I dug my fingers in. I could feel wet sand raking through them, bending my nails back. Finally I came to a halt. First, I threw one arm forward, then the other. Hand over hand, I began to haul myself up the bank, not daring to use my feet in case I caused any more damage. When I reached the top of the bank I could see the treetops tossing about above my head. For a moment or two I just lay there with the rain falling on my face. Quickly, I pulled myself together. Still on all fours, I scuttled from one tarpaulin to the next, tugging and hammering away until I had secured them all.
Even when all the tarpaulins were pegged back down, ripples of air swept back and forth beneath them, puffing out the material. I had no idea how much water had got in. It was impossible to tell until morning came and the sand started to dry out. My biggest worry — I could hardly even bear to think of it — was that a large section of the ship might have been completely washed away.
After cleaning myself off as best as I could, I headed back to the cottage. As the path rounded the bend near Sutton Hoo House, I saw there was a light on upstairs. The curtains were half-drawn. In the gap between them stood the silhouette of a figure, staring out into the night.
The moment dawn broke, I was up and out of the house. All the way to the mounds I kept dreading what I might find. First, I unpegged the tarpaulins and rolled them back. Then I looked inside. I had to have another look to make sure. As far as I could tell, there was no damage at all. In fact, there was scarcely evidence of any rainfall — apart from a general darkening of the soil. For a moment I even wondered if I’d imagined the whole thing.
I spent the next hour and a half waiting for John and Will to arrive, growing increasingly impatient and wondering what could be keeping them — until I remembered that it was a Saturday and they wouldn’t be coming at all.
However, the boy Robert did come out to help. I gave him a broom and we spent the next hour or so sweeping away the puddles of water from around the edges of the tarpaulins. When we had finished I said, “Time for some tea, don’t you think?”
“Yes, please.”
We went into the hut and I boiled the kettle on the Primus stove. I spooned the tea from the caddy into the pot and then poured in the water. Steam rose and gathered under the roof. I held the mug cupped in my hands. As I did so, I noticed the boy held his mug the same way. While we were waiting for the tea to cool, he said, “Do you know who built your ship, Mr. Brown?”
“Not exactly, no. Not yet. I thought at first it was the Vikings. But now it looks as if it was the Anglo-Saxons. The Vikings, they didn’t invade until about AD 900. But if it’s the Anglo-Saxons that would make it older. Much older,” I added.
He thought about this, then said, “But there’s something I don’t understand.”
“What’s that?”
“Why anyone would want to bury a ship under the ground.”
“Probably so that the ship could take whoever was buried inside from this world into the next.”
“But where is this next world, Mr. Brown?”
“Ah, well. No one is absolutely sure about that.”
“How do they know it’s there if nobody is sure?”
“They don’t know. Not exactly. They just… hope.”
“But surely they should have some idea?”
“I suppose they should really. I can’t say I’ve ever thought about it like that before.”
“I mean, I know where Norwich is, even though I’ve never been there.”
“It’s more complicated than that,” I told him.
“How?”
“Because it just is. It’s something you’ll understand better when you’re older.”
He went back to staring at his tea. But not for long. He looked up and seemed about to speak. Then he stopped himself.
“Go on, boy.”
“Do you think there will be a war, Mr. Brown?”
“I don’t know. I hope not.”
“Mr. Grateley thinks there will be. So does Mr. Lyons.”
“Do they now?”
I took out my pipe and began cleaning it. Running my penknife round the inside of the bowl and then tapping it on the wall of the hut to dislodge the bits and pieces.
“What was it like?” he asked.
“What was what like?”
“Fighting.”
I filled the pipe with a wad of tobacco and lit it. Smoke drifted up in front of my face.
“I didn’t fight,” I said.
“You didn’t fight?” he repeated, his voice rising in astonishment.
“No.”
“Why ever not?”
“Because they wouldn’t have me. They reckoned I wasn’t medically fit. On account of an illness I had when I was about your age.”
“What sort of illness?”
“Diphtheria.”
“Oh… Mr. Spooner and Mr. Jacobs both fought.”
“Yes, I know they did.”
“Were you very sad about not being able to fight?”
“Yes, I was.”
“Most of your friends must have gone.”
I nodded.
“Did many of them die?”
“Sixty-one men from my village alone.”
Now we both sat and stared down at our tea. Strips of grass showed through the gaps in the floor — greener than usual for being so thin.
“If the Germans do invade, Mr. Brown, do you think they will sail up the estuary and land at Woodbridge?”
I laughed and said, “I don’t think there’s much chance of that.”
“They might do, you know.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Because it’s been done before.”
“Who by?” I said, humoring him.
“By the Vikings.”
He was quite right, of course, although I’d never thought of it before. I must have been too stuck in the past to join it up to the present. Now that it had been, I couldn’t help wishing it had stayed where it was.
“Come on, then,” I said. “We can’t stay here nattering all day.”
I threw the dregs of my tea through the door. Robert followed my example. However, he had more tea left in his mug than I did and it splashed over my boots.
By the time we came out, I reckoned it was safe to climb down the ladder into the ship. Even at close quarters there didn’t seem to be any serious damage. Nothing but a few minor slippages. The ribs of sand were still quite hard and the pink patches were showing up just as clearly as before. I’d been toying with the idea of making a start on the center of the ship. But without Will and John to help shift the earth, there wasn’t much I could do on my own.
The next best thing seemed to be to carry on round the sides. It wasn’t long before I found something that made my heart sink — signs of a filled-in hole. It descended straight from the middle of the barrow, right to where the burial chamber might be. The remains of the robbers’ flute. You could see the change in the soil quite clearly. It was like a chimney dropping down into the ground.
So they’d been here all right. Just as I feared. However, it was impossible to tell at this stage if the hole extended all the way into the ship or stopped short. At one side of it were the remains of a burnt-off post. There was a central core of black surrounded by a red ash band. I reckoned this was probably the remains of a fire that had been lit by the robbers. My suspicions were confirmed by some shards of pottery that I found close by. These weren’t Anglo-Saxon — nothing like it. More like sixteenth century, I’d say.
When I had finished troweling and brushing, the post jutted up eight inches in the air — a good deal narrower round the base than it was round the top. As I was clearing away the last of the sand, I looked up to see Reid Moir framed against the sky.
“There you are, Brown,” he said, as if this was the last place in the world he expected to find me.
He showed no sign of wanting to come down the ladder. Probably he was bothered about muddying his clothes. Instead, he waited at the top for me to join him.