by Jenny Kane
Delaying his response with a kiss that felt as if it could stop time, Shaun reluctantly pulled away and lowered Thea to the floor. ‘I have something to show you. Then we’ll go and see how the AA are getting on.’
‘They weren’t just passing then?’
Shaun chuckled. ‘No one “just passes” here.’
*
Sam stroked Tina’s hair out of its right plait. The action of unknotting and teasing out the kinks in the blonde tresses was blissfully relaxing.
Tina’s head was on his shoulder, her eyes were closed. As they sat in comfortable silence, she thought her heart would break for the man next to her. He’d saved lives, lots of them, and yet he was crippled with the knowledge that he hadn’t saved three of his friends. Tina was used to solving problems; it formed the largest part of her job after finance balancing. This however, was one problem she couldn’t solve.
‘It’s okay.’ As if reading her mind, Sam said, ‘I’m not expecting you to find a solution to this. There isn’t a solution, there’s just finding a way to live.’
Staying where she was, not wanting the spell to break, Tina whispered, ‘I’d like to help you though. Find a way I mean.’
‘I’d like that. I have to tell you though, I have nightmares. There’s a long way to go before I reach where I want to be.’
Tina shifted her legs, so they hooked themselves around his, bringing them as close as they could get on the walled garden floor. ‘Where do you want to be?’
‘In a house, with the woman I love and a family.’ Sam swallowed. ‘Does that sound corny?’
‘No. It sounds perfect.’
‘And to be working in a worthwhile way. Doing something good for other people.’
‘Like this?’ Tina nodded towards the chicken coop they’d built together.
‘Or something similar. I’ll need to earn some money again soon. My forces pension can only stretch so far.’
‘I’m working. We’d be okay until you’re ready, especially if we are only paying camping fees, not rent. The ultimate savings plan.’
Sam stopped stroking her hair and turned to look at Tina properly, his eyes searching her face for any sign that she could be joking. ‘You would live in a tent with me?’
‘Yes.’
‘But you have possessions and you need to be smart for work and…’
‘And there are a million problems, but you forget, I’m a problem solver. I’ll think of something.’ She kissed him slowly. And don’t forget, I have a room in a rented house, so I can leave my stuff there until the lease ends in three months, and we’ll have worked something else out by then.’
Sam was in shock. ‘You really want to?’
Tina started to laugh. ‘You can’t be that surprised surely?’
‘I’m hardly a rich older dude with a BMW.’
‘You’re better than that. You’re real.’
*
Thea hesitated as she peered through the gap in the wooden gate into the walled gardens. ‘I’m not sure we should disturb them.’
Shaun smiled as he followed Thea’s line of sight. ‘At last! I was beginning to think Sam wouldn’t tell her how he felt.’
‘I could say the same about Tina. Sam is so far from her usual type. Thank goodness.’
‘Sam did ask me to find him before we went back to the AA though.’
‘Oh, so Sam knows what’s going on, does he?’ Thea’s eyebrows rose. ‘Well! So much for me being in charge.’
Shaun stuck his tongue out at her as he pushed open the door as noisily as he could so that the human occupants of the garden were warned of their approaching presence.
*
Deliberately keeping a few paces behind the men as they left the walled garden and headed towards the part of the garden where the woods merge into the grass, Thea whispered, ‘Are you two properly together now?’
‘Yes.’ Tina couldn’t stop the beam that spread across her face. ‘It’s not going to be easy, but it is going to be worth it.’
‘Did he tell you why he can’t go inside?’
‘He did.’
‘Good.’ Not wanting to put Tina in a position where she might have to break a confidence, she didn’t ask more questions, but covertly pointed towards the men in front of them. ‘Have you any idea what they are up to, beyond the fact that they’ve organised for a geophysics scan of the grounds?’
‘Well, there’s only one reason they’d want one of those, isn’t there?’
Thea agreed, ‘Because they think there’s something to find under the ground archaeology wise and…’
Both women came to the same conclusion at the same time.
‘The Trust!’ Thea spoke before Tina, who was nodding manically. ‘That’s why they sold! If there’s even a sniff of an expensive excavation to pay for, it would eat up all their funds.’
‘Especially after that financial cock-up ate into the funds all that time back. I wondered why Mill Grange was the house that the Trust chose to sell when there are other houses less accessible for public visits that they could sell. This is finally starting to make sense.’ Tina scooped her loose hair up into a loose bun, in a manner that showed she meant business. ‘But they’d need a reason to scan. Geophysics is expensive; you can’t just do it on a whim, even if you’re friends with a TV archaeologist.’
‘Which means Shaun found something on one of his walks.’
The girls ran towards the van.
*
The pot shard was small. Even with Thea’s practised eye, she was sure she’d have missed it in the undergrowth. Shaun however, with his more recent experience – and, as it turned out, his suspicion there was something here to find in the first place – hadn’t missed it.
‘And you’ve just found one?’ Thea held it in the middle of her open palm and traced the shape with a fingertip.
‘So far.’ He watched as Tina and Sam stared at what looked like a square-ish stone. ‘It was here. Exactly here.’
Thea crouched to where Shaun had stuck a tent peg he’d borrowed from Sam, at the very edge of the hinterland between the sloping lawn and the path between the woods and garden. ‘How much can Andy and Ajay do before someone at Landscape Treasures starts asking questions about budgets?’
‘Only four square metres.’
Thea traced a rough shape in the air with a finger. ‘Then, if you agree, I think they should use this as the right edge and run north and east.’
Shaun pulled out his phone and showed Thea a text he’d sent Ajay a few days earlier. It said “North and East from find. As much as budget will allow.”
‘You know what it is, don’t you?’ Shaun asked.
‘Oh yes.’ Thea stroked it reverently. ‘And so do you.’
‘Well, we don’t.’ Tina and Sam had linked hands as they stared at the recently washed shard.
‘It’s Roman. Part of a mortarium to be precise.’
Forty-Three
July 19th
‘We’ll have the results in about three hours. Ajay promised television time turnaround.’
The four friends sat around one of the three picnic tables Derek and Bill had made for the garden. They were making serious headway into one of Tina’s lemon cakes. The girls both had clipboards in front of them. Tina was making a note of everything left to do for the Open Day in thirty-six hours’ time. Thea was drawing the pot shard which sat in the middle of the table, while Shaun took out his tape measure and calculated how big it would have been when it was intact.
Sam stroked the top of the pot fragment. ‘What is a mortarium anyway?’
‘The bowl part of a Roman pestle and mortar.’ Thea picked it up so Sam could see the underside. ‘If you feel here, it’s got a rough, gritty texture. That was part of the lower bowl. It had a deliberately pitted surface to help grind herbs, or whatever else needed pounding into a paste or powder.’
‘And you can tell that from one tiny piece of pot?’
‘Sure.’ Thea turned to Shaun, who had finished calculating
the measurements of the shard, looking at him expectantly.
‘It had a diameter of twenty centimetres I’d say.’
‘That would be in line with the style and size of such pots at the middle to the end of the Romano-British period.’ Thea was trying not to get excited. ‘And unless I’m very much mistaken – which I might be of course – this is from Gloucester.’
Shaun’s head snapped up. ‘You think so?’
‘A hunch, no more.’
‘Rubbish, this is your speciality. Gloucester?’
‘I think so. That makes it from about AD 55-90. It’s rare to find it so far to the south west, but to be honest it’s unusual to find Roman stuff in this region anyway.’ Thea glanced towards where Shaun had found it. ‘And there was no sign of any other pieces?’
‘No. I’d love to have found a piece of flange or rim or something, just to confirm its origins.’
‘As I said, I can’t be certain, but the material is the right sort of pale red-brown, and has—’ Thea lifted the shard up to the sunlight ‘—fine inclusions of quartz sand and limestone. The underside also has a hint of the traditional thin cream or white slip used to finish such pots in the Gloucester area.’
Tina smiled across the table. ‘Look at you two all historied up!’
‘I hadn’t realised how much I missed this bit.’ Thea blushed happily as she picked the four-centimetre-wide piece of pottery up. ‘The chance to investigate something that would have formed an everyday part of a normal human beings life thousands of years ago is so special.’
Not wanting to spoil Thea’s mood, but knowing he had no choice, Shaun asked, ‘Will you tell Malcolm about finding this?’
‘I suspect he knows, or at least suspects.’
Tina nodded. ‘It’s only a theory, but we think he must have got wind of a possible site under the grounds. And with Exmoor being on the very outer edge of Roman success in Britain, there is little chance of any such site not being investigated.’
Sam was confused. ‘Why is that a bad thing? They’re a historical trust, aren’t they?’
‘They are.’ Tina laid down her pen. ‘But excavations cost money.’
‘Would the trust have to pay? Surely the people doing the dig pay for it?’
‘Each case is different. In this instance I imagine it isn’t so much the costs involved in the excavation itself, but the fact that it would have held up the opening of Mill Grange. Think about it in terms of a farmer and his field. If a Roman villa is found in a farmer’s field and is declared of special interest and should be excavated, the farmer isn’t paying for the dig, but he does lose that field’s yield and profits for the length of the excavation, potentially forever.’
‘So Malcolm and his team would lose the income from the visitors they predicted?’ Sam frowned. ‘But if I was them, I’d be thrilled. A rare Roman site on the grounds of a beautiful Victorian manor. Surely that’s two attractions in one to draw the crowds?’
‘If red tape, health and safety and all the other legal requirements that go with that sort of historical site weren’t an issue, I’d agree with you. But it isn’t that simple, sadly. It ought to be, but it’s not.’
‘That’s daft.’
‘Modern life often is.’ Tina added, ‘In this case it’s academic anyway. As the Trust was in financial difficulties anyway, they had to dispose of a property to keep afloat. Far better, in their eyes, to lose one that will cost more than expected to open to the public now, even though it would eventually earn them more income, than to lose one of the less accessible properties that’s already up and running.’
‘It seems dishonest that they’ve sold the house and grounds, and not told the owner what might be lurking beneath.’ Thea sighed.
‘I suppose they might have told them, but I doubt it.’ Tina considered her employers. ‘Since the extent of the money worries has become apparent, Malcolm and Grant have become less history lovers and more bank managers.’
‘Fear of losing your job can do that to you.’ Thea gave the pot shard one last stroke. ‘Talking of which, I’m going to lose this one with dignity and style.’ Accompanied by approving nods from her friends, Thea stood up. ‘As much as I’ve enjoyed my trip into the more distant past, I ought to pull myself together and focus on all things Victorian by finishing emptying the scullery and my attic room.’
‘Don’t you want to wait for the results from geofizz?’
‘Of course, but I don’t have time to wait doing nothing.’ Thea passed her drawing to Shaun. ‘You go and check on them. Oh, and not a word to any of the others. Especially Mabel. She’d be so delighted that, whether we find anything or not, it would be all around Upwich in less than half an hour.’
Shaun smiled. ‘Agreed. I think we’ll find something though.’
‘Me too.’ Thea gazed across the gardens. ‘Now I’ve studied the ground with an eye to the possibility, I’m inclined to agree.’
‘A villa?’ Sam asked.
‘Unlikely. More likely a temporary camp or even…’ Thea paused. ‘No, let’s not tempt fate.’
‘You think you know what it is, don’t you?’ Shaun’s eyes shone. ‘I really need you on my team if you can work out what’s beneath the earth from the lumps and bumps alone. It’ll save us a fortune in geofizz scanning.’
‘I’m wishful thinking.’ Thea picked up Tina’s list. ‘All we have is one pot shard, some lumps and bumps in the ground and a suspicion that we’ve worked out why the Trust chose Mill Grange as their sacrificial lamb. We could be whistling in the wind.’
Shaun unhooked his long legs from the confines of beneath the picnic table. ‘I’ll go and check how the lads are getting on. I’ve got them tucked away in Moira’s backroom. Only place with a good enough signal around here for them to work.’
‘Was she okay with you hiding more people there?’
‘She’s a wonderful woman, that Moira. Thinks she’s hiding more celebrities.’
‘Which she sort of is.’ Tina smiled.
Shaun kissed Thea’s cheek. ‘I’ll be back as soon as I have news.’
*
Since the smoke damage from the fire had dented her already meagre clothing collection, it didn’t take long for Thea to stuff her few garments into the large rucksack that stood, propped in the corner of her attic room. A few of her things still littered Shaun’s borrowed bedroom, but otherwise, it had taken a depressingly short amount of time to tidy and pack away the evidence of her life for the past few months.
Standing at the window, Thea studied the view, enjoying the vista of the garden merging into the woods while she could. One more night in Mill Grange.
Shaun would want her to spend it in his room with him. She’d like that too, but Thea had an almost childlike urge to spend her last night where she’d spent her first one. Where she’d crouched frightened while the nightjar had woken her in alarm, where she’d lain worrying and wondering about what John would do next, where she’d spent so many hours planning how to make Mill Grange the best visitor attraction she possibly could. Where she’d wondered if Shaun really liked her or if he was just after a fling; at least the latter was something she was certain of.
She’d come to Mill Grange single, a little lonely, and with a man who refused to leave their brief moment of shared past alone. Now she had the chance of a future with an amazing person who seemed to like her as much as she liked him.
It was too early to think beyond like. Yet the other four-letter word beginning with ‘l’ and ending in ‘e’ had almost formed on her lips when they’d been together a few times.
But what about Mill Grange?
‘Coming here wasn’t pointless.’ She spoke the words boldly, trying to edge away the lingering doubts that crowded her head. ‘The house looks great and the day after tomorrow we can show off what Mabel and the others have achieved.’
The pheasant she’d been addressing as it crossed the lawn far below did not appear impressed by her claim.
‘We’ve s
old fifty tickets, and with the promise of one of Sybil’s cream teas, Moira’s cider tent and Bill’s mate’s hog roast, even old Alf from the café can’t fail to approve of our efforts on Upwich’s behalf.’
But you burnt down the mill.
The thought arrived from where it had been lurking at the back of her head and refused to leave. It isn’t going to matter how well tomorrow goes, I’ll always be the girl who dropped the candle.
Determined to move her mind forward, Thea looked across to where Shaun had found the pot shard. Despite the trees and flowerbeds, her aerial view reinforced her view that there probably was something under the soil. But whether it was what she hoped it was, or whether it was a disused Victorian rabbit warren, would have to wait to be seen.
‘Someone could have dropped the pot shard. They could have had it in their pocket, after picking it up somewhere else.’
She knew this was unlikely too. But not impossible.
‘Concentrate on the here and now. Think Open Day. Then think what comes next.’ Thea piled her small tower of novels up on the desk. ‘And if they do find a Roman site, so what? I’m nothing to do with this place after 21st July. It’ll be the new owner’s problem.’ Thea froze. ‘We could leak the information. If the new owner finds out they have a possible ancient monument in their garden, especially one of significance, they might pull out of the sale.’
The pheasant tilted its head in Thea’s direction, as if she had finally said something of interest.
‘Anyone who has purchased Mill Grange to get away from it all is hardly going to want a load of archaeologists and sightseers traipsing around their garden.’
Forty-Four
July 19th
‘Did you know that bit of pot was from a mortarium?’
Tina passed Sam another handful of grain for the chickens. ‘Once I held it, I knew it was Roman, and I could have guessed it was a bit of mortaria because they are the most distinctive pieces of Roman pot beyond the bright orange Samian ware, but beyond that my knowledge ends.’
‘If I’d seen it, I’d have assumed it was a bit of masonry from the house or just some random stone.’