yfeere never bryngen frute
“What language is that supposed to be?” Adam asked.
“It’s Middle English,” Laura said. “Say, 1300-ish.” She traced her finger along the words. “Someone has already had a go at translating the runes and incorporated the inscription into the wall painting.”
“So what does it mean?” Adam squinted at the picture. “That birds and plants can’t make fruit?”
Hilary snorted in derision, but Laura was more sympathetic. “Yes, kind of, Adam. You often get this kind of warning in old inscriptions, that breeds mustn’t mix, to maintain the purity of livestock, or corn crops, for instance.” She stabbed at the picture. “But I think this has a more specific reference to families.”
“Of course it does,” Wing said. “The same inscription is carved into the fireplace in our dining room. The medieval spelling of my surname was Wynnge.” He leant back and folded his arms as though it were all perfectly obvious.
Adam was starting to get it. “And maybe our mom’s surname was originally spelled Rote?” he ventured.
“Top marks,” Dalton said. “So, the inscription is a warning for the two oldest families in the village not to get together and have children. Makes sense too. Loads of these places bred among each other so much they’ve all got three heads and stand around at night shouting at the moon’s reflection in puddles.”
Laura and the twins were slightly taken aback by Dalton’s rather brutal interpretation, but Wing agreed.
“Noble sentiments,” he said. “Keep the breed healthy, keep the families apart.” He flashed a nasty grin at Rachel and Adam. “I’m sure you wouldn’t be too thrilled to discover that we were related, would you? However distantly…”
Adam was almost about to answer back, but Laura spoke first. “What if they didn’t stay apart?”
“What?” Rachel said.
Wing whipped round to Laura; spoke in an icy whisper. “Excuse me?”
“What if, at some point in the past, your family and the Root family ignored the warning and produced children? What would be the outcome? Maybe there was a genetic defect they were trying to avoid, or perhaps it was just territorial. I’m not saying they did … but what if? I mean, I can’t find anything in the parish records, but we probably wouldn’t be talking about a marriage.”
“You mean, like an affair or something?” Rachel said, concealing the slight thrill she felt at the idea.
“Sure,” Dalton said. “Things like that have always gone on in places like this. Not much else to do in the country.”
Hilary smirked, but Laura was following a different tack.
“Given that the village is so small, and that people didn’t move around very much, it would be strange if a Wing and a Root hadn’t got together at some time. It’s a fascinating idea, don’t you think?”
Laura looked directly at Hilary, raising her eyebrows, almost as if she was playing a game with him.
The smile evaporated from Hilary Wing’s face and he turned slowly back to the twins. “If that were so … and this is purely hypothetical, of course … we would have to lay aside any differences, wouldn’t we?”
Adam grunted. “Would we?”
“Of course,” Wing said. “Because that would mean we were family.”
“What was all that about?” Laura asked, as she and the twins walked away down the High Street. “He’s got a bit of a problem with you two.”
“Just a bit,” Adam said.
“Clearly doesn’t like people on his land.”
“It’s his dad’s land really,” Rachel said.
Adam looked back towards the tea shop, where Hilary Wing was still deep in conversation with Chris Dalton.
“He tried to kill us,” Adam said.
“Adam,” Laura laughed. She was about to pull Adam up for exaggerating, but one look at his pale face and his desolate expression told her instantly that he was not. Or, at the very least, that he truly believed what he was saying. She put her arm round him as they walked, feeling his narrow shoulders trembling under his shirt.
Adam suddenly felt like a small boy, his hands dangling by his sides and this older woman’s arm round him. He slid his arm round Laura’s waist, feeling her hip bump against him comfortingly as they walked. “I’ve got the other blade,” he said.
Rachel gasped.
Laura stopped in her tracks. “What, the one stolen from the church?”
“No way. We wouldn’t do that,” Adam said. “Honest, Laura. It’s another one. We found it fair and square. Hilary Wing locked me in his cellar and I tunnelled out.”
Rachel nodded to confirm her brother’s story. “He nearly died,” she said.
“How on earth did you find it?” Laura asked, astonished.
“We had a map,” Rachel said. “Jacob Honeyman helped us find the spot, but in the end we kind of found it by accident.”
“I don’t think it was an accident,” Adam said.
Laura looked at him.
“Look, I know it sounds weird, but it was, like, the blade itself led me to find it. Underground. It was like I just followed a light.”
Laura thought for a few seconds. “OK…”
“I think we were meant to find it and Hilary Wing wasn’t. Otherwise he would have found it by now.”
“You’re right, it does sound a bit weird,” Laura said.
“It’s true,” Rachel said. “Me, Adam and Gabriel found a tree, well, were almost guided to a big yew tree, and Adam just happened to be in a hollow underneath it. Came up from it, like the earth just spat him out…”
Laura looked from one to another. The story sounded ridiculous; a fantasy. But then, nothing could have surprised her more than what she had discovered a metre or so under the ground herself. “Who’s Gabriel?”
“He’s our friend. The dark-haired boy…”
“Rachel’s boyfriend,” Adam said.
Laura smiled as Rachel glowered at Adam and took another glance behind her towards the tea shop. Dalton and Wing had gone. “Is the blade in a safe place?” she asked.
“Sure,” said Adam. “It’s—”
“No, don’t tell me,” Laura said. “And for goodness sake, don’t tell anyone else. For the moment you should forget you ever told me about it. OK?”
Rachel and Adam looked at each other. Decided not to tell her that Jacob Honeyman already knew.
“Wait till we need it,” Laura said. “This could be our secret weapon.”
Rachel looked at Adam. Did they need a weapon?
“Right,” Laura said. “Shall we go and take these samples?”
“What, now?” Adam was less than fond of medical examinations. Even a routine check-up was enough to make him panicky. He’d already had enough excitement for one day, and it was still only lunchtime.
Laura laughed at Adam’s wide-eyed, frightened expression. “Sure. It’ll only take a few minutes, and it really won’t hurt. We’ve got a temporary lab set up back at the church hall. We moved the coffin and everything there a couple of days ago for safekeeping…”
* * *
The hall was a large, single storey, wooden building set back behind the church on the edge of the green. Treasure Hunters had hired it for the duration of the dig as a place to keep their equipment dry and to store any important finds they made along the way.
Amanda had set up a temporary office in the far corner with a laptop and a phone, while Laura had sectioned off an area with heavy curtains of polythene sheeting, behind which the blurred, dark outline of the sarcophagus could be seen. Behind it, Rachel and Adam could just make out the shape of someone working round the sarcophagus and the faint hiss of the water spray that was still being used to keep the bodies moist.
In front of the curtains, several trestle tables had been assembled, on which lay the various coins, brooches, swords and shields that had been unearthed during the dig. One of Laura’s fellow archaeologists was busy taking detailed photos of all the artefacts and labelling them. H
e looked up when Rachel and Adam came in; grunted a hello. Next to him another archaeologist, a woman, was working at something in clay on a potter’s wheel.
“What’s she doing?” Adam asked.
“We’ve been able to scan the skulls with some new infrared equipment we’re trying out,” Laura said. “Caroline is making up some sculptures based on 3-D scans of the skull shapes. Hopefully we’ll be able to see what our Bronze Age friends looked like.”
“Neat,” Adam said.
Laura pulled back another thick layer of polythene. “Right, let’s get this business over with. Nobody should be able to hear you scream from in here.” Adam grinned, enjoying having his leg pulled, and the three of them stepped into another small, sectioned-off area equipped with a steel surgical trolley and a medical couch. Laura clicked on a floor-standing lamp and Rachel and Adam blinked in the stark glare of white, clinical light.
“OK, you guys,” Laura said, taking a box of cotton buds from the trolley. “Open wide…”
Rachel and Adam looked a little taken aback, then did as they were told. Wearing rubber gloves, Laura took a cotton bud and wiped it round Rachel’s mouth and gums, then dropped it into a polythene bag, which she sealed and wrote Rachel’s name on. She then went through the same process with Adam.
Adam smiled and looked relieved. “That’s it?” he asked.
“That’s it. Unless you’d be kind enough to donate a little hair as well?”
“No problem,” Adam said, eager now to please, and calmly pulled a clump from his head.
Laura laughed. “Just one or two hairs would have done,” she said. Rachel obliged by plucking a couple of strands and handing them to Laura, who quickly bagged and labelled them.
“So you can extract our DNA just from that?” Rachel asked.
“For sure,” Laura said. “That’ll give us plenty. Mr Wing gave us some yesterday, and one or two others, so we’ll be able to eliminate a few suspects straight away.”
“Have you analysed the bodies yet?” Adam asked.
Laura suddenly looked awkward, and Rachel guessed that she was trying not to give too much away.
“Well, the DNA results are still being processed. But it looks like the female could be local … and the guy, well, it looks like he comes from a long way away. What we can tell, is what they’d eaten, and when. The contents of their guts – grains, pollen and so on – give us the approximate year of their death, about 1700 BC, and the fruit seeds give us an exact snapshot of the season. Looks like they died at the end of the summer.”
“Like now?” Rachel said.
“Possibly. We’re still trying to identify a few of the berries and grains.”
One of the other archaeologists poked his head round the curtain and pulled down his surgical mask. He looked flustered. “Laura?” He glanced from one twin to another, trying to decide if it was all right to talk in front of them. Laura nodded. “Got a result on those berries from the bodies this morning. They’re yew berries.”
Laura and Rachel looked at one another.
“Yew?” Laura shook her head, as though trying to process this new information. The implications of it. “They’re seriously toxic.”
“Exactly,” the archaeologist said. “Both guts contained significant traces of yew berries. These people were poisoned.”
Oh, my God. The voice inside Adam’s head was Rachel’s and he knew that she could hear the same thought coming from him.
“That’s not all.” The archaeologist hesitated. “We’ve also established that the female was pregnant when she died.” He looked at Rachel and Adam and cleared his throat. “She was carrying twins.”
Laura walked with Rachel and Adam as far as the end of the lane that led up to Root Cottage. They walked slowly, and in silence. Each of them letting the latest discovery sink in.
“But they already had twins,” Rachel said suddenly, breaking the silence.
Laura looked at her strangely. “What? How do you know?”
“I know how this will sound … but I’ve seen them. In a vision, or a dream or something. I saw them getting married and having children, and then I watched them being buried. They had twins before they died.”
“She’s right,” Adam said. “Twins who lived. I’ve seen them, too.”
Laura looked at the twins in silence, but her face betrayed her thoughts; made it clear just how bizarre she found what they were saying. “OK,” she said. “For the sake of argument, let’s assume they already had twins. They’re hardly going to kill themselves, are they? Not with a young family.”
Rachel and Adam shook their heads.
“So maybe someone in the village didn’t want them to have any more kids. We know yew was used to terminate pregnancies back then.”
“But they were both poisoned,” Rachel said.
Laura nodded. “Good point.” She thought for a few seconds. “The only thing this has in common with any other Bronze Age burial I know about, is that if they were poisoned, then it may have been as a sacrifice to appease the gods. To assure the fertility of the land, of the crops, whatever. You see, usually people were only buried outside the village if they were considered bad luck. If they were outcasts.” She thought about what she’d said for a moment. “That might also explain the state of the bodies.”
“What do you mean?” Rachel asked. “What state?”
“The bodies aren’t … complete. It’s not unusual…”
Adam pulled a face. “Eucchh…”
Rachel stared at Laura, waiting for more, but Laura seemed reluctant to continue.
“Why would anyone have been an outcast?” Adam asked.
Again, Laura hesitated, as though she were deciding whether or not to share something.
“And if they were outcasts, why let everyone know where they are?”
“Right,” Rachel said. “Why would they mark the spot with a big chalk circle?”
“Beats me,” Laura said. “It’s like ‘X’ marks the spot, or something. Maybe it was so somebody could find them.”
“Maybe so we could find them,” Rachel said. “It’s like a signpost.”
Something dark passed quickly across Laura’s face. “Or a warning.”
Their grandmother was waiting at the door for them as they walked up the garden path and beckoned them in.
“Rachel, Adam. I wondered when you were coming back. Come in, we must talk.” Celia Root seemed agitated as she wheeled herself back into the house.
The twins stood awkwardly by the fireplace while their grandmother manoeuvred her chair, positioning herself in front of them. “Darlings, there’s been a terrible fuss about some blade or other,” she said. “Do you know anything about it?”
Rachel and Adam tried hard not to look at one another. Tried and failed not to look guilty.
“Well, we saw that they discovered a blade at the chalk circle,” Rachel said.
“Not that. Everyone knows about that, now. There’s another one.”
The twins shook their heads, but Rachel could see that this was cutting no ice with the old woman. “We saw one at the church,” Rachel said.
“And what did you do with it?” Granny Root asked. “Please tell me, darling.”
“We didn’t do anything with it,” Adam said. “The vicar showed it to us in a glass case.”
“I see. And you thought you might like it, as a souvenir of your visit?” Granny Root smiled sadly, as if she had somehow extracted a confession from her grandson.
“No,” Rachel said. “We looked at it, like Adam said. That’s all.” Rachel was trying to sound firm, but she could feel tears pricking at the corners of her eyes. To have been confronted in the church was bad enough, but to be questioned like this by their own grandmother was unbearable. “You’re accusing us, like you think we’re thieves or something.”
“I’m so sorry, but I’m afraid your recent behaviour is against you.” Granny Root’s words and the tears in her eyes were a sharp reminder to Rachel and Adam of th
eir ill-advised break-in at Waverley Hall.
“But surely you’re on our side,” Adam said. “Right?”
The old woman shook her head sadly. “It’s not that simple, darling.” She turned and shouted, “Gerry, you can come in, now. I’m getting nowhere.”
From the kitchen, Commodore Wing stepped into the sitting room. He was quickly followed by Reverend Stone. It was clear that they had been listening to every word.
“I’m sorry, children,” Granny Root said. “I gave you every chance to be honest with me.”
Reverend Stone nodded. “Unfortunately we are going to have to do this another way.”
The look her grandmother gave the commodore caused something to flip in Rachel’s guts. She had a horrible idea what this other way might be.
“You stole my map!” the commodore bellowed, abandoning any attempt at subtle cross-examination. “Now, what have you done with the blade?” The hot blast of his voice was almost enough to knock the twins back a step.
The weight of guilt and paranoia made Adam’s head throb. He knew that one of the blades was only a few metres above their heads, hidden under a floorboard in the bedroom. It would be so much easier, he thought, just to come clean: to give them the blade, let them deal with Hilary. Then they could go home, forget all about it.
“There’s another blade,” Adam said quietly.
Rachel could have murdered her brother. Even though he was talking about the blade that they had found in the woods, the commodore and his lackeys would presume it was the one that had been stolen from the church. Adam’s admission would convict them of something they hadn’t done.
Rachel thought quickly, kept her cool and spoke.
“Of course there’s another blade,” she said. “Everyone knows that, don’t they? In fact your son Hilary told us all about it, this morning. He showed us how it would fit together with the other two: the one from the church and the one they found at the burial site. It’s just no one knows where this third blade is, right?”
The mention of Hilary’s name seemed to take the wind from the commodore’s sails, and for a moment he was lost for words.
Triskellion Page 18