“I should have asked Sergeant Breckon if there are any current missing persons,” said Mari. “Or a tramp perhaps, dying somewhere nearby.”
“Neither one,” said the vicar firmly. “It would have come up in the meeting of the parish council this morning, when we decided we needed your assistance.”
Mari thought for a moment. A thumb bone separated from a skeleton had to come from somewhere…
“Do you have a local museum?”
The vicar and Lawrence shook their heads.
“What about archaeological excavations? Are there any taking place nearby?”
“No,” replied the vicar, but as she spoke, her husband cleared his throat. She looked at him crossly, as if he had interrupted her.
“Not nearby, as such,” said Lawrence, with an apologetic glance at his wife. “But I believe there is a dig going on at the upper end of the northernmost arm of Castwell Creek.”
“Is there really?” asked the vicar, as Mari said, “How far away is that?”
“A good seven miles as the crow—you might fly,” replied Lawrence. “But at least nine miles by road, because you have to go along the New Cut for such a way before the crossing at Bridge. Would you like a rock cake? There is only one left.”
Mari took the cake and ate it slowly. It lived up to its name, being very hard indeed. Seven miles was a long way for a shade to go, but it was not impossible. So far, the spirit was not malevolent. But it might become more urgent in its searching, and serious thumb injuries could result. Or become annoyed and take even more drastic action.
One puzzling aspect was that the shade should already have found the thumb bone and taken it back. It ought to be able to sense where it was, unless there was interference of some kind, or it was being moved about. The testing of people’s thumbs was also curious, as if the shade hoped to find its own member attached to a living person.
She wondered if she should try to find the thumb bone herself, by divination or augury. But the fact the shade itself was having difficulty suggested this would not be easy. Locating the skeleton the thumb came from should be more straightforward.
“I had better go and have a look at this archaeological dig,” she said when the last crumbs of rock cake had cleared her throat. “Though I’d rather not fly. My broom is rather old and needs a rest. Does Sergeant Breckon have a car?”
“He does not,” replied the vicar. “But I do. Lawrence shall drive you over immediately.”
“Oh yes,” said Lawrence mechanically. “Delighted.”
The vicar’s car turned out to be a well-used but apparently entirely unsprung two-seat roadster of considerable vintage. It was even more uncomfortable than Mari’s broom. The rock cake also sat uncomfortably in her stomach, and several times threatened to rise as they hit a pothole or bounced over a flurry of flood-scoured ridges in the road.
It seemed considerably further than nine miles, much of it beetling along the raised road alongside the New Cut before crossing the iron bridge at Bridge, only to go back up the Cut on the other side. From there they took a road between two long, thin arms of the estuary, the narrow strip of bitumen often lower than the water on either side, protected from inundation only by turfed-over banks that did not seem sufficiently high or thick.
The dig itself turned out to be in a creek that joined the left-hand arm of the estuary. Several cars, a motorcycle and a lorry were drawn up on a hummock of raised ground at this conjunction of the waters.
When Lawrence parked the two-seater, Mari stood up on her seat and saw that the tidal creek was dry, the sea kept back by a coffer dam made of sandbags and heavy beams of timber. Behind the dam, silt and mud had been carefully dug away down at least a dozen feet to reveal a buried longboat, its timbers still solid but dark as pitch from their long submergence.
Several people were digging in various corners of the boat, all of them quite young. Undergraduate archaeologists. Mari was familiar with the breed.
More importantly, from Mari’s point of view, were the tall, rune-carved willow wands topped with silver lamps that surrounded the lip of the excavation, one every seven paces, in the orthodox pattern. These were ghost-wards, deployed to prevent any shade or revenant from rising from the burial ship—as this had to be—to terrorize the surrounding countryside.
The willow wands were twinned with shorter rods of spell-engraved iron, thief-wards designed to keep people out, save for those mentioned by name in the warding spells.
Mari nodded to herself and climbed out of the car, pausing to push out and don her pointy hat. Lawrence followed, falling a few steps behind, his accustomed spot behind his wife, the vicar.
They had just reached the creek-side when one of the archaeologists in the boat saw them and called out.
“Hello! Stop there, please! The wards won’t let you past. I’ll come up.”
He was older than the others. Although he wore the same colorful cravat, untidy shirt, loose bags and tennis shoes as the students, male and female, he also wore an iron necklace tucked under the cravat, plus a tweed coat with heavily overloaded pockets, a symbol of authority and absentmindedness. Mari knew he would be roughly her equivalent, a junior fellow or something similar, recently awarded his doctorate, and here in charge for the first time on his own dig.
“Hello, hello,” he called again as he nimbly made his way up a ladder to the creek bed and then scrambled up the bank. “What brings a witch and… er… here?”
“I’m temporarily the district witch,” replied Mari. She liked this man for his cheerful countenance and greeting. “Dr. Mari Garridge, usually a junior fellow of Ermine College, Hallowsbridge. This is Mr. Lawrence Evenholme, the husband of the vicar at Nether Warnstow, who kindly drove me here.”
“Oh yes,” replied the man. He offered his hand, apologized for its filthy state, and quickly withdrew it. “I’m Dr. Robert Jacoby. Bob. Or Jac to some folks, take your pick. I’m a treasure-vigile from the museum. Friend’s College, originally, though I expect I was up at Hallowsbridge somewhat before your time, Dr. Garridge… Garridge… um, are you here on official business?”
“I’m afraid so,” replied Mari. She paused and tried to frame what she had to say as kindly as possible. A treasure-vigile was a kind of archaeologist who was also something of a wizard, which might mean not much of one at all or the full magic, so this cheerful chap had probably placed the ghost-wards himself. And there was a problem with them.
“Last night a shade haunted Nether Warnstow, I think trying to find its missing thumb bone. I suspect the shade’s skeleton is here.”
“But… but that’s not possible!” exclaimed Jac. He turned and gestured to the willow wands. “I placed the wards before we even started the dig.”
“Yes, I see,” said Mari. “But I’m afraid you haven’t taken something into account.”
Jac stared at her, an expression of intense puzzlement screwing up his plain but quite appealing face.
Mari pointed at the coffer dam. The tide was on the ebb, but the muddy, roiling water still came more than halfway up the dam. At the flood tide, it would be only a few feet from the crest—putting the water well above the height of the wands.
It took Jac a long, epiphany-dawning moment to work out what she meant.
“Oh Goddess,” he groaned. “Proximity of salt and the action of the sea! How high should I have made the wands?”
“At six-yards distance, one and three quarter times the height of highest water,” recited Mari from memory.
“Garridge,” said Jac and he groaned again. “You’re the sizar who saved Ermine and re-established the bounds… I feel so stupid.”
“Wards and binding are my specific area of research,” said Mari. “I am sure wizardry is only an adjunct to your archaeological expertise. Can you let us in to take a look at your skeleton?”