Triskellion (21 page)

“A
nd … action!” Chris Dalton dropped his hand in front of the camera, giving the sign for no one but himself to speak, and began to move.

“Peaceful village, England,” he boomed. “The bleak splendour of the moors…” The cameraman, who was doing his best to keep pace, widened his shot and Dalton spread his arms expansively as if the whole area belonged to him. “We’re here in one of the oldest settlements in the country to investigate the very thing that gave this village its name. The Triskellion. The huge chalk circle carved into the ground in a strange ancient pattern. Is it a place where druids worshipped the sun? Is it the burial place of an important Bronze Age family?” Dalton stopped, put on a mysterious voice and put his face close to the camera. “Or is it something else entirely? Is it perhaps some kind of prehistoric compass?” He cocked his head and smiled. “We’re here to find out in this week’s …
Treasure Hunters
.” He froze for a few seconds and then relaxed. “And … cut!”

“Nice one, Chris,” the cameraman said. “Do you want to go again?”

“No need,” Dalton said. “I think I got it in one take, don’t you, Amanda?”

The production assistant looked up from the clipboard and nodded enthusiastically. The take was fine, but there was little point arguing even when it wasn’t.

“Let’s move on.” Dalton looked round. “Where’s the kid?”

Amanda pointed.

They walked over to where Adam was standing by the Triskellion, Dalton calling out as they approached. “OK, Adam,” he said, “we’re going to film the questions we went through. Happy to have a go?”

Adam nodded. Having a TV camera pointed at him did not bother him unduly after some of the things he’d been through, and Adam had always relished his appearances in school plays, speaking in front of class and that kind of thing.

But then Chris instructed Amanda to bring the morris dancers over.

Adam looked over to where a couple of cars were parked near the
Treasure Hunters
van. Seven or eight men were beginning to assemble, dressed in leafy costumes, their faces painted green or in one or two cases black. They wore an assortment of top hats, furs and antlers on their heads. Adam’s stomach flipped over.

He had seen men like this before.

Chris Dalton saw him looking at the men. “Morris
dancers, they call themselves,” he said. “The Green Men.” He scoffed. “Green loonies if you ask me. We thought they’d add a bit of local colour, dancing round the circle, jingling their bells and shaking their sticks while we film.” Dalton directed Adam to stand in the middle of the circle. “It’ll make a great shot,” he assured him.

The camera began rolling, and Dalton called “action” again.

“I have with me here Adam Newman. Now, although Adam lives in America, his mother’s family have come from Triskellion for centuries. Hi, Adam…”

“Hi,” Adam said, trying to stop his voice from wavering. From the corner of his eye, he could see the Green Men assembling at the edge of the circle.

“I understand you are a keen amateur archaeologist,” Dalton said. “Can you tell us what you know about the chalk circle?”

“Er, well, we know that the symbol is probably Celtic and was carved during the Bronze Age.”

“Which makes it how old?” Dalton asked the question as if he already knew the answer himself. Adam glanced around nervously before he replied.

“About three thousand years,” Adam said.

Dancers were now positioned at points round the circle, their painted faces staring impassively towards Adam at the centre. Each of them carried a thick, wooden stick, stripped of its bark.

“Three. Thousand. Years.” Dalton gave a whistle as if impressed. “And can you show us some of the things you’ve discovered here?”

Adam opened his palm, revealing a selection of coins, pins and brooches that Honeyman had lent him.

“Coins and other pieces that date back to Roman times, and beyond.” Dalton began to walk away from Adam, the cameraman following him. “But here’s the big question. Is there something far more valuable buried beneath our feet?”

As Dalton stepped out of the circle, leaving Adam stranded in the middle, he gave the morris dancers a nod to start.

A drumbeat struck up and, one by one, the dancers started a shuffle and a hop, tracing a pattern along the chalk lines of the Triskellion. They began to move faster and faster, crossing and skipping past each other where the lines intersected, clashing their sticks together with a noise that made Adam flinch. Bells attached to the legs of their costumes jangled as they danced and leapt to the beat of the drum. It appeared to Adam that, as they got faster, the circle of dancers was tightening in on him – so close that he could smell their sweat. It seemed as though they were skipping a little nearer to him each time they passed; smashing their sticks together closer and closer to Adam’s head.

The circle of men concealed Adam from the camera and meant that he could no longer see anything beyond the tangled crush of the dancers themselves. It tightened still
further until Adam was completely hemmed in by the scrum of Green Men, their sticks interlocking above head height, forming a canopy that completely closed him in.

Then the chanting started: quietly at first, sounding like a traditional song. Then it became louder, building in volume and intensity until Adam could make out what they were saying.

“We know what you stole from us … give it back, give it back. We know what you stole … give it back, give it back.”

Adam felt giddy as the chanting grew and the circle spun wildly round him.

“We know what you stole…”

He looked round madly, his heart thumping as fast as the dancer’s drum, searching for a way out and seeing none.

“Give it back, give it back…”

Adam’s stomach lurched when he suddenly registered a pair of very pale blue eyes, and he watched helplessly as another man began to detach himself from the circle. He saw the man raise his arm, but his scream was lost beneath the drone and the drumbeat, as a willow pole crashed down on to his head.

As Adam came round, all he could hear were arguments. The loudest voice of all belonged to Chris Dalton.

“Of
course
we’re not responsible. They should be insured against this kind of thing.”

Then Adam heard another voice, a local one, apologizing,
and explaining that he had lost the grip on his stick. Dalton called him a bloody fool. Then Adam heard Amanda’s voice. “He’s coming round…”

Adam opened his eyes to see Amanda leaning over him, pressing a damp towel to his forehead.

“Adam? You had a bit of a bump on the head. Don’t worry, I’m a qualified first-aider. You’ve got a nasty lump, but I think you’ll be OK. We’ll get you checked out. I’ve called a doctor.”

Rachel appeared in Adam’s field of vision, panting, as if she had been running. Laura was standing behind her, and, seeing her, Adam tried to be brave and got up on to one elbow.

“Don’t move, Adam,” Laura said. She laid a hand on his shoulder and squeezed. She looked concerned, but when she wheeled round to Amanda, the worry in her face turned quickly to anger. “What on earth happened here?”

Amanda led Laura off into a huddle, whispering and pointing at the pair of remaining morris dancers who were packing their things away. Laura glared at them, and at Dalton.

Rachel leant in close to her brother. “What happened, Adam?”

“We’ve been betrayed, that’s what,” Adam whispered. “Someone’s told them we’ve found the blade.”

“I don’t understand. Who?”

“It’s got to be Jacob.”

“No,” Rachel said. “Jacob wouldn’t.” She shook her head, kept shaking it, but at the same time she was wondering
whether Jacob would. He had been the one who had invited the TV crew to the village, after all.

“Then it’s your lovely Gabriel, isn’t it?” Adam hissed. “He’s the only other person on earth who knows.”

Rachel said nothing. Gabriel had been quiet for days. There had been no messages since the television crew had arrived in the village.

She looked across the moor to where the cars were parked. A tall morris dancer in a long leather coat and top hat, his face completely blackened, was watching her. When he realized Rachel had seen him, he raised his hat to her, before climbing on to a big motorbike and roaring off.

Adam climbed slowly to his feet. “It’s not really important who told them anyway,” he said. “All that matters is that they’re prepared to kill us to get it.”

D
alton peered into the tunnel that had already taken his team a solid three days to dig. And now it was starting to rain.

“How much longer?” he shouted into the tunnel, shielding his hair from the drizzle with Amanda’s clipboard.

Dalton was getting impatient. He didn’t like going into the tunnel. It was wet and dark. And scary. The dig had only just got back on track, having nearly been aborted after the incident with Adam and the morris men. It had taken all Dalton’s considerable charm to smooth things over following the accident. He’d sent a letter (actually written by Amanda) to Adam’s grandmother, together with a cheque for two hundred pounds which Mrs Root had immediately donated to the appeal to restore the church roof.

Now there seemed to be some kind of delay. They were supposed to be transmitting the dig live on TV that night, on a special edition of
Treasure Hunters
. Dalton checked his watch. It was nearly six, and the first part of the show
was due to go out at seven.

“Can we hurry this up?” Dalton shouted to no one in particular. “We’re live in an hour.”

Laura Sullivan, wearing a hard hat with a torch attached to the front like a coal miner, poked her head out of the tunnel. She was covered in mud.

“We’ve got to be patient, Chris, OK? I think we’re at the entrance to a burial chamber. At least, there are bogoak props holding up something and barring our way.” Laura wiped specks of dirt from her eyes. “I’ve sent some splinters off for carbon testing to get a date on them.”

“Can’t we just guess?” Dalton said. “I mean, they’re going to be about a thousand years old, roughly. Let’s just make an estimate and plough on.” He peered down into the tunnel. “Can’t we just chainsaw through them or something?”

Laura rolled her eyes. “Chris, this is important. We have to show every single consideration for a site of this age. We can’t rush it. We’ll put out the first part of the show at seven. Then see how we get on between then and eight when the update goes out.”

“OK.” Dalton puffed out his cheeks in frustration. “But I want results by the eight o’clock transmission. If we’ve got nothing to show, the punters will stop watching. We’re looking for four million viewers for this show. Minimum.”

Dalton stepped out of the tunnel entrance to see that a crowd was already gathering in the drizzle behind the tape that cordoned off the dig. Word had quickly gone round that
the site was revealing coins, shields, swords and more artefacts that suggested a burial mound, but now a rumour was growing that the archaeologists had found something else. Something big. Despite the villagers’ reluctance to offer information, a certain morbid curiosity had drawn them to the circle, eager to see what of the village’s history would be uncovered.

And of their own.

“Going live in … three, two, one…” Amanda looked at her stopwatch and gave Dalton the nod to start speaking.

“Good evening and welcome to a very special live edition of
Treasure Hunters
.” Dalton stared straight into the camera and adopted his most dramatic voice. “Tonight we are coming to you live from the ancient village of Triskellion, where we hope we are on the verge of a very important discovery…”

He paused. The moment where he knew from long experience that the show’s title sequence would play in. The camera turned on to the crowd, revealing a cross-section of the village’s inhabitants to the viewers at home.

Pale faces framed by waterproof hoods peered through the fine drizzle into the arc-lights that illuminated the tunnel: Reverend Stone, the Bacon brothers and many other of The Star’s regulars.

Close to the tape, at the opening of the tunnel, stood Rachel and Adam, having been ushered into prime positions by Laura. Next to them, her wheelchair protected from the
rain by a yellow cycling cape, was Granny Root, her lips pursed as she watched the action unfold. Alongside her, his face fixed in a frown beneath a black umbrella, stood Commodore Wing. It was not the company Rachel and Adam would have necessarily chosen to accompany them to the dig, but they took some comfort from it.

While they were with their grandmother and the commodore, they were safe from Hilary Wing.

Adam and Rachel stared up at the projection screen that had been erected close by, so that the villagers could watch events as they were broadcast live. After the
Treasure Hunters
titles, Adam watched the sequence that had been filmed a couple of days earlier, just before the “accident”. He saw himself, several metres high on screen, without the large plaster that was now stuck to his head, and heard himself say, “We know that the symbol is probably Celtic and was carved during the Bronze Age.”