Grave Consequences (4 page)

“Oh, if Jane says something is so, it is. You can rely on it.”

I handed him his book.

The young woman, the petite brunette with a pointy, foxy face, nodded in agreement, and held out hers. “I’m Nicola, with a C. Will’s right, Jane always does her homework. There’s always a reason for everything she says.”

“I imagine she’s a tough instructor,” I said, scratching away on Nicola’s book.

“Oh, well, yes, but, not…er—”

Will paused and I realized that he was trying not to say anything bad about Jane at the same time he was trying not to contradict me.

Nicola jumped in. “She is, she’s very demanding, but she always knows how to explain something if you don’t get it. That’s the thing. You know, everyone has a different way of learning things and she always figures out where you’re getting caught up and is able to explain it in a way that you’ll understand. She asks a lot of us, but she’s very patient that way, so we know it’s well worth the effort. With Jane, you always know you’ll learn something.”

“Unless you’re Bonnie,” Will said.

Nicola snorted. “Bonnie’s not a real archaeologist. She’s an undergraduate who only signed up for an archaeology degree because she heard there were a lot of men. Thanks, Professor Fielding.” She took her book back.

“You’re welcome, but call me Emma, okay?”

Will just about wriggled. “Thanks, Emma.”

“Yes, thanks.” They hurried over to their tea, comparing what I’d written on their title pages. I’d written the same on both of them, “Pleased to meet you at Marchester Abbey, best wishes,” etc. Not very imaginative, but at least personalized.

Jane returned, emptied rucksack in hand. “I hope Will hasn’t been annoying you. He tends to be a bit of a creep, but he’s not a bad sort. Have you eaten anything? I did actually bring extra for you today; I didn’t plan on being a wretched hostess.”

My stomach growled alarmingly. “I could do with a bite, but I don’t want to keep you from work.”

“Not a bit; we always have our tea break about this time. Have a sandwich, I made them in your honor.” Greg brought over his backpack and a thermos. “Cup of tea?”

“Yes, please,” I said, taking both the offered sandwich and the cup. My head was still feeling achy, but I attributed that to jet lag. I bit into the sandwich, and my surprise must have been evident on my face, because both Jane and Greg laughed.

“It’s peanut butter and…what?” I said, crunching my mouthful cautiously.

“Cucumber. I thought you’d like a little taste of home,” Jane said.

“It’s very nice,” I said, and it was, once I got used to the idea. It really wasn’t bad, only curious and nothing I’d ever eaten in New England. I had been hoping for some of the much vaunted cheese sandwiches I’d recently heard about.

“Look, I’ll show you around a bit today, and we’ll meet up with everyone tonight at the pub, introduce you properly.”

I could feel my shoulders sag. I couldn’t face any more visiting today.

“It’s just around the corner, very nice sort of place. Unless you’re feeling tired,” Greg guessed shrewdly.

Jane and Greg had looked so pleased with themselves and their plan that I hated to disappoint them. “Oh, that is so sweet of you, but I just can’t. I’m beat and I honestly don’t think that I would be very good company.”

Greg turned to Jane, worried. “I thought you said that Emma drank beer?”

“Oh, I do, I’m definitely a fan!” I hastened to assure him. “But I just couldn’t tonight.”

I began to worry about etiquette; the way they were acting, an invitation to the pub sounded like an important gesture. I tried to staunch any social breach by suggesting tentatively, “Maybe tomorrow night? Would that be okay?”

My hosts exchanged a doubtful look. “Well, maybe this once,” Jane said slowly.

Greg nodded more decisively. “No, no, we can do that.” He took out a small pocket diary—along with a piece of flagging tape, which fluttered to the ground—and noted, “Tuesday, Emma, pub.” He underlined the notation care
fully, closed the calendar, and smiled broadly, as he tucked it back into his pocket. “I’ll make the necessary arrangements. Nothing simpler.” He stooped to pick up the flagging and returned it to its place as well.

Jane turned away and coughed, probably embarrassed for me.

“I really appreciate it,” I said, standing up and brushing the crumbs from my lap. Jane and Greg watched me, puzzled.

“Er, the facilities are located just over there,” Jane offered. “There’s a porta-loo, if that’s what you’re looking for.”

Porta-loo? Probably British English for porta-potty. “Maybe later; I was just finished with my sandwich and thought we could get to work.”

Jane looked at her watch. “There’s another fifteen minutes, Emma, no rush.”

My mouth twitched. It seemed a very loose way of running things, especially when there was daylight burning. Everyone just lying around, drinking tea, eating the pile of sandwiches that Jane had provided; my palms itched at the thought of all those students lazing about. It wasn’t right.

I surveyed the site. It was big for an urban site, nearly half the size of a football field. Within the ten-foot-tall chain-link fence it was open, save for a couple of stands of trees and the low remains of a wall, less than half a meter high, by the river’s edge, suggesting the original location of the abbey. The ground had been mechanically graded into a nearly level, roughly rectangular shape, punctuated by neater, more regular rectangles: the excavated burials.

Outside the fence were a few more trees and overgrown weeds. Across the street I had come down were a few shops and more houses, most of them in neat rows of dark gray stone. I knew that the “new” church, a pretty but modest structure built in 1520 after the destruction of the abbey, was about a half mile to the west of us, obscured by the gentle curve of the land and a few stands of trees. Across the river
Mar was the more commercial area of Marchester, which was still of a scale small enough to be human. All in all, it was a pretty spot; I thought it would have made a nice park, once the archaeologists had finished and decamped and someone spent a couple of weekends cleaning out the weeds and rubbish.

“Maybe I’ll just take a walk around, have a look at things, stretch my legs until you’re ready,” I said.

“Well, I suppose we can oblige you there.” Jane got up and dusted herself off. “Okay, follow me.” She walked toward the water, talking and pointing very fast. “Right, then, the river is site south; the graves will generally be oriented east-west, according to your early Christian traditions—buried bodies face the east, so that they will be facing the proper direction at the last trump—so they will in most cases be running parallel to the river. I say in most cases, because excavations within the original confines of the abbey, where most of your important types tend to get buried, reveal that space was at a premium and your lesser gentry were getting bunged in any which way. No problem, really, because they were getting pretty well consecrated just by being within the abbey walls. You can see just the tiniest bit of the structure walls left—most of the ruins were knocked over during the war by a bomb’s concussion—it doesn’t look like anything actually hit the site here—and a lot of the rest of the stones were removed or robbed out after. Now, as for burial goods, we’re not expecting much and we’re not finding much—that’s all in order. We are finding some personal adornment—fasteners, some leather, ornaments
very
rarely—and possibly the odd memento or two, men and women both—”

I knew from my reading that while Marchester Abbey was a female community, the wealthier and more important members of town—male and female alike—would be buried inside the abbey. I frowned.

“Why was Greg so concerned about having uncovered a man’s skeleton, then?”

“Because we found it in what I believe, based on compar
ative data and remote sensing, was the sisters’ graveyard. A man’s burial would make more sense inside the abbey or outside where the rest of the town’s parishioners could expect to be buried, as long as they hadn’t done anything stupid, like killing themselves or someone else. In those cases, they were buried outside consecrated ground—not very desirable, in terms of salvation. Here we are.”

Jane stopped and pulled back a large piece of green plastic. It covered a deep cut in the ground, in which a trench was cut about two meters long, about one wide, and about one deep.

“You can see here that it cuts into those other two burials that we’d begun to expose.”

Sure enough, walking around to the other side, I could see where the more recent burial had been dug into the earlier ones. Luckily, it just nicked the edges and there wasn’t too much mixing between the graves: the soil there was mottled where the pits intersected each other, and comparatively straight, clean edges existed where the burials had been left alone. This new shaft also contained more cobbles on the surface and in the wall profile.

“How old do you think this one is?” I said, squinting down into the shallow shaft. I could just make out the reddish-brown, soil-stained bones at the base of it. They’d barely been exposed.

“We’ve got one button, and I’m guessing it is no more than a hundred years old. You’d be better able to tell us, I suppose. Americans have the greater need to learn about much more recent artifacts.” She said that with the faintly patronizing air I’d come to expect from European scholars used to sites with a much longer historical record.

“I’d be happy to look, but why isn’t anyone working here now?”

“Because,” Jane enunciated with reborn ire, “to start with, the bloody coppers have determined that I’m not fit to excavate my own site! And furthermore—”

“That can’t be right—” I began, but Jane was on a tear.

“No, it’s quite maddeningly correct! In this particular situation, where the burial is deemed to be suspicious, the police have to come in and investigate. They would like Andrew to have a look before they call the Home Office pathologist—Detective Chief Inspector Rhodes has used him as an expert before—”

“But he’s nowhere to be found,” I finished for her.

“So we must leave the grave, that whole area, in fact, alone, until his lordship thinks it meet and fit to grace us with his presence again.” Jane’s hands were knotted into fists so tight I thought she’d pop a knuckle out. Just as quickly, though, she regained command of herself and resumed our tour.

“I’m guessing you’ve done the reading I suggested, so I won’t bore you with the details. Constructed in
A.D
. 1190 and destroyed by fire—a lightning strike, according to the chronicles—about 1504. Left a very nice little burn layer for us, helps show how far back in time we’ve gone when we dig. Benedictine pattern of building arrangement, I’m predicting, no great stretch there. While our main goals last year were to define the parameters of the abbey and nunnery, this year we’re trying to determine the number and organization of the graves, interior and exterior. Looks to be quite a few; we’ve already identified twenty in ground, fully excavated seven of them. We should get a nice little population.”

Jane stopped and looked at me. “Emma, are you feeling entirely well?”

I turned away from an odd sight—a line of paper plates that looked as though they’d been nailed to the grassy ground outside the perimeter of the excavation. Now that she mentioned it, I felt awful. My head was pounding and I kept feeling as though I were fading in and out of focus. “I think the time zone changes must be catching up with me. What time is it?”

“Nearly half four. Greg’s got them closing up for the night.”

Sure enough, I saw the crew going through the universally recognizable patterns of cleaning tools and storing them and covering units until work began again tomorrow morning.

“How about we get you home, into a hot bath, perhaps a glass of something, then dinner and bed for you? That sound like it would do the trick?”

“It sounds perfect,” I said gratefully. A little food and a little quiet and rest would do me a world of good, particularly since my tummy was starting to feel queasy. Jane had a way of taking things in hand that was very soothing.

Jane was all concern, pushing her hair behind her ear. “Well, let’s get going. It’s not a long walk, just a few blocks, really—do you feel up for that? Just tired, not going to faint on us, are you?”

“No, I’ll be fine after a good night’s rest,” I reassured her.

“Then we’ll let Greg sort things out here and whisk you home, chez Ashford-Compton.”

Jane took my big bag and her rucksack and I picked up my backpack; she called out, “Greg, we’ll see you back there. You’ll do the walk-through?” He waved. “I always like to take the crew around at the end of the day, make sure everyone gets an update on what’s going on throughout the site.”

We began to walk away from the river, through a little winding street crowded with homes and the odd corner store. It was a quiet part of a quiet little town, and had a very cozy, neighborly feel to it. I realized that the rowhouses were built with the same gray masonry as the new church; it must be a local stone. I noticed a lot of bicycles chained up in front yards and little window boxes filled with early summer blooms—people here obviously thought a lot of keeping their homes tidy. We went around a few more turns and down one more long street before we reached our destination.

“Here we are, 98 Liverpool Road,” Jane said, pausing before the last door at the end of a block of rowhouses in a cul-de-sac. The building was three stories, and narrow, virtually
identical to the other doors, but it was distinguished by a dark red doorway, outlined in white to match the window frames, and a row of pansies on the window ledge.

“We are lucky to have the last house on the end—much quieter than the others. Come in, I’ll show you to the bath right away.”

Jane gave me a spare key and then showed me to my room, a quiet space on the third floor, and then to the bath, on the second floor, which was narrow and a little old fashioned looking, but had a marvelous old white enameled tub.

“Take your time, fill it up, soak your cares away,” she said, almost jolly, now that she was away from the dig. “I’ll get to work on dinner and then we’ll tuck you into bed.”