Light levels in the trench were very low, the mist denser, and he felt his flesh goosebump as he walked slowly forward straining to find a recognizable shape in the chaos of the shifting air. Disorientated by the lack of visual landmarks he tried to estimate visibility, but looking down realized he could barely see his feet. The acrid mist made the back of his throat ache, and he covered his mouth with his hand as he edged forward.
Ahead of him, funnelled along the trench, he could hear the susurration of the distant pine trees, and then something else: the brittle tap-tap of a digger’s trowel on clay and pebbles. He moved north and the sound grew suddenly clearer, preternaturally close, almost – it seemed – in his own head. He coughed self-consciously, and suddenly a figure in grey outline stood before him.
‘Dryden. Welcome to the kingdom of the mist.’
‘Professore,’ said Dryden, recognizing the voice of Azeglio Valgimigli, the academic leading the dig, an international collaboration between Cambridge, Lucca, Prague and Copenhagen. He was a deeply cultured man, a facet of character that bewitched Dryden, who was not. But there was something of the charlatan about him as well, something a little too mannered in the precise academic movements of the slim hands, and the perfectly manicured fingers. Dryden imagined him working in a cool, tiled museum expertly caring for the artefacts in glass-fronted exhibition cabinets which, like him, had been arranged for effect. He was lean, but slightly too short to carry off the half-moon professorial glasses, and the deep, terracotta, Tuscan tan. Dryden knew his age thanks to a press release issued when the dig began. The Italian was thirty-nine but looked older, the academic manners slightly archaic, the constant attempts at gravitas strained.
His clothes, although caked in dust, were the finest: moleskin trousers, a leather shirt, and a faded silk bandanna, the last an affectation which made Dryden wince. To combat the Fen mist he wore a thermal vest, but even this was a fashionable matt black.
Dryden, who made a point of making friends with people he didn’t like, greeted him warmly with a handshake.
‘What today?’ he asked, peering into the hole Professor Valgimigli had dug in the trench face.
‘Today, Philip, we are – what you say? Up page?’
Dryden had given the archaeologist a brief drunken tutorial on the various gradations of newspaper story: from splash to filler, from page lead to down page. The Italian had been enticed into The Fenman bar opposite The Crow’s offices after the finding of the silver pommel – a conversation which had resulted in the headline ‘Royal Sword Found at Ely Dig’. Which was a shame, as it was almost certainly something else, but Valgimigli was unable to demand a correction owing to the confusing effects of six pints of dark mild and a fervent desire for publicity of any kind. The story had, after all, got him a page lead in the Daily Telegraph, complete with a flattering picture.
‘Up page’ was encouraging, but Dryden didn’t trust the academic’s news judgement.
‘Can I see?’
Valgimigli crouched down on the damp clay and folded back a piece of tarpaulin. Against the dark green material the archaeologist had arranged what looked like six identical rusted carburettor rings.
‘I found them by this.’ Valgimigli picked up a curved shard of pottery decorated with blue smudges.
‘Note the design,’ said the Professor. Dryden studied the pot. Heads, perhaps? Pumpkins? Banjos? Was there anything duller than old pottery, he asked himself. Yes, old carburettor rings.
‘It’s a bull’s head,’ said Valgimigli, and the smile that spread across his face was a living definition of the word smug.
‘And these?’ said Dryden, pointing at the rings.
‘They don’t look like much, do they?’ asked the archaeologist, not waiting for Dryden to confirm this judgement before adding, ‘They’re rein rings.’
‘Like for horses?’ asked Dryden.
‘Chariots,’ said Valgimigli triumphantly.
‘So?’ Dryden had bright green eyes, like the worn glass you can pick up on a stony beach. When he knew he had a story, they caught the light.
The archaeologist covered up the rings. Dryden whistled, knowing just how annoying that can be. ‘Chariots. Like Boudicca. Charlton Heston.’
‘If you like,’ said Valgimigli, letting him build any story he wanted.
‘I like,’ thought Dryden, disliking him even more for underestimating him so much.
They looked up as a shadow fell across the trench. The crew had appeared, and stood in grey silhouette against the white sky, ghosts on parade. Dryden had got to know them over the months, Professor Valgimigli’s ‘muscle’ – a team of six postgraduate students from Cambridge. The other senior archaeologists made only occasional visits to the site. Valgimigli ran the show, Lucca having provided the biggest single contribution to the costs.
There were five of them. ‘Josh has found something, Professor,’ said a woman Dryden knew as Jayne. He noted with appreciation the curve of the hips and the tight jeans, fashionably bleached. Her voice lacked confidence and held an edge of anxiety. ‘Something he shouldn’t have.’
The crew stepped back into the mist, leaving Valgimigli and Dryden to continue north to the central ‘crossroads’ where the two site trenches met. Here they turned east and continued for a further twenty-five yards. They reached a large hole dug in the north side of the trench. The diggers stood on the trench lip, while a large floodlight had been set up in the ditch floor aimed into the exposed cavity.
Valgimigli stopped. ‘Josh?’
‘Here, Professor.’ The voice was so close Dryden jumped, exhibiting the nerves which he generally hid so well. Josh backed out of the hole, dragging with him a set of trowels and a torch. Josh was tall, blond, and well-built, an ensemble undermined by heavy features and weak, grey eyes. ‘The light’s bad, but have a look.’ Dryden saw now that the hole was about two and a half feet square, and the sides were roughly panelled in what looked like old pine slats.
Valgimigli emerged and handed the torch to Dryden without a word. Dryden, faced with an unknown fear, did what most children do – he ran towards it, thrusting his torso into the hole and crawling forward three feet, bringing his trailing arm, which held the torch, around in front of his body.
His face was less than six inches from a skull. Its dull yellow surface caught the light like rancid butter. Only the top of the cranium was visible, with part of the brow exposed towards the ridges above the eye sockets. Around the head newly exposed earth trickled and shifted, a pebble dropping from the tunnel roof struck the exposed bone with a lifeless, hollow tap.
Dryden drew back a foot and saw that the head was not the only bone uncovered. The fingers of the right hand were clear of the earth as well, giving the impression that the skeleton was emerging from its grave. A snail, its shell threatening to topple it forward, descended the cranium towards the unseen jaws.
Dryden backed out, feeling with relief the caress of the cool moist air.
‘And that?’ said the archaeologist, kneeling down and using a long metal pointer to gently tap the exposed bones of the finger. Something man-made caught the light, something folded into the exposed finger bones. Valgimigli stepped into the opening and, reaching forward, lifted it gently out of the creeping earth. The rest of the digging crew had climbed down into the trench using a portable ladder and had laid a clear plastic artefact sheet on the floor. Valgimigli placed the object centrally with the kind of meticulous care reserved for a religious ikon. It was a folded wax pouch, the kind smokers use for tobacco but much larger, A4 size. The archaeologist prised it open using one gloved hand and the metal probe.