We all turned to the Squire as the lad stood there, panting, apparently exhilarated by the effect his words had had. Another boy popped up beside him, swore softly at being beaten to it, put his hand on his friend’s shoulder, and looked down at us with equal anticipation. I felt for a moment as though I was on a stage, in an ancient theatre, where ritual grief sounded after ritual murder. We were looking to the Squire as if he were the salvatory King, as if he might raise his arms, and open his throat, and wail for all of us. Instead, he reached into his waistcoat pocket and took out two pennies, flicked them to the boys (who scampered off down Louzy Hill, shrieking at their good fortune), scratched his forehead, and indicated with his trowel that we should continue — and nothing more was said for the rest of the day, bar the odd ‘poor bugger’ murmured into the chalk. I felt now as if I were at a tea-party where a guest had loudly broken wind; where some rule had been broken and custom breached by the unforeseen — and no one was quite sure what to do about it.
So it was not unexpected when Marlers stood up at the end of a day’s excavation and announced that this was to be his last week. His leggings were white with chalk; his face was streaked like a clown’s. He said that Jimmy Tuck’s mother looked at him funny, that the nips looked at him funny, that the whole universe, in effect, was looking at ‘awld Marlers funny’. I had indeed looked at him, I must say, with a wry internal grin since our first encounter, when he had come to advise on the contents of my greenhouse, and I had displayed the newcomer’s unerring ability to try too hard. ‘Ah, good morning Mr Marlow, come in,’ said I. ‘My name en’t Marlow,’ came the lugubrious reply, ‘it be Trevick.’ Why ‘Marlers’ I have not been able to discover. Not that it matters now: how many bright appendages are lost, how many quirks and tics that make up the human sum of personality slip beneath the earth, when faceless Death strikes!
Back on the barrow, the Squire blanched a little at this news. ‘It’s your decision,’ he said. He could have said little else, in the circumstances. Ernest, whom he was consulting at that minute, sucked on a pencil.
‘Duty,’ said Marlers, glancing at the others, who were wiping their trowels on the soft tussocks. ‘You talked of duty at the meetin’, so we understand. That’s why all our young lads have gone. You an’ your sword from Waterloo, sir.’
‘Yes,’ said the Squire, looking down. ‘Of course. Duty.’
Ernest began to flick through his drawings. Urns, shards, an iron hair-pin, yesterday’s broken beaker impressed with a comb in crude diamond-shaped patterns. Nothing of significance or value.
‘Yes. Of course. Duty.’
Marlers, Allun the chauffeur, Terence Brinn, and wheezy but no doubt formidable Tom Sedgwick — all left at the end of the week. Ernest stayed, of course — as well as Dart, nostrils quivering like a horse, content with his stupidity. The Squire was devastated, and consoled himself by shooting pigeons for a week in Bailey’s Wood — while the barrow was left under canvas wraps. A month of disappointing finds had taken its toll, and now war had interrupted his long-held ambition (this is how I now interpreted it) to take possession of an ancient treasure.
Sometime during this week of idleness, Ernest called round and (in between taking sips of tea with his tongue-tip protruded, like a cat at its milk) explained to me the various stages through which the barrow had passed before resting content with tussocks and butterflies and the odd rustic rump for four thousand or so years. His enthusiasm was tempered by the possibility that our Chief had lost interest. This was, he claimed, a sign of the amateur.
‘Though, of course, I cannot, um, blame him. Of course.’
I nodded. His moustache was wiped free of tea and malt biscuit and he spread out a diagram on the table between us.
‘Here,’ he said, pointing to a large oblong ringing the welter of circles and crosses; ‘here is the latest burial-phase. A ditch dug around the mound in which, um, we have found evidence of burial by cremation. The discoloration of the soil is probably due to the rotting of wooden stakes surrounding the most recent, um, mound phase.’
He paused. I was impressed.
‘From previous expeditions which I have been party to I predict that, um, an earlier phase will yield something much more exciting.’
‘Why should it?’
He smiled.
‘The initial justification for such a sizeable mound,’ he replied, in a triumphant tone befitting the Assistant Secretary of our county’s Archaeological Society. His moustache quivered at my quizzical look. ‘Our finds up to now, um, these recent finds — they were simply additions. And cremation is, I believe, associated with later centuries. If we continue, I confidently predict that, um, we will uncover a rich burial, uncremated, with grave-goods to match. It might take many weeks, but I am sure it will be, um, worth it.’
I sat back and pondered his assertions while he lapped his tea. In actual fact, I was hardly bothered one way or another. With such recent memories of my wife’s last illness, I was growing averse to finding anything at all, if it meant uncovering something so manifestly morbid. To reveal the dead is not to release them.
‘I see. But with whom? Dart? He’s more a liability than a help. He still believes the trowel is his hammer and the chalk the anvil, if I’m not mistaken. He would smash the skull before we saw it. I say we should enlist some female support, but the Chief is dead agin it, needless to say.’
Ernest laughed — giggled would be a better description. The Chief’s misogyny was the best known fact about him — the oft-given explanation of his bachelor state, accompanied with an apparent unconcern at the inevitable withering of the Norcoat-Wells tree.
‘Yes, there’s the problem. Um, I’ve often wondered why the under-gardener hasn’t joined us. He’s, um, very strong.’
‘Percy Cullurne?’
‘Yes.’
I sighed. ‘That man has strong opinions of his own. As you saw — or rather, would have seen, at the meeting.’
‘I heard, yes,’ he said, flushing a little at this somewhat oblique reproval. ‘But what are these opinions? Concerning the excavation, I mean.’ He coughed and blew his nose, in case I had forgotten about his weakly constitution. ‘He never,’ he added, ‘says very much.’
‘That’s partly because the Squire has forbidden him to do so. Button your lip, he was told, apparently. Too much talk of treasure. So that is what Cullurne has done, in toto. I have had several most fruitful discussions with him on ornithological and botanical matters, as well as other more general concerns, such as the survival of the soul after death. Now it is exceedingly difficult to extract the shortest of sentences from him, unless you are talking of the weather, or the crops, or such like. And that in an almost impenetrable dialect, which was not the case before.’
‘Ah,’ Ernest nodded, and wiped his moustache with the corner of his handkerchief. ‘Then we will have to work slowly. Or recruit others. Older men. A pity, a pity. Um, yourself excused, of course. The new chauffeur looks very, um, frail. And the harvest is at its height. Pray for a fine autumn.’