by Jon Jacks
As she had to keep her head low, that wasn’t very fast at all.
‘Foal! Come back here, you stupid dog!’ Beth hissed irritably.
She knew she was angrier with Foal than she should be.
But if she lost Foal, Foley would kick and beat her to within an inch of her life.
Foley fed Foal on little more than scraps. But he loaned her out on a fifty-fifty basis to anyone heading into town for a few hours begging, boasting that her sad little eyes could charm a quid or two out of the stingiest passer-by.
You didn’t have to do much wrong to find yourself on the end of Foley’s boot.
‘Foal, please come back here girl!’
Damn! Who’d believe a blooming sausage dog could run so fast?
*
Even as Beth neared the edges of the field, where the wheat thinned out enough for her to see the wire fence, she still hadn’t caught even a glimpse of Foal.
If Foal was still somewhere amongst all this wheat, it was bad enough; it could take Beth ages to find her.
It would be worse still, however, if the little dog had raced out into the area of stubbly grass running alongside the fence.
She might attract the attention of any archaeologist coming back early from lunch.
Lying down on the dried soil, Beth tentatively poked her head out past the stalks.
She carefully checked either way along the length of the fence.
Damn!
Foal was about a hundred yards from her.
And right by the base of the wire fencing.
And, as sausage dogs always seem inclined to do, she was digging away at the soil just beneath the fence.
*
Chapter 3
Foal was attacking the soil so eagerly she could have been uncovering a whole mammoth of juicy bones.
‘Foal! No!’
Beth cried out as quietly and yet as forcefully as she could manage.
If Foal heard Beth, she ignored her.
Having dug away more than enough soil, Foal scrambled beneath the fencing.
Coming out on the other side, she excitedly gambolled off towards the entrance carved into the side of the hill.
Oh no no no! Foley will kill me!
*
Earlier, Beth had wondered what she would do if she found a way into the fenced-off area.
Would she risk taking a look at the passageway rumoured to have been discovered there?
Now she had no choice.
She would have to follow Foal if she wanted to avoid a beating from Foley.
Worse still, he might even turn her over to the police.
Under Foley’s first-day interrogation (interrogation was the right word), Beth had insisted she was over sixteen.
Foley had smiled. Smiled like he didn’t believe her. Smiled like he knew she was underage underneath all that makeup.
Smiled knowing that, someday, if he waited for the right moment, he might be able to use that information to his advantage.
*
Beth slunk back into the shrouding wheat.
Crouching low, grumbling about her misfortune, she raced as quickly as she dared around the edges of the field.
Drawing closer towards the hole created by Foal.
‘Ah well! Here goes!’
Launching herself from the safety of the veiling wheat, she loped across the open space towards the fence.
She dived down towards Foal’s freshly dug hole.
She coughed and sputtered as she took in mouthfuls of dirt.
The wire fence was reasonably pliable.
She bent it upwards, as much as she could.
Then, telling herself that she would be in and out in no time, she squirmed through the hole.
*
‘Foal! Come back!’
Beth was furious now.
Now she was inside the wire, there was a good chance she would be seen.
Scrambling beneath the fence had also been a lot more difficult than she had expected.
The odd, sharp rock sticking up from the ground had painfully dug into her.
The straps and buckles on her jacket had caught on the wire.
Some straps had torn. The cheap buckles had bent and snapped.
But hey, looking on the bright side, it all added to her grunge look.
Foal had headed directly for the opening in the side of the hill.
Hearing Beth’s hissed cry, she halted in the opening.
She looked back with a turn of her head and a raised foreleg.
Then she disappeared into the tunnel.
No no no!
*
Chapter 4
Beth broke into a run.
She figured that if she ducked into the opening, she would at least be out of sight.
The archaeologists had only been here a few days. They had moved in after the heavy rain and strong winds of a storm had loosened and swiftly worn away some of the packed soil.
With any luck, they wouldn’t have had time to dig very deeply.
Didn’t they have to take special care, take things slowly, whenever they were excavating such important sites?
As soon as Foal found her way blocked, she would probably allow Beth to pick her up without too much trouble.
*
Beth’s heart sank as soon as she reached the entrance.
Yes, the area carefully excavated by the archaeologists barely extended beyond the hole created by the storm.
But the rumours had been true.
They had broken through into an already existing passageway, skilfully lined with stone slabs.
The angled slabs, their tops resting against each other, formed a low, triangular tunnel.
It sloped steeply, leading deeper into the earth.
Small electrically-powered lamps had been strung up along the tunnel’s sides, hanging like glowing baubles in a Christmas Grotto.
Clearly, the archaeologists had already explored the tunnel.
Some of them, excited by their discovery, might have decided to give lunch a miss; they might be down there right now, just waiting for Beth to suddenly appear amongst them.
Foal’s elated yapping echoed up towards Beth along the grey, triangular corridor.
If Foal hadn’t been Foley’s dog, if Foley hadn’t been as crazy as a rabid dog, Beth might have turned around.
She might have decided that she would just have to wait for the little sausage dog to make her own way back to the entrance.
But Foal was Foley’s dog.
And Foley would enjoy the irony of playing the concerned citizen, telling the police he thought Beth was a runaway.
So, ducking low beneath the sharply angled roof, Beth began to make her way down the sloping tunnel.
*
Chapter 5
As she ducked yet again to avoid one of the hanging lamps, Beth cursed herself for her stupidity.
Her stupidity for heading down the tunnel.
Her st
upidity for putting herself in a position where Foley had so much power over her.
Yeah, Foley had guessed right that she had run away from home.
And if he ever got even an inkling about the court case, well, that would only give him an extra hold over her, wouldn’t it?
*
When you’ve got someone like Beth’s mum taking the stand to vouch for your good character, what chance have you got, eh?
Standing up in the courtroom with this crazily wide-eyed smile on her face.
Like she was doped-up with every drug available from down the town’s back alleys.
It didn’t help that mum was called Jerusalem.
It helped even less when mum tried to calm the sniggers by saying her own mum was called Nazareth.
‘It’s a family tradition. We use Biblical and religious names to keep away the bad spirits.’
Talk about a gift to the prosecution team.
‘Why would Beth do something crazy like killing Miss Hilary? Oh no, no, no. Not my little Bethlehem! You wouldn’t, would you Beth?’
She had eagerly, helpfully admitted that she was on medication.
‘Medication prescribed by the clinic! So, yes, I’m so much better now! Much, much calmer! Not at all like I used to be.’
Not that Beth had helped herself, of course.
All that about flipping the coin.
About the symbols that made it come up more regularly on one side than it did the other.
She couldn’t remember what the symbols looked like.
She had tried to draw them on a coin the prosecuting counsel offered her.
It came up heads as many times as it came up tails.
It made Beth look like a liar.
Donna, Claris and Kate had smiled smugly whenever they were asked about the ‘magical coin’.
They had never heard anything so crazy, they said.
Beth always made up ‘crazy little tales’. Beth had ‘acted crazily’, trying to violently pull away from Miss Hilary.
Miss Hilary, see, had insisted that Beth needed to see the headmistress.
‘No, we don’t know what it was about, sir. But we all saw Beth push Miss really hard against the old wall. Everyone knew that wall was dangerous.’
Fortunately, the school had its reputation to maintain.
The wall had been sound. ‘Completely safe,’ the headmistress had assured the court.
There was no way that Bethlehem Jones could have known it had been recently weakened by storm damage and water erosion.
It could only have been a totally unexpected and horrific accident.
‘It was just one of those strange incidents we can only put down to chance,’ the court had eventually decided.
‘The teacher was just somewhat unfortunate. She was pushed into a wall by Miss Jones at a time when it had been unexpectedly weakened, and by a rarely seen excess of water in the soil at that.’
Strange that, Beth thought as she followed the sounds of Foal’s excited (and curiously loud and booming) yapping.
It was water damage that had got her into trouble.
And now, having opened up Silbury Hill, it was going to get her into trouble all over again.
*
Beth was disappointed when the cramped tunnel finally opened up into a wide chamber.
She had been hoping that she would find herself in something like the interior of a pyramid. Full of priceless artefacts, neatly arranged around a golden sarcophagus.
Okay, so she realised this wasn’t Egypt.
But hadn’t she read at school about a huge burial chamber found somewhere else in England containing a priceless helmet and beautiful armour? Hadn’t there even been some kind of Viking longship buried with the king? Along with all the other things he would need to keep him safe in the afterlife?
But here – well, there was nothing here.
The chamber was empty.
Unless you included Foal, who was frantically digging a hole in in its very centre.
A hole!
Oh no! Now the archaeologists will know we’ve been in here! And they’ll accuse us of causing damage!
‘Foal! No! Stop that!’
For a moment, Beth thought she had been struck around the back of the head with a ridiculously heavy pillow.
Her cry had been amplified into a low, thunderous boom.
It reverberated again and again around the semi-spherical chamber, echoing off carefully carved slate walls.
Covering her ears, she dashed towards Foal.
Apparently unaffected by the noise, the little dog was continuing to ferociously dig deeper into the soil.
‘Fo–’
She cut herself short, fearing that she would once again start up the booming roar that was at last beginning to recede.
Besides, she was now staring in awe at the vast jewel Foal’s frantic digging had uncovered.
It reflected the dim glow of the lamps like a huge, frozen globule of fresh blood.
Beth guessed that it was almost perfectly spherical, but it was hard to tell.
It was mounted on top of a thick, leather-wrapped stem.
Beth dropped to her knees.
Like Foal, she began to frantically dig away at and pull aside the swiftly crumbling soil.
She had forgotten, for the moment, all thoughts of being discovered.
Forgotten all worries about being accused of causing damage.
She and Foal were gradually uncovering a sword.
A beautiful sword.
And it was embedded almost to the hilt in a huge block of stone.
What? No! That’s impossible!
‘The Sword in the Stone!’ she softly gasped.
*
Chapter 6
Beth knew it must be a joke.
It was impossible.
The Sword in the Stone was from old legends.
It had never, ever really existed.
Around where the sword’s blade disappeared into the stone, Beth’s digging was slowly uncovering words carved into the surface.
no form, yet form
In a frenzy now, Beth pulled more and more soil away.
She brushed aside the drier, sandier dirt falling across and obscuring the words.
Below those already uncovered, she could now read a few more words.
here before you.
English?
Would an ancient stone really have sentences carved in English?
Didn’t they use something called runes in those days?
Above the first words uncovered, she was now revealing part of another line.
for you to see
Nothing about ‘whomsoever draws this sword’ then, she thought with a mixture of both relief and disappointment.
But how many more words were there for her to expose?
She dragged the earth away from both sides of the first words she had uncovered.
I have no form, yet form all things
A riddle. It was a riddle, she was sure of it.
Suddenly, Foal stopped digging.
She spun around and looked directly towards the tunnel, her ears pricked.
Beth recognised the pose. Foal had heard something, and was about to yap out a warning.
‘Shhhhssssh Foal!’
Beth held up a finger in front of the little dog’s face as Foal inquisitively turned towards her.
Foal remained quiet. Beth sighed with relief.
It was the only thing Foley had successfully trained Foal to do; to stop barking or yapping as soon as a single finger was raised.
E
very other command was based on hard slaps or sharp kicks. Not that Foley bothered too much what Foal did as long as it didn’t irritate him personally.
Beth heard voices. The casual conversation of people unhurriedly making their way down the tunnel.
Beth urgently looked about her.
Where was there to hide in a bare chamber like this?
*
Wait, what was that?
The shadows didn’t appear quite right. Like there was an indent or protrusion on the otherwise smooth wall.
The lamp hanging there was also faulty. So dim it was almost dead.
The voices were louder, closer.
‘Quick, over here Foal!’
Hurriedly picking up the little dog, Beth silently sprinted towards what she hoped was an oddly placed or disturbed slab.
With luck, it would stick out enough from the angled walls for her to hide behind.
Yes!
The slab projected out, if only for little more than an arm’s length.
But, if she crouched, and pressed herself hard up against the wall, the darker shadows towards the ground would probably keep her hidden for at least a few minutes.
But, she realised, those few minutes were all she had.
They would find her soon enough.
And there was nothing she could do about it.
*
They kept their voices low as they entered the chamber.
The sounds only echoed lightly and momentarily.
It was just general talk; what they had read in the newspapers, or seen on television recently.
It sounded like there was at least three of them. One of them a woman.
Beth was having a hard time controlling the struggling Foal, who was trying to leap back down to the ground.
Beth twisted slightly, lowering Foal down by her side. But she kept a firm grasp on the long, squirming body.
‘What the?’
Beth couldn’t see who had raised his voice.
The cry boomed around the chamber, growing in anger and surprise.
It wasn’t hard to guess, however, that the speaker was staring open-mouthed at the hole and the uncovered sword.
‘Who…who could have done this?’
The second speaker managed to keep his voice low. Yet the sense of barely controlled fury still remained.
Beth heard them scramble towards the freshly dug hole.
Heard them crouch around the partially buried sword and stone.
Heard them hiss and mumble furiously.
‘They must have buried this here while we were at lunch…’
‘It’s sacrilege, criminal…’
‘A sword in a stone? What fools do they take us for?’
‘Shusssshhh! Can you hear something?’
They all stopped talking at once.
Whatever it was the woman had heard, Beth could now hear something too.
A frantic scraping.
A scraping in tempo with Foal’s writhing body.
Beth looked down.
Foal was furiously digging another hole.
*
‘Foal!’ Beth hissed as quietly as she could.