“Closer.”
She shifted along the mattress towards me. I started rubbing her back. I could feel her bones poking through like buttons. Then I put my hand around her shoulder.
All at once she pulled away. “Oh, Basil, I can’t.”
“What do you mean?”
“Old Middleton said I had to be down at the Orford road at nine if I wanted a lift back.”
“But I don’t want you to go.”
“I don’t want to go either, Basil. But you know how it is.”
She stood up and started pinning her hat back on. After a while I stood up too. When she’d finished with her hat, she bent over and checked herself in the mirror.
“You be careful with old Middleton,” I told her.
“What do you mean?”
“You heard me.”
“Don’t be daft, Basil. They don’t call him old Middleton for nothing, you know. Why, you’re not jealous, are you?”
“No,” I said. “Maybe. Just a little.”
“Really, you do talk some rubbish sometimes, you know.”
“Do I?”
“Not that I mind, not necessarily. Makes a girl feel wanted.”
“You should do,” I said.
“Should do what?”
“Feel wanted.”
She laughed. Then she put the backs of her fingers up against my cheek. “You be sure to take care of yourself.”
“I will.”
“Don’t work too hard either. And remember, Basil, don’t you take any more nonsense from that Reid Moir.”
The next morning I finished uncovering the line of discolored sand I’d found the day before. It ran straight across the ship — almost from one gunwale to the other. An hour later, John Jacobs found another one. Again, there was a single discolored line running across the ship. This second line, though, was less regular than the first — it was more like a faint thread running through the earth.
We measured the gap between the two lines. It was eighteen feet. The more I thought about it, the more likely I reckoned these were the remains of the burial-chamber walls. When I told Mrs. Pretty, she insisted on having a look for herself. I held the bottom of the ladder with my foot so that it didn’t slide and guided her down rung by rung. She knelt on a piece of hessian and inspected both of the lines.
“You really think this might be it, Mr. Brown?”
“I don’t know,” I told her. “Not for sure. But it might be, yes.”
Throughout the afternoon we continued shaving down the area in the center of the ship, taking it off one thin layer at a time. As we were doing so, I found a third discolored line. This one was much shorter than the others — barely four feet in length and running downwards as well as outwards towards the position of the gunwale.
Sitting on the edge of the trench, I tried to work out what these lines could mean. The best theory I could fix on was this: the original burial chamber probably sat in the bottom of the ship with a pitched roof, much like a picture of Noah’s Ark in a child’s storybook. The Oseberg chamber seems to have been built like this — as far as I could tell from the illustrations in Maynard’s book. But at some stage the roof must have fallen in. Most likely due to the weight of soil. The fall seems certain to have dislodged the contents of the chamber. Of course, there’s also a possibility it might have crushed them in the process.
I drew a sketch of how the chamber might have looked — as close to scale as I could make it. I was staring at this sketch when Maynard appeared. I could tell straightaway there was something wrong. He’s a real worry-guts at the best of times. Now, though, he looked more bilious than ever. Rather than ask what the matter was, I decided to wait until he told me. As expected, it didn’t take long.
“Basil,” he said, “I fear I have done a foolish thing.”
“How’s that, then?”
“I meant no harm by it, I swear. Quite the reverse. My intention was solely to make sure that we — that you were on the right track. I wrote to Megaw in the Isle of Man.”
“Megaw?”
“Yes, at the museum there. I knew that he had records of burials that had been found on the island. Records that could be very useful in determining the precise date of this ship. Well,” he said in a shriller voice than before, “how could I know that he had been at Cambridge with Charles Phillips? No sooner had Megaw received my letter than he contacted Phillips and read it out to him. Over the telephone,” he added, as if this made the whole thing even worse. “Now everyone seems to know about the dig. There’s already talk of the British Museum becoming involved. And the Ministry of Works.”
“Oh, Lord.”
“I know, Basil. I know… I never imagined a little thing would have such implications. As you can imagine, Reid Moir is furious. Apart from anything else, he can’t stand Phillips. It turns out there’s bad blood between them from way back. Apparently Phillips wrested control of the East Anglia Society from him in the most underhand fashion. You know how Reid Moir can be sometimes — far from reasonable, frankly. He spoke to me in the most — the most disparaging tones.”
I folded up the drawing and put it in my pocket. Maynard was still standing there, looking as if he’d swallowed a pound of worms.
“What do you think we should do, Basil?” he asked.
“Not much we can do, I wouldn’t have thought. Except wait and see. Whatever happens, I dare say we’ll be the last to know.”
When Robert appeared the next morning, he said that his mother wasn’t feeling well and might not come out today. Not unless we found anything significant. He also mentioned that she’d had a visitor the night before. He’d been about to go to bed, he said, when someone had rung the front doorbell.
I can’t say I’d been paying much attention to this. Not until Robert said that this visitor had been large. Then I did come to.
“How do you mean ‘large’?” I asked him.
“Fat,” he said, and giggled. “Although I’m not meant to say that.”
“What did he look like?”
“I’ve just told you, Mr. Brown.”
“Did you notice anything else about him?”
“He wore a bow tie.”
“Did he now?”
“It had spots on it.”
“Yes,” I said, “I thought it might have done. And had you seen this man before?”
He shook his head. “But Mama must have known him.”
“How do you work that out?”
“Because he called her his dear lady.”
“His ‘dear lady’? How did she like that?”
“I think she pretended not to notice.”
“You didn’t happen to catch this man’s name, did you?”
“I’m sorry, Mr. Brown.”
“Doesn’t matter,” I said. “Doesn’t matter at all.”
“But Mr. Grateley would know it,” he added. “He showed him in.”
“So he would.”
“I could run and ask him if you like.”
“No need to do that.”
“Shall I, Mr. Brown?”
“Go on, then, boy.”
He ran off, returning just a few minutes later. “Grateley said that he was called Phillips — Mr. Charles Phillips. Do you know him?”
“I know of him. He’s an archaeologist. From Selwyn College, Cambridge.”
“What do you think he’s doing here?”
“I’m not sure exactly. Although I reckon I can make a pretty good guess.”
Throughout the morning, we kept on digging in the middle of the ship — in the area where I suspected the burial chamber must be. For fear of disturbing the soil, I switched to a trowel, a brush and the bodkin. While this was sure to take longer, there was less risk of doing any damage. Yet despite being careful not to hurry, I felt more of a sense of urgency than ever before. It was like having a metal band round my head, growing tighter and tighter.
Meanwhile, I crept along, scraping and brushing. The three discolored lines went down a good fourteen inches without getting any lighter. Despite not finding anything, I could be sure of one thing — there were no signs of disturbance. That didn’t mean that the burial chamber was still intact, of course. On the other hand, it was hard to see how else any robbers could have got in. Not without leaving a trace. And if the chamber really hadn’t been touched — well, anyone with any degree of curiosity would have to wonder what might be inside. No matter how hard they tried to stop themselves.