return.
“Congratulations, darling,” said Stuart, with his glass still held aloft.
“Yes,” said Phillips. “Cheers. People spend entire lifetimes waiting for a discovery like this. It hardly seems fair that it should happen to one so inexperienced. Nonetheless, here’s to you, my dear.”
The beer had such a delicious peaty taste that I was reluctant to swallow it. Instead, I kept swilling it around in my mouth until the taste had disappeared. Afterwards I took another mouthful and did the same thing.
“Now, let’s think about period, shall we?” said Phillips, sitting forward with one hand planted on his knee.
“As you mentioned before, CW,” said Stuart, “if the boat is roughly contemporaneous with Oseberg, then that would suggest anything between AD 600 and 800. My initial feeling was that we were looking at something nearer the latter end of the scale. However, the jewelry rather changes all that.”
“Yes, yes. Go on.”
“Well, the only comparative jewelry that I can think of is the piece that Kendrick found at Dorchester on Thames in the early twenties. He believed this to date from the early part of the seventh century. Kendrick, of course, was roundly ridiculed for making such a suggestion. The general feeling was that a piece of such intricate workmanship couldn’t possibly be that old. In effect, Kendrick was invited to recant, although he refused to do so. I think we now have to consider the possibility that he might have been right, after all.”
“We may,” said Phillips. “We may indeed have to consider that possibility. Let’s also consider the coin that Brown found before I arrived. This morning, I took it to Cambridge for Kendrick himself to examine. As you know, East Anglia did not have a coin-based economy until the eighth century at the earliest. However, a number of Anglo-Saxon inhumations have been discovered with coins in them dating back to around AD 575. The coins are assumed to have been used for symbolic purposes — most probably for placing in the mouths of the dead in order to facilitate their passage from this world to the next.
“I think it’s fair to say that Kendrick was considerably taken aback when I showed him our coin,” added Phillips with satisfaction. “Frankly, he could hardly believe his eyes. It took me a while to convince him it wasn’t a prank, something a student had knocked up in the lab.”
Stuart began to laugh. His eyes were sparkling. I don’t think I had ever seen him look so happy.
“The first thing Kendrick said was that he was quite certain it wasn’t from East Anglia at all. Although he was only able to give it a cursory examination, he believes it to be a tremiss from Merovingian Gaul, dating from between AD 575 and 625.”
Phillips took another drink and pressed his lips together. “Considering all this, now what do we have? We have a buried Anglo-Saxon ship, almost 100 feet in length, with what appears to be a burial chamber at the heart of it. A burial chamber that would appear to be completely intact. I suppose we have to consider the possibility that both the coin and the gold pyramid were placed there at a later date, but I doubt if even Reid Moir would give that one serious credence. No, the inference must surely be that this is the grave of someone important, and that the jewelry is part of his grave goods.”
“But surely —” I broke in.
“Yes?”
I knew that I must not appear too excitable. That I must make sure my voice was properly measured.
“Well,” I said, “if that is true, and if Professor Kendrick is right, then surely that would alter our entire understanding of the Dark Ages?”
There was a pause after I had finished and I began to wonder if I had said something foolish.
Then Phillips went, “Mmm … it would rather.”
The curtains had been drawn in our bedroom and the beds turned down. Only the bedside light was switched on. Stuart stretched out his arms in front of him. “It’s been quite a day, hasn’t it?”
“Quite a day.”
“You should feel very proud of yourself, darling.”
“Should I?”
“You know perfectly well you should.”
Just as he had done earlier, Stuart came towards me and wrapped his arms around my shoulders. His tweed jacket had a reassuring smell, of solidity and permanence. It was the sort of smell that could banish doubts and fears, possibly forever. I turned my face up towards his, wanting above all to feel his mouth on mine, if only for a moment. It would have been the crowning of a perfect day.
Stuart, meanwhile, was looking over my shoulder towards the window, as if peering through the drawn curtains at the street outside. Without relaxing his grip, he tilted his head down towards mine. We stayed like that for some time. Then he gently extricated himself and went back over to the armchair.
The nonchalance with which Stuart undressed only made my self-consciousness all the more pronounced. He undid his boots, folded his trousers over the arm of the chair and buttoned up his p
yjamas. When I got into bed, the sheets were cold against my skin. I had to push my feet down to the bottom of the bed in one movement for fear that they would become stuck halfway. Even then, there was a moment when I doubted if the warmth of my body would be enough to drive the cold away.
“Ready?” he said.
“Ready.”
“Right, then. Sleep well, darling.”
“And you.”
He reached over and turned off the light.
Instead of leaving the car by the squash court, as he had done before, Stuart continued along the track all the way to the mounds and parked beside the shepherd’s hut. The men were already there with their shovels, awaiting instructions.
Everything proceeded as before: the procession from the house, the setting up of Mrs. Pretty’s chair, supplemented today by a golfing umbrella. Before we started, Stuart handed the pyramid to Mrs. Pretty, apologizing for not having done so the day before.
I then continued in the same part of the chamber, while Stuart moved to the westernmost corner. Phillips patroled up and down the edge of the trench, monitoring our progress. An hour or so after we started Stuart called me over. He had uncovered the rim of a large bronze bowl. Inside it, showing up as this circular protrusion in the sand, was what appeared to be the rim of a second, slightly smaller bowl. This second bowl had a definite collar-like formation on one side which might have been the remains of a lid. Rather than try to remove either of the bowls, Stuart decided to leave them there until the ground around had been lowered to the same level.
Soon afterwards came another object — the first of several iron clamps. On the same axis as the clamps was a large, apparently amorphous mass of decayed wood. Stuart believed — and Phillips agreed — that these clamps must have been used in the construction of the burial chamber and that the piece of wood was part of one of the walls, or possibly even the roof.
The sluggishness that I’d felt the day before had not gone away. Although I had slept, I had only managed to do so in a restless, fretful sort of way. In my dreams, the sky was black, with planes obliterating what was left of Sutton Hoo, and probably us as well. It seemed an especially cruel sort of joke that we should be unearthing the remains of one civilization just as our own appeared to be on the brink of annihilation. In the Daily Telegraph that morning, I had read that the Germans were reported to be continuing their build-up of forces in the port of Danzig. A Polish frontier guard had been shot and killed — it was presumed by SS officers stationed in the city. Meanwhile, a doodle by Field Marshal Goering, the head of the German air force, had been analyzed by a handwriting expert. The expert had concluded that the person who had drawn the doodle was feeling “very much in control and rather unresponsive.”
Just before lunch, I came across a mass of folded and stitched leather. It looked just like a pad of unburnt newspaper from a bonfire. Although much decayed, several of the stitches were still intact. Phillips suggested putting it in some water. A bowl was brought and the mass of leather immersed. Nothing happened for a while. Then, very slowly at first, the leather began to unfurl.
As it did so, I realized this was the sole of a shoe or sandal. I stared in fascination as it bent and stretched. It looked exactly as if a living foot was still inside, taking on substance before me. But when I took it out of the bowl, it disintegrated immediately. All that was left was this weightless slime that fell from my fingers in long brown strands.
When we broke for lunch we all — the men included — sat on the top of the trench, our legs stretched out in front of us, eating the sandwiches that Mrs. Pretty had provided. At one point Phillips dropped an apple. It rolled down the bank, bounced across two of the terraces and came to rest in the middle of the burial chamber. Without being asked, Robert slid down the bank and went to retrieve it for him. I saw the appalled expression on Phillips’s face as Robert scampered across the crust of sand. However, he managed to make a reasonably plausible job of thanking him for his trouble when his apple was returned.
But his mood deteriorated sharply when Mrs. Pretty informed him that she had invited a number of local people to a sherry party on the following Tuesday so that they could have a chance to inspect the ship. She apologized for not telling him earlier, but said that it had slipped her mind in all the excitement. She also mentioned that her nephew was on a bicycling holiday in East Anglia and would be arriving that afternoon. A keen amateur photographer, he hoped to be able to take some pictures of the excavation.
I could see that both of these pieces of information were extremely unwelcome to Phillips. He could hardly say anything, though. Only the curtness of his replies gave away the scale of his displeasure.
Once we had finished eating, we set to again. Mrs. Pretty disappeared back beneath her umbrella, trying without much success to keep Robert beside her. Above our heads tiny silver aeroplanes darted about among the clouds. The sun was even hotter now; the earth had been baked quite dry and in places was starting to turn powdery and run. Stuart, I knew, was concerned that the combination of wet and heat could cause fissures to open up all over the boat. But the only thing we could do was keep everything covered when we were not working.
The hissing noise I heard sounded like air escaping from a bicycle tire. I looked up. Stuart was bent over, facing away from me. He didn’t move. Just as I was wondering where the sound could have come from, I heard another hiss.
I went over. He had uncovered what appeared to be a layer of wood. The wood was plainly very rotten — it was practically transparent. The streaks of grain were held together by only the thinnest of skins.
“Can you see that?” he said quietly. His finger was extended. “There, in the background.”
Standing up, I couldn’t see what he meant. However, the moment I squatted down, I saw it straightaway. Behind this screen of decayed wood, I made out a faint gleam.
When I shifted my head fractionally to the side, the gleam vanished. But as soon as I moved my head back — by the same fractional amount — back it came again.
“You do see what I’m talking about, don’t you, darling?” he asked.
I nodded.
“Thank God for that,” he said. “I was beginning to think my eyes were playing tricks.”
Stuart kept brushing away. Every few seconds he broke off to check on his progress, rocking back onto his knees, then tilting forward again. As he did so, I could see more gold emerging from behind this powdery screen. There appeared to be three separate pieces. One looked identical to the pyramid I had found the day before. The other two were small gold plaques, both around two inches in length — one flat and triangular, the other with a more rounded end. Each had the same intricate threading of gold around an inlay of garnets.
All of them were so beautiful. So delicate and yet so pristine. They were like emissaries from another world, undimmed by the mass of centuries that had passed since they had been last seen. Or rather, it was as if all those centuries had counted for nothing. Time had simply flown by between then and now.
Neither of us could look away. Stuart extended one arm towards me. I took hold of his wrist. “I never imagined …” he said. “I thought yesterday might have been a fluke. But this — my God. What are we going to do?”
There was a note of helplessness in his voice. Tightening my grip, I found myself saying, “Don’t worry, darling. It’ll be all right.”
“Yes,” he said. “Yes, of course it will … We’d better call the others. I suppose.”
But in the event, there was no need to. Something had already alerted Charles Phillips.
“What is it?” he was saying. “What have you found?” He was quickly joined by Robert. The tone of their voices sounded identical, both equally excited.
“It’s more gold, CW,” said Stuart. “Quite a bit more gold, in fact.”
Phillips, I saw, was puce with frustration. He paced back and forth along the top of the trench, almost colliding with Robert as he did so. After he had done this a few times, h
e stopped and said, “Just don’t move, either of you. Is that perfectly clear? I am coming down the ladder.”
As quickly as he could, Phillips began to descend. At this point discipline rather broke down. He was followed by Mrs. Pretty and then by Robert. Throughout this, the men — Mr. Brown, Mr. Spooner and Mr. Jacobs — remained on the bank, looking down.
Meanwhile, in the trench, the five of us — Stuart and myself, Charles Phillips, Mrs. Pretty and Robert — knelt and gazed at what had been found. Looking at the pieces of jewelry, I was overcome by an enormous sense of insignificance. Not just my own insignificance, but everybody’s. I felt as if we were all insects who had been tipped onto our backs and were waving our legs vainly at the sky.
After a while Phillips ordered everyone from the chamber. Everyone apart from Stuart and myself. “What would you like us to do, CW?” Stuart asked.
Behind his spectacles, Phillips’s eyes were still swimming about. Slowly, they steadied and sharpened.
“Do?” he said. “Carry on, of course.”
Once we had removed the two gold plaques and the gold pyramid, we continued in the same southern corner of the chamber. Stuart took one side of a square and I took the opposite one. Together, we worked our way towards the center.
As on the previous day, but even more so now, I felt there was this enormous gap between my outward behavior and my inner world. On the outside, I was perfectly controlled. I could see my fingers holding the pastry brush, sweeping carefully and methodically at the soil. My mind, though, was a riot. Dazzled one moment, then plunged into confusion the next.
But even in the midst of this headspin, I knew with absolute certainty that I would unearth something else. It never occurred to me for a moment that I wouldn’t. All the time my hands worked unhesitatingly away, just as if they were being guided. They might have had strings attached to them. And when I did find something, I felt no sense of surprise at all. I felt only relief that I had done what I had been supposed to do.