It was how the thing felt in her hand.
Now, shifting aside those soggy cardboard boxes and torn sheets, her heart thundered in her chest. What if someone has taken it? she thought, but a moment later she knew that would not be the case. Everyone had wanted to leave it, not take it. Likely some of those here were even now worrying about what would happen to the artifact—
—weapon—
—when the time came to close the dig once and for all. They could not stay here indefinitely. The public enjoyed the spectacle of exploring history, but they liked even more the absence of tents and caravans and the mud of open wounds.
She moved one more sheet and several more slid off in a pile, heavy with water, slumping to the ground as if they wrapped something dead.
Ashleigh caught her breath and stepped back, berating herself in the same instant.
“Stupid bitch.”
She breathed deeply and stared at what had been uncovered. A rusted old artifact. It sat there like something forgotten at the bottom of the garden, not an old thing that had been buried away for perhaps four thousand years. It looked sad and useless, not chilling, and for a moment she could hardly recall why any of them had been so troubled by it.
Maybe it was just me, she thought. It was possible. The student had found it and thrown it into a corner, identified it as part of some broken farming machinery from thirty years ago, and for some reason Ashleigh had attached much more dread significance…
But no, that was untrue. This dig was her dig, and she had not just imagined the reaction to this thing. Strange that no one had spoken of it.
She took a step closer and reached out. This won’t be finished until everything is packed away, she thought. However distasteful, she could not leave something like this lying around. Treasure hunters weren’t only a thing of fiction, and projects like this often attracted professional thieves as well as casual opportunists. They employed minor security measures—her caravan on-site being one of them—but they had yet to suffer any losses. She could not leave that to chance now that the dig was almost over.
“Well, if they steal it, they steal it,” she muttered, but on the back of that came the sudden unbidden thought: They can’t!
She took one last step forward and picked the thing up. It was heavier than it looked, and as she lifted it in one hand its weight shifted strangely, as if it were full of liquid. She shook but heard nothing. It felt solid, but it contained a potential for strange movement. Ashleigh hefted it in both hands.
A breath of wind whispered between the heavy polythene curtains and lifted dust, carrying a cloudy veil and forcing her to blink it from her eyes.
The artifact was cool and heavy and damp, and Ashleigh hurried across to one of the examination tables. On the way she thought, Give it a look over, try and find out just what it is… ceremonial wine holder, ornament, weapon… But by the time she’d reached the table, she was already glancing across at the pile of storage and shipping containers, trying to work out which one would be best.
A metal one, of course. Stronger.
She packed the artifact away, breathing heavily, concentrating on this one task, so focused that she did not notice the blood dripping from her left hand. Into the metal container, soft cloth surrounding the object, tied around with masking tape, then the container itself packed with polystyrene beads, surrounding the packed artifact so that no part of it came into contact with the metal box’s walls. She saw the red smears but did not acknowledge them, because now it was almost away and out of sight.
Ashleigh paused and looked around. The hairs on her forearms and the back of her neck stood on end, and her nipples grew hard. It was as if a cold breeze had passed around and through her, and she felt sweat beading and running down her sides.
“Fucking ridiculous,” she said, uttering a short barked laugh that was meant to be softer than it was. She had never spooked herself before. There was a first time for everything, she supposed, but that still didn’t diminish the anger. How stupid she was.
She clipped and screwed the metal lid on the box with the fittings provided, then addressed the tag on the outside. She was sending it to her own flat a couple of miles away from her place of work, the British Museum in London. She should have been sending it directly to the museum, she knew—this could have been regarded as theft by some—but when this was over and she returned home for a few days’ rest…
Well, there were books she needed to consult. Books that few archaeologists would really take seriously. She’d been collecting them for years as something of a distraction, a creative outlet for a mind so used to analyzing fact and recording intricate detail.
With the box sealed and addressed, she turned off the lights strung beneath the canvas ceiling and exited into the dusky light. As she walked to her caravan, she noticed that her hand was wet, and then she acknowledged the blood she had felt and seen there, the warm blood she had smelled.
Inside, she flicked the light switch and turned on the gas fire. It would take an age for the caravan to warm up. Sometimes she wished she had more creature comforts, but this was the life she had chosen for herself. A life looking for mystery in buried history.
She wiped blood from her left hand and ran it beneath the warm tap for some time, turning her hand this way and that, splaying her fingers, examining her fingernails, looking for a cut that was not there.
Later she sat at the small table, a glass of gin before her as she looked at her left hand and waited for fresh blood that did not come, and which perhaps had never been there at all.
LONDON
PRESENT DAY
1
ROSE, THE COLOR OF BLOOD, wrung the final drops from the clear plastic bag. They dripped onto her tongue, the last dribbles tasting just as good as the first. Chilled, old, dead, still she took strength from this drink and relished its goodness. Some of the others hunted rats and cats, but this was her choice, and the only way she knew to remain undamned in her own eyes. Anything warm would be too much like the real thing.
As usual, as she licked her lips and sucked any traces from her fingers, she wondered who this had been. The blood could have come from anyone in the city: one of the soldiers she saw disembarking from a train the previous night; a stranger looking for love; a lover seeking strangeness. Once, Rose might have understood the act of willingly giving away one’s own blood, but now that things had changed, such an act seemed abhorrent to her. She was glad people did so, of course… but she no longer understood.
She hoped Marty never did it. The idea of drinking something of him… She would know, of course. That would make it worse. She’d know, and she would not be able to stop.
She sighed and closed her eyes, relishing the power and strength the blood gave her. It’s just food, she thought, and she imagined Francesco’s mocking grin if she ever said that aloud. He was the oldest among them, and sometimes he disturbed her. It wasn’t that he had seen more than she could imagine; it was the fact that he found no compulsions to talk about it.