‘I’ve been dying to get a look at the place,’ said Nicolette, ‘but now that I’m here…’
‘It’s giving you the creeps?’ I asked sympathetically.
‘Absolutely the willies,’ she said. ‘One envies Miss Lindsay with her sketchbook. She obviously has no qualms.’
‘We don’t have to go,’ muttered Vashti. ‘I don’t think I dare.’
‘Dare what?’ I said. ‘You’re surely not worried about a mummy’s curse, are you? Haven’t there been archaeologists and university scientists all over the place time and again?’ If truth be told, I was feeling rather less hearty than this made me sound, for the last twenty-four hours had seen some terribly murky deeds unfold: this chamber was very far from being a mere historical site in some people’s reckoning.
‘Scoff all you want to,’ said Vashti. ‘There are more things in heaven and earth…’ But I was with Mr Tait on that one: firmly believing that there were rather fewer things in heaven and earth than one was wont to hear tales of, and that stout refusal to give the tales credence was perhaps best all round.
Standing just where the little cleft became almost a cave, overhung most disquietingly with jagged plates of fissured rock which looked as though they might slide out of place at any moment and plummet, spike first, to the earth, Mr Tait was gathering everyone’s attention.
‘Now then,’ he said, ‘it is perfectly safe inside, solid rock and all most carefully pinned and buttressed by our friends from the university not five years ago, so there is no danger. I have a lantern here, and Hugh has another. You don’t mind coming at the back, Hugh, do you? The going is not arduous – I see you have all been sensible and worn stout shoes. So let us begin.’
He turned and walked into the cave and then, moving to one side, he disappeared, leaving the rest of us to give a collective gasp.
‘Come along,’ said Mr Tait’s voice, sounding rather muffled. Miss McCallum strode after him and stopped at the point where he had vanished, standing with her hands on her hips, looking upwards, then she too walked as though into the solid face of the rock facing her. I followed.
Disappointingly, although I could understand how Mr Tait might have been unable to resist the little show he had given us, there was no mouth of a tunnel, tiny doorway with odd symbols carved above it, or any other fantastical portal to be found there, but just a set of rough steps which led between outcrops of rock, hidden from view and so lending themselves to theatricality, but otherwise, with their edging of brambles, and withered stinging nettle, looking very much like many another flight of steps hacked into a hillside up and down which I had been dragged during the country walks which punctuated the early years of my marriage. I started to climb, ignoring the brush of gorse and bracken against my skirt and hoping that we were not expected to go too far up the law on the outside before being admitted to its secret innards.
We went quite far enough, high above the hawthorn and elder which clothed the lower slopes and ending with a splendid view – almost worth it – of Wester and Over Luck Farms although the Mains was hidden by the trees below us. At last Mr Tait stopped, stepping off the path onto a flat place on the cropped grass, puffing like a bull walrus and with his spectacles slightly misted, and waited for everyone following to catch up with him.
‘Round here,’ he said. ‘Here we are,’ and he picked his way along a path as narrow as a sheep track which wound around and slightly downwards, veering out alarmingly to pass a rather twisted little rowan which was just about managing to cling to the rocky slope. On the other side of this, signs of interference by man could be seen. Earth had been shovelled out of place and was held back by restraining planks of rough wood, themselves buttressed by pegs driven deep into the ground. The resulting niche was floored with brick and there were four metal poles, rather rusted now, set in the corners which must have held up a canopy at one time. At the back of the niche was a plain wooden door, painted with creosote and shut with a sturdy padlock. Mr Tait fished in his trouser pocket and drew out a new-looking, very shiny key. He caught my eye.
‘Yes, Mrs Gilver,’ he said, loud enough for everyone to hear. ‘We very often have to change the padlock on this place, I’m afraid. Boys will be boys, I suppose, and it’s just too much of a temptation for some of the Luckenlaw rascals, this place sitting up here like the den of dens. Look, the staple and hasp are quite buckled with all the attempts over the years. And judging from these bright scratches, the scamps have been at it again not long since. Boys will be boys!’
While talking, he had undone the padlock, released the hasp and closed the padlock over the staple again, locking the door open, and now he grasped the handle and pulled. There was no spooky creaking as the door swung open, but beyond it was exactly what one might have hoped for – an older doorway, this one of stone and arched to a point at the top. Mr Tait took out a box of matches to light his lantern.
‘Shall we?’ he said. ‘Better late than never, my dear Hugh. Now ladies, the first thing you will notice is the surprisingly modern-looking stonework of the entrance way, which suggests that this place was in use until perhaps Georgian times and was repaired using the builders’ know-how of the day. Certainly these blocks you see in the lintel have been quarry-cut and dressed and could not be original, but as we go further you will be pleased to hear that the inner lintels are made of free surface slabs that…’
The history lesson had begun and it carried on the whole time we were in there, much to the evident delight of what I came to think of as the three scholars of the party, the schoolmistress, the postmistress and, of course, Hugh. The three sensation-seekers, if I might lump myself in with the Howies and describe us that way, would have been better served by a deathly hush or whispered legends, but it is perhaps just as well that Mr Tait did not indulge in such things, for Nicolette and Vashti looked quite mesmerised enough as it was, even while the description of hair-strengthened mortar and estimations of the weights of the stones and their provenance and the flint marks upon them and the significance of the whale-jaw shape to the entrance pillars droned on and on. Hugh, of course, was transported. The only one of us, in fact, who strolled down the passageway to the burial chamber, quite unruffled, neither enchanted nor intrigued, was Lorna.
Even when we reached the chamber itself, more of a cave really, she stood as calmly as though she were in a museum, looking at the exhibits in well-lit glass cases safely behind velvet ropes. I, in contrast, had icy prickles up the back of my neck and was concentrating on not noticing anything identifiable in the many prints on the dusty floor, dreading to see where the bones of the poor girl who had lain here all these years might have rested on their recent brief return.
‘… can’t have been intended for burial,’ Mr Tait was saying. ‘For as you know, a stone cist in the ground covered by a mound of earth is the normal thing in these parts, but it was probably used as a resting place for the king, or chieftain – hence the central sarcophagus – and for generations of his family too, judging by the number of cists which have been constructed over time.’ He waved a hand at the tiers of little cubby-holes, half hewn out and half built on, all around the walls of the chamber, turning it into something resembling a giant honeycomb. ‘The small size of these – smaller even than the usual short-cist – is thought to indicate ash burial or bone burial rather than the interment of recently deceased corpses.’
Beside me I could hear Vashti Howie’s breath, fast and shallow.
‘Are you all right?’ I asked her.